An Author Among Us: Carrie Chesney

Carrie Chesney knew that she wanted to write books that were somehow connected to one another. She knew well the feeling that dedicated readers get at the end of a really good book, one that has done its job and enveloped the reader into its pages, the sorrow of being finished along with the excitement of looking for another pathway back into the folds, into the characters. In the case of The Lander Series, readers can look forward to being brought back into Lander, an actual town in Wyoming.

Christopher, Brody, and Jennifer; the three published volumes of The Lander Series, each bring the readers into the town of Lander. The books are not defined by a specific character that the reader follows throughout the series. Rather, the books are defined by the town itself. Characters recur as do businesses, but each book brings readers into a different character’s life within that town.

Chesney is a thorough researcher for her books. While she has never been to Lander, Wyoming, she has been in constant contact through the years with the Chamber of Commerce and other resources there to make each book as true to form as possible. If a character is having lunch at a local restaurant, Chesney wants to know what restaurants exist that fit the situation, what the character could order, and where in town the restaurant is located. Chesney’s characters are not based on actual people in the town, but using an actual location ties each book to the last, the next, and hopefully, to each book in the developing series as they are published.

As I interviewed Ms. Chesney, any sense of the first-meeting formality melted away as speaking with her combined a unique sense of talking with a trusted friend yet with the excitement of learning about someone just met. She is excited about all things writing and has such a natural genuineness about her own character that it is difficult to reign questions into a simply interview format.

Chesney grew up in Canada and was a genealogical researcher there for 25 years. She met her husband; a lifelong Bonduel, Wisconsin resident; and made the move here to be with him.

Jennifer Stallsmith (JS): Your first novel in The Lander Series was published in 2005. When did you know you wanted to write a novel and how was that process?

Carrie Chesney (CC): I wanted to be an author when I was 10 or 11 years old. Then I went to college and became a genealogical researcher. I came back to writing, and I wrote my first full novel in 1997. It was a romance and so I sent a query letter. I did everything that a writer isn’t supposed to do. I needed to learn how to take the novel from craft to professional. I needed to learn to properly edit. I had a wonderful mentor who taught me that process of taking a good story to the professional level.

JS: What specifically brought you to use Lander, Wyoming as the town unifying your characters?

CC: The characters started out as being located in Ontario. In my mind I had the picture of the town being somewhere out west. The character was a rancher from the west. I was looking through a coffee table book of pictures and saw the area around Lander and knew that was where the characters were from. I had pictures in my mind of mountains and foothills.

JS: Will there be more novels in The Lander Series?

CC: Yes. I am pretty ambitious. I have a master plan of 100 books mapped out. The characters are named and all have a connection to Lander.

JS: What brought you to the genre of romantic suspense?

CC: I only read mysteries usually. I love to watch romantic movies. I always have to have a dead body in my novels. I do not want my books to be written by formula as some can be.

JS: You have a large family (Carrie and her husband have a combined family totaling 12 children). How do you find time to write? What is the process like?

CC: We are empty nesters now. I have written under wild circumstances. I would put on country music videos and write with them in the background. I would pound it out. I have been known to write from noon until four am.

When I sit down, I review what I have written the day before and then progress from there. I typically write a novel in about three to four weeks.

JS: When you write, do you have an outline before you begin the book or do the characters lead you through?

CC: The characters speak to me. Sometimes a character will keep me awake at night speaking to me. I don’t have an outline before I begin. I don’t control the characters. I see it as a movie in my head.

I like to write in the fully omniscient point-of-view. Some say this is the most difficult point-of-view to write from but to me, it comes naturally. I like to represent the angle of the antagonist as well as the protagonist.

JS: How do you know when a book is finished? Does the character stop speaking to you?

CC: I watch my word count. My books are usually a little longer than the average of 60,000 words. I usually like to end around 100,000 words. The characters usually fit into this limit.

JS: You mentioned that you wanted to comment on the book, Brody.

CC: Brody started out as any other book, but I felt a social obligation with this book. Brody comes upon a woman who is a victim of multiple rapes. It became important to me for readers to see how a victim learns to be intimate again. It is something not often represented. As the woman goes through the steps of recovery, she falls in love with the deputy, Brody, that rescued her. The book shows how the couple has to work together to regain intimacy. It shows that to be a whole woman again and to truly love, she needs to heal intimately as well as physically and emotionally.

JS: You co-authored a novel with Thomas Lynn in 2008, The Secrets of Blaney’s Mountain. How did the process of co-authoring compare for you to individual authorship?

CC: It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had! We had the utmost respect for each other. We were both thrilled with each other’s writing talents and knew that we were equally talented. We had a similar sense of humor. We blended our writing so cohesively that we have received comments that readers cannot tell that it was two authors writing the book. Lynn writes beautiful imagery, detail and narrative. I’m the queen of dialogue.

The story started out as a science fiction story and turned into a mystery. Lynn and I never actually met face-to-face until after the book was published. He was a short story writer and I lengthened and stretched. We would discuss the next chapter and characters. He would send me 12 pages to review and I would read and rewrite and send back 24 pages. We would read the story together aloud as if reading a script to make sure everything was good and then would put the chapter to bed. The book took us eight months to write.

The book is set on campus at the University of Tennessee. They were so supportive. They have cameras up on campus so we could authenticate our details for the book. When we went there, we were able to speak to the English classes on campus about our process. The cheerleaders even took us out.

JS: Your bio on Amazon.com refers to you as being involved in Authors by Design. Can you tell me a little about this site?

CC: Authors by Design is an online community of writers. There are connections made to critique one another’s work. There are blog areas for many areas of writing. There are prompts and advice forums. It is a site to foster writers. A friend and I started the site in September 2005. I recently handed on control of the site but remain involved with the site.

Carrie Chesney’s books, Christopher, Brody, and Jennifer (all part of the Lander Series) and The Secrets of Blaney’s Mountain (co-authored by Chesney and Thomas Lynn) can be found online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. The web address for Authors by Design is http://www.authorsbydesign.com.

Jennifer Stallsmith is a local freelance writer and short story author. She lives in Green Bay with her eternally patient husband, Brad, and her two sassy cats.