Follow-up Interview with Novelist
Sally M. Keehn (2005)
by Debbi Michiko Florence
What have you been working on since we last chatted?
For the past year, I've been working on my latest writing endeavor — Magpie Gabbard and the Buried Moon. I travelled to Kentucky, where the novel takes place, to research the history and culture of the area. I love the research and the travel! I attended the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, which I would recommend to everyone. It's fabulous. There are story tellers from all over the world! The festival always takes place the first weekend in October. Attending it fills my creative well.
Do you work on one project at a time? Or many at once?
I generally only work on one writing project at a time. I let it obsess me. I become the character I'm writing about and so, to do more than one project, well, I'd be even more confused by reality than I already am.
What's the best thing that's happened in the last year?
The best thing that happened to me over this past year is that I met and adopted Sophie, our cocker spaniel. She's such a stitch — she's so funny, neurotic and loving. Her antics fill me with great joy. When she decides I've been sitting long enough at my computer, she pesters me until I take her for a walk. We love our walks.
My exciting news is that my first folk-fantasy Gnat Stokes and the Foggy Bottom Swamp Queen finally came out in late April and the reviewers (at least so far) have understood and appreciated the book. It's such a departure for me. Before Gnat Stokes, I'd always written books with a strong toe-hold on reality — three historicals and a contemporary. And then I came upon an old Scottish Ballad — "Tam Lin" — which grabbed my heart. It's about the transforming power of love — the holding on through it all and then, when you just can't hold on any longer — the letting go. I told my editor, Patti Gauch, of Philomel Books, about how much I loved this ballad and she suggested I retell it — setting it in the Appalachian Mountains! I traveled to those mountains — the more southern part — the Smokies. They, and the mountain folk I met, awoke something in my heart and set me on a journey to retell "Tam Lin" Appalachian-style.
What's the best advice you were ever given, and by whom?
The best writing advice I've been given lately came from a friend of mine, Trinka Hakes Noble — who's a member of one of my writers' groups (I'm in three) — the Riverstone Writers. I'd brought in an early chapter of my Gnat Stokes novel for critique. Now you have to understand, this book is different and I was going out on an imaginative limb in order to tell it.. I worried about it being too imaginative and Trinka, who'd enjoyed what I'd brought, said, "Sally, go for it. Go beyond the wall; you can always come back."
So I did.
Follow-up Interview © June, 2005, by Debbi Michiko Florence.
See also my initial interview with Sally Keehn, in 2004,
along with my most recent conversation with her, in 2007.
what's new?
For more information about Sally and her books, see her web site: www.sallykeehn.com.
See also my initial interview with Sally Keehn, in 2004,
along with my most recent conversation with her, in 2007.
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