Bookshelf: Talking with Beth Fehlbaum

Beth Fehlbaum drew on her experience working with abused children as an English teacher in writing Courage in Patience to give hope to survivors of abuse. She is an English teacher with an M.Ed. and lives in East Texas. - back cover, Courage in Patience

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INN: What inspired you to write Courage in Patience?
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BF: I am an English teacher and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I was working through dealing with my growing-up-years, and I wrote a lot as a way of processing it. I kept showing my short stories and poems to a friend of mine, and he suggested that I channel my creative energy into writing a novel. I started and stopped for about four months, then I sat down and got serious about it, and the story came out.

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By the way, Courage in Patience is NOT an autobiography. It is a fictional account of a teen girl's initial foray into recovery from sexual abuse, and the building of her relationship with her biological father, who she had never known until she was placed with him and her stepmother (who happens to be an English teacher), after being taken from her mom and stepdad.
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INN: How did you break into publishing?
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BF: By the time I finished writing Courage in Patience, I felt that I had a story that could inspire hope in others who had experienced abuse. I strongly committed myself to (a) finding an agent and (b) querying independent publishers that did not require an author to be agented.
I submitted the first two chapters of Courage in Patience to Kunati Books, an independent publisher based in Canada, in April, 2007.

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I found my agent, Rachel Dowen of Talcott Notch Literary Services, around the same time, and formally signed with her in June, 2007. In August, 2007, James McKinnon, my editor at Kunati, contacted me and asked for the remainder of my manuscript. November, 2007, Kunati offered to buy my book. Rachel negotiated my contract and I FedExed it back to Kunati the Saturday before Christmas, 2007. It's been a whirlwind adventure since then! Courage in Patience releases on September 1, 2008. It's already available for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders, too.

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INN: What's the strangest thing that's happened to you as a writer?
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BF: I get a lot of letters/messages from people online. The other day, a guy wrote to me and told me he wanted to see what I look like, "as long as I didn't look like Quasimodo" -- and he also wanted to know where he could read excerpts of my book.
I thought that was kind of funny-- the request to see what I look like.
I wrote him back and told him he could see Chapter 1 of my book on my MySpace page and on my Blogspot page, that there is a picture of me on my Blogspot page, and that my "Quasimodo hump" didn't show in the picture. He wrote back and told me that as long as I was able to walk upright, that was enough for him.
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I thought, "Huh?"
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He was really nice; he was very supportive and complimentary of my work; it was just a funny thing to say, I thought.
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INN: Who are your favorite contemporary authors?
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BF: This list is by no means exclusive, but looking around my writing room right now, I see: Chris Crutcher (I have read all his novels, but my favorite of his is Ironman, because he graciously allowed me to integrate elements of it into Courage in Patience), Mark Spragg (An Unfinished Life; The Fruit of Stone), Joyce McDonald (Swallowing Stones), Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian; The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven; Ten Little Indians), David Sedaris (I have everything he's written but I'm currently reading his latest, When You are Engulfed in Flames), Stephen King (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft); Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird); Deepak Chopra (How to Know God), William Sloane Coffin (Credo), and Al Franken (The Truth- With Jokes).
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INN: If you could have dinner with three historical people (literary, political, scientific, or simply odd), who would they be and what would you talk about?
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BF: I'd love to meet Chris Crutcher, because he has been such an influence on my writing. It was in reading his book, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, that I realized there was an audience for the stories inside of me.
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I'd love to sit down with George W. Bush and tell him to his face how much I am looking forward to his being out of office, to our country being able to rebuild its reputation in the international community when an idiot is no longer in charge.
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I'd also like to sit down with some of my long-dead ancestors, to show them a crystal ball and say, "Let's talk about what you're going to need to do differently, because you're about to set off a shitstorm of stuff that will take years to work itself out."
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INN: Any advice for teen writers?
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BF: Just write. Allow the thoughts in your head to trickle down your arm and come out through your fingertips. Don't mercilessly edit yourself when you're getting your ideas out-- editing comes later. Don't let anyone tell you that what you're writing is wrong or that you "shouldn't" write a certain way. Give yourself permission to be as wildly creative as you want. Language is alive. It changes and grows with people as it needs to change and grow. So many people get bogged down in the "rules" of writing and being afraid they'll sound foolish, they stifle the flow of their ideas. It comes down to two words: Just. Write.

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Thank you so much, Beth!

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You can visit Beth's website at www.bethfehlbaum.com and watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yCNz7i88RM.