12 minute read
AUGUST'S FEATURED AUTHOR - Cynthia Newberry Martin
Mandy Haynes interviews author, blogger, and friend to everyone she meets, Cynthia Newberry Martin, followed by her essay - HOW WE SPEND OUR DAYS
When I started writing, I had no idea that I would meet so many supportive and encouraging people. Writers who are readers who become friends, like Darrelyn Saloom, who I met when she wrote a review for one of my short story collections. I was blown away, but that was only the beginning of her support. Through Darrelyn, I met Cynthia when she contacted me to see if I’d be interested in writing an essay for her blog, Catching Days. Me? Would I be interested, shoot yeah! I was over the moon! When you read Cynthia’s essay following the interview, you’ll see why. I couldn’t believe she’d read my stories, much less include me on her blog. But that’s what writers do for each other - and now it’s my turn to shine a light on Cynthia. Let me introduce you!
Cynthia Newberry Martin is the author of Tidal Flats, Love Like This, and The Art of Her Life. Her first novel, Tidal Flats, won the Gold Medal in Literary Fiction at the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards and the 14th Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Fiction. Her website features the How We Spend Our Days series, over a decade of essays by writers on their lives. She grew up in Atlanta and now lives in Columbus, Georgia, with her husband, and in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in a little house by the water. Her third novel, The Art of Her Life, was released in June of this year.
I have some catching up to do! I loved Cynthia’s novel, Tidal Flats, so much I couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks once I finished. This is the review I left within minutes of closing the book: “Tidal Flats is much more than a story about marriage. I loved this novel by Cynthia Newberry Martin and couldn't put it down. I read it in two sittings because I was fully invested in the characters. I HAD to know how Cass would come to terms with her buried secret, how far Ethan would go to repair the damage he caused to their marriage, the fate of the Fates and Howell House, and if Cass would find the courage to trust herself to make the right choices. Life - and marriage - is full of compromises. I found myself nudging Cass towards finding herself and cheering her on with every turn of the page. Well done Cynthia Newberry Martin!”
There were times I wanted to hug the main character’s neck and times I wanted to wring it. Maybe because she was so real and her story was so believable. And The Fates! I never wanted to wring their necks.
So many interesting characters, I had to ask, “Who were your favorite ones to write?”
“Who were my favorites? The Fates. The three older women who live at Howell House—(Cora) May, Lois, and Atta. I created them from the cloth of the Greek Fates—Clotho (who spun lives), Lachesis (who measured lives), and Atropos (who cut them short). I gave May knitting needles; Lois, a measuring cup; and Atta, scissors. And then their real personalities took over. Before arriving at Howell, each lived a different kind of life—two were married, one had children, one had neither spouse nor child. Each is wise in her own way,” Cynthia answered.
“Who was the hardest?”
“The main character Cass—she’s so private and prefers to keep to herself. Until the 2018 revision, she was a writer, but that version of the novel just didn’t sing. It wasn’t until I got her out of her apartment and out in the world reading to May that she was able to be all that she could be. Who knew,” laughed Cynthia.
Even though Tidal Flats is the first published novel, it wasn’t the first one she completed.
“It took six years from first words on the page to publication for Tidal Flats. I started this novel in January of 2013 and was working on the publisher’s edits in January of 2019 before it went to press. I finished it the first time in 2015 (so in two and a half years). My agent sent it out but couldn’t sell it. Over the years, I made a number of big revisions, the last being in 2018.
Actually, I wrote Love Like This before I wrote Tidal Flats. I started it as my youngest of four was starting high school when I could finally see the finish line of the empty house. And then I thought, what would be the worst thing that could happen now. Ha.
It took thirteen years from first words on the page to publication. But I wrote the novel in three years. This one was the easiest to write. Only one big revision in 2018 when I changed from three point-of-view characters to two.”
Wow… two novels finalized in the same year! I wondered, did she have the story already brewing for her third novel, The Art of Her Life?
Cynthis laughed, “Ha again. This novel is actually the first novel I ever wrote. I started it in the late nineties when I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I learned how to write by writing it.”
“How long did it take to complete?”
“Twenty-five years from first words on the page to publication. I worked on it for ten years before I felt as if it were finished enough to move on to the next thing. And then I would re-read it over the years as I finished each of the other novels to see if I still liked it and to make the writing better as I became a better writer and to change car phones to cell phones…”
“Were there any surprises, lessons, or discoveries you made about yourself finishing your second novel?”
“I wrote the second novel while I still had a kid in the house. When I re-read it before publication, I was shocked at how true it was,” answered Cynthia.
“What about after finishing your third novel?”
