Author Name: Laura Stone Book Name: Bitter Springs Release Date: December 3, 2015
Today I’m excited to have LAURA
STONE author of BITTER SPRINGS on the Book Blog.
Hi Laura, thank you for
agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background,
and your current book.
I'm delighted to have been invited, thanks so much! I'm
Texan, I'm a mom, I'm a writer, and I'm a Master Gardener. I'm terrific at
Spades and Gin Rummy, have a killer chocolate cake recipe, and could live off
sourdough bread if push came to shove. I cannot, however, play a harmonica or
knit worth a darn. My uncle taught me how to crochet when I was eight, and I
guess I'm a loyalist. (I like to claim that instead of just admitting that I'm
simply clumsy with the knit-purl business.) This has been your random facts
about Laura moment.
Bitter Springs was a challenge I set for myself to
write a genre of which I never really read while growing up. Well, I say that,
but I did love books like the Little House series, the Justin Morgan books, and
I think I checked out King of the Wind every other week in the sixth
grade before my parents took a hint and got me my own copy. While not Westerns,
they did feature horses and that pioneer spirit so iconic for the genre, which
I was a huge fan of—still am!
Bitter Springs also serves the purpose of me showing
my father—a man from a long line of ranchers and cowboys—that gay men existed
prior to the 1970s. (You'd be surprised at how many people didn't believe there
were LGBTQ folk before modern times...)
In the opening of the book, I mention how the idea came to be: I was on
a road trip and stopped off in Tombstone, Arizona. In the famous cemetery there, two men are
buried in the same plot, and they are the only folks in the whole cemetery with
that distinction. Mothers and their
children weren't even buried together. Turns out these two young men insisted
on it, and that got me to thinking about what their lives were prior to their
untimely death. While this book isn't
about those two men (there just isn't enough information about them beyond
being “the best of friends”), it is about all the men of the time who maybe
were “the best of friends” in a way that enabled them to be in long-term
relationships with one another in a land where laws didn't matter much, and
there weren't too many folks to stick their nose in other people's private
affairs.
I also wanted to give voice to the people who actually lived
out west in the 19th Century instead of the white, handsome,
clean-souled white guy Hollywood likes to claim owned the West. Not even close.
Mexicans, Mestizos, Blacks, and especially the Native Americans who had lived
on the land for centuries... these were the people who lived and settled the
West long before the Anglos, and it's important that we hear their stories.
Hopefully your readers will enjoy meeting some of these different families!
Say something to your fans.
Moving from the world of blogging and running fan boards to
the world of writing books has been such an amazing turn of events, and it
wouldn't have happened without the support from the people who have cheered on
my writing over the years. One of my favorite things about the world of readers
and writers is how close-knit our relationships with one another become. I've
made life-long friends who mean the world to me.
There's a bit of built-in distance with writing books and
interacting with fans, and I wish there wasn't. I love talking to people,
getting to know what they feel so passionately about, connecting with what
interests we both share. I love when I get to chat about those things with
readers, old and new. It's such a privilege to have someone connect with the
words I've put on a page, and an utter delight to talk about what it is that
makes you, the reader, click. Know that for any time you might wonder, “does
that author really want to know what I thought about such and such,” let me
just speak on my behalf: Yes! I love it!
And you know, that goes for what works and what doesn't.
I've had some really interesting criticism about why a thing didn't work
for a reader, and it made me want to work harder. There are times when it's
just a thing a person prefers, though, so hey. Not much I can do there. But I
do love hearing from readers. Especially when it leads to us finding out we're
both crocheters or super into baking or hockey fans. Let me just say that if you read M/M
literature and you love hockey, you have a new best friend in me.
It's one of the most amazing turns in my life, becoming a
professional writer, and I appreciate each and every one of you helping this
long-held dream of mine become reality. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
(But seriously: who's into hockey? I'm from the Land of
Football, so I need my gang! Don't be shy! I'll bring the wine and nibbles next
Game Night.)
Blurb: In 1870s Texas, Renaldo Valle Santos, the youngest son of a large and traditional family, has been sent to train with Henry “Hank” Burnett, a freed slave and talented mesteñero—or horse- catcher—so he may continue the family horse trade. Bitter Springs is a sweeping epic that takes themes from traditional Mexican literature and Old Westerns to tell the story of a man coming into his own and realizing his destiny lies in the wild open spaces with the man who loves him, far from expectations of society.
