2012 Broadcasting Interview with Rusty Blackwood by Abigail Green

Rusty Blackwood Interview
By, Abigail Green
First year broad-casting, radio, TV, and film major at Niagara College,
Welland, Ontario, Canada.
SCRIPT: by Abigail Green
WHERE: Interviewed at Abigail’s home in St. Catharines, Ontario
WHY: I chose Rusty because she is a brilliant author, an inspiration to young authors, and is also a dear friend.
WHEN: The interview took place Sunday, September 30th. 2012.
HOW: Rusty came to my home and the interview was performed in person. I also recorded it.

Production Script:
Abigail: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this, Rusty! Are you ready?
Rusty: It’s my pleasure. Of course!
Abigail: When did you first start writing?
Rusty: I’ve always loved to express myself with words, right from grade school and whenever I was upset or down or something I’d write about it rather than verbally express it. I found that it helped me, and I could say something through writing better than I could tell someone to try to help. I always liked to write. I got started at it when I was probably seven or eight years old and it just grew.
Abigail: If you had to pick one person who inspired you in your writing, who would it be, and how did they inspire you?
Rusty: Do you mean a writer, or just anybody?
Abigail: Either way is fine.
Rusty: Well I could answer that in two ways. I think I would attribute my love of writing to my public school teacher, Mrs. Gladys Carroll. She was just fantastic. She loved literature; she read to us every day and would take the time to discuss it, analyze it and get our feedback, and maybe she did that to try to find out who in the class had a tendency to write or speak or whatever. So she would encourage it, and I was just blown away by her knowledge of it and her expression, the way she would express what she was reading or what it was that she read that she really liked. As far as authors, probably because I started out liking writing as a child, they would be Louisa May Alcott who wrote ‘Little Women’, ‘Black Beauty,’ by Anna Sewell. Laura Ingles Wilder, fantastic author for writers who did not take formal training; they just wrote passionately about the way they felt. I like descriptive writing; I like to be able to be where the author is when they write it. So if it’s written expressively, I really like that. I can’t say that I like writing that is dead on; that is like “bang-bang-bang” type of thing. I would say probably the three that I mentioned. In adult writing, I really like Danielle Steele, simply because I love romance and I like a good, sweeping saga, a good romantic interlude with the couple, graphic input, because it’s got to be there to keep it realistic. Jackie Collins is a little edgy; she was one of the very first writers to really walk that line between graphic romance and erotica. But she did it extremely well and I think that she brought an entirely new audience and a new light to romance. But I think Danielle Steele would be my first choice if I were to go into a store to purposely purchase a romance novel.
Abigail: What was your first, concrete piece of writing about? The first time you sat down and said to yourself: “I’m going to write a book.” And how old would you say you were at that time?
Rusty: I would have to say ‘Passion in Paris’. I was 51; that was in 2001 and I just had this desire to see if I could write a novel. I’m not formally trained and so it was just this passion to sit and write and see what I could do with these characters that I invented, and see where I could take them. I’ve always loved Paris, although I’ve never been there, I feel as if I have been in prior lives. I’ve always had an affinity to Paris and anything Parisian French. I always thought “what a great place to set a story!” So I would have to say that ‘Passion in Paris’ was the very first piece that I ever sat down to intentionally write.
Abigail: Tell me a little bit about the first time you were published. How did that feel?
