Interview with Author Stacy Thowe
Stacy Thowe is the author of several short stories and poems. Soap Opera Digest is her fifth book. She has also written a Christian fantasy trilogy. The trilogy was born out of her fascination with guardian angels.
Stacy Thowe is a graduate of Washburn University with a degree in English, emphasis in creative writing. She has been awarded numerous awards for her various short stories, all of which can be found listed on her website. She is a Kansas native and can be found at their family farm most weekends, riding along side her husband.
Tell me more about your latest book
I wrote Soap Opera Digest to help people move past the pain of a life altering event. My main protagonist, Julia, gets caught up in her past. She can’t seem to move forward and live the life she was always meant to live. Like many people who go through a devastating life event, she loses her passion for life.
I grew up in the eighties and soap operas were a big deal. So much so, I knew many people who got caught up in the excitement of these programs and forgot that they had their own lives to live. The fans of this type of entertainment started living vicariously through the characters they saw every day on their televisions. And this is what happens to my character, Julia.
This type of television character fascination happens more than we would all care to admit. One day you have dreams and ambitions and the next day you can’t seem to remember what they were. You set them on a shelf and out of fear, you wait.
Soap Opera Digest teaches the reader that it is never too late. That life can throw many obstacles in your path and your life can start looking more like the lives that we watch every day on these soap operas. But in real life, we don’t tend to have that happy ending we see portraited on these types of shows. In real life, we must continue to fight for our dreams every day. We have angels – friends and family – as you may call them, all around us, guiding our way. Sometimes the answer to what is holding us back is lying deep within our own struggles. Sometimes the only thing preventing us from pursuing our dreams is ourselves. Soap Opera Digest teaches us that life is not over, until we say it is.
Soap Opera Digest is available for preorder currently and will be released on December 15, 2023 on Amazon and on the Barnes and Noble website.
What was the most challenging aspect of writing this book?
I drew a lot of material from this book from my mother’s own tragic love story. Lost loves, especially first loves, are the ones we carry with us. Many tears were shed for my mother during the writing of this book as I discovered what loss truly is.
My character, Julia, hears a voice from the past telling her to live her life. In my effort to make this story believable and relatable, I had to put my protagonist in situations that would break most people. I wrote about love and the betrayal of those that you love. I wrote about the heartbreak of losing someone that is part of your soul. Yet, the resilience of a strong character is what makes this all work. Yes, we get knocked around, yes life doesn’t always turn out as we planned it, but as people of faith, we get up again. We see the sunrise again and again and we put one foot in front of the other and meet our destiny. But we do this with the help of loved ones, friends, and strangers.
What is your normal procedure to get your books published?
I believe in traditional publishing so I look for an agent or publisher that believes in me and my work. You must grow tough skin as a writer because the rejection in this business is immense. If you don’t believe in your work, you will never make it.
I send out many, many queries to various agents and publishers and look for that person or publisher that I believe can take my work to the next level. I have sent as many as eighty queries for one of my works. I find publishers and agents through writer’s resources such as Duotrope. There is a small charge for this site but it does have good information, especially for writers just starting out.
The Writer’s Market is also a good resource for publishers and agents. This resource also has great tips on querying agents and publishers and sending out query letters.
How important are the elements of character, setting, and atmosphere to a story, and why?
If I had to pick the most important element it would be character. If the reader doesn’t connect with your character, they are not going to connect with the story. I try to make my characters very relatable. After all, we are selling their story. The reader has to be able to feel what the character is feeling. They have to laugh and cry with them.
When I write a character, I always write them from a point of view of someone I know, or have met, or even someone I saw on television or in a movie. I do this so that I know just how my character is going to react to a given situation. How they will speak. How they will verbalize their fear, sorrow, and joy. What makes them light up or what brings them to their knees. Because, if I don’t believe in the character and cry and laugh with them, my reader won’t believe in them either.
I do love setting. I try to write so the reader can visualize the character’s surroundings. I dabble in poetry and I believe that helps me when I am describing my character’s setting. I love to introduce the colors and the smells. I like to have the character feel the wind and smell the rain. That way the reader can actually experience the setting along with the character and can visualize the setting as if they were looking through the character’s eyes.
