Sylvie Denied – Blog Tour and Guest Post

Sylvie Denied

by Deborah Clark Vance

Genre: Women’s Fiction

As she enters adulthood in the turbulent 1970s, Sylvie thinks the way to change a violent world is to become a peaceful person. Yet she slowly sees how a childhood trauma thwarts her peaceful intentions and leads her to men with a dark side – including Enzo, the man she marries. Even as his behavior becomes increasingly volatile, she believes she can make things better with love and understanding. But finally living in terror. Sylvie must find a way to escape with her daughter and a way to claim her place in the world.

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Originally from the Chicago suburbs, Deborah Clark Vance has lived throughout the US and in Italy. While raising her children, she earned a living by teaching piano lessons, selling her original artwork, editing a health journal, translating Italian, writing freelance articles and textbook chapters, working on a children’s educational TV series, teaching in a day treatment program for adults with mental and emotional illnesses, creating garden designs and teaching as a college adjunct. After completing a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture at Howard University, she taught and served as Chair of the Department of Communication & Cinema at McDaniel College in Maryland. Although she also contributed articles and chapters to academic publications, those only earned her a modicum of prestige rather than income. She’s keenly interested in the natural world as well as in social justice, spirituality and women’s issues. “Sylvie Denied” is her debut novel.

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What is your writing process? For instance do you do an outline first? Do you do the chapters first?

It’s more circular than linear. I write in snippets as ideas occur, then build until I have enough to start organizing into chapters that I keep in separate computer files so I can I play around with the order. When I have enough, I troubleshoot and adjust the story—is it what I planned? is it becoming something else? – and make some decisions.

What makes a good story?

A story needs to be about someone who learns something, someone who starts out with a lack and acquires it, or maybe has something and loses it and in the losing acquires it. I think stories were invented to teach about a lifespan – we’re born, we live, we die = beginning, middle, end. But how do we change during that time? If there’s no change in awareness, there’s not really a story, though it could be an anecdote or just a joke.

Do you believe in writer’s block?

This is an interesting question. I think I’ll say no and here’s why. I write because I have a lot to say. Maybe some days I don’t feel like talking or thinking or even writing. Or maybe I really don’t have anything to say because I’m tired, empty, distracted, otherwise engaged. Or it could be I’ve started writing something and it isn’t turning out as I expected so I quit going that way.

Describe your writing style.

There’s a certain compactness to my writing that comes from my trying to find the strongest most perfect words to convey what I want to say. And there’s humor – my sense of humor is very dry and subtle so people don’t always pick up on it.  I get a kick out of people, even ones I don’t personally want to hang around with, so I try so share my amusement by showing their quirky ideas, behaviors and speech mannerisms.

Advice you would give new authors?

When I was learning to drive, my older brother said, “it’s great that you know the rules of the road and how to operate a car. But it’s most important to know how to get where you’re going.”

I’d amend that slightly and say an author should know what they want to say. For instance, Mary Shelly wrote the first book in the horror genre, but she wanted to say that humans aren’t ultimately in charge and shouldn’t be messing with the creation of life. There’s something unique we’ve all been learning in our life’s journeys and everyone has a perspective to share. Find that something and then figure out the best way of saying it. There’s nothing better for creating a sense of urgency and passion that keep you going.

What made you want to become an author and do you feel it was the right decision?

That’s like asking me whether it’s a good decision to breathe.