THE
SILVER LOCKET by Sophia Bar-Lev is the author’s third novel. A former
elementary and high school teacher, Bar-Lev now devotes full time to writing,
her lifelong passion. She is an avid
reader, loves to travel, enjoys cooking and baking and spending time with her
family. Her vivid descriptions, tasteful
humor and insightful treatment of human behavior render her novels not only
entertaining but thought-provoking.
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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’ve
had this inner drive to write since I was a child, turning in my first ‘book’
of 8 pages to my second grade teacher! I
continued writing over the years despite other responsibilities and determined
that once I got past raising children and holding down a job because I had to,
I would do what I really loved which is to write. Now I do and I love it!
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
can be an enemy as well as a friend; it can yield great pleasure and
satisfaction one the one hand and discouraging frustration on the other; but in
the end, most writers – myself included – keep on writing because it’s what we
love. Writers, I think, have this drive to get something said and we don’t give
up.
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
went the self-published route on the advice of a few people I respect. It has its ups and downs. The folks I worked with at Create Space were
wonderful but I quickly learned that in the new paradigm of publishing, an
author has to be a marketer as well.
That’s a real learning curve for many of us and demands a significant
time investment. However, my overall
evaluation is that self-publishing is the way to go at present at least until
such time as one’s book gets the attention of a big name publisher. I like the control you keep over your work
that self-publishing gives you, but distribution and publicity is the
challenge. However, there are some great
book publicists out there to help.
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?
Fortunately
for me, my children are all grown and married.
My husband is very supportive and only occasionally has he mildly
complained when I lost track of time and forgot to start dinner!! I do tend to get so engrossed in my writing
that I lost all track of time. He’s
really good about it. It would be very
different if I still had children at home.
Are your plants actually still alive?
I
laughed right out loud when I read this question. My plants are alive but only because they’re
low maintenance!!!
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?
Early
on in the process, I turned the ringer off on my phone and learned to use an
alarm clock for starting dinner.
However, I must confess, sometimes I’ve been so engrossed that the alarm
clock went off and I didn’t hear it! For
true!!
My
husband heard it at the other end of the house but I didn’t and it was on my
desk! Now that’s called super
concentration I guess.
What
was the craziest or insane thing that happened to you in the book publishing
process?
After
I uploaded the manuscript to Create Space, I panicked. Was it good enough? Did I go through it enough times to be sure
there were no mistakes?
Would
anybody like it? Then all of a sudden I
realized I forgot to include the Dedication in the final manuscript. Fortunately, my account specialist was
awesome and fixed it for me.
How
about the social networks? Which ones do
you believe help and which ones do you wish you could avoid?
Facebook
has helped as well as Twitter. I
registered on Goodreads and have had minimal response from there so I haven’t
paid much attention to it. There are
hundreds and hundreds of books on Goodreads.
I felt lost in the crowd. But Facebook has several ‘groups’ for authors
and those have been helpful.
Book
sales. Don’t you just love them (or lack
of?)? How are you making the sales
happen for you?
Started
out with Facebook, my website and some promotional emails but that wasn’t
enough. I searched out book publicists
and hired the one I liked best. She’s
been great.
What
is one thing you’d like to jump on the rooftop and scream about?
People
who write reviews and you can tell they never finished the book! It’s so
annoying. And people who post sarcastic
comments. Whatever happened to old
fashioned courtesy? You can write a
negative review without being mean.
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?
Sure
can – I’ll give you a specific example.
Recently a reader contacted me on the website and invited me to have a
SKYPE visit with her book club who had just finished reading and discussing one
of my earlier novels. It was the most
delightful and encouraging experience any author could hope for. The ladies were great; they asked superb
questions and shared valuable insights they had gained including ideas I’d
never thought of but that they’d derived from the novel. It was thrilling.
Knowing
that readers get something valuable from my novels is the best reward of all.
