Authors

Choosing to Begin

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment
Photo by Jon Tyson (Unsplash)

A writer becomes an author in their own way. Each route to publication is unique, and while you can read about someone else’s experience, I doubt you can duplicate it yourself. Writing is a practice—something you work at repeatedly to become proficient. The arts are a prominent theme in my books and writing, like music, visual and performing arts, to do it well you have to practice. You write, edit, and rewrite to hone your craft and simultaneously work on growing courage and conviction—dispelling the internal and external voices that tell you that you can’t and embracing those that say you can. You’ll also need the wisdom and grace of friends, family, and other writers who are willing to share their wisdom and experience so that you grow through it as you go through it.

Until my debut novel, PROVENANCE, I had never written fiction. I entered the publishing world naked and afraid—with no massive social media platform, celebrity status, or inside access to the publishing world. I also had additional hurdles—I am a woman of color writing about a nuanced black experience (passing) and, I’m over fifty.

Undeterred,  I went to writing conferences to meet agents and queried incessantly, hoping to beat the odds. Agents in their 20s and 30s looking for the next young literary breakout talent found it hard to relate to me and my manuscript. Though the odds were against me, I believed in my hard-earned skill, and if I am anything, I am determined.

After a couple of years of “I don’t understand how to find an audience for your book,” or “I don’t think I am the right agent for a book like this,” or no response at all, it became clear that landing an agent and a traditional publishing deal was highly unlikely for this first-time author with no platform. I may have been beaten, but I certainly wasn’t broken.

I wrote PROVENANCE for avid readers like me—anyone who had grown tired of reading fiction about the African American experience that focused only on our history of being enslaved. I craved stories that celebrated what it means to be a person of color – to determine our own destiny and to achieve great things.  I knew I had written a good book, and I knew there was an audience for it.

Not being able to land an agent could have ended my quest to be a published author, but, as I said before, if I am anything, I am determined. I figured out how to self-publish and promote my debut novel. I worked like hell to reach an audience that I knew was there.  

PROVENANCE took this author on an exhilarating adventure. I am grateful to the readers who helped it reach #1 in African American Fiction on Amazon, to the juries who awarded it prizes for debut and historical fiction, to the book clubs, book fairs, and libraries who invited me and my book to in-person and virtual appearances around the country.  It was a heady adventure—risky and remarkable.

Fast-forward to 2025, my next manuscript, PROMISE, is complete, and I am embarking on a new adventure. It is time to begin again. Putting fears of the dreaded sophomore slump aside, I am querying agents hoping that the literary world will offer this author an opportunity to share a story that challenges our assumptions about race, class, and identity while celebrating the enduring bonds of family. So, aware of the challenges and the rewards and armed with my hard-earned skills and my hard-headed determination—I am choosing to begin again!

An Anarchist, A Junkie and A Habitual Liar—Similarities and Differences at the Virginia Festival of the Book

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

Le Fiction en France panel: Michael Keenan Gutierrez, Bonnie MacBird and Donna Drew Sawyer
Le Fiction en France panel: Michael Keenan Gutierrez, Bonnie MacBird and Donna Drew Sawyer (Photo by Pat Cuadros)

Despite this post’s headline, I recently spent a few days at the Virginia Festival of the Book in great company. I was honored to be a presenting author on a panel, Le Fiction en France: France in Fiction, sponsored by Alliance Française Charlottesville (AfC). Also on the panel was Michael Keenan Gutierrez (The Trench Angel), who teaches writing at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Bonnie MacBird (Art in the Blood), an EMMY award-winning screenwriter/actor/author from LA. The panel was expertly orchestrated and moderated by AfC director, Emily Martin.

Emily Martin, director, Alliance Française Charlottesville
Emily Martin, director, Alliance Française Charlottesville

This was my first author’s appearance at the Festival so we met briefly the day prior to our panel. Emily suggested Marie-Bette, the best little French bakery-cafe in Charlottesville and over coffee and pastry we found that even though we’ve moved in different spheres professionally, shared experiences made it easy to establish rapport. I know a little about Michael’s world because my daughter earned her Masters’ from UNC and Chapel Hill was on our regular itinerary. In addition to Bonnie’s impressive literary accomplishments, she wrote the story for the classic sci-fi movie, TRON. For my husband, Granville, that fact made Bonnie beyond cool. Emily’s broad knowledge of France touched on the experiences each of us had with the country and the language. We were comfortable with each other as people and authors however, would our characters and our books be as compatible?

