Published Author Interviews
June 2009 Interview:
Sheri Cobb South
Interviewed by Sarah Tanner
Welcome, Sheri! Please tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m 49 years old, married to a 6’5” basketball-playing chemist. We have two children--one grown daughter and a 16-year-old son. I’m left-handed, as so many writers seem to be, and both of my children are as well, which means my husband has trouble finding a pair of scissors he can cut with. I love doing needlework--I knit, crochet, and do cross-stitch. I play clarinet in the Mobile Pops and in my church orchestra. I love old movies, and I think that comes through in my writing.
How long had you been writing before you got “The Call”?
I was way too lucky way too quickly--from the time I sat down at the typewriter to the time I held my published book in my hands was only 3 years. I paid for it later, when the Sweet Dreams series was discontinued and I had to start all over again. There seems to be an unwritten rule that All Writers Must Pay Their Dues.
Have you always been a full-time writer?
Hmm, I don’t have another paying job, but I find there are always things that will fill up my day and steal my writing time if I let them.
What's your writing schedule like?
Schedule? What’s that? ;-D Seriously, I’m a very s-l-o-w writer, and wish I were more disciplined.
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
I’m a pantser, or at least I was, but now that I’m writing mysteries, I’m having to get used to doing a lot more advance planning.
Do you have any research tips to share?
I think the members of the Beau Monde are a fantastic resource for hard-to-find details. The depth of their knowledge never ceases to amaze me! For more general information, especially when physical descriptions are needed, I like to use children’s books from the library, since they tend to have lots of illustrations. This helps me get a picture in my mind which, hopefully, I can convey to the reader.
Do you write in any other genres, or could you imagine doing so in the future?
I already have--twice! I began as a writer of teen romances for Bantam’s Sweet Dreams series, and wrote five titles in that line before it folded in 1996. (One of those books, Wrong-Way Romance, now sells for $40 and up on Ebay. I should have ordered a case or two!) After the last of the regency print publishers dropped their lines, I began a series of regency-set mysteries with a romance thread.
Could you tell us about your next release?
A Dead Bore was published in December, and earned me my first reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. It’s scheduled for large-print release this summer.
What are you working on at the moment?
A romantic mystery set in 1936 about a wide-eyed Southern girl who goes to Hollywood to become a star. It’s a fun period, but a little intimidating to step so far outside the Regency--especially since there are people alive today who will know firsthand if I get it wrong!
Finally, do you have any tips for aspiring writers?
There’s lots of advice out there for beginners, but not so much for “orphaned” writers who are havingto start all over, so I’d like to speak to them, if I may. When the young adult market shifted to horror in the mid-1990s, I asked myself what it was about writing young adult romance that I liked best. The answer was the humor and the chance to write romances that relied on comic dialogue instead of sex to develop the attraction between hero and heroine. Then I thought about what other genres those same characteristics might translate to. I’d loved Regency romances ever since discovering Georgette Heyeras a teenager, so I tried my hand at that. The result was Miss Darby’s Duenna, which won the Royal Ascot. When the print market for Regencies soured, I asked myself the same questions and came up with In Milady’s Chamber, which introduced Bow Street Runner John Pickett. I think there are still ways to write what you love; you may just have to be a little more creative. But hey, we’re writers--that’s what we do!
Sheri, thank you!