Anne Armistead: Down the Rabbit Hole with Historical Fiction and More

On this episode we talk with author Anne Armistead. Take a listen! 

From Anne: 

Welcome to my writing journey! I write love stories, set in the past and present. I earned my English literature degree from the University of Georgia and my MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. I am a member of the Atlanta Writers Club, Georgia Romance Writers, and the Historical Novel Society. When I'm not writing, I'm reading, taking nature walks, and watching BBC television. My husband and I have two daughters, an adorable baby grandson, and a senior pup named Jackpot (so named because we hit the jackpot when he "rescued" us). My debut historical romance is a Southern Gothic paranormal romance DANGEROUS CONJURINGS (Soul Mate Publishing, April 2018), set in the aftermath of the American Civil War. WITH KISSES FROM CÉCILE, co-authored with Jan Agnello (Storyology Design and Publication, September 2019) was awarded the 2020 Georgia Independent Author of the Year Award in historical fiction and the Silver Award from Literary Titan. My debut sweet contemporary romance is A CHRISTMAS CANNOLI KISS, published by The Wild Rose Press. My historical time travel romance A TRYST IN PARIS is out on submission for publication. My work-in-progress is another sweet contemporary romance in which two hearts re-connect for a second chance when circumstances bring the former high school sweethearts back to their quaint and cozy hometown in the north Georgia mountains.
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Transcript

0:30

Folks. Today we're in for a special treat. We have an author extraordinaire by the name of Anne Armstead. This is gonna be a really good interview. Aren't you excited about that? Let's get into it. Welcome to MFA Payday, where we talk with people about how they make their M FFA pay. We're your host Dreama Drudge and Barry Drudge. Ann Armat. She writes Love stories said in the past. In the present, Anne earned her English degree from the University of Georgia and her mfa Creative Writing from Spalding University. She's a member of the Atlanta Writers Club, Georgia Romance Writers and the Historical Novel Society. When she's not writing, she's reading, taking Nature Walks and watching BBC Televis. She has a husband and two daughters, an adorable baby grandson, and a senior pup named Jackpot. So named because she says that they hit the jackpot when he rescued them. Her debut Historical Romance is a southern gothic paranormal romance, dangerous, conjuring soulmate publishing. April, 2018 set in the aftermath of the American Civil War. With kisses from Cecil co-authored publication September, 2019, she was awarded the 2020 Georgia Independent Author of the Year Award in historical fiction and the Silver Award from literary Titan. Her debut suite Contemporary Romance is a Christmas cannoli kiss published by the Wild Rose Press. Her historical time Travel romance, a trist in Paris is out on submission for publication. So let's give a big welcome to Anne Armad. Thank you, Anne. Yes, welcome. Thank you Beau. I'm excited to be here. Well, first off, it's like, wow, there's quite a list of books from 2018 on. I'm like, I'm just kinda blown away. Yes. And if I remember correctly, you've recently taken a trip to Paris. Was that at all in connection with this book that you've written that's coming out? It's in connection with, um, uh, Tristan Paris, which I did get a publishing contract with Soulmate Yay. Who published My Dangerous Conjuring. And so I signed a three book contract with them for three time travels and a Tristan Paris is the first, and then the, um, connection among the three to create the series is the time travel portal for each one of the romances is a carousel. So a Tristan Paris. It's the Luxembourg Carousel. Mm-hmm. And for the second one that I'm diligently researching and using Xena. Her book Abundance from, uh, our, our wonderful Senna, uh, Gina Nalan. Uh, it's set in the Marie Antoinette timeframe. And Marie Antoinette actually had a carousel, um, that they built in for SI and this little area of property that kind of was her own to do with as she wished. And so, um, that's going to be my, um, portal for this, uh, second one. And it's all revolving around a diamond affair, which, um, is something that happened during the Marie Antoinette rain. Uh, and then my third one I'm thinking might be set around The carousel that is at santa Monica Carousel. We've been there cause there's a ghost involved with the Santa Monica carousel. So I think I'm gonna take advantage of this kind of ghost story thing. So that's gonna be the three. But right now and then the editing on a tris with Paris with soulmate and hopefully, fingers crossed it will come out this spring. it was sound amazing. I mean, well they're a lot of fun to write. I can't, I, I keep telling myself I'm not