This Week: Renee Russell

Q: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

A: I’ve always been an avid reader. My mother likes to tell the story from when I was 2 years old and she didn’t have time to read to me. I’d take the book, sit on the floor and hold the book upside down while I read to myself. I’d memorized the story! When I was in junior high my best friend and I wrote short stories and poems. I would say that’s when the dream was born. My junior high (through high school) best friend and I are still in touch and I found an old notebook with a collection of our stories in it. She was so excited to see them again!

Q: How and when did you make this dream a reality?

A: In the late nineties I came up with an idea for a novel based on some frustrating family history research. I came to a complete dead end with a great great-grandmother and couldn’t go back any further. She’d had a couple of children out of wedlock and was disowned by her family. So I decided to write a novel based on a young woman in that time and place and under those circumstances. I shopped it around the major NY publishing houses and got rejections from all of them. I then stuck the manuscript in a drawer and decided I wasn’t cut out to be an author. Then in 2002 I decided I couldn’t give up trying and sent the manuscript out to some of the reputable ebook/small publishing houses. Wings ePress accepted it for publication as both an ebook and a trade paperback. Kate’s Pride became available on January 1st, 2007, from the publisher’s website www.wings-press.com

Q: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far in your writing career?

A: Persistence, persistence, persistence. Don’t give up on the first try, you have to keep going.

Q: What are you working on right now?

A: Currently I’m working on a mystery series based on a character who’s an amateur genealogist.

Q: Name some authors or books that have influenced your writing life in a positive way.

A: Wow. This is tough! I have so many authors whom I’ve loved over the years and still do. I grew up on Victoria Holt, Phyllis Whitney and Norah Lofts. I also love Tess Gerritsen, Michael Connelly, Martha Grimes, Nevada Barr….and the list goes on.

Q: What have you recently read or what are you reading right now that you would consider an outstanding work?

A: Another tough one. I just finished reading The Dead Hour by Denise Mina and it was a page-turner. I also recently read Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn; it kept me so interested I read it straight through!!

Q: What excites or ignites your soul?

A: The feeling that a manuscript is going tremendously well. The words just flow through my fingers like silk.

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Renee Russell is a seventh generation West Tennessean. She graduated from Lambuth University with a double major in Marketing and Business Administration and a triple minor in Art History, Literature and Economics. She still lives in West Tennessee with her husband Gerald and their cat Gambit (who thinks he’s a person). Visit Renee at www.reneerussell.com