The characters and stories in our books are unique—as authors we shared the common thread of Paris as the creative backdrop during distinctive periods in the city’s history. Bonnie set Art in the Blood in the year 1888 and writes in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about famous fictional private detective, Sherlock Holmes. Critical scenes in Michael’s, The Trench Angel, unfold in Paris during the 1920s after the Great War and, the characters in my novel, Provenance, are part of the frenzied art scene in Paris between 1931 and 1938 as the prospect of World War II looms large in the City of Light.

All of our protagonists are male, all are broken men in some manner, fighting inner demons that threaten to destroy them. Holmes is hopelessly addicted to cocaine, mystery and mayhem; Neal Stephens’ secret marriage and anarchist father connect him to murder; and in my novel, a father’s secret reveals a devastating legacy of lies that threatens to destroy his family. The differences in our three books were obvious but the similarities, like gems, were harder to find but delightful to discover. Our protagonists—a junkie, an anarchist and a liar— facilitated an organic, interesting and successful panel during the Festival.

For more than 22,000 book lovers, across 250 programs featuring more than 400 authors, there was discovery and exploration of surprisingly common elements in literature and people who seem to share no DNA. However, like our panel, if done right—as the Virginia Festival of the Book was— authors and readers have the opportunity to get to the heart of what makes books and book festivals so wonderful—they celebrate the diversity as well as the shared experiences of us all.

Building the Buzz On PROVENANCE!

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

From my publisher’s publicity department! I like it!

PROVENANCE ON SALE NOW!
Sweeping Debut Novel Explores America’s “Third Race.”

Hardcover and eBook Image 616 x550In America, racial identity has never been just Black or White. Long before the idea of post-racial, there was Passing. In her epic debut novel, PROVENANCE (Creative Cache; $26.00; October 15, 2015), Donna Drew Sawyer explores America’s third race—Americans whose ambiguous looks allow them to pass, undetected, into another racial group.

With the art world as its backdrop, PROVENANCE weaves historical fact with fiction to paint a vivid picture of race in America from the perspective of one family across three generations. It is a sweeping, complex, art infused coming-of-age story like Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch; akin to Lalita Tademy’s Cane River as a family saga and, its flawed yet captivating characters evoke Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. PROVENANCE’s haunting tale of fear and secrets is also reminiscent of Nella Larsen’s seminal classic on race, Passing. PROVENANCE is perfect book club fiction—a page-turner that keeps readers pondering long after the final page.

Provenance Press Release FINAL 10-21-15.

 

Out of, or Into, My Comfort Zone

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

With Lalita Tademy - National Book Festival 9-5-15Writers by nature seem to be a solitary bunch, much more comfortable face-to-face with a blank page than the prospect of talking to strangers. Authors on the other hand must be bold, engaging and engaged in order to bring an audience to their book. I am in the process of making the transition from writer to author and I took a bold step down that path this weekend.

After hearing Lalita Tademy, one of my favorite authors, gave a talk at the National Book Festival last Saturday, I went up to her to tell her how much I enjoyed her talk. After a couple of minutes of chatting I surprised myself and asked her if she would consider writing a blurb for my book. After she told me how to contact her, I thanked her and left wondering when I became that bold author I need to be to bring an audience to my book.

With booklover, Tina, at the 2015 National Book Festival
With book lover, Tina, at the 2015 National Book Festival

My audacity was further rewarded when a woman named Tina from a local book club, who overheard my conversation with Ms. Tademy, followed me out and asked me about the availability of my book so they could consider it their November selection. Wow!

Being bold is not so bad – I kinda like it.

Writing “Fact-tion” with Lalita Tademy

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

Lalita Tademy
Lalita Tademy

I was with my tribe last weekend, among the many DC booklovers at the 15th annual National Book Festival on Saturday, September 5th. This year I went not only as a booklover, but as an author. My novel PROVENANCE, comes out in October, and I wanted to see how the pros engaged with their readers. One of the sessions I attend was with author Lalita Tademy where she read from her latest novel, CITIZENS CREEK. Tademy is a favorite author of mine for many reasons—I love her writing, we are both happy refugees from the corporate world, we both came to writing later in life and, after achieving success in one career, we had to learn a completely new profession—writing—on the job.