Rusty: It felt great! I’m an indie author – which means I’m an independent author. I had done a lot of research on traditional publishing as opposed to self-publishing and which route I might like to follow. Rejection is nine-tenths of writing; you have to be able to take rejection because nine times out of ten it’s what you get, unless you write something that grabs some editor’s eye immediately and they’ve got to see what they can do with it. I chose self-publishing simply because you retain your own rights, and that’s very important, because in traditional publishing you sign your rights away, and therefore they can take the piece of work that you’ve slaved years over and change it into whatever they want to. If you write, it becomes your child. You wouldn’t sign your child away, and you wouldn’t be put in a situation where you would let somebody take something that you wrote and change it entirely, because it’s your name under that title on the cover. I did a lot of research on a lot of self-publishing companies and what they offered, and I ended up going with one that I’ve since pulled away from because I felt that they didn’t carry through. They carried through contractually on what they signed to do, but as far as the business aspect I felt they hadn’t held up their end of the contract, so I’ve since pulled away from them. I will say the name of the company simply to help someone in the future, their name was Xlibris. When I first started with them I published my first collection of poetry in October of 2009, and it felt absolutely wonderful to see my words inside of a book with a gorgeous cover and my name on it. It really is exhilarating, and you feel accomplished as if you’ve accomplished something. I mean, you haven’t discovered the cure to some major disease, but it’s something to be proud of because it’s your time, your sweat, and your emotions put all together and out it comes, there it is. It was a good feeling.
Abigail: What would you say is the most difficult part of the writing process for you personally?
Rusty: The business aspect. Because I’m an indie author so much falls on my shoulders that I have to do myself. Even with traditional publishing, they don’t do a lot of the marketing like they once did, so it falls on the author’s shoulders to do this once the book comes out. So you have to have a really good marketing agency, or find yourself an individual that knows what they’re doing and can help get you out there. You can write and write and write and compile books to no end, but if you can’t get them before the public’s eye you’re defeating your purpose; if you’re writing for that reason, I mean a lot of people simply write because they love to write and they’ll sit doing it and it’s the same as keeping a daily diary of your life. It just depends on what you want to do with that. So, it takes a lot of hours, especially in the beginning process when you’re putting a project together; everyone has their own methods and their own way to go about it. Some authors will block a book out starting from the prelude right to the epilogue and then work that way. Any book has to have a beginning, middle, and an end, but with me I take an idea and project ahead of what I’d like to do with the characters and where I’d like to take them as it comes to me. You can write and write then you’ll have days on end where nothing is coming. But one thing I like to do is keep notes so that when something comes to me that I’ve been trying to get, I’ll jot it down. It might be spontaneous, but it is my true, inner feelings and not just padding words for the sake of filling pages for that would be fake words, and the reader is going to pick up on that if the author isn’t being true to themselves. That’s not what you want. You want them to enjoy what you’ve written and feel what you were feeling when you wrote it.
Abigail: Have there been any hardships with you in your life as a result of being a writer? I know we’ve spoken now about the hardships in the process, but has being a writer negatively affected your life at all?
Rusty: Time, definitely time consumption. I self-publish, so I’m not in a contract where I have a deadline that I have to meet so in that respect I’m freed up. When you’re an indie author it is entirely up to you how much time you’d like to submit to what it is you’re doing. But I would say it’s just trying to arrange your life. I work, as well as write, so it’s just combining the two and trying to find time for family and friends in the process. All of a sudden an idea comes and you don’t want to lose it while it’s fresh and it feels good, so you want to get it down. Even at two o’clock in the morning you can wake up and say, “Oh! Now I get it! Now I know what I want to do with so-and-so!” But I think for me it boils back to the business aspect of it, and the expense, always worrying about how you’re going to do this and how you’re going to stretch you’re dollars to include this or to afford that. I would think a combination of all of that would be considered hardships.
Abigail: How do you overcome these? What do you do to handle it all?
Rusty: I’m a firm believer in “everything happens for a reason” and “everything balances out”. So if you’ve got hardship for a period of time, sooner or later it’s going to balance and it’s going to turn and swing the other way and things will come easier for and to you. You have to have endurance, and you have to have patience, the patience of Job. It’s not something that happens overnight, and I think that would be where that drive comes in, the passion to do it. When you write something and you put it out there it might not go the way you want it to go, and that can be really discouraging. Just learn how to cope with the anxiety and the disappointment, because there are many, many of those. But I think those aspects help it seem that much more special when it turns around and something good starts to happen from it.
