Today I am pleased to host Jennifer Archer, author of Through Her Eyes, as part of the Teen Book Scene blog tour (Click banner for more tour stops).
Throughout your life you have moved to so many places and experienced many environments. Do you feel this has given you an advantage with writing with your extra knowledge of different places and people throughout the country? Do any of your earlier works have roots somewhere specific that you lived?
Writers are readers. (Or should be!) I don’t know of any writers that don’t love books. When I began meeting other authors who moved a lot during their childhoods, as I did, I started wondering if always being the new kid on the block and at school affected us in similar ways that resulted in our becoming writers. For me, in addition to entertainment, books provided escape, companionship, and comfort when I was a child. I was never lonely, as long as I had a good book to read. While reading all of those books, I became intrigued by the art of storytelling, and awed by the power of words to paint vivid images in my mind, move me to laughter or tears, and make me genuinely care about people who didn’t actually exist. I also fell in love with the sound of words and sentences – how they can create a rhythm, just like music.
Living in a lot of different places influenced my writing in many ways. Of all of my work, only one novel and one novella have been set in a state I’ve never lived. The rest of my stories take place in states where I’ve been a resident, in fictional towns that resemble places I’ve lived or lived near. Here are some of the benefits of my nomadic background: If I want to set my story on a Kansas farm or someplace similar, I can close my eyes and remember the cornfield in Kansas I once lived across from. I can take myself back there in my imagination and hear the dry rustle of the stalks as my friends and I ran through the rows, and smell the earthy scent of the soil. If I want my story to take place in a region like Arizona, I can draw upon memories of living there – red clay dirt, the wind carrying the haunting sound of native Americans drumming and singing on the nearby reservation, Navajo babies nestled snugly in cradle boards made of wood. I know from personal experience that it’s not always sunny in southern California, that it does, indeed, snow in Texas, and that Colorado forests have a spicy, damp scent after a rain. I’ve found it helpful, in my work, to be able to pull from the first-hand knowledge of these personal experiences. And I believe I now pay closer attention to sensory details around me every day, because of the rich, varied and abundant sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and scents that I’ve been exposed to over my lifetime. Such details really help bring realism to stories, so as a writer, I feel fortunate to have had the sort of upbringing I did.
My “gypsy” life also allowed me to meet diverse types of people, which gave me great insights for creating fictional characters. I lived in New Mexico when I was eight years old, and experienced in a small way what it’s like to be a minority in America. I was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian child – typically the majority in the U.S. But in my third grade class, I was the only blonde-haired blue-eyed child, as most of my classmates were Mexican-American. Although, at first, I felt very conspicuous and was afraid I would never fit it and find friends, I was made to feel welcome right away. When I lived in Arizona during 4th and 5th grades, my best friend was a Hopi Indian whose grandparents lived on a reservation. These experiences served as great lessons in acceptance and awareness of the beauty of diversity for me. I learned to appreciate cultural customs and traditions that I didn’t practice in my own family.
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Thanks to Jennifer for stopping by!!
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THROUGH HER EYES book trailer:
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