Meet three New York Times best-selling novelists at 2 p.m. Saturday for book-signings at Borders Books, Music & Movies in Lihu‘e’s Kukui Marketplace off Nawiliwili Road. Stella Cameron, Jill Marie Landis and Kristin Hannah shared insights on the writing process
Meet three New York Times best-selling novelists at 2 p.m. Saturday for book-signings at Borders Books, Music & Movies in Lihu‘e’s Kukui Marketplace off Nawiliwili Road. Stella Cameron, Jill Marie Landis and Kristin Hannah shared insights on the writing process recently and plan to go more in depth at a second event from 5 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. Monday at Kaua‘i Community College library for a panel discussion sponsored by Kaua‘ibackstory.
Stella Cameron
Cameron has 70 published books to date, 10 of which made it to the best-seller list. This part-time resident splits her year between Washington state and Hanalei.
Nocturnal by nature, Cameron works best “in gray weather with the shades down and the drapes closed,” where she writes all night.
“When the kids were small I wrote on a typewriter between 4 and 7 in the morning. I would roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter the night before because I knew I wouldn’t write otherwise,” she said.
She describes her genre as character-driven romantic thrillers. Recently her focus shifted to include the paranormal.
“It’s tremendous fun to write,” she said. “I like doing what I’m doing. All these people look perfectly ordinary but have these powers.”
One theme predominates in Cameron’s books.
“I’ve been trying to write the injustice of the world. In my books evil is not going to win,” she said adamantly.
The series she is presently working on is set in New Orleans. One character she is fond of from the “Court of Angels Series” is Sykes Millet.
“Sykes can kill with hypnotism and has the power to be invisible,” she said.
The exploration preceding each novel includes lengthy stays in her chosen setting where she buries herself in research soaking up the mood of the place.
Before writing begins, “You have this mountain of research,” she said. “And you pick a few grains from that mountain of rock. By the time I’m ready to write I can smell it, taste it and feel it.”
Cameron received a star review in Publishers Weekly for “Out of Body,” the first book in the “Court of Angels Series.”
She confessed that while it is an honor to receive nationally-recognized praise, the high is short-lived.
“It lasts for a whole day,” she said, emphasizing “whole.” “And then you ask yourself, can I do it again?”
Jill Marie Landis
Full-time Hanalei resident Landis has enjoyed two decades of accolades as the author of 24 romance novels, three of which have been on the best-seller list and more than half nominated for awards in her chosen genre.
Landis writes one novel a year on average, which is quite a feat when one considers the amount of foot traffic beating a path to her door daily. The social nature of Hanalei and her own effervescence do not distract this six-year North Shore resident for long. She is at home writing in her office or on the couch, or “I can write on the beach with 10,000 people around,” she said.
Her former life as a kindergarten teacher acted as a compass steering her toward her next incarnation as a novelist. A book exchange with other teachers led to her chosen genre.
“It was the 70s and I began reading historical romance by authors like Kathleen Woodiwis and I thought, ‘I want to do this.’”
Romance set to a historical theme governs the world created by Landis. She described them as heart-warming love stories but still page-turners with action.
“I like to have a spiritual message that’s inspirational,” she said.
For the first time Landis is working on a series.
“My books stand on their own,” she said. “So they don’t have to be read in order.”
One character she holds affection for from the “Irish Angel Series” is Laura Foster, a former prostitute who falls in love with a preacher. “Heart of Stone” is the first of the series.
“It’s a story about finding forgiveness,” she said.
Landis has had multiple nominations and been the recipient of the prestigious, Romance Writers of America Golden Choice RITA Award for Best Romance of the Year, for her novel, “Come Spring.”
“I don’t know if awards help,” she said. “But they do make you feel better.”
Awards aside, the heart of commercial fiction for Landis is more than providing a compelling story and characters, but being the purveyor of hope, she said.
Kristin Hannah
With a whopping 12 best-sellers of 18 novels written, Hannah can stake a claim at the top with an eight-and-a-half-month run on the New York Times best-seller list last year for “Firefly Lane.”
But this career writer and part-time ‘Anini resident shyly acknowledges the fame.
“I am not dialed into lists and reviews,” she said. “If I value the positive I have to despair over the negative.”
Hannah learned early in her 20-year career of her inclination for allowing ill words to hold merit.
“Whoever says the worst thing about a book is the one I believe the most,” she confessed. “If you want to be a career novelist you have to rise above all of it: good and bad; making money, not making money. You just have to write every day because that’s what you do. Writing is not for sissies.”
When Hannah committed to becoming a women’s fiction writer she was a stay-at-home mom with a baby. Regardless of her countless accolades, she still holds dearest that first nudge of success that came 20 years ago in the form of The Golden Heart Award — an award given for the best unpublished manuscript.
“I won this and knew that was my proudest moment,” she said. “Until then I didn’t know that anyone can be a writer.”
Hannah’s stories lean toward the heartbreaking.
“I knew I wanted to write stories that were intimate. What surprised me was that they are as sad as they are,” she said. “My books should come with a warning. I don’t know how I became the tear-jerker queen.”
For Hannah a book exists in its entirety inside her head, and her job is to get out of the way so the story can come through.
“When writing I feel like a paleontologist brushing away at a skeleton,” she said.
As the story develops she recognizes characters and plots as though they’ve been waiting there all along.
One favorite character of Hannah’s is a child named Alice in “Magic Hour.” Alice is a modern-day feral child unable to speak.
“I loved the research,” she said. “It’s world-building. I have a vision of the world and can fit that vision into a number of settings. What the writer offers the reader is a world view.”
