Pump Up Your Book Chats with K.D. Hays & Meg Weidman

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K.D. Hays and Meg Weidman are a mother-daughter team who aspire to be professional roller coaster riders and who can tell you exactly what not to put in your pockets when you ride El Toro at Six Flags. Meg is studying art in a middle school magnet program. For fun, she jumps on a precision jump rope team and reads anything not associated with school work. K.D. Hays, who writes historical fiction under the name Kate Dolan, has been writing professionally since 1992. She holds a law degree from the University of Richmond and consequently hopes that her children will pursue studies in more prestigious fields such as plumbing or waste management. They live in a suburb of Baltimore where the weather is ideally suited for the four major seasons: riding roller coasters in the spring and fall, waterslides in the summer and snow tubes in the winter. Although Meg resents the fact that her mother has dragged her to every historical site within a 200-mile radius, she will consent to dress in colonial garb and participate in living history demonstrations if she is allowed to be a laundry thief.

Their latest collaboration is a wonderful book titled Toto’s Tale.

You can visit their website at www.totostale.com.

On Toto’s Tale

Q: Thank you for this interview, Kate and Meg. Can you tell us why you wrote your book, Toto’s Tale?

Kate: We started writing this together to give us something to do during my son’s basketball practices. Meg was in about third grade at the time.

Meg: Now I’m in seventh grade, so you can see it took us a while to finish.

Q: Which part of the book was the hardest to write?

Meg: The written part of it.

Kate: Early on, Meg liked to talk about the story and figure out what’s going to happen and write funny lines, but sometimes when it came to sitting down and writing out the action we’d discussed, she got a little bored.

Q: Does your book have an underlying message that readers should know about?

Kate: Everyone knows there’s no place like home, but I think we forget the main reason why home is so important. It’s where people accept you and stay true to you in good times and in not-so-good times. The underlying message of Toto’s Tale is to stay true to your friends.

Meg: Even if they don’t understand you at times.

On Books in General

Q: What was one of your favorite books as a child?

Meg: The Harry Potter books were all my favorites. I would read them over and over

Kate: She still reads them over and over. She even sleeps with them.

Meg: Only when I’m too lazy to put them back on the nightstand.

Q: What is your favorite book as an adult?

Kate: You don’t get to answer this one yet, Meg. How many favorite books am I allowed to have? If you’ll let me have two, I’ll say Persuasion by Jane Austen and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Q: What are you reading now?

Meg: I’m reading the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan.

Kate: I’m always in the middle of at least 5-6 different books. is reading Camilla by Frances Burney. We’re both also reading Temple Grandin’s book Animals Make us Human.

On Writing

Q: Do you remember when the writing bug hit?

Kate:Meg is 12 now, and she has always liked to write what some people call “fan fiction.” She started with the characters from Harry Potter and wrote her own stories and acted out life at Hogwarts (she was a professor). She also wrote a cartoon story – the Adventures of the Dead Arm and some episodes of Scooby Do. It was all done for fun with no intention of getting it published or even finishing it. I was the same way as a kid. It was fun to write, but hard to finish a story and even harder to clean it up enough to where it was good enough to show to someone else. This “kid” phase lasted til I was about 30. Then I decided I actually wanted to finish a story.

Q: Besides books, what else do you write? Do you write for publications?

Meg: I have to write for school, of course L.

Kate: I’ve written everything from legal analysis to ad copy. For nearly ten years, I wrote a weekly newspaper column on religion. These days, I write mostly fiction and articles for my website. Most of my books are historical, so history is a major topic on the website.

Q: Do you have a writing tip you’d like to share?

Meg: Writing is more fun if you don’t feel like you have to do it.

Kate: That’s true, but sometimes it doesn’t get done unless you have a deadline. So it helps to impose a deadline for yourself. When I started, I tried to make sure I had enough written so I’d have something to share with my critique group each month. Usually I have to make it a priority or it won’t happen. Then once you’ve got something written, you need to be willing to share the writing with others and accept critiques. Sometimes what you don’t what to hear is exactly what you need to hear. But you don’t realize that until later!!

On Family and Home:

Q: Would you like to tell us about your home life? Where you live? Family? Pets?

Kate: I think we have the typically over-scheduled suburban family life.

Meg: I do my homework in the car a lot.

