Interview with T.W. Colvin, author of LETTERS TO LANGSTON

By: Meradeth Houston on 4:00 AM

I completely love getting to know other authors here, and I have a wonderful one to introduce today! Please leave her some comment love! :)

Hi, I’m so glad to be here.  My name is Tesa W. Colvin, I was born in Alabama and Raised in Michigan, but I now call Alabama home again.   I am a wife and mother of two girls and an adorable puppy named Sasha (who is probably too old to be called a puppy but she’s small and I’m her mother so I can get away with it).  I started out writing poetry, graduated to short fiction and I’m now working on my first YA novel.  My favorite page turns are mysteries and in my spare time (whatever that is) I do book reviews and a little creative consulting.

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jusreadit
Author Central: www.amazon.com/author/twc

Website: www.twcolvin.com
FaceBook: www.facebook.com/authortw.colvin

(Q) I think it’s pretty safe to say that most writers love reading. What are some of the books that influenced you the most? Anything you’d like to recommend?

~I totally agree, you might say that I’m old school; some of my favorite books were written by V.C. Andrews.  I can remember reading Heaven and My Sweet Audrina and literally finding myself on the edge of my seat.  I recently had the same experience with James Patterson’s Confessions of a Murder Suspect.  It was a good read, but at the end I still wanted more, so I look forward to future installments.

(Q) What is your favorite part of the writing process? What about it makes you love it?

~My favorite part of the writing process is the writing.  You know- when you block out everything and forget about editing tips and notes because you just want to get this world, conversation or plot out of your head before you go completely insane!  That’s when I seem to get so much done…when I don’t overthink it.

(Q) What’s your biggest pet-peeve when it comes to the writing world? Does anything get under your skin and itch?

~I absolutely love to write.  I have a million encouraging quotes that I’ve emailed myself, poems that happened by mistake, funny scenes to stories that are still being worked out in dreams or my imagination.  But I am far less enchanted with the business side of writing.  I guess it’s because handling that aspect of being a “writer” is far less creative and more of a cut, dry, punch a clock email here and a build presence there type of feel for me.

(Q) If you could meet any writer, living or dead, and pick their brain over coffee/tea/hot-chocolate, who would it be? What would be your first question?

~Answering this question was much more difficult than I anticipated.  So I’m going to take a little creative license and list two authors.  

The living author that I would choose would be James Patterson.  And I would ask him 1 question. “What authors do you read that help you write across an array of genres and sub genres?”

And the Author that I would have loved to meet who is no longer living would be Langston Hughes.  I am a big fan of his work, as similar to JP his credits are vast and touch on any range of subjects and even formats (poetry, plays, fiction, nonfiction, operas, children’s books etc.).  And the question that I would ask would be, “With no formal education specific to writing, how did you sharpen your craft in such an effective manner that allowed you to build such a broad repertoire and also teach others?”

(Q) Are you currently working on any projects that we should be looking out for?

~I have a few projects in the works that I can tell you about.  I’m working on a short YA fiction piece entitled The Secret Lives of a Shoe Thief, two other shorts that are still untitled, as well as the grueling revision process for my full length novel Dark Princess.  

Also, two of my items currently available online are Prompts, Poems & Practical Advice for Writers, available at Smashwords and Amazon, and Letters to Langston which is exclusively available at Amazon and free until 07/04/2013.