Meet Rebecca Ballard. One of the many good writers making Lockhart, Texas their home. I asked her a few questions.
Tell us a little about your novel TINY ALICE:
Tiny Alice is a multi-generational story of women struggling to meet the challenges of today—whether or not to become a parent, how to be the kind of parent you hope to be, miscommunication, disappointed expectations, and trying to keep a sense of humor in the face of it all. Alice says that an expectation is a disappointment waiting to happen. The characters are intense, colorful, funny and determined. In a way it’s a family saga that spans the time of the Great Depression to today, and examines the machinations of families to find each other and to stay together in spite of innate differences.
How do you write and what do you like and dislike about the process?
I write in the early mornings, probably two to three hours a day. When writing the first draft I try to get the story on paper. It’s a very thin, stream of consciousness process. Then I address each chapter to flesh out the story, develop the characters, and delineate and add detail to the plot, create backstory and subplot. The third time I go through the book I look at language and the quality of my writing style. Then…I EDIT—my least favorite phase of writing a book. Then it’s off to my professional editor for final tweaks.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I enjoyed a double career for thirty plus years as an administrator in the financial industry and as an actress. Health concerns made it necessary of me to “retire” several years ago. I’d always been a writer as well—poetry, short stories, periodical articles, stage plays. Missing the theater terribly, I needed to find a creative outlet that would nurture me through the coming years. I began to write books. My psychological thriller, Wild Game, was published in 2012. Tiny Alice is my second novel, and I’m at work on a third, Saint Sal.
You can get Tiny Alice at https://amzn.com/B07TRTNK7D
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