Kate: We spend a lot of time at jump rope practice. Meg is a on a team and she’s also learning to coach. I coach beginners. So with classes, practices and shows, we are out for that 5-6 days a week. Then there’s scouts and music lessons and church youth group. And Meg has a brother with a schedule that is just as busy. It’s crazy, but before I know it, they’ll be off to college, so I try to not worry about stuff that doesn’t get done and just go. As for family–

Meg: Let’s not talk about my brother.

Kate: We’ll just say he’s two years older and that will give people an idea of what kind of relationship you have.

Meg: I have a nice dad. And my Aunt Peggy lives with us right now too and she’s nice.

Kate: And we have nice pets.

Meg: We have two dogs, Alice and Shannon and they were the canine consultants for Toto’s Tale. And right now we have Aunt Peggy’s dog, Lela, too. And we have two lizards and an evil bunny.

Kate: The bunny lives in my office, to keep her away from the dogs. She likes to pull things off of shelves and chew up my reference books. She makes a big mess.

Meg: And she’s really soft but she hates to be petted so she’s not cuddly at all.

Q: Where’s your favorite place to write at home?

Meg: In bed

Kate: I like to write in my office on sunny days when the rabbit isn’t making too big of a mess.

Q: What do you do to get away from it all?

Meg: I read and listen to music.

Kate: While sitting in a big cardboard box in the living room.

Meg: Well, yeah.

Kate: To get away from it all, I really have to get away physically as far as possible. If I’m at home, I’m constantly reminded of everything that needs doing around the house, with respect to writing and work and with volunteer activities. I really look forward to trips away from home whether it’s going to visit family or heading out for a conference or a baseball tournament.

On Childhood:

Q: Were you the kind of child who always had a book in her/his hand?

Kate: Meg definitely was and is. She used to sit in bed with a big book with almost no pictures and she’d sit and turn the pages even though she couldn’t read. And once she learned to read, it only increased. Now if I need to punish her for something, I take away her reading time. I think I was the same way.

Q: Can you remember your favorite book?

Meg: The Harry Potter books. Dad used to read them to me when I was in preschool. And Hardy Boys books, too. I still re-read them all the time.

Q: Do you remember writing stories when you were a child?

Kate: I remember writing a really bad play when I was little and I sent it in to a TV show and then wondered why they never performed it. I don’t think it had a plot or dialogue.

Meg: I remember the story of the Dead Arm and the Harry Potter stories.

On Book Promotion:

Q: What was the first thing you did as far as promoting your book?

Kate: Probably the first thing was to register the domain name TotosTale.com.

Q: Are you familiar with the social networks and do you actively participate?

Meg: I’m not allowed yet.

Kate: You don’t have time anyway. I’ve started using Twitter and Facebook, but to make it work for promotion, you have to develop a huge network and participate A LOT. I haven’t put that much time into it yet.

Q: How do you think book promotion has changed over the years?

Kate: Obviously the internet has changed book promotion just as it has changed book sales and even reading itself. It makes it easier for authors to get information out. And that’s essential because book publishers aren’t providing the promotional help that they used to. In a nutshell – authors can do more these days and they have to do more.

On Book Publishing

Q: What is the most frustrating part of being an author?

Meg: That I still have to do all my homework

Kate: For me it’s promotion, definitely. I feel like I’m constantly begging people to review my book or read my guest blog post or come to a book event. I don’t mind doing the work – it’s begging for people’s time and attention that gets so tiring.

Q: What is the most rewarding?

Meg: You get to see your name in print

Kate: When people tell me they enjoyed one of my stories and want to know what else I’ve written.

Q: How do you think book publishing has changed over the years?

Kate: New print technology has made it easier to get books published but now that there are so many books out there, it’s hard to find a market for them all. Readers are the winners – there are lots of great stories out there to choose from.

On Other Fun Stuff:

Q: If you had one wish, what would that be?

Meg: To play Magiquest with mom all day. Magiquest is a game at Great Wolf Lodge (a hotel) where you use a magic wand to perform various tasks to collect points, fight dragons, etc.

Kate: It’s like a video game that you walk around in. The first time Meg did it, I kept borrowing her wand because it was fun to point it at things and make them react. So next time she made me get my own wand.

As for my own wish, I’d want to be able to fly.

Q: If you could be anywhere in the world other than where you are right now, where would that place be?

Meg: Great Wolf Lodge

Kate: Someplace warm with a beach nearby and fun historical places to explore.

Q: Your book has just been awarded a Pulitzer. Who would you thank?

Kate: I would thank my parents for always encouraging me. Meg, you have to say the same thing.

Meg: But I don’t even know what a Pulitzer is!

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How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

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