Who are you?
Karen Dionne, author, Michigan
USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER - “Subtle, brilliant and mature . . . as good as a thriller can be.” –The New York Times Book Review, and THE WICKED SISTER, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020. "Massively thrilling and altogether unputdownable. Dionne is proving to be one of the finest suspense writers working today.” –Karin Slaughter.
What do you write?
I write psychological suspense set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula wilderness. My early novels were science-based thrillers similar to those written by Michael Crichton and set in what I thought of as exotic places (Antarctica, Chaiten Volcano in Northern Patagonia, Chile). But when I switched to writing psychological suspense set essentially in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where I lived for 30 years, my career exploded. The Marsh King's Daughter has been translated into 28 languages, was a bestseller in Germany, Sweden, and Iceland, and was released this fall as a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn.
I came to writing later in life. I'd won creative writing awards when I was in high school, but I wasn't one of those people who always had a pen in hand. But when my then-high-school-aged son won a Gold Key award in the same contest I'd done well in (The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards), I thought, "What about me? I used to be a good writer." I spent about a year writing short stories to get the creative juices flowing, then wrote a novel. That novel was never published, but it did get me my agent, and almost 25 years later, here I am! I love writing now, and will never stop.
All my novels return to a similar theme to explore the question: How does a person who experienced a less-than-ideal childhood not let themselves be defined as an adult by how they were raised? Interestingly, the director of the movie, in answering the question of what compelled him to want to make The Marsh King's Daughter movie, said virtually the same.
Thematically, I've made all sorts of different kinds of movies set in the past, set in the future, set in space, but there is something that ties them together, which are they're stories of transformation. Can you change? Can you become the person that you should be? I'm interested in families and parenting and how your past imprints you or molds you in a way, and can you throw that off? Can you free yourself? In this case for Helena's character, can you free yourself from the trauma of your past and become the person that you should be? That you want to be? [Source]
Where do you write?
I write my first drafts in longhand on lined steno notepads or on my ReMarkable tablet in a writing studio in the woods on the back of my property. The studio has no utilities by my own choice, and most importantly to my productivity, it has no Internet. I use a kerosene heater in the winter and a rechargeable battery that can run a single light on dark and dreary days, but aside from these, I have everything I need: a desk, a cozy chair that looks out a bank of windows into the forest where I often see deer or raccoons or other wildlife.
When do you write?
I'm most creative in the mornings, but since I write full-time, I don't set a time limit or a word count goal - as long as the words are flowing, I keep going!
Why do you write?
When I began writing, I did it to make money, which only shows how naive I was, since it was 8 years before my agent sold my first novel. Now, I write for my readers. It's their enthusiasm for my novels that makes it possible for me to write them. Without readers, there would be no books!
How do you overcome writer's block?
I don't believe in writer's block. Instead, I call it "writer's resistance." I'm never stuck in the sense that I don't know what to write; instead, when I hit a wall, it's usually because something about the scene falls outside my comfort zone. For instance, I was terrified to write the scene in The Marsh King's Daughter where young Helena shoots her first deer. I've hiked across a frozen marsh in winter, so I was confident that I could describe what doing this looked like and felt like, but I've never hunted, let alone touched or held a gun. I did a lot of research including watching what to me were some pretty ugly YouTube videos on hunting and skinning, and from there, I just pushed through. Now that chapter is one of my favorites. Interestingly, after the book was published, an author told me that he was an avid hunter said that after reading that scene, he knew I was a hunter too.
Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?
Nature photography is my passion. Since I live on a small lake surrounded by woods in the middle of Michigan, there's no lack of opportunity!
My thanks to Karen Dionne for today's interview.