Our author interview for today features Marsha Ward, novelist, journalist, and poet. Marsha, you have published over 900 articles. I can’t even begin to imagine how you did that. Tips? Advice? Are you magic?
I’m not magic. I merely worked for several newspapers, and was editor of three of them. The bulk of my article credits come from those days. I also edited and published two periodicals for writers, one a newsletter and the other a small magazine. I had a couple of columns in other small publications, as well.
That sounds pretty magical to me. Plus, you’re a published poet. Where can we find some of your poetry?
My poems were mainly printed in small publications in the 80s, so they’d be hard to find. In 2003 I won the national Alice Abel Literature Competition in Poetry with “My Mother’s Bureau Drawer,” which took First Place in two other contests in 2002. I really should re-issue the prose and poetry chapbook I self-published five years ago, I suppose, but I’ve been focusing on book-length fiction in the intervening years.
Yes, you should reissue it so we can all read it! Now, you’ve also written two novels. When were they published?
I published “The Man from Shenandoah” and “Ride to Raton” at both ends of 2003, but it took many years to get them written. In fact, I began writing the first novel 38 years before it saw the printed page. I put it aside to go on a mission for the LDS Church, marry, and have a family. I brought it out of hiding in the 80s and worked on it for a couple of years before I got an agent and submitted it. In hindsight, it wasn’t nearly ready for publication, and I have the pile of rejections to prove it. I did have the newspaper credits to join Western Writers of America, though. The members there have always given me encouragement and moral support as well as critiques and endorsements.
In the meantime, I wrote the sequel and began submitting it. Then the death of my daughter took away my creative drive for several years, and the two manuscripts went back into the drawer.
The unexpected illness and death of my husband a few years later had the opposite effect on me. I began writing again, and got to the position where I actually quit work to write fulltime. I polished up the manuscripts and begin submitting them again, with encouragement from editors, but no sales. The market for novels set in the West had shrunk. When I had some serious health issues, I decided to use iUniverse to publish the two books. I wanted my novels in print before I died.
I did the right thing. I didn’t die, but I’ve had the satisfaction of seeing the novels be well received by both reviewers and male and female readers of all ages.
I think you did the right thing too, Marsha.
We’ll continue our conversation with Marsha Ward tomorrow. In the meantime, be sure to check out her website.
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