Author Interview: Barbara Davis

Yesterday, I reviewed the book The Secrets She Carried by Barbara Davis, today she is here for an interview!  Without further ado . . . 

1.  What do you find yourself rambling about?

College football.  It's my one real vice, and I can literally talk about it for hours when I find someone who's equally passionate.  I grew up with four brothers, so there was always football on.  I became a student of the game, not so much an armchair quarterback as an armchair coach.  I can talk offensive and defensive strategy, call plays, recite players' bench press numbers, forty times, and yards per carry stats.  And when the season is over, I fill the void by following high school recruiting with nearly equal vengeance.

2. What was the inspiration that started you down the path to this book?

Not long after I moved to North Carolina, I was sitting in the car, waiting for my husband to come out of a store when I noticed a single grave in a vacant lot across the street.  I'd seen others like it before.  You see them over the place here, on roadsides, in the middle of cornfields, even in the mall parking lot in Greenville, NC.  But this time, something spoke to me.  I started wondering who was buried there, and why.  Was anyone looking for this person? Did anyone ever visit?  Or had they, and their stories, simply been forgotten.  And just like that, in the space of ten minutes, Adele Laveau was born.  The rest of SECRETS grew up around her - and her grave.

3.  If you could put your book into one person's home, who would that be?

Oprah, hands down.  She's a smart, strong woman who has made it her business to discover and promote great books.  Her stamp of approval would be a dream come true for me.  You . . . uh . . . you don't happen to know her, by chance?

4.  Is there any part of yourself in Leslie?

I think the part of Leslie that I most strongly identify with is the "Big City" aspect of her personality, the part of her that got caught up in the office and title and lost sight of her creativity for awhile.  I had a fairly meteoric rise to an executive position in a large corporation.  All of a sudden I was a Vice President, traveling and making all this money, not realizing that it all came with a cost.  Not until I wound up jobless, with a lot of time on my hands, did I realize how little I'd been enjoying life, and how far from my true passion I had really strayed.

5.  What is next on your plate?

I'm currently putting the finishing touches on my second novel, which is called The Wishing Tide, and will be out in September 2014.  It's the story of a woman, Lane Kramer, who leaves Chicago to open a bed and breakfast on North Carolina's Outer Banks.  All she wants is to retreat from the world and put her failed marriage behind her.  The novel opens at the beginning of the off-season - the inn is closed for the winter, and a late-season tropical storm is bearing down on the island.  Everything seems to be under control until a weathered old woman full of improbable stories appears on the dunes behind the inn, and a mysterious stranger who is not quite what he seems lands on her doorstep in the middle of a storm.  Suddenly, three unlikely characters find themselves on a collision course with a past that will either destroy their fragile bonds, or forge them forever.

Thank you to Barbara Davis and Penguin for the opportunity to send questions!  I will definitely be waiting for The Wishing Tide!