Interview with Tammy Snyder author of The Chimney Still Stands

The month of June at the B&N.com General Fiction book club we are pleased to be featuring the Pubit author Tammy Snyder. Those of you not familiar with Pubit it is a B&N exclusive way to self publish yourself. We will be featuring Tammy's novel The Chimney Still Stands so please join us in the discussion and conversation here.
Now for my interview

Interview with Tammy Snyder

This month at the General Fiction book club at B&N.com we are celebrating Pubit, a great no cost way for authors to publish and sell their works in digital format and what better way to do that than by featuring debut author Tammy Snyder and her Pubit novel The Chimney Still Stands.

Debbie - Tammy thank you for agreeing to participate as this month’s featured author.

Tammy -Thank you, Debbie, for inviting me. I'm very excited to be here!

D -First tell us a little about yourself.

T - Sure. I'm a 39 year young wife (of 17yrs) and mother of three teenage boys. I'm a Christian, reader, writer, movie fanatic, and I love photography. I've done everything from flipping burgers to being a nanny; from running my own businesses to volunteering in my community. Now, I feel the need to calm down and finally focus on my dream. Writing.

I moved in 1991 from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I was born and raised, to where I now live in the beautiful Ozark Mountains just down the road from the Buffalo National River in northwest Arkansas that I write about in my book.

D -Did you always want to be a writer and tell us how you found Pubit and a little about that process.

T - Definitely! As far back as I can remember. I'd say the seed was planted long ago when I discovered my love for reading. You could say that, since spending most of my life holed up in one quiet corner or another with my nose in a book, that it'd be inevitable that I'd end up wanting to write one of my own. I can remember being in fifth or sixth grade and being assigned an idea for a story. If you wrote it well, you could sit on the teacher's stool in front of the class and read it. Well, I did great. And, despite my severe shyness and hatred of getting up on front of class, I went up and with, I can only imagine, a red face read my story with pride. I remember then feeling a jolt of excitement for the idea.

Finding Pubit was a happy coincidence. It was a 2010 Christmas commercial for the new NOOK that had me googling Barnes & Noble. That's when I found Pubit. I had already completed my novel in March of 2009 and, failing to find an agent, let it sit collecting dust on my dresser ( I write long hand). In typical “me” fashion I began researching this Pubit and it sounded ideal. Hey, how can you go wrong when someone offers to sell your book for free! So, I followed the directions, filled in this, listed that, download like so and voila! A ten year labor of love had finally made it's mark in the publishing world! I can, now, call myself an author!

D - Are you working on another novel and will you continue with Pubit or will you be looking for a mortar and brick publisher?

T - As a matter of fact, I'm researching right now for what will be my first series and I have to say I'm quite nervous about it. Excited too, of course! :) It takes place in a Michigan towns heyday from the late 1800's through the Depression and includes miners, lumberjacks and love stories (no book is complete without a love story!).

I'm not certain yet what I will do to publish them. I know I would love to work with a mortar and brick publisher and see my books in print and eBook form but I will just have to wait and see. One thing I've learned is you never know what's around the next corner. All I can do is pray and leave it in God's hands.

D - Tell us how this novel came to be. I know it takes place near where you live, are there any other similarities?

T - Well, my husband is to blame for this novel. Haha He has always loved to take me for drives and when I started noticing chimney's with square, rock foundations dotting the countryside I started asking questions. That's when he showed me a yellowing and slightly brittle sesquicentennial paper he had with the story of how it all came to be. Of course I said, “What a great idea for a novel!”

Yes, much of what is written is similar to facts such as scenic descriptions, the outside of the courthouse, comments during the courthouse meeting, the waterfall scene...ask me later about the river scene!! There are a great many similarities. All but the characters. They are all of my own creation even though, as with any writer, we tend to use a bit of what we know to build our characters personalities, none are based on any one specific person. 

D - Do you have a favorite author and or genre to read?

T - I always have to laugh at this question because my favorite author changes as the wind blows. :) If I read a book by an author I've never read before and love it, they become my new favorite author! Lol I can tell you I've enjoyed Nicholas Sparks, Nora Roberts, Susan Wiggs and of late, Kathleen Morgan's Brides of Culdee Creek series.

I grew up reading mostly Harlequin Romance and a mass of teenage girly books. I love fiction love stories...historical or modern, Christian or not. And though I don't really read anything but adult fiction, there was a teen series I just loved when I was a substitute teacher called The Shadow Children by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Terrific!!

D - The final question is just for fun – Do you have a bucket list and what’s the number one item on it that you want to accomplish?

T - Haha. Well, besides jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to sky dive, visiting Africa and Hawaii, doing more charity work and a whole host of other things, the #1 on my list is to be a successful novelist. I dream of spending the rest of my life whipping out one successful novel after another and sweeping readers away to other worlds the way I've been swept away. Hey! It's happened for some, right? Why not me. ;)

Thanks Tammy for taking the time to answer these questions and also in advance to agreeing to be with us during the month to contribute to the conversation.

 Visit the author on FaceBook here