gonna write anymore historical, I just can't help it. I love historical, I love historical romance. And um, I was thinking, oh, with my Christmas cannoli kiss, I'm working with Wild Rose Press on, uh, contemporary romances, which are so fast and easy to write, comparative to historical And I thought, oh, I'm just gonna give up historical, but I just can't. Yeah. Well, so how much, um, studying and, and, and investigating do you have to do before you feel comfortable creating a, a world in time? Well, with Dangerous Conjuring, which is also historical romance, that actually started with a workshop piece at Spalding's Workshop in, uh, BTH when we went to London and Bth. And, um, I was, we were asked in our group to write some kind of a supernatural, and I never read nor wrote Supernatural. And I'm thinking, this is so far outside my Bailey wig. And so I, I, I just had this scene that came to me with this woman jumping into a river and this real ghostly person rescuing her. And there was gonna be some kind of something happening, and I had no idea what, and it was just a scene for a workshop. But after I hopped at. The people in the workshop kept emailing me, what's gonna happen? What's gonna, and I'm like, nothing's gonna happen. This was just a scene. And so I thought, well maybe you can make that into something. So I'm talking like, when were we in London? 2009? I think it was. This was about right. Yeah. The book didn't come out until 2017. And um, so between me trying to figure out how, what to write and me then trying to make it ya historical, cuz I was really focusing, thinking I was gonna write ya and then shopping it around to ya and getting rejected, saying Uhuh, you know, this is not going to sell for ya. Historical, because that's not a huge market if you don't have like vampires or something. I mean, you know. Hmm. So, um, I, and then a friend of mine said, you really need to make this a romance just. Juice up the romance in it and I bet you, you can find a romance publisher. So that's what I did. I did a rewrite. I, it had a ghost. I took the ghost out and I used the Wounded Warrior kind of trope. My hero is a wounded warrior from the Civil War, and I have an independent young lady, and they, and, and then I had to throw in some voodoo and hudu along the way, perfect. You know, had to have a Geechee Gullah, um, uh, hudu person that ends up being kind of a villains. And I had to throw in Marie La Vo from New Orleans because how can you write something in the 1860s without throwing in Marie Lavo in New Orleans? So, of course I had to have'em go to New Orleans. So they went from Savannah to New Orleans in the book and, um, had a lot of, uh, of love. Things happening in between. Uh, so anyway, that's kind of where that came about and that took a really long time for me to research for a couple of reasons. Um, I didn't really know anything about Voodoo and Hudu, so that took a long time. and I found a wonderful professor at Georgia State whose, um, teaches um, black culture and history and has several classes. She teaches about voodoo and hudu. So she was wonderful. And then I had to, uh, do a lot of research on transportation. How would they have gotten from Savannah to New Orleans after the war? Cuz they were, everything was torn up in the south. Mm-hmm. So I had this wonderful person from Tennessee. He was, he specializes in vintage and antique maps and he helped me figure that out. So that took a while to find him and to figure it out. And, um, it also took a while for the fashion research. Which I have found when you write historical, there's a lot of rabbit holes to go down for fashion research to make sure you have them dressed correctly. Um, she was gonna be on this huge road trip on a horse. What would she have worn? Um, you know, she's not gonna be in the hoop skirts on the horse traveling, you know, so I had to do a lot of research on that. I also had to do a lot of research on just the, um, political feel of what was going on in post-civil War. So I would know what she would see and run up against. Um, And, uh, there was a lot of, uh, of historical things I had to understand about that. Um, to create some, um, some scenes in the book that gave tension, you know, that muddy middle, middle, had to find some good stuff for that muddy middle. So in other words, uh, and, and then in addition to that, I'd never written romance. So that book took me a really long time. I was working full-time as a teacher and, uh, during this time our house burned down, so we had to rebuild our house and there was a lot of things going on. Um, and I had a publisher who then disappeared off the face of the Earth. And then I found soulmate and then soulmate. The editor there worked with me very closely and, uh, we got it to publication. So, So that took a really long time for a lot of different reasons. And so then when I started writing with kisses from Cecil, that