Author Q&A with Beth A. Freely

Author Q&A with Beth A. Freely

Born and raised in upstate New York, with a brief and very influential stint living in Great Britain, Beth A. Freely now calls Texas her home.

With more than 14 years of writing experience as a copywriter, she holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Media Communication with a minor in Marketing and a master’s degree in English and Creative Writing.

In 2003, she published some of her fanfiction online and won awards for her stories. Two years later, she was the first-place winner of the 2005 Arche Books Publishing Novel Writing Contest, Women’s Fiction with her novel Behind the Eyes of Dorian Gray.

The Legend of Captain St. Pierre, her second novel, was written with her best friend, Mariam, and is the first book in a planned trilogy.

The Loch is her third novel.

Beyond The Steps of Stone is her fourth novel and won the 2022 SPRING BOOKFEST AWARDS – 1st Place Romance/Science-Fiction and 2nd Place Science-Fiction/Aliens & Alien Invasion.

She loves horseback riding, swimming, reading, cuddling her cats, and helping other authors hone their craft.

 

1. Have you always wanted to write? 

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. It started after I saw this little move called Star Wars when I was six and it hasn’t stopped *coughs years* later. Somewhere in my pile of papers there are some sheets typed on my grandmother’s typewriter of the very first fanfiction I ever tried to write.

Through my 20s and 30s, I wrote om a variety of bulletin boards – from Babylon 5 to Farscape to Star Wars.  It was the Farscape fanfiction that pushed me over the edge in the early 2000s. I started sharing it on the bulletin boards I wrote on and then people convinced me to enter the stories in competitions. I won a couple of awards with it. A friend of mine approached me with some initial thoughts and “what if” scenarios that turned into Beyond The Steps Of Stone. I finished the initial draft of that story in 2003. It would take 18 years to publish that book the way I wanted it to be.

But before then, in 2005, another friend sent me a link to a writing contest and before I could decide if I wanted to enter it, my best friend paid the entry fee and committed me to it. The book I entered was Behind The Eyes Of Dorian Gray. I won first place in the contest and a traditional publishing contract.

I haven’t looked back since. I went self-published when my publisher closed their doors at the end, I found the experience extremely rewarding.

 

2. What advice would you give to someone wanting to write their first book?

Do it. Sit down and get your story on paper, on the computer…however you enjoy getting your words out. The editing comes later. The story is the most important thing. Your first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even need to be a certain word length. Your punctuation and grammar can…well…suck. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is getting the story out of your head and onto the paper.

Once you do that, once you have something physical to work with, you can edit it until it is the way you want it. It’s more important to get the story out than anything else. Don’t be scared to write it. Embrace it.

 

3. Do you do research for your books? If so, what kind of research?

The type of research I do depends on each book. For the St. Pierre series, I was researching the types of ships used in the 1700s, what each part of the ship was called, what the rigging was called, if women wore dressed without stays and corsets, etc. I did a lot of the research while editing the initial draft of the book and didn’t stop researching until I wrote the last word.

For Beyond The Steps Of Stone, I did a lot of research about the stone temples in Belize, how nuclear fallout drifted and how half-life’s worked, and whether or not fuel would last 2000 years in hermitically sealed containers.

Behind The Eyes Of Dorian Gray required me to reread Oscar Wilde’s original novel…no, that was not a chore. It’s one of my favorite books.

Research is fun for me. My WIP takes place on equine therapy farm and the culminating scene happens on top of a wind turbine. I’ll just let you all think on that one.

 

4. How do you handle criticism?

I handle criticism with a grain of salt. When I first tried pitching Beyond The Steps Of Stone to agents and publishers, I got my fair share of rejection letters. The first ones made me feel very dejected, but the more I got, the more determined I became to make writing a successful venture for myself, if not a full-blown career.

Now, I read it and if I think it is viable criticism, I consider what the other person is saying. I also look at it with a critical eye. I went back to school and got my master’s in English and Creative Writing so that I could understand some of what is said. It has helped a lot because now I have the schooling and background to defend my writing, defend why I edit things the way I do, and to make sure my writing – and that of the other authors I edit for – put out quality work.

I am proud of my writing. I’ve come a long way from the days of writing fanfiction. I am glad that I can mentor other authors now and help them get through their own rejection letters with their chins held high.

 

5. Would you want your book made into a film?

This is actually an easy question to answer: Yes!. When I was working on Beyond The Steps Of Stone, my core set of characters had a few “face changes.” When I’m writing, my stories run like movies in my head, so I usually have an actor or actress picked out for the characters. It wasn’t until I realized that Michael Fassbender was the face and voice of my Jericho that the book pulled itself together.

I see Karen Gillian as Morgan, Tom Hardy as Alex and Jensen Ackles as Isaiah. They are my core characters and, boy, that would be one heck of a movie!!!!

 

6. How many books do you own? 

A best guestimate, probably around 500. I own almost all of the Star Wars novels that are now considered “alternate universe,” all but two or three of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, the entire Dune series by Frank Herbert and at least three copies of The Picture of Dorian Gray. That’s not including my writing books, my RPG books, and books by my author friends. I probably own about 100 eBooks across the three different platforms I buy them on. I love to read!

 

You can find Beth on Twitter