An Interview...with novelist Marcia Preston

Marcia Preston has long been a fan of words, as her bio page on her website states, "From her father she learned the art of storytelling; from her mother, a reverence for books." As an adult, she taught high school English, wrote freelance for a number of publications and edited the trade magazine ByLine for 20 years. So it was no wonder that her first novel, a mystery titled Perhaps She'll Die, was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award in 2002. Nor was it when her second novel, Song of the Bones, won the award, which honors the best women's suspense novel, in 2004.

"That was huge fun," Preston says, who wrote her mysteries under the pen name M.K. Preston. The event was held during the Mystery Writers of America's annual gala, also known as Edgar Week. "I flew to New York...Mary Higgins Clark presented me the award in person (see the photo right). She's the sweetest, most genteel lady."

Did she leave ByLine because of her successful novels?


Her novels were partly the reason behind Preston's departure. It had been a long 20 years of filling afternoons, many evenings and weekends too, preparing monthly issues of the magazine, but there was more to it than the toll of relentless deadlines.

"I also felt that the magazine needed a fresh viewpoint, perhaps a younger perspective," she explains. Magazine publishing had change a lot in her 20 years at the helm, particularly the rise of online competitors. "ByLine probably needed some changes I was reluctant to accomplish."

"I felt lost for a while. I've never in my life had down time," she says, "but my days are starting to fill up again." Always an early riser, Preston writes for three or four hours in the morning as she did when she ran the magazine, but now she uses her afternoons for book promotions and other business, and for gardening, exercising and "anything else that might come up," such as serving as the president of the Oklahoma Writers Federation in 2009.

Will we see more mysteries?


No, not any time soon, although her mainstream novels have some suspense in them. Preston says her publisher, Mira, wants a book a year, which is all she can handle. "I'm a slow writer and an obsessive reviser," she confesses. Also it has been too long since the second book in her series for her to try a new one.

"The purpose of a series is to build a readership, and I imagine by now most readers have quit looking for the next title in the series. Still, I love mystery/suspense and keep thinking maybe I can start a new series sometime." She continues that she likes the freedom of writing stand-alone books where she can explore different characters, settings and subjects, but she isn't a multi-tasker.

"I get so immersed in a book when I'm working on it that the fictional world becomes more real to me than my normal life. I don't see how I could split myself again in yet another world without losing touch with reality altogether."

How many novels has she written?

Preston has five published novels and a sixth one in progress. By the time Perhaps She'll Die was published in 2001, Preston had three novels "in the closet" and one other she was writing. Song of the Bones was published in 2004 and was her second Oklahoma-based mystery. Then came the mainstream novel The Butterfly House (2005), which hit number one on the HeatSeekers list of debut fiction in the United Kingdom. The Piano Man (2006), about a woman who hunts the recipient of her late son's heart, was inspired by a television commercial.


Her latest Trudy's Promise, released in February, has something of a history behind it. It is Preston's first novel to be set in a foreign country and was inspired by a visit to the Berlin wall in the 1970s. The manuscript won the Oklahoma City Writers' Novel Contest in the 1980s. Over 20 years later, the story of a mother separated from her baby by the Berlin Wall is now in print.

"Ideas are everywhere," she says. " I save snippets of phrases, observations and odd facts, and often these connect themselves in ways I never dreamed of when I wrote them down."

Her latest idea, and her next book, comes from close to home. The setting is on a wind farm in Oklahoma, with a ranching background. Preston oversees her own family farm, homesteaded by her grandparents, in central Oklahoma.




To learn more about Marcia Preston and to read an excerpt of Trudy's Promise, visit her website.







NOTE: Don't forget The Virtual Book Tour by Font Literary Agency & Writing Centre is coming April 8. Click here to read more and to leave comments or questions Lover's Hollow author Orna Ross.