took a long time. Also, that book was a decade in making. Um, and tell me if I'm talking too much or getting off board. Oh, no, So with kisses from Cecil, with Janet Ello had a history of us meeting at an Atlanta Writer's Club and her reading an Exce. Of her, her book and I, and talking about who Cecile was in her family's life. And I was just so intrigued. And we happened to be sitting next to each other, so we thought, let's grab coffee. And so from grabbing coffee the week after that meeting, um, she. Wanted someone to help her write cuz she was not a writer, but she had the story she wanted to tell and her daughter had actually written a non-fiction, tiny little story about Cecile and the letters Cecile wrote to her great-grandmother. Um, and it got published in, I believe it was Cricket Magazine lady and an editor from New York saw it and contacted Jan and said, can you make this into a middle grade book? And at the time I was still thinking, I'm still gonna do ya middle grade, you know, uh, even though I'm writing on this romance over here, but you know, I still have, my heart is in middle grade and ya from teaching and everything. So she said, would you be my ghost writer? And I said, sh Oh sure. So she brought over the letters from Cecile that she has, and they're from 19, um, 19, uh, 17 and 18 and 19. And they're gorgeous. I mean gorgeous. They're in that beautiful penmanship. Cecile was like an artist. She had illustrations and she had her own little sea with a seal that she made hand, hand painted. And I just fell massively in love with these letters. And I said, I am in, I am so in. We're gonna do this. And so she had a sketched out middle grade approach. And so I worked with that and it took us about a year and by the time we put it to that publisher who had been interested, I'm not publisher, I'm sorry, it was an agent, not a publisher, an agent. The agent had gone on to novels and verse and more racy things, more contemporary, sizzling kind of ya stuff. And our historical little middle grade, she was not interested in anymore. So we went, well, boo. And so then we shopped it around and couldn't get any interest in it. And then life happened to both of us. Some stuff happened in her personal life, stuff was going on with me and we just kinda lost track of it for a while. And so we're now about about eight years away from all of that. And she calls me up and says, uh, do you still have all that stuff? And I said, of course I do. And we met up and by that time I had started into my romance career and Dangerous Conjuring was coming out. And she said, I said, well, let's make it romance. Let's kinda. Rejigger it. And so what we did is I gave it a framework of a contemporary descendant of, um, of, of Ruth, who is the recipient of Cecil's letters back right after World War I, I created a fictional descendant of hers, and she was going to Paris to learn more about what happened to Cecil and what happened to her, uh, great-grandmother. And she has, um, some bumpy stuff happening in her life. And so basically it's a, uh, it it, it ends up with this, uh, fictional descendant learning from what she learns about Cecil and Ruth and their stories and the tragedies that happened to them. She's learning how to help herself in her own life and how to make some reconciliations and some forgivenesses in her own life of today. And so once we wrapped it that way, we decided to heck with. Traditional publishing, we're gonna self this sucker. And so Jan is an antique and a jewelry designer and she created a line of jewelry that goes with the book. And um, she was selling the book Great Guns at all of the antique shows that she was going with and the necklace that went with it. And then Covid hit Mm-hmm. and things kinda shifted. We were gonna do like a three book series and they were all going to be something to do with Paris and something to do with these antique coin purses that she specializes in purchasing and selling at antique shows, but things went sideways and she can't. She, she no longer is pursuing that. And I already had this outline for a Tristan Paris. So I went with it and, and decided I was gonna go ahead and came up with the carousel portal idea, the Luxembourg carousel for a lot of different reasons I chose that carousel. And um, so it was about two and a half years of research on that one. Um, I'd never written time travel before, so that put me down the rabbit hole of reading romance, time travel, and looking at movies and what do I like about this and how did they do that? What will my portal be and how do I explain time traveling? You know what, I came up with you, don't you just. The reader just buys in to their time. Oh yeah. You know, you can't scientifically explain it, you know, you just have to go with the romance of the idea of time travel. And then I did, I set it at the exhibition of 1900 in Paris and there is so much on YouTube