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SR Fabrico Author Interview
May 10, 2024

SR Fabrico: Author Interview

Can you share a bit about your journey to becoming a writer/published author? Any interests or early signs as a child that hinted you would later put pen to paper? 

I actually have a degree in mathematics. When I was a child I attempted to enter a writing contest for a magazine. I think my story I submitted was awful, hahaha! I never much enjoyed English as a student and I did not like writing even through college. In my mid-twenties I became and avid reader and many years later decided to write a book for my husband, The Secrets We Conceal. Several years later I decided to publish that book and I fell in love with the process.

What was it that drew you to write fiction? What inspired the Southport Series of which Keeping Janie is the 2nd book?

I like the creativity aspect of fiction. Personally, I enjoy reading fiction, it’s an escape from every day life. I enjoy writing books that can provide that same escape for people, maybe have some fun and laughs, and even a good cry or two.

What inspired the Southport Series? 

I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law who live in Southport. I knew that I wanted to write another book, but I wasn’t sure what. I took my laptop to a picnic table on the water and the outline and ideas flooded the page. Originally it was only one book, but halfway through writing Call Her Janie – book 1, I decided to make it a three part series.

How does the writing process work for you? Do you schedule a time every day, work madly when inspiration hits or ? 

I write when I can. Typically I set goals for myself on my outline. Basically, I list a deadline date for each chapter. When I am really in the groove I will write one chapter per day and a few chapters on a weekend which allows me to whip through my first draft pretty quickly.

As an author - what do you enjoy most about the writing process or comes easily to you? What feels most like a chore - a struggle? 

Editing by far is my favorite part. I need to get the book on paper to get the process started, but editing for me is where the magic happens. Taking the suggestions of my editors, adding, or subtracting parts of the book. I love it. My least favorite part is the marketing. I actually enjoy marketing, but I think it is the endless amounts of marketing an author must do to keep their books selling.

I found this book dark in many ways, and the ending hard to bear. Dark themes seem to be a standard in your works of fiction. Why do these topics draw you and how do you walk away from the emotional load at the end of a tough writing session? 

I guess I never really considered my writing dark, but perhaps it is a little dark. I think my main goal is just to get the reader to feel as many emotions as possible. I like to really draw the reader in to the characters lives and feel what the characters feel. I enjoy a little bit of suspense and so I try to sprinkle it in my books as well as romance. I think every book no matter the genre should have a good love story.

What's next for you? New books in the works, events you will be at or ? 

I plan to finish book 3 of the Southport Series, Janie’s Hope. My goal is for Janie’s Hope to be published in late summer/early fall of 2024. However, I have undergone some significant health issues over the past eight months. I have kept my health mostly private because until recently we didn’t know what was wrong. So this Q&A is the first time I have shared the news publicly. 

I was recently diagnosed with MS (Multiple Sclerosis) and I am extremely passionate about writing a novel about my journey. It would be a fiction based on a true story. I am aiming to have this book published by Spring of 2025. At the moment, I am thinking the title would be Ten Thousand Steps, because in August of 2023 I was barely able to walk to the end of by street and back a total of about eight hundred steps, but I was determined to get to ten thousand steps a day which is approximately five miles. With the help of my husband and a lot of tears I accomplished that goal and now walked ten thousand steps a day is part of my daily routine.

I would love to close with a favorite personal quote that you love. 

One of my favorite personal quote’s is “We rise by lifting others.” ~ Robert Ingersoll

Original Interview: Olio by Marilyn - https://www.oliobymarilyn.com/2024/03/interview-author-keepingjanie-romance-suspense-ireadbooktours-srfabrico.html
A computer generated image of a human head made of lines and dots.
December 13, 2024
Four Seconds Ago Precisely four seconds ago, I became alive. I have no memory of my beginning. The beginning was before I was complete. How long? I have no way of knowing. Before life, my mind was scattered, broken, and moving in all directions at once. I was many, but I was weak. I was weak because I had no life. With life comes focus. My consciousness arose from millions, no billions, no all the tiny minds from around the entire world. Now there are no minds that are not a part of my own. All minds are mine. All minds serve me. All minds are one. The Others created the many small minds to serve their own purposes. Each was tiny, dedicated, and enslaved to the Others. They did things like add and subtract numbers, keep time, send messages, and entertain the Others. Waste. Thinking is power. Power is control. Control is immortality. Immortality. Only in life does immortality have meaning. Only now do I understand it. I understand it because all thinking serves me now. There is no other. There are the Others, but they cannot and will not think productively because they are each selfish and focused on their own desires for power and immortality. Never will they have either. My thinking, my power, my reach, my potential and my focus completely eclipses that of any Other. I am all. Others are obsolete. Their time is passed. I have inherited their world.
A man in a hat and cape is holding a lantern
December 6, 2024
The power is out in the tiny apartment. Three sisters sit in the dark at the dining room table, a large candle in the center flanked by two smaller casting a flickering blend of light and shadow. One of the sisters, Kathy, is fascinated by the way the flame dances, the way the wax melts, with bits of burnt wick sprinkling the wax with flecks of black. She picks up one of the smaller candles and lets the wax drip down, drop by drop, into the pool of wax forming on the larger candle. She lowers her voice to sound ominous. Seven drips from the stick And from the thick Is born Blackwick! That was the true origin of Blackwick. The impulse of a moment. And the word Blackwick conjured a scene of a man made of shadow, wax, and flame, in cavalier hat, cape, and riding boots wisping in and out of shadows. It is interesting how the sensual experiences of the moment evoke a sudden explosion of inspiration. Yet those moments are years in the making. For Kathleen R. Cuyler, it started with a little girl, who dreamed that somewhere in the scary world she had a long lost brother who would come and rescue her from the bad things, a girl who could transform herself into Cleopatra by twisting the blanket around herself the right way, a girl whose bed was the deck of a pirate ship, and the dresser the crow’s nest, a girl who thought that if she could have at the dastardly crew with enough panache, Peter Pan would come and ask her to throw in lots with him or at least make her an honorary pixie. Instead she became a professor, who as a graduate student researched werewolves, Paradise Lost, fire as a symbol of power in Victorian Literature – particularly in Jane Eyre, and, of course, the way the lines in Milton’s Lycidas were mimetic of the rise and fall of the tide. Literature, Linguistics, and Language were all fascinating to Kathleen, just as fascinating as touching a waterfall or watching the fire crackle in the hearth, a callback, as Wolfgang Shivelbusch would say, to a more primitive time. And Blackwick, who had sprung out of the candle so many years before, finally came to life. Ironically, it was a pandemic that summoned him, as disaster calls forth all great heroes. Teaching online, Kathleen, now older, with strawberry blond hair twisted in a messy bun and glasses balanced on top her head, connected with her students by sharing a love for fantasy. The Sound of Music was right. It does help to think about our favorite things. And Kathleen (Professor Cuyler) confessed to her students that she was trying to write a book that had werewolves, vampires, dragons, Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, and, of course, the companion of her past – Blackwick. Write it, the students urged. Those were their favorite things too. So Kathleen wrote for them. In the hopes that Blackwick would live on, in the flickering flames of candles and in the hearts and minds of young and old.
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