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INTERVIEWS
an interview with author Pat Dennis
by Donna Sundblad
"I once had a friend whose writing goal was to write "fillers" for magazines." Author Pat Dennis' friend never moved beyond this small goal and rarely in a life of sixty some years accomplished it. Pat desired something more. "I wanted my dreams to be larger than my life. I wanted to walk into a library and find a book I had written…to leave proof on the earth that I was indeed a writer."
Today, Pat works as a comedian, author and Creative Director of Penury Press. Since 1999, her first two books have sold over 11,000 copies. Her most recent short mystery is found in Who Died in Here?, an anthology of twenty-five authors, including herself, published by Penury Press. "I am having fun and making a little money, not bad for a woman who couldn't face her muse until she turned fifty."
The Missing Muse
Pat's father hailed from the hills of Kentucky and dropped out of school after the third grade. Her mother graduated from the 8th grade yet loved to read. Pat attributes her love of reading to her mother and oldest brother who was "an avid reader of Zane Grey, O'Henry and Pearl Buck." As a child of three Pat would lie on the floor coloring and tell her family she was writing a story. "I have always been a writer."
Pat wrote short stories in her teens. She'd horde baby sitting money to cover postage to mail her manuscripts to magazines listed in the Writer's Digest. "I started collecting rejection letters at thirteen years of age." At seventeen Pat received a letter from Woman's Day regarding a story she wrote. "They almost bought it but felt it was too 'slight'." The first month out of high school a newspaper 1,000 miles away published her first piece--a poem. "I was on a roll. The roll stopped at eighteen."
For the next thirty years Pat coped with the everyday necessities of life. "I wrote, but only a little." Her career choice led her to the stage as a stand-up comedian. She gradually tired of mailing off stories that, usually, did not sell. "I hadn't noticed that the short fiction market was drying up around me as quickly as a martini glass in the hands of Dorothy Parker."
For Dennis, writing lost its joy. The mere mention of writing flooded her with an overwhelming sense of guilt. "Every day that I didn't write, the guilt grew. I knew I was supposed to be writing." The downward spiral caught up with her.
"On my 50th birthday I sat across the table from my husband at a Japanese restaurant and sobbed uncontrollably into my sushi. By 50, I had totally expected to be a famous author, to be mortgage-free and to have more money than Dick Clark." None of that happened and at the beginning of her fifth decade she needed to figure out why.
Setting Goals
An executive in the reading department at DreamWorks explained to Dennis that it is a known fact that many writers find their voice in their 40s. "My forties is when I found my voice as well as a 12-step group that forced me to be honest for the first time ever, even in my writing. The task to overcome is putting that voice onto paper."
Pat set a goal of three hundred words daily. "I wrote with the flu, with a toothache and with a cat scratching at my door to be fed. If I have learned one thing during these last five years, it is this: If you want to be an author, even a self-published one, you have to write." Today, Pat is disciplined when it comes to writing.
When asked about writer's block, Pat admits, "For me, not writing is always a self-esteem issue. Am I good enough? Is the idea good enough? Will it be rejected? If you want to write, and don't, I suggest going into therapy to find out why."
Evolution of a Story
Pat writes without an outline and enjoys turning to the last page to find how the story ends. "I prepare to write fiction by falling in love with a character." She usually christens her characters first, imagines how they look, what their goals are, what they find amusing, and what dreams they will never achieve. "To me, the most interesting aspect of a person is how they handle disappointment rather then success."
Coming up with a concept for a story or book is the easy part for Pat's creative imagination. "What is hard is choosing the right idea at the right time. An idea for a story is like a friend, and you have to make sure you want to be around that friend for a long, long time."
Find a Writer's Group
Dennis stresses the importance of editing and rewriting. "I write, and rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite until I get it right, and for me that is just a feeling, a gestalt if you will, that the story is finally complete."
As an author and publisher she suggests writers find a group that is painfully honest as well as supportive. The writer's group Pat is currently a member of meets at a coffee shop. "When we are at the meeting we are not allowed to read our own work. We are forced to hear someone else read it and listen to them stumble over words or grimace at our ineptness. We do not allow an author to "argue" a point. We accept the fact that if someone says they "don't get it"- we know we haven't given it."
Self-Publishing
With the advent of self-publishing Pat decided to take a chance. The re-writing and honest support of her peers paid off. Her first book, Hot Dish to Die For became a regional bestseller selling over 9,500 copies. "It's a fun and entertaining collection of six culinary mystery short stories and eighteen hotdish recipes."
Pat Dennis' success as a self-published author motivated her to take another risk. Penury Press ran a writing contest. She offered the opportunity for publication to other short story writers like herself. "My latest project, Who Died in Here? has twenty four authors beside myself and I feel a responsibility to market the book for my authors."
Pat believes in what she calls the Hansel and Gretel approach to marketing. "I leave little mentions of my books or projects wherever I can." She markets on the web at www.penurypress.com, posts in news groups and sends out books for reviews. "I also do interviews on the web, television and radio." However, Pat admits the best marketing is to produce a quality book that needs little marketing. "I have discovered that word-of-mouth by readers and booksellers is what sells books."
This approach works for Pat. Her first book, Hotdish to Die For became a regional bestseller. Her second book Stand-Up and Die is a mystery novel set in the funny, dark, and neurotic world of stand-up comedy. It won the Merit Award for Fiction from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association.
Publisher/Writer
Pat stepped into self-publishing with her eyes open and advises people not to invest money they are not prepared to lose. "The advantage to self-publishing is that you have total control of how a book looks, of its contents and the publication date. The disadvantage is that total control usually means total failure."
The transition from self-publishing her own works to accepting submissions from other writers created a whole new mindset for this bright entrepreneur. "Publishing other writers is scarier for me. I am a weird combination of egomaniac and co-dependent. Publishing twenty-five authors in an anthology meant that I would have to please twenty-five authors."
The March issue of the Small Press Watch at www.MidwestBookReview.com gave the anthology a favorable review. "Who Died In Here? is a bizarre but thoroughly fun anthology of 25 short stories of mystery, murder, and crime by a wide variety of skilled storytellers... and every whodunit is connected somehow to bathrooms. An eyebrow-raising, tongue in cheek collection for mystery lovers who don't mind a little (or a lot) of bodily humor/irony to round out their leisure reading shelf. The tales are brief yet engaging enough that Who Died In Here? is in fact perfect for reading when one is personally parked upon the "porcelain throne" and in need of light entertainment."
Penury Press' next publication on the menu is Hotdish Haiku, which will be sixty haiku about nature and hotdish and thirty oriental hotdish recipes. "Our target markets are bookstores, gift shops, and tourist attractions in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Iowa." They also have another theme-based anthology of mystery short stories under consideration and will make that decision sometime in the summer. "We always keep our themes secret until we publish a call for submissions."
One of Pat's best friends is Marjorie Douglas, winner of the prestigious Minnesota Book Award for her memoir Eggs In The Coffee and Sheep In The Corn. Marjorie published her first book at 82, and has written three since then. She is now 92 and is starting her fifth project. "My hope it to be like Marjorie, creating and writing, even in my nineties or beyond."