Author Bio:
I was born and raised in San Diego, California and earned a BA in English from San Diego State University and an MLS from UCLA. I began my career as a reference and collection development librarian in the Art and Music Section of the San Diego Public Library and then transferred to the Literature and Languages Section, where I had the pleasure of managing the Central Library’s Fiction collection and initiating fiction order lists for the entire library system. Although I also enjoy reading biography, memoir, and history, fiction remains my first love. In addition to the three R’s—reading, writing, and research—I enjoy Scrabble, movies, and travel.
My earliest ambition was to be a “book maker” and I wrote my first story, “Judy and the Fairies,” with a plot stolen from a comic book, at the age of six. I broke into print in college with a story in the San Diego State University literary journal, The Phoenix, but most of my magazine publications came after I left the library to spend more time on my writing
My stories have been published in Eclectica, The Binnacle, The Nassau Review, Orbis, Thema Literary Journal, Verandah Literary & Art Journal, Short Story America, San Diego Writers’ Monthly, The Storyteller Anthology, I-70 Review, and the anthologies Short Story America, Vol. 2 and The Captive and the Dead. Four stories, including three as yet unpublished, received honorable mention in the Short Story America Prize for Short Fiction contests. A romance novel, Seventeen Days, was published by Wild Rose Press.
What inspires you to write?
Often I’ll have an idea of something I’d like to write about, but it remains just an idea or most often two or three ideas that might work together, until the “glimmers” start flowing. Sometimes the level of creativity in the universe is very high, and sometimes it all but disappears. And sometimes a story begins completely out of the blue with a single line that comes to me as I’m waking up or half asleep, as happened with the story “Starbucks.”. It doesn’t always end up as the first line, but everything flows from it.
Tell us about your writing process.
I rarely outline, and when I do it’s usually after I’ve written much of the story and need to keep the chronology straight. As the glimmers come I write them in a notebook, and since they don’t always come in logical or chronological order, I cross them out (lightly) when I’ve typed them into the story, so I can more easily see what I haven’t gotten to yet.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
My characters talk to me and to each other, and sometimes they talk back on subjects unrelated to the story. Unfortunately they like to talk most often late at night, so I have to keep a notebook and pen next to the bed. Sometimes I talk to them, but they don’t listen and refuse to take orders.
Who are your favorite authors?
I love Gillian Flynn and Sheri Joseph and wish they wrote more. I like memoirists like Jeannette Walls and Jennifer Storm, and I’ve just discovered Roxane Gay. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s diaries and letters felt like letters written to me by a friend. I loved Dick Francis, Tony Hillerman, and Sue Grafton, all now silenced. A major influence early on was the Williamsburg series by Elswyth Thane, published before I was born. It’s now very dated and politically incorrect, but I still see echoes of it in my writing. Ditto Robert A. Heinlein’s “books for boys.” Even though I almost never write science fiction, I quoted him in “Vacation Hold,” (Thema, August 2017: Missing Letters,) and named a character after one of his.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
Self-publishing was too daunting for me and if readers don’t like the book, the publisher can share the blame! (And of course the credit if they do.)
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
It may change in ways we can’t imagine now, but it will always be with us. I prefer print books and I’m gratified to see that many younger people do too.
What genres do you write?
Romance, romantic suspense, mystery, literary fiction. I write what I write and worry later about the categories they might fit into.
What formats are your books in?
eBook, Print
Website(s)
Linda Griffin Home Page Link
Follow Linda Griffin On Amazon
Author’s Social Media Links
Goodreads
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All information is provided by the author and is presented as it was submitted so you the reader get to hear the author’s own “voice” in their interview.