Abigail: What would you say you enjoy most about writing?
Rusty: The expression. I love the expression. If you’re happy: if you’re sad: if you’re angry, or you’re hurt or embarrassed. Every feeling that you can experience you can put into words. And when I read someone else’s writing I want to be right in the middle of what they felt when they wrote it. I want to be the heroine. I want to feel the experience and get carried right along with her, and regardless of whether it’s a romance or a comedy or whatever it is, if at the end of the book I have tears streaming down my face because it’s very sad, or my sides are hurting because I’ve laughed so much, or you’re scared to go into that dark room because you don’t know what might be in there, then you’ve experienced the full impact of what the author was trying to do.
Abigail: I completely agree. Have your family read any of your work? If so, what did they think of it?
Rusty: Well, my mother reads most anything that I write. She hasn’t read ‘Passion in Paris’ and I think that’s simply because it’s pretty graphic in places and my mother’s a very old-fashioned lady. For her to sit and read something knowing that her daughter wrote it, I mean she might read Danielle Steele and enjoy it, but knowing that it was her daughter that wrote what she’s reading she would probably be uncomfortable about it, so if she chooses to read it or not, it’s entirely up to her. But she hasn’t as yet, and whether she ever will is hard to say. But she’s read everything else that I’ve written: all the poetry collections, all of the children’s stories, and she’s read the comedy that I wrote. So she’s very supportive, and I have a cousin-in-law that is extremely supportive of my work and has read the ‘Passion in Paris’ series, the older one, not the one that I am presently working on. She is extremely supportive and very vocal in her support as well. She helps me out vocally by trying to speak to her friends, and is constantly using her Facebook to re-post anything that I’ve put on my Rusty Blackwood page, and she posts any news, press releases, and any book signings. My oldest daughter-in-law has read all of my work and has enjoyed it. You’d like to think that anybody who reads it jumps for joy especially when it’s family that has written it. I think that they’re honest, and if they truly didn’t enjoy something they read or they had an issue with something that I wrote they would tell me. So in that respect I haven’t had any bad feedback, and I think they always look forward to the new things that I write. I think that when it is your family or your friends you have more invested in it; you hope they will like it simply because of who they are, and how they know you as opposed to perfect strangers who wouldn’t know you to begin with. Their opinions are important too, just like anyone’s opinion is important and you hope that they will enjoy it. But I think that when it’s someone you personally know, it probably carries a little more weight in the fact that you hope they will enjoy what you’ve written and take you seriously. You hope that they realize that you are an author, that you wrote this, and that they could be objective in that respect, and not just “Mom wrote this so I have to like it” type of thing.
Abigail: Exactly. You hope that they can remove your family title from it while they read.
Rusty: Yes, exactly.
Abigail: So out of all the things that you’ve written, which one would be your favorite and why?
Rusty: There, I’ve got two. I would say ‘Passion in Paris’. I’m proud of that story and there’s a lot of me in that story. It took the better part of 10 years to write from beginning to publication. There is a tremendous amount of me that I reveal through the main character of course, and I used different experiences from my life as the basis of the story. So in that respect, probably because of the amount of time that I contributed to that project and the fact that I fell in love with the characters, Joy and Cully became real to me, and I care very much about them. If they actually existed, then I hope the way I brought them through to the end would make them forever happy. The other I would think would be my first collection of children’s short stories ‘Young Minds.’ I based a lot of those stories on my own childhood: memories and escapades that happened with me and my girlfriends. I also wanted to write those stories for my grandchildren so that they would get to know me as a child, and what it was like for me as a child and the things that I did. I would have loved to have been able to read things about my grandmothers when they were girls, what it was like for them, but they never wrote, so I had no way of knowing and I just thought it would be really cool if I did that for my grand kids and they would have this to read to their own children someday. Then they could say, “Yes, this is your great-great-grandmother and the things that she did as a child”. That’s why you become involved in projects and you have an affinity to certain things that you write. This is the reason why you would express this, and some people might wonder why I would write that, but that’s why: I wanted my grandchildren to know me as a kid.
