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Use this forum to discuss the February 2022 Book of the month Totem: (Strong Heart #3) by Charlie Sheldon
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Charlie Sheldon
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Re: Ask the author...

Post by Charlie Sheldon »

jemimapaul wrote: 07 Mar 2022, 00:34 Did you face any obstacles as an author while writing Totem and the series?
No special obstacles beyond the usual ones - which are nearly infinite in number, all arguing to give up, forget it, not worth it, that little beast on your shoulder telling you none of it is any good. I did wrestle for a long time, once there was more than one book, of deciding of many more books? There is an earlier answer in this thread, early on, which answers your question.
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

jemimapaul wrote: 07 Mar 2022, 00:38 Congrats on winning the "Other Fiction 2021 Book of the Year"! What was your reaction when you found out that you had won this award?
I was surprised and delighted.
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Post by Ruth Frances A »

I don’t know whether this question will not offend you or anyone else, but there are many cultures and practices that people in this Century seem wary of. How can you help us accept that different communities have their way of life, but the good can be retained and change embraced. I am still reading the book (between reviews), but slowly, because I am intrigued by the contents so far. Perhaps I will get my answers as I read, who knows! Great so far.
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Post by jemimapaul »

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
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Post by Rhea_K »

What inspired you to write this story in the first place?
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

jemimapaul wrote: 07 Mar 2022, 14:08 What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
I had absolutely no idea, none at all, that I was embarking on a series, when I started. This means that the first book Strong Heart was not written to set up later books. I left a few "hanging chads" like the parcels seen with the Buckhorn people when Sarah and her people were leaving Bear Valley, not to further the story because I think a good story MUST have a few unresolved things remaining to provoke and intrigue the reader.
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Rhea_K wrote: 08 Mar 2022, 10:46 What inspired you to write this story in the first place?
I learned, in 1990 when I first came to the Pacific Northwest, and in the years afterward, that there was a commonly held belief among nearly all First Peoples of the Americas that they have always been here; i.e., they did not migrate across the Bering land bridge to reach the Americas. This legend, and wondering if and how it might be true, was the seed for this series.
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Ruth Frances A wrote: 07 Mar 2022, 11:55 I don’t know whether this question will not offend you or anyone else, but there are many cultures and practices that people in this Century seem wary of. How can you help us accept that different communities have their way of life, but the good can be retained and change embraced. I am still reading the book (between reviews), but slowly, because I am intrigued by the contents so far. Perhaps I will get my answers as I read, who knows! Great so far.
Not sure if I understand your question. I had a story in mind and by necessity the story required characters and events that covered both European-based and First Peoples-based cultures. In addition, I had to invent or see imagined cultures from tens of thousands of years ago. These days of identity politics have created a world where authors are basically forbidden from writing about cultures other than their own, races other than their own, peoples other than their own. At the extreme, if I am left handed I cannot write about someone right-handed. As a male, I cannot write about females. For sure, as a descendant of northwestern Europeans, I cannot write of Native Americans. It is an impossible dilemma for fiction is, after all, imagining other worlds, other stories. The issue of cultural appropriation is huge right now. How to thread that needle? Some will say, you cannot thread it. They might be right, but if readers fall into the story and believe it feels and seems real, go with it and the characters, then that's ok, isn't it? I sure hope so.

In the case of these books, you cannot write of the PNW today or any time in the past without somehow including the First Peoples, as they are many among us, and until a couple hundred years ago were the only people here. But stealing cultural myths and legends is real, too, and deeply offensive to many. There is no place on the Olympic Peninsula that is not the ancestral homeland of one of the many tribes out here. Not one square inch. So this is what I did to thread the needle with my series - those who study the maps will realize there is no town of Sol Duc on the peninsula. I invented this community, placed is a few miles west of Port Angeles and the reservation of the Elwha Tribe. I also invented the Sol Duc tribe, created a small tribe with a tiny reservation somewhere near the town to Sol Duc, and you will see my characters are all members of this tribe. There are some similarities among all tribes as to structure and governance - they have tribal councils, they have fisheries commissions, they have environmental offices - so hopefully the Sol Duc tribe matches reality without being one of the real tribes. Some will argue this is still not proper, but honestly in the now over 5 years since the first book in the series was published, and all the books since, so far nobody has complained, vilified me, or tried to cancel me; quite the opposite, actually. In the case of William, a main character who was born Haida in Canada, I intentionally had him taken to a residential school when a small boy and removed from his homeland.

