Marion Talks About Her Writing

There doesn’t seem to be a time when I didn’t have a book in my hands. During those long summer vacations of my youth I would take my required summer reading list to the library and work through it until I had finished everything. I discovered many great authors that way. As a child, my mom found that the best way to make me feel better when I was sick was to either give me a book to read or, if I was quite ill with something like the flu perhaps, she would read to me and I would almost always feel better.

So the natural progression was writing, correct? My earliest attempts were to send stories to ladies magazines. Naturally, I had no idea how truly awful they were. The editors were very polite and sent rejection notices to me. I learned early on that my writing would need lots of work. During my high school years I was fortunate. As a member of the Creative Writing Club I learned how to overuse adjectives. Seems we couldn’t use too many back then. Additionally, I was granted a spot on the high school newspaper staff; seems like that was good training as well since I now write a monthly newscolumn.

Over the years life got in the way of my serious writing although I dabbled a bit in poetry and several times made false starts on my ‘great American novel’. Those were good exercises though and at least one or two good passages came out of those early attempts.

In the late 1990s I decided to put my one burning idea into a novel. My in-laws owned a lovely old house in an historic area of New Haven. There were many things I loved about that house, most especially the small stained-glass window in the stairwell and the built-in china closet. During many family gatherings I began to imagine the previous owners and what their lives were like. That was the starting point for 201 Atwater.

Over the years my friend Helen has often remarked how she felt I could produce novels as good as any on the market. It was her persistence that drove me to finally begin writing seriously. I spent about three years writing long-hand, during my lunch breaks, the skeleton of 201 Atwater. But it wasn’t until we finally relocated to the sunny shores of the Gulf of Mexico that I felt compelled to finish the story and get in into print. So in early 2005 my dream of becoming a writer came true.

I was totally unprepared for the kind words of reviewers and readers. Pleased but unprepared. Then came the requests for ‘More’. The idea for Honeysuckle Hill had been brewing in my head when another friend, Judi, suggested I set the story in my old hometown. I did just that. In 2007 my second novel became a reality. This time readers were reaching for their tissue boxes as they rediscovered that true love doesn’t die but lasts for an eternity.

I thought that with two books complete I could rest but there are so many more stories to be told. I’ve been working on my third novel for almost two years now and have a bit further to go. I don’t want to rush the story even though many readers have been politely asking when it will be out.