Rosemary Poole-Carter
Rosemary Poole-Carter explores an uneasy past in her novels Only Charlotte, Women of Magdalene, What Remains, and Juliette Ascending, all set in the late 19th century South. Her plays include The Familiar, a ghost story, and The Little Death, a Southern Gothic drama. Fascinated by history, mystery, and the performing and visual arts, she is a member of the Historical Novel Society, Mystery Writers of America, and the Dramatists Guild of America. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, she was a long-time resident of Houston, where she practiced her devotion to reading and writing with students of the Lone Star College System. She now lives and writes by the Eno River in Durham, North Carolina.
Only Charlotte, her novel of amorous and murderous entanglements, is set against a backdrop of misogyny and racism in post-Civil War New Orleans. Its narrator Lenore James is determined to disentangle her brother Gilbert from the beguiling Charlotte Eden, whose husband is enmeshed in the re-enslavement schemes of a powerful judge. Lenore worries that Gilbert’s adoration of Charlotte will lead him into disaster. Inspired by a production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Lenore adopts the role of Paulina for herself to discover how far Charlotte’s husband bears the blame for his wife’s fate and whether or not he is capable of atonement.
Now in hardback, trade paperback, and e-book, Only Charlotte is available for order online and from your favorite independent bookshop.
Interview
BMH: What is something you wish someone would have told you before you became an author?
RPC: I wish someone had convinced me to prepare much earlier for a day-job that would support my writing addiction without nearly suffocating the life out of me. Oh, those Dickensian office jobs of my youth!
BMH: You can go back in time, meet and chat with anyone, who would it be? What would you talk about?
RPC: Answers might vary with my mood, but today’s answer is William Shakespeare. I’d love to hear his voice and his answers regarding some of the questions and theories that still circulate about him. Also, with his permission, I’d enjoy sitting in on a rehearsal of one of his plays, watching him work as both actor and playwright.
BMH: Why crime fiction?
RPC: A criminal and/or despicable act sets so much in motion in a novel, including powerful emotions, rash and desperate actions, reasoned and meticulous investigating. It gives a story a shape and a purpose, as well as allowing scope for imagination.
BMH: Have you written in other genres?
RPC: Yes. My first and only published short story appeared in a children’s magazine and concerned the adventures of Tex, the Armadillo. I’ve written several plays that were produced in Houston and Seattle, as well as one YA novel inspired by my seeing a street performer in New Orleans who was dressed as an angelic cemetery statue, complete with an urn for her tips.
BMH: What is something you’ve never written about, but hope to some day?
RPC: So far, I’ve written four novels set in post-Civil War Louisiana, all of them with elements of Southern Gothic. Whatever the place and time of future projects, I’m interested in trying to go a little deeper and darker into what gives me the shivers and might have a similar effect on readers.
BMH: How big a part did your upbringing have on your writing? Why did you become a writer? When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
RPC: My upbringing is my material. I was raised in a moldering Southern Gothic atmosphere that hid itself behind closed doors in an ordinary suburban neighborhood in Texas. Telling myself stories, later writing them down, was my way of having a life of my own making while trapped and under the influence of certain eccentric relations, including some from the Deep South. I don’t remember a time when I did not want to be a writer. Even before learning to read, I sensed books were important and necessary, and I wanted to write some.
BMH: Who is you hero/heroine? Why?
RPC: In my everyday life, I admire many people but shy from calling any of them my hero or heroine. People can so easily fall from a pedestal. I’d rather simply appreciate remarkable individuals, realizing they may be as complicated or flawed as anyone else. In my writing life, I think more in terms of protagonists and antagonists than heroes and villains. In Only Charlotte, Lenore plays a pivotal role in the tale she narrates, taking action and holding strong opinions about the actions of others, but there is an ensemble quality to the story she unfolds. While Lenore casts her brother Gilbert in a heroic role, she and Ella (her housekeeper and friend) also join him in efforts to save Charlotte from a deadly predicament. The story really belongs to the four of them.
BMH: What two words best describes your writing style?
RPC: How about Southern Unease?
BMH: What comes first for you, characters or plot?
RPC: Usually, what comes first is a character in a situation—which may include place & time, atmosphere & mood. I think about characters’ personalities, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they would do faced with a particular dilemma. The events and interactions that reveal character and lead to growth/change/deepening of understanding put pressure on characters to act, and those choices and actions influence the turning points and the trajectory of the plot.
BMH: How do you create your characters?
RPC: Observation—including observing actors, who heighten particular behaviors in order to communicate something about their characters’ inner lives that’s not given away in dialogue. People in everyday life sometimes behave with a bit of randomness, but skilled actors choose their mannerisms, gestures, tones of voice, and so forth, specifically to express character in action. While writing a scene, I tend to play all the parts and speak the lines, so I rarely write in public coffee shops.
BMH: Outliner or seat-of-your-pants writer?
RPC: I do some planning ahead—an overall scheme of things—and then add notes as I approach writing particular scenes. I like to figure out what purpose the scene will fulfill, what it reveals about character, how it moves the story. I might make a brief list of moments in a character’s emotional ride through a scene and visualize how I can dramatize that for the reader. I think of the term playwright—a builder of plays—and try to borrow some of that craftsmanship in building a novel. Of course, I welcome flashes of inspiration and insight, suddenly seeing patterns and connections that surprise me, and am willing to revise my plans.
BMH: What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
RPC: I used to feel bogged down when writing descriptions to set a scene, then found the way for me to climb out of the bog is to make descriptions matter beyond scene-setting. So I try to show how a setting affects the characters in it and to give the objects in the scene purpose and significance to the characters. The stuff in a scene becomes interesting, even part of the action, if it reveals character, is something to negotiate/argue over, or foreshadows something intriguing to come. Another and harder challenge for me is writing scenes that include a lot of characters in action. Picking a point of view saves me a lot of grief. If I can focus on how one important character participates in the scene and sees and interprets what other characters are doing, I’m not as likely to get lost—or confuse and lose the reader.
BMH: How much editing do you do as you write your first draft?
RPC: Maybe too much. If I’ve been away from the manuscript for a while, I’ll read it again, revising in the process, while getting back into the story. I’d like to zip along and enjoy unbroken momentum, but life and interruptions happen.
BMH: How do you use social media to promote yourself? Do you blog?
RPC: I use social media a little and guest blog or submit articles sometimes. My comfort zone is in interacting one-to-one, preferably face-to-face with other book-lovers and in offering programs and panels geared to particular groups.
BMH: What do you think of the new faces of publishing….ebooks, POD, indie-publishing?
RPC: Whatever it takes—to keep people reading, learning from and enjoying the sharing of stories. New platforms may increase publishing opportunities, but writers are still faced with the challenges of distribution and reaching readers, who may feel overwhelmed with options vying for their time.
I believe librarians and independent booksellers are still wonderful guides for readers looking for a new read, no matter the format, and I put my trust in them over algorithms.
BMH: How about some hard-earned advice.
RPC: The book business is mercurial. Creativity is full of risk. It can help to develop a personal philosophy that suits who you and validates yourself and your work, apart from any external validation, so that you can cope with both rejection and acceptance—keep calm and carry on writing.