silent movies that were done. Um, I just lived in that. I just had'em up all the time in my office and w would watch them and they would just be on a loop for me cuz I was just wanted to feel like I was in 1900 Paris. And, um, so then I got a fashion expert from Auburn University to help me with the fashion. Um, got a couple of, um, Parisian historians to help me make sure I understood some of the layout of how the exhibits were set up and cuz they walked through and I wanted to make sure that was accurate. Um, had a, uh, uh, uh, native, uh, speaker of of French. Read through it and help me make sure I didn't do any screw ups when I would use French phrases. Um, so anyway, that took about two and a half years. So now I know going into this next one is, you know, it's gonna take probably minimum year, if not longer. Um, I am setting it during the Maria Antoinette era, so that's a whole nother era of fashion. that I'm gonna have to learn. Um, and that era of history, there's a lot of stuff I didn't know about it, so I'm having to really, really dig into the French history to make sure I, uh, portray some of this correctly. Um, but it's, it'll be fun. So by the time I get to my third time travel, I really think I will set it contemporary, but it's still not really contemporary. It's still really the 1970s, which is historical fiction, which paints my heart to say Its, uh, but it's not in another country and it's not in another language, so won't take me as long for that one. So, um, but in the meantime, I'm, I'm working on my second sweet contemporary for Wild Rose Press, and it goes a lot faster, let me tell you. Cause it's set in Georgia where I live, and it's set around a football season, which I know. You know, I don't have to have any foreign language or anything in it. it's not, there's, it's, it's, it is a pretty straight shot hallmark. You kind of feel using, you know, that kind of, uh, framework for the book. So, uh, I have to say it, I love writing contemporary, but get me in front of any type of research and I'm just a garner. I'm just gonna do it So I love, love the past. You, uh, even made the double hurdle. You, you have early 20th century Paris, then you have late 18th century Paris. Like, wow. Those are different worlds. It's pre Oh my gosh, Oman, Paris. You are so right. You are so right. It took, it's so funny, I'm, I've been with a writer's group now for, I think we're going on our 12th, 13th year together and, So when I, when I got this three book offer from Soulmate, I quickly sketched out a couple of ideas for two other time travels and, um, I, they were contemporary, like American Contemporary, and my writing group said, no. No, you gotta go back to the no, no, no. gotta do. And I was like, no, I can't. It'll take me forever. But then I stumbled across this diamond necklace thing cuz I watch Lupin. I don't know if you watch that on Netflix, but it's a, um, mm-hmm. Uh, it's a story that really had, its um, the books came out at the turn of the last century and it's about this French guy who is like a, a thief, but there's a motive behind what he is doing. And it's a, it's a French miniseries, but they show it on Netflix and it is wonderful. And um, so I kind of got intrigued about what was his necklace had in the very first episode. And then I had read Cena's book and I thought there's something about a diamond affair with. Marie Antoinette. And when I went back and started looking at that, I thought, oh, this is it. This is where it's gotta be. This is gonna be the story. And then I thought, no, I can't, cuz there were no carousels back then. So I thought, well, I can't use it. But then I found that she had this kind of a carousel built, but it was, uh, propelled by, by men, you know, walking like, yeah, it was, you know, no electricity or anything then, you know, so thought, how was it moving? And then I read that made it move and it was only like these two seats. And, and, and so it's a whole big history about that, but I thought, hey, you know what, it's carousel so how am I gonna get it into the 21st century from my person to find it to be sent back? And so I've, that's one of the other plot points I had to figure out, but I got a really good juicy thing going there. So, but yeah, it's, that's awesome. It's completely different. Um, uh, so much about France and French history, I did not know that I am learning so, I was maybe gonna do something with Lafayette, but then that got way too complicated, so, and there wasn't any juicy something with that. So I left Lafayette on the sidelines. Um, since you do have some mileage under your belt and published books and things, what advice would you give if you will? Uh, some tips on, on what to expect. Some, I mean, some of this, whatever comes to mind, I guess. Well, I had, um, I had a reason other than writing to get my m ffa because I wanted to get out of teaching high school and get to a