Setting the atmosphere takes the most work in my view. To make the reader feel just what the character is feeling is hard work. As I have said before, if you are not crying or laughing as you are writing your novel, the reader won’t be laughing or crying as they are reading it.
How many books have you written so far?
I have actually written five books. I just finished my sixth book but it is still in the editing process. My first book was actually God Bless My Broken Road. It was published in 2021. I didn’t publish it for a while as it was written ad rewritten several times before I thought it was at a place that I could release it to the public. Being my first book, I had to learn the process of writing and editing and then editing again.
My next three books were a fantasy series. They were a joy to write but were a surprise to me. I never intended on writing a fantasy series, but I think God had other plans for me. I have always had a fascination with guardian angels, even when I was a little girl. My grandmother had this portrait in her home of a guardian angel walking across an old broken-down bridge, protecting two small children. This image never left me as I recollected those moments in my life when I shouldn’t have made it through something; moments when I felt my guardian angel protected me. And hence, The Guardian series was born. The first book is entitled Angels, Demons and Mortals. The second book of the series is At Hell’s Gate. And the final book of the series is The Blood Stone.
And then we come to Soap Opera Digest my current novel which is about never giving up on your dreams and living the life you were always meant to live. Again, Soap Opera Digest is available for preorder on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble’s website. The book is scheduled to be released on December 15, 2023.
What’s the best way to market your books?
I wish I had the recipe for this. Reviews are great way to market your book. Reviews on Goodreads are always helpful. If someone knows the key to getting these reviews, please let me know.
Besides that, I look for any avenue that can bring my work in front of readers. I have marketed on social media sites, local newspapers, podcasts and at local bookstores.
What is your writing routine? When you write, do you plan or outline ahead?
I am untraditional in that I never have an outline. I know the beginning and I know where I want the story to end. I have always written this way. I never know exactly what characters are going to be a part of the story. I have the main characters in mind and through all the twists and turns of the story they are led on a path much like we are. We don’t know what is waiting for us around the corner or at the grocery store. We don’t know who we are going to encounter every day. My characters drive my story. The storyline is as much of a surprise to me, as it is to the reader.
And this is the magic of writing. I don’t know how the story is going to turn out. I don’t know how the characters are going to get from A to B. And I don’t want to know. The character drives my writing and the storyline. Sometimes I will introduce a character that I believe will just have a minute impact and he or she ends up being a large part of the story.
How hard or easy is it to establish and maintain a career in writing?
Well, if you truly love writing, you somehow make it work. I’ve had to sacrifice a clean house, time with friends and family or time to just do nothing. Even when I haven’t written in days, my writing is always calling out to me to get back to it. And when I haven’t written for a while and finally get back to a manuscript I am working on, it is like meeting up with a long-lost best friend. It is as if there has been no time between us at all. We take up, right where we left off.
I still dream of the day that writing is all that I do for a living. I hope and pray that someday all I will have to do is wake up and write. Until then, I trudge forward with that as my goal and try to take advantage of every opportunity presented to me.
What is your advice for aspiring writers?
Never give up. Write, write and then write some more. Don’t forget to take time to read other works. Not to copy them, not to change your writing style but to evaluate their writing, understand what makes their work brilliant and what aspects of their work you don’t want to do. We can always improve our writing but we don’t want to lose our voice. We don’t want to lose what makes our writing unique.
Writing is very hard work with lots and lots of rejection. But you can’t be afraid to put yourself and your work out there. If you are not putting your work out in the world, then why are you writing? I write to help people. I write to tell stories that people can relate to. If I am not putting myself out there then, really, why am I doing this? Rejection is just part of the work. Remember not everyone is going to love your writing style, and that is okay. You have to find those that do. And there will be those that do. You just have to keep working at it. If you love it, you will find a way.
Visit Author Stacy Thowe book links:
You can find my books on Amazon at:
You can also find them on the Barnes and Noble website at:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/stacy%20thowe
My website is: www.stacythowe.com
You can find me of Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/authorstacythowe
You can find me on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/stacythowe.author2012/
You can find me on Twitter (X) at: https://twitter.com/StacyThowe
Again, my website is: www.stacythowe.com
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