Jacqueline T. Lynch is not only is the author of numerous novels, she has also had several of her plays published and produced in the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands. 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 Playright’s Showcase of the Vermont Actors’ Repertory Theatre in Rutland, Vermont.
You can view 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.
What was the hardest part of writing your book?
I’ve written a great deal of nonfiction, historical articles primarily, and there is the problem sometimes of writing about factual events as an historian and not as a storyteller. One needs to remember to illustrate with imagery rather than to document. Blending fictional characters with a story based on a true event is part of that challenge. What makes it especially hard is that old axiom that “truth is stranger than fiction.” Sometimes, it really is.
When did you first start writing and when did you finish your first book?
I first started the book in 1991, researched a great deal, wrote several drafts, and completed what I felt at the time was a finished novel in about 1998, I think. Other projects, and life, got in the way, and I put it aside, revising it again in the past few years. It’s hard for me to pinpoint when I was actually working on the book, because I work on several projects simultaneously.
Can you tell us about your challenges in getting your first book published (if any)?
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