Our guest this week is none other than author Mariam Kobras, whose latest book Under the Same Sun (sequel to The Distant Shore) was launched earlier this month.
In Mariam’s own words:
What, Why, and How
One evening, while chatting with my publisher, I once again gave in to yammering about the looming blog hop because I never had any ideas, and it kept me away from the real writing.
With a slight edge to her normally gentle, lovely voice, she tossed a couple of questions at me, and asked me to answer them.
Here they are:
What story would you really like to write, but won’t, and why?
None.
Well, that’s not quite accurate, since I’m actually writing exactly the story I want to write.
Initially, when I began writing, I didn’t have any idea where it would lead me. I certainly never thought of writing a second or third book about Jon and Naomi. But the story grew and grew. It’s like a hydrangea bush, you know. You buy one for a couple of dollars at some flower stall outside the grocery store, and it’s a teeny tiny thing with one single blossom. You keep it inside for a while because it’s still too cold to plant it in the garden, and you enjoy that single blue or pink or white blossom. Then after a while you do plant it outside, and a year later, it has grown and is suddenly a big bush in full bloom. And the longer it grows, the bigger it gets and the more flowers it has.
So that’s how it went. The Distant Shore is really nothing more than a love story, a story about two people and their lost and recovered love.
The new book, Under the Same Sun, is the sequel, but it’s also more than that. It expands the storyline. People who are mere bystanders in The Distant Shore, well, maybe I should say minor characters; Naomi’s father is certainly no bystander. So people who only have supporting roles in book one, now take over the stage and tell their own story.
The setting broadens, too. Where in The Distant Shore, the characters move only between Norway, London and the US, now they go to meet the family of Naomi’s mother in Italy.
See, the longer you work with or write about characters, the more you find out about them, and the people surrounding them. They have families, friends, foes, neighbors, and every one of them has their own tale to tell.
Right – which story would I really like to write, but won’t…
To be honest, there is something that I would like to write, but won’t, and that’s an epic space opera. I mean, a real, deep space, galaxies and generation ships, one with alien planets, and alien people, and beasts that seem terrible, and ferocious, but in truth have a brilliant civilization hidden away somewhere.
But I won’t, and that’s because I really suck at physics, and because my imagination can’t top what others have already written.
So I’ll stay on Earth and deal with humans and their small problems.
Where do you come up with your ideas?
This is a funny question, because so far I’ve really only had one idea, and then expanded on it. Truth is, I don’t have any ideas when I start writing a new book. I just start. I pick a situation, a setting, and start out from there, and the rest sort of develops from that. It’s a bit like an avalanche. I start with one snowball, and everything else is set in motion from there. On the way down the mountainside my snowball gathers up stuff—trees, stones, even houses and people—and mixes them into the great mass of snow.
That’s how it works for me.
When I started out writing Distant Shore I had no idea there would be this shooting at the Academy Awards. No idea. I didn’t even know it would be Jon’s former girlfriend who tries to kill Naomi. But somewhere along the line, I think when she shows up just before Jon and Naomi’s wedding, I thought, “hmm….what can I do with Sophie?” and wham, she got a gun. Worked well enough to convince a publisher!
Same thing with Under the Same Sun. When Naomi meets Parker on the plane and he offers her a drink I had no idea how that would all end up.
So all I can say is that I really get my ideas from within the stories. They run in my head like a constant movie, I hear the characters talk, I watch them act, sometimes I even play one role or the other myself. You might say the people in my books live their own lives, and all I have to do is document them.
Now I can hear the publisher say, “See? It wasn’t all that hard, was it?” as she smiles at me. It’s true though. It wasn’t all that hard. In fact, it was fun!
This was the eleventh stop in Mariam’s Blog Hop celebrating the launch of her latest book, Under the Same Sun (Book II in the Stone Trilogy) which hit the Amazon.com bestseller list on its first day on sale!
We hope you enjoyed her guest post, and invite you to write a comment below about this blog post for a chance to WIN one of three copies of Under the Same Sun (plus some pretty gosh, darn, yummy chocolate)!
You can get additional chances by following Mariam at every stop on her hop and leaving comments after each post. And hey, while you’re here, why not follow this blog—you won’t regret it.
Join Mariam tomorrow, 10/29 when she stops by Leanne Gagnon’s blog. Join us there!
Check our blog for the full calendar and more details about Mariam and her books!
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Mariam lived in Brazil and Saudi Arabia with her parents as a child before they decided to settle in Germany. She attended school there and studied American Literature and Psychology at Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen, where she met her husband. She lives in Hamburg, Germany, with her husband, two sons and two cats.
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