Hello Readers!

Our featured author for this post is Victoria Joyner.  Enjoy!

Did anything from your childhood inspire you to write “July Burning Bright”?

Not directly. The actual plot was part of a random writing exercise, but I felt comfortable writing about Texas boys getting in over their heads — those types of guys comprised my childhood friendships. The rest of it fell into place from memories of dinner table stories from the men in my family about their own delinquent formative years.

Are you a procrastinator or preparer?

Neither? I dislike anticipating things overmuch, nor having them hanging over my head in dread, so I tend to live from moment to moment. I believe the future will tend to itself… for better or worse.

Tell us a funny or embarassing childhood story.

My parents caught a lot of grief for saddling me with (in my relatives’ minds) a long, complex name. This resulted in my acquiring a score of nicknames, none of which would be used by the same two people. By the time I started kindergarten, I’d been trained to answer to Victoria, Vicky, Tori, VicVic, Cathy (Cathleen is my middle name), Chatty, Toreador… and so forth. So my kindergarten asked me what I wished to be called, and I thought about it for a moment, and answered, “Elizabeth”.
I suppose I felt I had to keep it in the realms of royalty.

What was your favorite book as a child and why?

The Last Dinosaur. It’s the only book I clearly remember reading and re-reading as a child (and I remember being inordinately proud, because it was an 8th grade reading level book and I could read it at 5) and it’s one of  the few things from my youth I’ve kept.

It was a story about the ending of the dinosaur era, and featured a triceratops pair struggling to survive. It did not have a happy ending, but it’s one of those stories that stuck with me. The triceratops remains my favorite dinosaur because of that book.

Have you ever been a bed wetter?

Not that I remember. I was a night terror kid, though, and spent many a night scrambling into somebody else’s room or else cowering behind furniture until dawn.

Who or what inspires you to be a better writer?

Bad literature. There is no better motivation to improve your own craft than being subjected to people wielding it badly.

What do you think is the meaning of the masthead, “An Honest Lie”?

I see an honest lie as telling a falsehood with good intentions. It’s the lesser of the lies!

Victoria Joyner is a native Texan who discovered early in life that she was equal parts writer and wanderer.  This wandering has taken her through much of the Midwest and the South, the experiences of which has found inevitable roots in the makings of her writing.  Her current perch is in the Pacific Northwest, where she has decided to watch the Seattle rain and sit still long enough to put words to paper. 

While she’s known she wanted to be an author since she was eight years old, “July Burning Bright” is her first publication.  In addition, Victoria has a novel currently in progress, which will be an urban fantasy set in Dallas, and several short stories in varying stages of completion.  In the past, she has been a runner-up in the “100 Words or Fewer” writing contest with her story, “The Wedding Dowry” placing third.

Victoria is twenty-three years old and lives with her remarkably tolerant roommates and five cats.  When not writing, she looks for odd jobs to workon, and has done everything from hawking wares in a flea market booth to doing a radiologist’s laundry before filing his x-rays.  She is an aspiring student, but has yet to determine which major will net her the best story, whether it be genetic engineering, 19th century poetry, meteorology, or some combination of all three.  For now, she has found simply being a student of life to be an adequate inspiration.

Wanna know more about Victoria?  Go to  www.bardsong.info/blog