Abigail: That’s awesome, what you were saying about your grandchildren’s children would read ‘Young Minds.’ Have your grandchildren read it? What did they say?
Rusty: They like it, and they each have their own favorite stories in ‘Young Minds.’ I revised ‘Young Minds’ and republished it under the title ‘Through the Eyes of Innocence’ and I added some stories, again based on some of the things from my childhood. Some of the stories are complete fabrication; they didn’t happen to me at all, but a lot of them did, and I use what happened as a basis for a lot of the stories. Of course you tweak it up to make it interesting, but the basis is what really happened. Each of my grandchildren has a story in the books that I wrote specifically for them, and of course they each read their own story. I think it’s kind of cool to read something that somebody wrote specifically for you, but I think that they each have a favorite story that is not written about them. There’s one that I close both of the children’s books with and it’s a really cool story that is centered at the time of Halloween. It takes place in the neighborhood where I grew up, and when I was a little girl there was a swamp right beside my house. One time, when my grandfather was a young man, they were supposed to have taken thirteen wagon-loads full of bones out of that swamp. I don’t know what kind of dinosaur it was, but they’d load it on the train and it went to New York City. So, when you’d walk by this swamp, especially on a moonlit night, it was spooky, especially during Halloween because you’re mind is already in overdrive. But I thought it’d be cool; I wanted to write a story about that, so I did, and that became the favorite story of my grandson, and my middle granddaughter. They like that one the best and it isn’t the story that was written for either one of them.
Abigail: So, going back, you had mentioned before that you have a current ‘Passion in Paris’ novel. What are you working on right now? What is in the future for Rusty Blackwood’s published works?
Rusty: I have done a complete revision of ‘Passion in Paris’. It was part of the reason I pulled away from Xlibris, because when I first started with them everything was fine, and they were an independent company of their own. But they have since been taken over by Author Solutions, which took over a number of the self-publishing companies, and after that the business between the company and the author started to slide and I did not like the service that I was receiving. Some of the work from both the books had gone through edit twice, and they still came out with major problems in them and I was not pleased with that. I wanted to re-do them so that it was done properly. Because I decided to re-do it, I decided that I would change a bit of it and add to it here and there. The story line is still the same, but there’s different areas throughout that has added content, or is expressed in a different way than it originally was. Right now I’m in the process of obtaining literary representation to shop it to see if a traditional house can pick it up. I’ve given myself a window of about three months to see if that is possible. There has been a request for material from two agencies in New York City who have asked for added content on top of the query letter that was sent to them. They’re showing interest in what was sent, but I shall see. You know you don’t want you get your hopes up when you send out to one-thousand and fifteen agencies and receive mostly rejections, but that’s expected when you go into it. As I say, there’s these two right now that are pending, but regardless of whether it’s picked up that way or not I’m sort of changing my mind. The more I learn about traditional publishing and the fact that the marketing still falls on your shoulders, you’re just as far ahead to stay indie because that way you obtain your rights. That is very, very important, and I can’t stress that enough to any author or aspiring author to hang onto your rights, because that’s holding direction of your work, and if you sign that away, regardless of what they do with it, there is nothing you can do about it. So, this is why I’m second guessing myself as to whether or not I really want to go that route. Either way, this new revision will be coming out. It’s called ‘Passions in Paris: Revelations of a Lost Diary.’ That’s how the book begins, on the discovery of a lost diary that’s been forgotten for 40 years. It begins following the death of the heroine and her adult grandchildren gathered at her home to help plan her memorial. While there, they discover this old diary that their grandmother had written many, many years earlier and along with this diary they discover an old manuscript in rough draft. Their grandmother ended up being a successful author but she didn’t start out that way. She was an interior decorator who won a prize in a contest and that’s how she ends up in Paris. The contest is a chance to meet and have dinner with her favorite actor, who she’s always had a very secret attraction to without understanding why. When she meets him it’s immediate déjà vu. They’re star-crossed soul mates, and when they see each other they then realize who they actually are, but they’re both in relationships. Joy is in a failing marriage, and Cullen is in a relationship with the mother of his daughter. That relationship is not good it’s more of a business deal than anything else. From the minute that Joy and Cullen meet circumstances begin to happen that is beyond their control. It’s almost like the hand of fate is pushing them together while all of this turmoil is happening. The grandchildren decide that they are going to read the diary because during their growing years there was a time in their grandmother’s life that was secret and she never ever spoke of it. When they decide to read it you’re swept back to 1999 and the story of ‘Passions in Paris.’ I told it over the course of two books, it will probably be told over two again because the size of the manuscript makes it too large for one book. I’ve tried to edit down, but to me it was like taking bones out of my kid and I couldn’t do that. So when it comes out again it will no doubt come out as two. I’ve also got a couple more projects I’m working on. I’d like to do a story based on my family’s band. At one time I was a professional musician, but I started out singing in my family’s country band when I was 13. It was wonderful because it was my father, my brother, and three of our first-cousins who were brothers to each other. I stayed until I was twenty-six when that band ended. Through all those years I learned rhythm guitar, as well as bass guitar and we just toured around Southwestern Ontario. It was great and we had a lot of fun! I think because we were family to begin with we had a band in itself. You form tight bonds in a band, but when it’s family to begin with it makes it that much more so. We had a lot of great times together and a lot of wonderful memories, especially of my father who has been gone since 1975, and my one cousin who passed about fifteen years ago now. It was a very special time, and the more I think about it the more I’d like to write about it. I think it would be a nice documentation for my family, if nobody else, and all of the cousins and everybody who knew about this band and used to come to all of the dances we would do. So that’s kind of a back burner project. I’d need to go and speak to those who remain and take my little tape recorder – much like we’re doing now – and just sit and talk. I’d like to see what everybody remembers, because things that I remember one of the other members could remember in a different light, or from a different angle, so I’d like to gather it all together before I attempt to write it. Probably more children’s stories too, because I like writing those because it was so different back then than now. We’ll see. I’m always writing poetry, so we’ll see if I combine enough to make another collection. I’m working right now on another romance-drama that is sort of part way through. It got shelved about 2005 and I haven’t had the chance to get back to it. So, I guess that’s it. I don’t have any major ideas like “I’m definitely going to do this” or “I’m definitely going to do that”, but that’s the way that I write though: it’s whatever takes my fancy and how expressive I can be about it.
Abigail: Let’s go back to ‘Passion in Paris’ for a moment. You said that you’ve revised it, would you suggest to someone who read it originally to read it again?
Rusty: Oh yes. I hope that they would. As I say, the way that it was done the first time was a learning project for me. Some things I was not aware of, and I thought that copy-editing would have caught it and they didn’t, so I ended up having to do it myself. If you end up having to do something yourself, you may as well have done it in the first place! There were different French phrases that are in it, and I don’t speak French. I can speak the odd word or phrase, but I’m not fluent. Therefore, it wasn’t accented properly. I thought that that would have been taken care of in copy-editing, and just because the book was published in the States the copy-editor should have been able to apply the proper accent to any language regardless of geographical location, but they didn’t do that. That bothered me. I had one review on Readers Favorite Dot Com, and the overall review was very fair; she gave me a decent review. She liked the book and the story, but because of the imperfections in the French, it pulled it down. It makes sense. She said if any French person were to read this they would be appalled at the mistakes, which is understandable. That was really the main reason that I decided to revise it for I thought I could express particular areas better.
Abigail: What would you say inspires you to write now, as opposed to when you were younger? You said you started writing recreational y when you were about eight, so what has changed over the years about you and about your life to inspire different stories?
