Linda DeFruscio is the founder and president
of A & A Laser, Electrolysis & Skin Care Associates in Newtonville, MA.
In addition to Cornered, her memoir
about her friendship with Dr. Richard J. Sharpe, she is currently writing a
book on skin care and completing a book of profiles based on interviews with
transgender people, many of whom are her clients. While Cornered is her first book, her skin care articles have been
published in magazines for years.
Find out more on Amazon.
Questionnaire:
Thanks for letting us
interrogate you! Can you give us a
go-for-the-gut answer as to why you wanted to be an author?
I
never had a choice. I take notes all the time and on virtually every subject. Sometimes
I have an interesting thought and I don’t want to forget it, and sometimes I am
simply recording what’s going on around me, because I find it fascinating. Some
of my notes wind up becoming the foundation for articles or books.
Tell us (we won’t tell
promise!) is it all it’s cracked up to be?
I mean what are the perks and what are the demands?
Writing
a memoir is a real challenge. You have to walk a fine line between telling the
truth as you know it and ensuring that you don’t insult anyone along the way.
Because Richard Sharpe’s story was very high profile, I had to work with
lawyers to make sure I played by the right rules.
Which route did you take –
traditional or self-published – and can you give us the nitty gritty low down
on what’s that like?
I
have had my own business for many years. It was hard enough to squeak out the
time to write Cornered. I certainly didn’t have the time to get involved with
self publishing it. So I went the traditional route. I actually had three
offers, albeit all from small presses, and I picked Twilight Times Books
because they seemed the best fit for me.
Tell us for real what your
family feels about you spending so much time getting your book written,
polished, edited, formatted, published, what have you?
My
husband is elated to see the result of all my hard work. Like me, he is anxious
to see what will happen next regarding
reviews, book signings, etc. As far as other family members, I don’t
think it made much of a difference in their lives. They’re happy for me.
This is for pet lovers. If you don’t own a pet, skip this question,
but do your pets actually get their food on time or do they have to wait until
you type just one more word?
This is for plant lovers. If you don’t own a plant, skip this question,
but if you do, are they actually still alive?
In writing your book, how did
you deal with the phone ringing, your family needing dinner or your boss
calling you saying you’re late?
I
usually try to do my writing at end of the day when all that stuff is over with
or early in the morning before it all starts. Again, since I work full time at
a business that I own, I never had the luxury of sitting and writing hour after
hour, day after day. But I was driven, and I got the job done and am now
working on two other books.
What was the craziest or most insane
thing that happened to you in the book publishing process?
I
can be fanatical when it comes to certain details. There are pictures of
Richard Sharpe on the cover of the book. Even though they are small pictures,
maybe an inch square, they are very important because they show his progression
from childhood to student to Harvard medical school graduate to cross-dresser
to convict. I wanted them to be perfect, but every time we worked with the
printer to modify the colors on the cover, the contrast or hue of the pictures
changed too. We couldn’t seem to get it all right. As of this writing, the
first printing has been completed, but we’re still tweaking the cover, trying
to perfect it for the second printing. Other people have said the cover looks
fine, to just let it go. But I’m not a “let it go” kind of person. If I was, I
never would have finished the book in
the first place.
How about the social
networks? Which ones do you believe help
and which ones do you wish you could avoid?
Too
soon to say.
Book sales. Don’t you just love them (or lack of?)? How are you making the sales happen for you?
I’m
off to a good start because I have hundreds of clients and friends who want to
read the book. I am extremely social. I know a lot of people and I’ve never
been shy about telling them what I was writing about. Everyone wants to get the
skinny on Richard Sharpe. The book of course is a memoir, but my life-changing
association with him is at its center.
What is one thing you’d like to
jump on the rooftop and scream about?
After
all these years I still want to scream because in 2000 Dr. Richard J. Sharpe’s
mental instabilities resulted in the death of the person he loved most in the
world—his wife. I want to scream for her sake, because she was a remarkable
woman who was extremely nurturing toward everyone she met, and I want to scream
for his sake, because if he hadn’t screwed up royally and wound up in prison,
he would have found a cure for cancer by now. If he was alive now, he’d be
looking for a cure for ebola. He couldn’t help himself. He was as committed to
putting the world right as she was. The difference between them was that his
psyche was fragile, perhaps badly dysfunctional, and when the world seemed to
be caving in on him, he lashed out big time.
Okay, too much sugar for you
today! Here’s a nice cup of Chamomile
tea and come on over and sit under the cabana and watch the waves roll in. Now…can you tell us what you love about being
a published author and how all those things above doesn’t matter because it’s
all part of the whole scheme of things and you wouldn’t have it any other way?
The
act of writing a memoir has opened my eyes to some truths about myself and some
truths about the people, especially Richard Sharpe, I interact with in my
story. Truth is all important to me. The truth will set you free.
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