Another important similarity, that I can now give name to after hearing Tademy speak, is that we both write “fact-ion”—a term Tademy explained as fiction based on fact. She explained that when something piques her interest, as did her ancestral past for her novels CANE RIVER and RED RIVER, she deeply researches her subjects and weaves the facts of people, places and time into a compelling story. She has done that again for CITIZENS CREEK, an epic story of the slave, Cow Tom, who became the black chief of the Creek Indian Nation.

While Tademy’s oeuvre deals with aspects of the history of slavery in 19th century America, my novel, PROVENANCE, moves that history forward to aspects of the African-American struggle for freedom in the 20th century. Like Tademy, I use historical figures, places and facts to tell the story of fictional characters who, because of their light-colored skin, believed they could escaped the tyranny of racial discrimination only to find that their freedom was not truly free.

In response to a question about the topic of her work, Tademy said her writing enables her to tell the stories of people whose lives are for the most part unexplored in American history. Through PROVENANCE, I hope to do the same thing, share unique American “fact-ion” that illuminates a cultural aspect of history that rarely reaches an audience.

Swing Sisters: Inspirational Jazz by an Inspiring Author

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

Karen Dean's BookMy good friend, Karen Deans, is the epitome of a Renaissance woman. When I met her more than a decade ago she was an artist, launching Wooden Tile, an art business that now sells online and in stores across the country. She also loved and collected children’s picture books. That obsession inspired her to try her hand at writing a book for children on a subject she was passionate about. Now, Karen is an author. Her picture books feature “women who defied racial and gender discrimination to become superstars in their respective fields.”

Her book Playing to Win: The Story of Althea Gibson was published by Holiday House in 2007. Karen’s second book, Swing Sisters: The Story of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm was just published. It is the incredible tale of the first inter-racial female jazz band, formed in 1939. They defied the constraints of racial prejudice and segregation to play throughout the United States and in Europe. Stories like these are lost or buried gold nuggets of  history – it takes authors like Karen to mine them for us. In a world that needs more diverse books for children and adults, Karen is a contemporary author making a substantive contribution.

Please visit Karen Dean’s Facebook page to see a clip of the Sweethearts of Rhythm, enter a raffle to win a signed book and, learn more about my very talented friend. She’s also a scenic painter for a children’s theater, but we’ll save that for another post.

Oh, and please buy Karen’s book – one for you and another for someone you care about. Support the artists who make the art!

 

Four Drafts and Counting…

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ 2 Comments

Edited Manuscript - iStock_000008245569XSmallI am finalizing my fourth draft of my novel, Provenance. The first draft, of which I was extremely proud and actually sent out to agents, was atrocious. I wrote the second draft after a kind and knowledgeable literary agent gave me feedback on my first draft (thank you Miriam). I hired a developmental editor to read and comment on the second draft and while it was better I had more work to do.

The third draft was a slavish concession to every comment the developmental editor made on the second manuscript, including to turn my too-long novel into two novels. I tried, but the separation did not feel right for me or my characters.

I am currently working on the fourth draft. Trusting my writer instincts, I am putting the book back together with a much leaner profile. The exercise of having torn the tome asunder has actually made the book better. In addition to working on my manuscript I have faithfully attended my writers group and I’ve taken writing classes with authors like Barbara Esstman and Con Lehane, to better hone my craft. I have read more than 70 books – some on the craft of writing, some fiction, all an education and thank goodness for Goodreads otherwise I would have lost track by now. At four drafts and counting, I’m a better writer, writing a better book.

According to author Louis Sachar, I have two more drafts to go. In a recent talk at the 92Y in New York that was reported in GalleyCat, Sachar said that an author must “always be willing to rewrite.” He shared that each of his books typically required him to write six drafts – three or four for plot and character development and in the last two drafts he adds the artistry. It is nice to know that I am not unique in realm of revision. After craft comes art, one draft at a time.