(Grouse Creek, 2010)author of Sun Tunnels and Secrets
GET TO KNOW YOU QUESTIONS
1. What is your favorite food? I love so many kinds of food. I’d say any well-prepared food with lots of veggies. I especially love Indian food.
2. What was your favorite childhood picture book? The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
3. Is there a book that changed your life? To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. If you go back in time, where would you go? I prefer the time we are in, but I might want to meet some wonderful women in history like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Eliza R. Snow.
5. What is your favorite sport? To participate in tennis and skiing, but to watch gymnastics.
6. What is your favorite kind of music? I love a wide variety of music, but always go back to 70’s music like Simon and Garfunkel, and James Taylor.
7. What is your favorite thing about yourself? I love that I enjoy nature so much. I am quite creative.
8. What are three adjectives that best describe you? Fun, Artistic, Talented.
9. What is the strangest thing you ever did? My childhood friend and I used to have a tradition that we would go out in the snow every New Years Eve in stocking feet at midnight and scream. I did it even after I got married.
10. What is the strangest food you ever ate? Raw fish in France. Dog food and cat food—just for fun as a child.
11. Have you ever met a famous person? Margot Fonteyn, a famous ballerina. Some of my author friends are on their way to being famous (James Dashner for one).
12. What was a favorite adulthood event? Going to Europe, seeing the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s great works, and other wonderful museums. Hiking in the Swiss Alps.
13. What was a favorite childhood memory? Nearly all of my best childhood memories center around the family cabin near Yellowstone in Montana. There we played, hiked, rode horses, and climbed in the back of my Grandpa’s jeep and drove to a dump and watched bears ravage through the garbage.
14. What are your hobbies? Hiking, riding bikes, walking, skiing, writing, pottery, art, and reading.
15. What countries have you visited? Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, England, and Scotland
16. What cartoon character best describes you? I hate to admit it, but probably Lucy in Charlie Brown. She’s a bit of a stinker.
17. If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be? Italian countryside.
18. What super-power would you most like to have, and why? I’ve always wanted to fly. Just so I could get places faster and get a better view of the world.
19. What is your favorite color? Yellow
21. If you could only see black and white except for one color, what color would you choose to see? Green.
22. What are you favorite smells? Sage brush and Pine trees and mountain air.
23. What is the best gift anyone has ever given you? My mother gave me a watercolor paining (painted by my brother) of the house my husband grew up in and that we lived in for five years in Grouse Creek.
24. If you were going to sing karaoke what song would you choose? American Pie
Wedding day, 1979
Warburton family, 1988
Annual birthday hike with writing group
Carole's graduation from Utah State University, 1980
Daughters Utah State University graduation
Grandchildren
Carole in pottery studio, 2009
San Fransisco, 2009
WHY I WRITE
I clearly remember my Third Grade teacher giving our class writing assignments. One prompt was to pretend that we were an apple at harvest time. We’d just seen a film about apples. Well, my teacher had me hooked. I loved creating and imagining “what if” scenarios. Our teacher gathered all our stories from months worth of assignments, typed them out, dittoed them (yes this was before copy machines) stapled them together and had us design a cover for our books. We were all published authors!
Most of my teachers from then on encouraged me in writing, noticing a talent and desire. My mother wrote for the Orem Geneva Times and I remember that she took a home-study course in writing. She often read to us her creative endeavors and I loved them. My Aunt Emma Lou Thayne is renowned poet and writer. My Aunt Mirla Greenwood Thayne wrote “I Wonder When He Comes Again.” Writing was in our family. From early on, it was one of the things that gave me a deep satisfaction. If I wasn’t writing, I was reading books and thinking of stories to write someday.
I was finally a “real” writer when a story about my grandma I’d entered in the New Era writing contest took third place. Years after it won, it was published in the New Era in about 1985. It took me years after that to write seriously again. I concentrated on my family, and making pottery—my other creative endeavor, and teaching school. My husband and I took a job teaching in Grouse Creek, Utah in a two-room K-10th grade school with only 24 students. It was Little House on the Prairie! I loved it and dreamed of using the setting for writing. It took nearly a decade before I would spend much time writing again. I went back to school and this time got a degree in English. After graduating a friend of mine suggested we form a writing group. We began meeting once a month. Within six months I realized I was writing a novel. I started a story with a young woman getting two flat tires on her way to Grouse Creek and an aging rancher picked her up. That was the springboard and each month I added to it. Eventually that first novel was published as “A Question of Trust.” Seeing my baby on the shelves was addicting. The process of writing is something that I am passionate about. Publishing is difficult but it is rewarding in a different way than the process of writing. One of the side benefits I hadn’t expected meeting so many new friends. I have a huge circle of writing friends. I have also met some wonderful bloggers, and readers, and people who like my books. That’s been fun too, although something I’m less than comfortable with. In short, I write because I can. I write because I love it. I write because of the effect and joy it brings to others. I write to expand my mind. I write to be creative. I write because I can’t imagine not writing.
Nice to meet you, Carole. You're grandchildren are darling! I have to admit that I'm a little jealous of how much you have traveled. I've hardly ever been anywhere myself. I love the story of how you started writing. Hooray for great teachers! Thanks for the interview.
ReplyDeleteWow, after knowing you all this time I still learned something! Congratulations on your new book, Carole.
ReplyDelete