“This is the novel my agent signed me on—she loved it but couldn’t sell it. Although I wish it had been published eons earlier, I’m also glad it wasn’t. This is the most complex of all of my novels, and I don’t really think I was a good enough writer to tell this story until now. Unbelievably to me, I revised it a good bit after it was accepted for publication. Even now I see places where I could make it better.
My editor at Fomite pushed me to write some new scenes, and those are some of the best in the book. And the ending, I changed that quite boldly at the last second—after I read the novel out loud and heard the clunk at the end.”
“You have such a full life - how do you find time to write?”
“The question is not how do I find time to write; it’s how do I find time to do the other stuff… Writing makes the days matter so I start with writing. That said, this past year was an exception. The logistics of having three books come out in a twelve-month period left no brain space for creativity. So last May, when it was time to start developmental edits on The Art of Her Life and then on Love Like This, I stopped working on The Glove Factory, my novel in progress. I currently have a self-imposed deadline to get back to it the Tuesday after Labor Day. When I last worked on it, The Glove Factory was about a librarian turned private investigator (married and divorced three times) who returns to the Cape Cod town where she used to live—which leads her on a quest for the place of the past in the present and the need to make peace with all her past selves.”
“Who is your first reader?”
“My friend Karen Nelson who I met in my first writing group back in 2007. She’s a writer herself, as well as the co-founder of the literary nonprofit Writing by Writers.”
Time for my favorite question. “Is there one book that you can remember that made you want to become a writer?”
“Yes, there is, thank you for asking! Ellen Gilchrist’s The Anna Papers because of the bold voice. Also, Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years for the story and James Salter’s Light Years for the writing. I’ve always been a reader, but when I was pregnant with child #3, practicing law became one thing too much. For the six years I was at home with the kids, reading connected me to the outside world and to other women who were thinking and feeling the same things I was. Which felt like someone had thrown me a life rope. Instead of going back to creating wills and trusts I wanted to throw the rope to others. So it was really all the writers I was reading in the nineties who made me want to write—Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Lamott, Ann Patchett, Josephine Humphreys, Kaye Gibbons, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Berg, Anne Rivers Siddons… I’m leaving out so many.”
“Who are you reading now?” My second favorite question.
“Georgia writer Ginger Eager and Kentucky writer Katy Yocom—looking forward to their next books. Loved, loved, loved Homestead by Alaska writer Melinda Moustakis. Last week I reread Ann Goethe’s Midnight Lemonade published in 1993—add her to that list above. Over the weekend, I read Heather Newton’s The Puppeteer’s Daughters, which I loved. And next up is a reread of Carol Shields The Stone Diaries also published in 1993—another to add to the list above—and a read of Sari Botton’s And You May Find Yourself…Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo.”
And my third favorite. “Who is your favorite author of all time?”
“Ellen Gilchrist. I’ve read, and still have on my shelf, all twenty-three of her books (minus the poetry). As I mentioned, I love her voice and also the way, when she was writing, that her characters’ lives would spill into new stories and books. Such pleasure in finding Rhoda and Nora Jane again on the page.”
“You live in Georgia and Massachusetts - which home do you prefer to write in or is there a difference?”
“OMG yes there’s a difference. Ha. I grew up in Atlanta but moved to Columbus when I got married thirty-eight years ago. For the last thirty-three years we’ve lived in a large house in the suburbs where we raised our family. I’m ready for a small loft downtown, but my husband loves the house, which is nestled up against the woods.
Provincetown, in Massachusetts, is my favorite place on earth. This is where I came after my last child left for college, and I’ve been coming once a month since January of 2013. I rented different places for years until I rented the one-bedroom cottage on the water where I am currently sitting.”
“Tell us about 50 Bookstores, 50 Writers, 50 Books.”
“When I found out that in addition to the release of the Tidal Flats paperback on June 14, 2022 and the publication of my second novel, Love Like This, on April 4, 2023, my third novel, The Art of Her Life, would be published on June 6, 2023, I wanted to do something BIG to celebrate.
After all, I had waited a long time for this. I started thinking… I get a lot of energy from a challenge. I asked myself what the hardest thing was about being published by a small press… Getting the word out. So I thought, what about an event in each of the 50 states… And then I thought but no one will come because no one will know you. So then I thought, join with a local writer. And then brainstorm, a local writer also of a small press book!
This was right as the pandemic was settling down but people were still not back in bookstores. So I thought let’s celebrate these indie bookstores and encourage people to come on out. So…I’m on a book tour to visit at least one indie bookstore in every state, to talk with readers not just about my book but also about the book of a local author also published by a small or indie press.
It is FANTASTIC—being in magical bookstores, meeting all these writers in person, and reading amazing books I never would have known about otherwise.”
So, do you see why I said Cynthia is a friend to everyone she meets? We haven’t even scratched the surface. Just wait until you read her essay, “How We Spend Our Days”.
