Author Interview ~ Vickie McDonough

Vickie McDonough is an award-winning author of 23 books and novellas. Her books have won the Inspirational Reader's Choice Contest, Texas Gold, the ACFW Noble Theme contest, and she has been a multi-year finalist in ACFW’s BOTY/Carol Awards. She was voted Third Favorite Author in the Heartsong Presents Annual Readers Contest in 2009. She is a wife of thirty-five years, mother of four grown sons and grandma to a feisty five-year-old girl. When she’s not writing, Vickie enjoys reading, gardening, watching movies, and traveling. To learn more about Vickie’s books, visit her website: http://www.vickiemcdonough.com/.

Did you see yourself becoming a writer as a child?

No. I don’t think I ever once thought of becoming a writer. If not, what did you dream of being? I loved horses and watched all the cowboy shows of the late 60s with my dad. My dream back then was to grow up and marry a rancher. Instead, I married a computer geek who’s scared of horses. :-)

How long did you write before you sold your first book?

Three years.

Many of the people who follow our blog are aspiring writers themselves. Can you share your favorite writing tip with them?

When I first thought God was calling me to write, I decided to devote a year to it, and if I wasn’t published by then, it was because I must have misunderstood Him. I look back at that now and laugh. By the end of the first year, I’d learned so much that I knew my initial goal was totally unrealistic.

Learning to hone your craft takes a lot of time and work, learning the publishing industry and making connections also takes time. If you’re working toward publication, you need to know that it could take years before your work is publishing quality. But the really cool thing about writing is that you can learn how to do it, and you have a good chance at getting published if you persevere. There are some great books out that can teach you about writing fiction and some wonderful conferences you can attend where you will learn tons of things. Just know that it can be a long haul to get published, but it is well worth all the hard work.

Now for the readers…many times, it’s easy for them to connect with the characters in a book, but not so much the authors themselves. Share something about your day-to-day life that might help a reader to feel as though they know you a little better.

I’m a wife, mother, and grandmother. I’m primary caregiver to my partially handicapped mother and run all her errands and do her shopping, take her to her doctors’ apptmts, and do things at her home that are hard for her. I also pick-up my granddaughter after school twice a week and watch her until her mom gets home. My writing time usually starts around 10 and runs until about 2 pm. I’m also the ACFW treasurer. Needless to say, I never have to worry about being bored. :-)

Now that you are published, do you still experience rejections?

Yes, I do sometimes.

If so, how are these rejections different or similar to the ones you received before becoming published?

Rejections are always a disappointment and hard to take, but now I look at them not as much as a rejection of my work, but as not being God’s timing for that particular book. He sees the future and knows when a person will need to hear the message in my books, so I trust Him to make the sale when the time is right. That sounds a bit cavalier, but it’s taken me ten years to get to that point. At first, the rejections were heart-breaking, and I questioned if I had heard right when I felt God calling me to write, but now I can honestly say I’m thankful some of my earlier books didn’t get published.

Tell us a little about your latest release:

Finally A Bride, is the 3rd and final book in my Texas Boardinghouse Brides series. It’s mainly the story of Jacqueline Hamilton Davis aka Jack, the feisty tomboy from the first two books. She is now a reporter for the local paper with dreams of landing a big story to pad her portfolio, so that she can leave her small town move to Dallas and work for a big city newspaper. A past character or two from The Anonymous Bride and Second Chance Brides also play a part in this story. Here’s a blurb:

Noah Jeffers returns to town as the new minister, determined to make up for past misdeeds. Will reporter Jacqueline Davis uncover his secrets before Noah can capture her heart? With nowhere else to go, ex-con Carly Payton returns to the Lookout boardinghouse when she is released from prision. Garrett Corbett is looking for an upstanding wife, not some jailbird. What will he do when overpowered by Carly’s unassuming appeal? Be on the lookout for romance in Lookout, Texas.

If you could only share one line from Finally A Bride, which one would you choose and why?

If she wasn't dead in the morning, she could just imagine the headlines in tomorrow's newspaper: Marshal's Daughter Attempts to Fly.

I chose this particular line because it shows my heroine’s penchant for getting in trouble (Don’t you wonder what is she doing that could cause her to possibly be dead the next day?) and it shows her spunky attitude. And, I hope it will intrigue your readers.

Writers often put things in their books that are very personal—like a funny story that happened to them, a spiritual truth they learned through difficulty, or even just a character trait that is uniquely theirs. Is there something in Finally A Bride that only people close to you know is about you or someone you know?

Jack is quite a bit like me when I was young. I hated dresses—still do for that matter. I was a red-headed tomboy who quite often challenged my mom, and I preferred playing with toy horses to dolls. I guess if you knew me back then, you might see a resemblance, but my mom, who’s read the book twice, has never commented about it, so maybe not.

Readers often talk a lot about the hero and heroine of a story, but today I’d like to know something about your villain. Does he or she have a redeeming quality? Why or why not?

I won’t name my villian, for those who haven’t read the book yet, but I’d say his redeeming quality is that he really cares for the heroine—at least he does in his own, selfish way.

What kind of research did you have to do for this book?

Since this was the third book in the series, I didn’t have to do a whole lot of research. Mostly what I did do was research the clothing of the time period, train schedules, current events, etc.

Can you share some articles or website links you found particularly helpful?

One of the most helpful links for Texas research is http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online. And here’s one of their links with lots of other links: http://www.tshaonline.org/lone-star-history-links/1054.

Tell us what new projects you’re working on.

I’m working on something different and exciting right now. The original idea was my agent’s. I’m writing a 6-book series called Texas Trails: A Morgan Family Series with two other authors, Susan Page Davis and Darlene Franklin. Each author is writing two books in the saga, which spans 50 years and several generations of the Morgan family, from the 1840s to 1890s, and incorporates tidbits of Texas history. The first three books release this fall, with the second three coming next spring. I’m writing books 3 & 6 and the titles are Long Trail Home and End of the Trail.

Here’s a blurb of Long Trail Home:

A weary soldier returns from the War Between the States to discover his parents dead, his family farm in shambles, and his fiancée married. Riley Morgan takes a job at the Wilcox School for Blind Children and tries to put his past behind him and figure out what to do with his life. When a pretty, blind woman who cares for the children reaches through his scarred walls and touches his heart, he begins to find renewed faith and hope for the future. But when he discovers Annie feigned her blindness just to have a home, will his anger and hurt drive him away and ruin all chances for a future filled with love, faith, and family?

Long Trail Home releases October 1st and is available for preorder online.

The most common thing I hear when people learned I’ve published a book is, “I’ve always wanted to do that.” Faced with this statement, what advice would you give to someone just starting out in this business?

Be careful what you wish for. A friend and fellow author, Beth Goddard, posted on Facebook today: “It seems life is passing by too quickly. I used to measure my life in holidays, now I measure it in book deadlines.”

Being published and having close deadlines to meet can be difficult. You need to know that you may have to sacrifice time with family and friends to meet your deadline. Be sure that’s something you can and are willing to do. Writing has many rewards, but it is a lot of hard work.

What is the one question you were afraid I would ask…and how would you answer?

Uhh…I’m just going to skip this question. With my quirky sense of humor, I can get myself in trouble if I’m not careful. But my answer would be “a blue and green plaid platypus with a clown nose and a cowboy hat.”
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