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About Jacqueline Lynch
Jacqueline T. Lynch’s novels are available as ebooks from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Several of her plays have been published and produced around the U.S., Canada, and one of which was translated into Dutch and performed several times in the Netherlands. Her ONE GOOD TURN premiered as a winner of the 2011 Northern Kentucky University Y.E.S. Festival. Her one-act play IN MEMORY OF TRIXIE GAZELLE was chosen as a winner in the 2010 Nor’Eastern Playwright’s Showcase of the Vermont Actors’ Repertory Theatre in Rutland, Vermont.
She has published articles and short fiction in regional and national publications, including the anthology “60 Seconds to Shine: 161 Monologues from Literature” (Smith & Kraus, 2007), North & South, Civil War Magazine, History Magazine, and writes Another Old Movie Blog and New England Travels blog.
For more information, please visit her website at www.JacquelineTLynch.com
What inspired you to write your first book?
Now we’re going back a long way. I was fourteen, and in a phase where I devoured Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie mysteries. I decided to write one myself, in longhand on school notebook paper. I don’t think I ever finished it, and when I started it I had no intentions of becoming a writer. But somewhere through the game -- and that’s all it was at first -- the process of developing character and setting, and dialogue, and story blew me away. I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life.
What books have influenced your life the most?
I think I’ve re-read Jane Austen more than any other novelist simply from the pleasure of it. Ernest Hemingway, conversely, I read from the fascination of his method of paring down the language. The old Burns Mantle series of “Best Plays” was extremely important to me as a young writer and eventual playwright. I did not have access to seeing plays when I was younger and this set of books from the local library opened a new world to me. And, as mundane as it sounds, I always loved encyclopedias. Every search began there.
What are your current projects?
I tend to work on several projects simultaneously. I’m preparing to publish a volume of my essays on classic films originally posted on my blog, Another Old Movie Blog. I’m also a playwright and have a full-length comedy in the hopper, as well as currently trying to market a full-length drama on Louisa May Alcott’s experience as a Civil War nurse. I’m working on a sequel to my cozy mystery novel, “Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red”, and another historical novel set in a northern factory town during the Civil War. I also have a couple of non-fiction projects (history) that have been on the back burner. One of these is a book on the life and career of 19th century eminent bronze founder and sculptor Melzar Mosman, on whom I recently gave a talk and slide presentation to an historical society. Lots to do.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
I don’t believe there’s anything I would change at this point. However, in many writers there is always an itch to re-write, even after the book is published.
What has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author?
I don’t think it was tough criticism, but fair criticism when it was pointed out to me on a couple of occasions that my sentences can sometimes be repetitious. It’s a fault I’m working to improve. At some point, you need to trust your reader, that the reader has “gotten it” and stop hammering.
What has been the best compliment?
“I love this” - love is such a strong, powerful word. When it’s directed at you and your own writing, it chokes you up.
Do you have any advice to give to aspiring writers?
Learn your craft carefully, be meticulous and professional. Explore different genres, and most of all, persevere.
What is your favorite quality about yourself?
Compassion. It makes you a better person, a better writer, but brings with it such heavy responsibility. It requires more than being sympathetic; that keeps you at arm’s length from the object of your sympathy. Being compassionate means putting yourself, your energy, your words, your life on the line for a person or an idea. When you have it, it rules your life and not always in a joyous way. But, it is worth it.
What is your least favorite quality about yourself?
A tendency to multi-task to the point of losing focus. I’ve never missed a deadline, but I impose too many on myself at once. See my answer on “What are your current projects”. Yikes.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
Only my thanks. I’m very grateful for this opportunity to introduce my book “Beside the Still Waters”, and myself, to your readers.
About Beside the Still Waters
Four towns, gone. Dismantled slowly while their inhabitants grieve for a history and heritage that has been voted away from them. The present threatens; the future belongs to the fearless.
“Beside the Still Waters” is a family saga based on an actual event which displaced four entire towns in central Massachusetts for the construction of a reservoir. Today, the Quabbin Reservoir provides water for millions of citizens, primarily in the greater Boston area.
Families are divided between those who protest the construction project, those who give up and leave, and those who help to build it. The central character is Jenny, a girl who comes of age facing the extinction of her community, who becomes the guardian of her family’s heritage, and ultimately, the one to decide what happens to them.
A rift between two brothers, Eli and John Vaughn, at the turn of the 20th Century continues through to the next generation as John tries to use Jenny, Eli’s daughter, in a plot to regain the family farm from Alonzo, who now runs it, who is Jenny’s love. John is broke and eager to sell the farm to the state, which is buying up area property for the coming reservoir. Both Alonzo and Eli refuse to sell their properties, and protest removal by eminent domain. Torn between loyalty to her family and heritage, and the allure of a future beyond the valley, Jenny refuses to remain powerless like the men she loves, but looks for a way to take control. A disastrous decision may prove fatal in a race against time.
Beside the Still Waters is her third book.
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