Rusty: Experience. The things that I’ve gone through in my life, that’s how we grow as people, we live and learn. It would be the same in my writing. As you grow older and experience more things in life it can change your outlook on things and the way you might have looked at something 20 years ago, now you can look at it in a different way. It allows you to speak about it from a different angle, which makes everything completely new. I would say experience, and taking from the experiences and putting it to use. Using that to help you in the future and the way that you might look at what you’d like to move toward, as opposed to where you come from and try not to make the same mistakes.
Abigail: If you could take your career anywhere, where would you like to be in the next five or ten year’s time?
Rusty: I’d like to travel more. I’ve been to Los Angeles. I enjoyed that very much. I went there for a book signing back in the spring of 2011. Just to be able to sample a different way of life. I’ve never been one that was awestruck with celebrity status, but it would be nice to let my work make me known so that people did know who Rusty Blackwood is the same as they know who Danielle Steele is, or Nora Roberts, anybody out there. I would really like to be able to just make a decent living with my writing. I would like to go to New York, and to go to Paris. Just to be able to actually be in Paris on the left bank and soak it in the way that I envision it to be. Even though Paris today is not the Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec or Monet, knowing that these artists were there is such an inspiration to be able to walk the same paths, and go to these places and experience some of the things that these people did. So anything over and above that is great. Someone asked me one-time what I hoped to gain from my writing, and I said just to be able to support myself, and help my family. Anything over and above that is just added gravy, you wouldn’t say no to that. Anybody who sits down and says they’re going to write a book – and I think everyone’s life is a book – it just isn’t everybody who can take their life and what they’ve experienced and express it the way a writer can. And there are good writers and bad writers, but it bothers me the way a writer is categorized. A lot of people think you should have an English B.A. I think that would help you a lot, but you could hold a B.A. and still not be able to express. I think some of the onus should be taken off of the technical aspect and attention paid to the creative aspect a little more than it is because no two people feel things the same way, so they’re not going to express it the same way. That’s what brings variety into any area of the arts, or any area of life. If everybody was the same, it would be very boring. I would just like to be able to write things that people enjoy. I hope to continue because I get enjoyment out of it. I think any writer has got to enjoy what it is they’re writing. You should never throw anything away regardless of how bad it is, because it can always be improved, and maybe somewhere down the road you could be doing a project where it just might fit. If you’re satisfied with it yourself, and you’re excited about it, I think there must be something there. All you can do is hope that somebody else who reads it gets that same feeling that you had when you expressed it.
Abigail: This is my last question for you. That question is what advice would you give to young up and coming writers?
Rusty: Be patient. Believe in yourself. Don’t get discouraged if somebody keeps telling you that you can’t do it. I don’t think that there is anything you can’t do if you want it badly enough; if you do you’re going to find a way. Do your homework. Learn English so that you know. Don’t be afraid to express yourself. Don’t be inhibited or feel ashamed to write what you feel regardless of how graphic or outrageous it may be. If it’s coming from within you, it’s part of you, and when you write you can’t be afraid to express that for fear of what someone might think of you. I think that’s what makes certain writers stand out from others because they’re not afraid to open their soul, and you can’t be afraid, because a closed soul is writing in a tunnel and you can’t expand past the walls of the tunnel. You can’t be afraid to open your heart and soul, and don’t be afraid to write what you feel. Write about what you know then you’re staying in your guidelines and not getting in over your head. If you want to write about something you’re not really sure about, research it well. A twenty-five- year-old cannot be expected to know what a fifty- year-old person knows simply because they have yet to live those twenty-five extra years. They might not experience everything the same way the fifty- year-old did, but that twenty-five extra years is going to influence the way they see things. If you want to take on a project that is beyond your years in maturity, make sure you research it really well before you try to write about it. But definitely write about things that you’ve experienced yourself. Who better to write about something than the person it affected? I think those are the guidelines, and I would say that to anyone who chooses to write.
Abigail: Well that’s all we have! Thank you so much for your time, Rusty!
Rusty: Thank you, Abigail!
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