college level so I had a more flexible schedule so I could write because when you are a high school English teacher, that's where you are. Okay. And you don't have much time. I'm not the kind, I can get up at 4:00 AM and write 5,000 words before I go teach, you know? And I'm like, okay, um, if I could just get to the college level, I could maybe have a little more time and have, uh, and you know, I was thinking, okay, I, I'll be an adjunct. Uh, uh, that's, that's all I want, is to be able to be an adjunct professor, teach a few courses, make a few thousand per quarter that will support my, my writing habit, or as my husband calls it, my expensive hobby, So, um, that's one of the reasons I decided to get the M F A and what I would say to people entering into getting the m FFA is y you cannot count on making a living off of your proceeds from writing unless you just happen to hit it big, which a very narrow percent, you know, unless you have like a, um, hunger Games or a, um, uh, what was the one with the vampire? Uh, Twilight. Twilight. Yeah. Yeah. Twi. Unless, unless you could do, you know, it's, you just are not going to be able to pay the bills unless you've got something else going on. And don't be naive enough to think that you're gonna be the one that is going to make the big bucks. Maybe you will be and bully for you and yay. Hey, hey, that's great But, um, be prepared that you are going to have to have something else going. So I think you need to approach your M F A with your, uh, blinders off and reality glasses on, and decide how you're gonna make this M F A work for your own personal writing goals. And, um, you know, writing doesn't always mean you're gonna get traditionally publish. It might mean you're going to be in the indie world and hey, there's lots of IND writers that make good money. Um, and then there's others like me that are just happy to be published, happy to have some readership. And I just write cuz I love to write and I'm not writing for, you know, to, to get the golden ring. I would say, uh, grow alligator skin because you may think what you write is beautiful and wonderful and is ready to go dashed off to the publisher right then and there. Um, and then you workshop it. And you're sending off, you get rejection, rejection you just have to be really strong within yourself and know that you're pleased and happy to be a writer because that's what you feel like your soul is calling you to do. And if you get rejected by others, you just have to stay true to yourself and, and not curl into the fetal ball and quit. You know, if writing is something that you're called to do, you're gonna do it. I'm sure you know, there have been lots of successes, so I don't wanna sound like a Debbie Downer here, but I would just say be very, very cautious and be very aware of what you're doing, why you're doing it, and what it's going to cost you to do it. That's some really, really good advice and I think you're the first person we've had on who has said that she specifically got her MFA in order to teach. Yes. So that's really cool to hear too. Yes, and it worked out great because I ended up. Working for the technical system of Georgia, where there are two college systems in Georgia. There's the technical system and there's the regent system. And so I did not want Master's in education and because that wasn't where I knew I was going to want to shift, my goal in life is to stay in education. Um, So I thought, oh, and Master's in Creative Writing, they want a master's. I can get the masters, the Twain will meet. And it did and I worked in the, the technical system. I did the English 1 0 1 s and 1 0 2 s and American Lit. And I did that for eight years. Um, so that, but it let me create my own schedule and I did a lot of online teaching for them even before the pandemic. They had a lot of online courses, so that was great cuz I could do that in the middle of the night or whenever, you know, so, um, but yeah, that's exactly why I got my m f A for my professional reasons of teaching. Um, of course I got it for my love of writing, which was what I knew I was going to eventually retire and do full-time. But, um, to get me to that retirement point, it, it definitely worked out fantastically for me for that. Well, you've, you've led us into another question, I know you said your love of writing and, and love of reading. What are you currently reading? Oh my gosh. I have that, you know, to be Red Stack that is as tall as me. We hear you. So sad. Um, I, of course, as I've mentioned, I am rereading seen as abundance over and over and over to help me. Yes. Get into that wonderful voice she has. Um, such a sad story. Uh, I love reading romantic suspense. So right now I'm reading Hank Philippe Ryan's, uh, her Perfect Life. Um, I have met her multiple times. She is actually a news reporter from Boston. She lived in Atlanta way back in the day and moved to Boston. She's. Emmy