There is no way to write fiction including peoples of other cultures, tribes or races and not also come up against accusations of stealing culture, no way at all. The legends I reference in the series are, all of them, total inventions from my fevered brain. Even in the prologue to Totem, when Myra's great grandmother, a Haida, tells the story of the whale and the bear, note she says this is story "before there were tribes," again my way of threading this impossible needle.

The readers will decide whether this works. Cultures are different, they are real, and each are to be respected. I have tried to do that. And, in the end, the very very end, the final point is very clear, as you will see....
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Post by Rhodahams »

How do you keep yourself motivated? I have read the three books and all I can say is that you are an exceptional author.
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Rhodahams wrote: 09 Mar 2022, 12:04 How do you keep yourself motivated? I have read the three books and all I can say is that you are an exceptional author.
Thank you for the kind words. As to motivation, this is difficult to answer. It might just be dog-headed persistence. This whole series did take at least 11 years. I have been thinking about another few stories now for a year and a half, doing research, but the days go by. There are long periods when I do not write. I think lots of authors are always working on a novel, writing one or two or three a year, driven. It is sort of a sickness, actually, at least for me. It is so hard to start something in the faith that a story will emerge, all faith, facing the weeks and months of writing, and I would think I am actually not that motivated, or efficient, at all. I have written a total of eight or nine novels since I began writing in 1988 seriously, there have been years that have passed when work totally interfered, and because the backside of any novel, to get it out there, requires promotion and ultimately dollars, and I loathe promotion and now know that no matter how much you spend it is really a matter of luck, right place and right time, and connections for a book to take off, I therefore, facing this dread and dislike and fear at the end, am of course inhibited from starting. This despite knowing in my bones the real fun is in making the story, that is great, but it takes patience, of which I have none, and persistence, which now and then I have...
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Post by jemimapaul »

What was your hardest scene to write?
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

jemimapaul wrote: 09 Mar 2022, 23:41 What was your hardest scene to write?
The first scene of Sarah's, the windstorm at her grandfather's place, was the hardest, because I had to somehow cover a lot of ground in very few words and also give depth to the grandfather and show the bond between Sarah and Tom Tom, all in about three pages before the tree falls. That was hard.
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Ayomikun Babalola wrote: 07 Mar 2022, 09:54 Did you experience a writers block at any point when you wrote this book?
Not once, once I started writing.On occasion I would not feel ready to start, which isn't a block but taking the time to be be ready, a very different thing. Last few books I have done, once I start I have gone straight ahead, writing every day, until a first draft is done, three or four months. Then the real work begins, of course.
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Post by Nwankwo GC »

How did you stay motivated to keep going from part one of the series to part three? That's no mean feat. Do you experience writer's block? If yes, how do you overcome it?
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Nwankwo GC wrote: 12 Mar 2022, 02:52 How did you stay motivated to keep going from part one of the series to part three? That's no mean feat. Do you experience writer's block? If yes, how do you overcome it?
Check out some of the other questions in this forum here, many people have asked the same or similar things and I have tried to answer there. When I wrote Book One I thought I was done but some of the "hanging chads" whispered to me and as described earlier, I had a big part of a second book I had removed from the first, because I changed the frame of the tale from that used by Conrad in Heart Of Darkness (a bunch of people awaiting a pilot boat telling the main story, except in mmy case it was a lifeboat crashing ashore and then William telling a story to keep everyone sane) and then, of course, there were more "hanging chads." Now I have finished this series, or completed a three book set piece you could say, so I can tell myself the series is done. B ut even now I have things whispering at me....
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