Ceaseless Way: an author interview

As part of our promotional effort for Ceaseless Way (now available for preorder — more sites to follow) my fellow contributors and I are interviewing each other. Here’s my Q&A for Ada Milenkovic Brown:

What are your stories in Ceaseless Way about?

“In Valleys Where Eternities Lie” is based on a German short story written in the 1800’s about a village that only appears for one day every one hundred years. In my story, a man living in Communist East Germany is obsessed with finding this village as a way of escaping the dystopia he’s living in. He does find it, but gets in trouble with the authorities because the villager he falls in love with has the power to send people forward or backwards in location or time when she’s upset.

“Nnn’s Children” concerns a teenage female Bigfoot who is trying to survive near future climate change while on a spiritual journey to learn what her role is for her people.

What inspired them?

“In Valleys” was inspired by me being in a production of Brigadoon, which like the German story I based my story on, is about a time traveling village and a villager falling in love with a modern person. The German story, which was published in 1860, is called Germelshausen and was written by Friedrich Gerstäcker.

How did you like working in a collaborative anthology?

I am very proud of the project we’ve put together. I hope we will continue to put out more of these.

Why should someone pick up a copy of Ceaseless Way?

You will be moved and entertained by the characters and situations you find in these pages.

What does “pilgrimage” mean to you?

My understanding of a pilgrimage is a journey with a religious connotation and such journeys are found in different religions. I think one can extend that to journeys that have any kind of spiritual or self-discovery element. With that definition, this probably encompasses all the journeys in The Ceaseless Way.

How did you become a writer?

I think I’ve always been a storyteller, and gradually grew into being a writer so I could share the stories with other people. Most of my ideas tended to fit within what we call speculative fiction, probably because my dad invented a robot, and my mother acted out fairy tales with me when I was young. She also took us to the planetarium a lot, and when they showed us the constellations, that there were story characters in the night sky, it blew my mind, and I was hooked. I bought a book of Greek mythology and never looked back. Later I took writing courses and workshops, including Clarion West and Taos Toolbox, and joined writers groups.

Tell us about your past stories/

Hmm, how long have we got? I have nine published short stories, but I’ll just tell you about four of them to give you a flavor of what I write about:

“Wisteria”— A widow becomes obsessed with her backyard gazebo because she sees the ghost of her gardener husband in the wisteria he grew in it.

“Nadirah Sends Her Love”— In an alternate history where the Mideast has the role of the US, and America is a bunch of fundamentalist Christian conclaves, a physician gets in trouble for treating a woman who has toxic shock syndrome from wearing a chastity belt, which all women in her community must wear when not alone with their husbands.

“Vodnik Laughter”— a musical prodigy in 1700’s Prague hears the river mermen taunt her when she plays the piano, as they try to capture her soul.

“Lover’s Knot” — A couple bring the quilts they slept under as babies to an old mountain woman so she can sew them into lap quilt, which will then tell the future of their love. I used traditional quilt pattern names as the jumping off point for the plot of the story.

What’s your life away from the keyboard?

I’m a microbiologist and taught that at what is now the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. I also studied voice and acting and sang at weddings, funerals, and as a vocalist in a swing band and acted in community theater. When I had children I switched to volunteer teaching, training tutors of adult literacy and English as a second language. I retired from teaching about eleven years ago, but I’m still singing and acting. My husband and I like to hike and bicycle.

What’s been the best part of working on Ceaseless Way?

Watching it grow up into a book. I’m proud of what we’ve created.

What’s been the biggest challenge?

None of us collaborating on this book had ever edited and published an anthology before, and it took us awhile to get our feet under us with it.

Anything you’d like to add that I haven’t asked?

I’m currently revising a novel called Fairytale Hell. It’s Inception meets either Princess Bride or Into the Woods, the story of a med student caught up in a boating accident who wakes up as the princess in a fairy tale. She realizes the prince in this world is a patient she heard about in class who is about to have his life support removed. It’s then a quest to fight off paranormal dream control, dragons, and fairytale minions (not the yellow kind), while seeking a way to bring the “prince” back to wake up in his body before he gets unplugged.

There you have it! Here’s Ada’s website. Cover art by GetCovers, based on concepts by Arden Brooks.