after Emmy, after Emmy as an investigative reporter. But she writes these fabulous books and she wins every award known to man for her her mysteries and thrillers and, um, I just love her to death. Um, Karen White is in Atlantan that I end up on different, um, Conferences where we're on the same Dias, which I have no idea why I'm on. Karen White's Dias she's unbelievably fabulous. Um, and hugely bestseller, U s a bestseller. Um, but she collaborates with two other authors, Beatrix Williams and Lauren Willig, and the three of them write historical together. But I'm, uh, right now I am reading, the first one that they've published together, which has probably been now for five years, called The Forgotten Room. So I am a very visual person and I was looking at your book covers and you have fantastic book covers. They're just gorgeous. Is there some sort of connection between them or have you just had really talented people every time that you've had a book cover? Well, I tell you, um, the Cecile book cover was a photograph that Jan took and. It was just so gorgeous. And we used a, um, professional photographer to edit it cuz uh, she has all that wonderful editing ability. But it was basically a photograph Jan took. And, uh, Jan was, is a very talented photographer so she put it inside her light box and took the photograph. And then our professional photographer edited it to make it look, um, as dreamy as it looks, you know, with that finish. Uh, cause we self pumped that book. We got to choose the matte finish. That it came out in, not the glossy but the mat, which makes a huge difference. And we got to choose the coloring of the inside pages to be ivory. We got to choose the font. We got to choose how the page number at the top of the page was formatted. And any little logo, I mean it, that's the plus on being nd published. You can just do everything to it that you will not get the ability to do. Even like me working with small romance publishers, I don't have that say So that's how that gorgeous, I mean, that is a beautiful book If you have it holding in your hand. It is a gorgeous, gorgeous book. Um, so for Dangerous Conjuring, interesting story. They kept sending me, um, photographs for the cover that were just wrong. Like one of'em had. You could tell that whoever was trying to design the cover had not read the book and really had not read anything about the book. It appeared I mean, it was, i, it was just really, really not going well. So I got in touch with my editor and I said, this is not going well, What can we do to, to help this? And so they actually sent me the link to their art, where they pick their stuff and I found that cover for Dangerous Conjuring. I found that and I was like, This gives the feel, this is what I want. And so I picked that and they sent it to my, um, book cover artist. Lovely, lovely woman. I love her to death. She lives over in Germany and does amazing covers for, um, vampire stories and dragon stories and, everything's Game of Throne ish looking and stuff with her original artwork. unbelievably knock your, knock your eyes out. Um, and so they sent her the art that I chose and she gussied it up and did the title artwork on it and everything. And so I was, I was pleased once it got out because, uh, it was just like going the wrong direction. So I have really enjoyed that cover. I'm glad you liked that one. I, I really love it. Um, and then for, uh, Christmas Canali Kiss, that was the cover, wild Rose Press sent me and I said, I love it. They asked fun, they wanted, they said, do you want people on the cover? And I really didn't for that one. I thought, I don't think I want to have people on the cover. And um, so they said, okay, well then we'll do setting. And uh, that was the first one they sent me. And I just thought they nailed it. I just loved it. I liked, you know, so I said yes to that. But there's the, I don't know if, um, if you guys have seen this Twitter feed on Twitter, but somebody started with about book covers and they were in a bookstore and they were taking a picture of a display and every single cover had the back of a person looking out. So I don't know what soulmate will come up with for a Tristan Paris. I've sent them some of my ideas cuz I did toy with self puffing it and I did find a, some Shutterstock art that I liked, but I don't know what they're gonna send me. When we back up to, what would I say to an incoming m MFA person is, even if you're traditionally published, you still have to run your own marketing. So you might wanna be thinking about getting a lot of expertise in that where can we find you at online? You can go to my website and armstead. Um, and it's all together, Ann Amistad author.com. Uh, and all my social links are there. We wanna thank you for all your time and all of the, I, I love energetic conversations, So until next time, we wanna just keep writing all, all the things.