AprilRieveschl

Female

Florida

Outdoor activities - hiking, biking, tennis. Writing. Travel.

<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Brief Bio:</span></p>
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I am a clinical psychologist and freelance writer. My publications are primarily nature essays in a variety of venues including, <em>Audubon, Isle(Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment), Wildbranch(an anthology of nature writing), </em>the<em> Michigan Quarterly Review, </em>and NPR's Living on Earth Radio show. I wrote a nature column in the local newspaper and received an award in Outdoor Writing form the Florida Press Association. The University Press of Mississippi published my first book, a work of non-fiction, <em>Horn of Plenty: Seasons in an Island Wilderness </em>in 2005. I am a Master Naturalist in the state of Florida.</p>
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<span style="text-decoration:underline;">Emerging Author Interview</span></p>
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<em>1.</em><em>Tell us something about yourself as it relates to your writing life. What inspired you to begin the novel?</em></p>
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Nature writing found me by way of a book that took what I loved and put it into words. Jack Rudloe’s <em>The Living Dock</em> set me on a nature-reading tear that led to my own nature writing. I studied the nature writers, took workshops, and met other nature writers. But, I began to feel constrained by the truth.</p>
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The idea for the novel came after reading a book on zoonotic diseases, diseases that jump from animals to people. I read a news report on bird flu, and then another, and another. What if bird flu jumped, what if the story did not focus on the pandemic, but on the social and personal ramifications of birds as carriers of disease? I had my premise, a story that would frighten and thrill even as it wrapped itself in the wonder of birds.</p>
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<em>2.</em><em>Who are you reading now? Which authors and novels have been an inspiration to you, and why?</em></p>
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In searching for books similar to my own, I came across <span style="text-decoration:underline;">My Last Continent</span> by Midge Raymond. I also just read <span style="text-decoration:underline;">Love, Life, and Elephants</span> by Daphne Sheldrick, a compelling story of a woman’s life in Africa and her devotion to orphaned elephants. In <span style="text-decoration:underline;">All the light we cannot see</span>, by Anthony Doer, I was struck by his unique style of writing as well as the story itself. As a result of this course, I read <span style="text-decoration:underline;">The River King</span>; Hoffman’s attention to unusual detail(and nature) as well as her imagination, magical realism, and craft made the book one of my favorites. The nature writers continue to be an inspiration - Terry Tempest Williams, Edward Abbey, Carl Safina and many more. I can never read enough of them. I had a mentor, Ann Zwinger(<span style="text-decoration:underline;">Beyond the Aspen Grove</span>, <span style="text-decoration:underline;">Run River Run</span>) who encouraged and validated my pursuit of nature writing.</p>
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My fiction favorite is <span style="text-decoration:underline;">The Poisonwood Bible</span>. Almost anything Kingsolver grabs me. She combines fine writing with meaningful themes, themes that resonate with my own love of the natural world and how it interfaces with our lives. <span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cold Mountain</span> had a similar affect – great story interwoven with nature.</p>
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<em>3.</em><em>Can you tell us about your novel?</em></p>
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Lisle Dufree, one time debutante turned full time birdwatcher chucks her pearls for binoculars, moves to the Gulf Coast, and risks everything, her life, her children, and her marriage as a deadly bird virus grips the world. She joins an underground mission to save birds from local rednecks who seek to kill the skyrats that bring disease. In <em>Hard Release</em>, the lines blur between passion and madness, self-preservation and murder, and commitment and betrayal. Human fragmentation and the natural wonder of birds are juxtaposed in a general fiction story that follows the struggle to break free and the tragic consequences of confinement, not just for one life, but for all the lives with which it intersects. <em>Hard Release</em> is a tale of one woman’s crusade to fly without wings.</p>
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<em>4.</em><em>What gives you a passion for this story and why are you the one who needs to tell it? </em></p>
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The novel is a possible reality, one small mutation away from non-fiction, relevant to our times and our way of life. It has an urgency. The characters struggle with meaningful conflicts, dilemmas that are wrenching and familiar. They are all of us, faced with desperate choices. The theme, the plot, the setting, and the characters converge to express a story that is unique, exciting, and consequential. As a birder, I know something about birds and I am passionate about their survival. I am a Master Naturalist in Florida in coastal, wetland, and uplands systems. My background in clinical psychology is reflective of my interest in people and what drives them to do what they do. Lisle represents a universal struggle to live according to one’s design, whether to fulfill a passion, pursue a gift, or simply to live unencumbered by damaging events of the past. As Lisle says, “It’s such a simple thing,†this hunger to be true to ourselves. And that impulse is not just a human one, but a characteristic of life itself.</p>
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<em>5.</em><em>What have you found to be your biggest challenges in writing a successful commercial novel? </em></p>
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My biggest challenge has been the transition to fiction. I was accustomed to having nature as my subject not people. My first drafts of the novel focused on birds with people as an afterthought. I had little or no experience in creating characters. At first, they were flat, more like stick figures than full and textured portraits. I studied characters in novels and used the course exercises to think about how to convey emotion and conflict. As my characters assumed their roles, they grew, over months and years; they grew as people do, into more and more complex people and birds became the glue that bound them all together, the subject that forced them to show who they were.</p>
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6. <em>Is there any particular facet of the Author Salon novel writing program that has helped you more than any other. If so, why?</em></p>
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The design of the course, step by step, building on itself, provided a guide that led me to each new stage with the tools that I needed to go forward. Assignments with a focus on specifics e.g. protagonist, antagonist, types of conflict, plot points, parts that I had either not considered at all or not to the extent necessary, have led to better writing and better editing. The required reading has been essential, but without the course work, they would have provided a good read but not the exercise, the knowledge without the dirt time. The module that required copying the voice of two authors was a great exercise; made me realize that I could write in other styles, but also helped me free up my own voice.</p>
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7. <em>What bit of advice can you give to other aspiring authors just getting started?</em> Write for the right reasons – because you love it and you have something meaningful to say. Take a really good course on writing, get the craft down first. You don’t know what you don’t know. And read, lots of different styles and genres to kick start your own voice and/or hone it.</p>