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

A: First grade was filled with those interminable “Dick and Jane Readers” (see Dick, see Jane, see Spot), and I longed for something more exciting. In third grade I discovered Little House on the Prairie, and I was determined to one day replace Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books in the school library with my own. That didn’t happen–but my professional career got a jump-start in fifth grade when the Paso Robles Press ran my write-up of our class field trip on page two.

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

A: As a young mother, between burps and naps and diapering, I wrote short stories. But it was during a road trip to Oregon in 1994 that I began conceptualizing a romance of the Oregon Trail. I joined a writer’s group with a critique group that met every two weeks, and I produced a new short story for every meeting. By 2001, I had a shoebox half filled with rejections, and forty publishing credits–short stories and essays. I began attending writing conferences, entered contests and won a few awards, paid Catherine Ryan Hyde to edit my novels, and paid attention. I read two dozen books on writing, and filled a notebook with notes. I met a publisher who asked me to collaborate on an anthology project and learned a lot about the publishing business. I keep reading and writing, and each project seems to get better. So true, that writing is a process not an event.

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

A: That I had to write until I found the one area where I soared. The energy wasn’t all outward-directed–as I mastered the nuances, the writing transformed me. I found my authority and my sense of place. My literary strength is evocative memoir. I connect with women readers ages 40-60. My writing makes women think, and react, and sometimes cry. Without meaning to, everything I’ve done as a writer has strengthened me in this age market.

As my fan base expands, I may be able to expand my passion into novels. But it will be my memoirs that launch me.

Q: What are you working on right now?

A: My second memoir, Ordinary Aphrodite. It’s a Love Goddess-meets-Bridget Jones’s Diary collection of personal stories as seen through the heart and eyes of a non-status quo woman coming of age in the ’60’s Social Revolution. It will be released in December by Russell Dean and Company (ISBN 978-1-891954-88-7), and available in bookstores and on Amazon. (For now, it’s available on my website.) I’m working with my publicist and my publisher.

When I am reasonably launched I’ll begin my third memoir, Ordinary Grace, more personal stories about a 40-year relationship with my mother-in-law. I already have a beginning:

“This is a love story. It may not seem so, but this is the story of two women who never liked each other very much until they came to realize the depth of their affections in the dying year.”

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

A: LaVeryl Spencer (I closed the cover on her Morning Glory, and knew I was going to become a novelist.) Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, Amy Tan, Jane Kilpatrick. My reading is diverse. I read like-minded writers for inspiration and unlikely writers for the same reason. When I’m writing, I make a point of never reading anything in a similar genre lest I shade my work with their ideas.

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

A: I am studying tension and drama. It wasn’t a book, it was a DVD: The Passion of the Christ, the Mel Gibson movie that caused the mighty reaction I’d like to achieve in my writing. I’m reading Zane Grey and other Westerns to discover how dramatic action is written. But the evocative drama I’m reaching for is one that most men won’t touch. Too often they eschew emotional depth for young, sexy, superficial female characters.

I dread the question, “What are you reading?” I tend to read for content and style, and I tend to forget all but the most famous of names. Shame, shame. But if, nutritionally, I am what I eat, then literarily, I am what I read. I try to read a well-balanced diet–and that includes the Bible.

Q: What excites or ignites your soul?

A: Honesty of feeling. A sense of connection with the character. Words that express my hidden thoughts. Secondary story lines that create delicious complexity. Boldness.

Bio: Anne Schroeder describes herself as a calorically challenged Aphrodite with an unshakable fervor for life. She lives on the Central Coast of California with her husband Steve, two Labs, Maggie and Sadie, and a few chickens. On her walks into the hills, Anne has encountered the occasional mountain lion, coyote, black bear and rattlesnake along with interesting people–all endless ingredients for her writer’s stew. Visit Anne at www.readanneschroeder.com.

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