TRACY McNISH
Affaire de Coeur's Author of the Month - September/October 2009

Tracy MacNish resides in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where she and her husband own a custom marble and tile contracting business. She also works part-time, taking on various pursuits for hire, such as interior design, handmade window treatments, costuming for theater, and just about anything that requires creativity and little in the way of actual training. She is the proud mother of one son, two dogs, and a particularly bossy cat. When she isn’t writing or working, she enjoys hiking, cooking, reading, spending time with family and friends, and a really good single malt scotch. She is currently working on her next novel.

AdC: When did you start writing and why?
T.M.: My ninth grade teacher, Mr. Titus, gave us an assignment after we read A Separate Piece. He had us strike the last chapter and rewrite the ending. Anything went, he said, just be sure to match the voice and tone of the author and to honor the characters and the truth held within the story. What a license he gave us, rewriting a classic. It seemed almost sacrilegious to touch a great author’s work in such a way.
That writing assignment made me do something that I thought I could never do, something so bold and courageous: I wrote fiction. It had always seemed to me that authors were untouchable people who must be incredibly intelligent, clever, and shrewd. After all, I read book after book, swept away time and again by the power of their written words.
But there I sat, an awkward, nerdy teenager, writing, holding the threads of an author’s story and weaving out of it what I wished. The power I felt – it took my breath away. It made me want to create my own characters, to find their truth, to discover my own tone and voice, and helped me to believe in myself enough to try. Thanks, Mr. Titus!

AdC: What is your favorite book?
T.M.: This is one of those questions that makes it tempting to give an answer that’s not completely honest. It’s nice to say To Kill a Mockingbird or Siddhartha, books I truly do love, but are also literary enough to list in an interview. Probably the most truthful answer for me is more like Oh! The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss because like the other two books I mentioned, it’s wise and thoughtful, but it got me at an earlier age.

AdC: What is your idea of a perfect day?
T.M.: Any day where I am completely alone at home, without a ringing phone or a single unwanted noise, the only sound my pond’s waterfalls, the tapping of my keyboard beneath my fingertips or the whisper of my brush on canvas. I love being alone.

AdC: What are your hobbies?
T.M.: Golfing, painting and drawing, hiking and walking, scrapbooking, reading, and my pond. Pretty much the only thing I get to do on a regular basis, however, is read and hang by the pond.

AdC: What authors do you admire?
T.M.: I admire the hell out of Woodiwiss. I know her books are dated and floral and overblown, but they were so much fun and they made me fall in love with romance. I think I read The Flame and The Flower like 13 times when I was a teenager, and Shanna and The Wolf and The Dove at least as many if not more.

AdC: What is the worst thing about being an author? The best thing?
T.M.: The worst thing: Having so many books I want to write and feeling inadequate to do them justice, and feeling frustrated that my work schedule and insomnia conspire to leave me so tired I cannot imagine how I’ll ever be able to write them.
The best thing about being an author: Holding the finished book in my hands, the satisfaction that comes with knowing that as much as it tortured me along the way, the damned thing is as done as it’ll get.
The best thing about being a writer (which I think of as an entirely different thing): Getting lost in the story. So lost that I forget where I am, what time it is, or if I’ve eaten. So completely gone that I no longer hear the music I’m playing beside me. And afterwards, reading that scene and not quite recalling having written it. It’s addicting, that kind of magic.

AdC: What do you expect to be doing 10 years from now?
T.M.: I like that the question is all about expectation and not the least bit about hope. It’s a gritty question, without a single wish in it.
I expect I’ll still have to work full time, but I hope I won’t. I fully expect to be writing novels, and I hope I’m right. I also hope I can do both, because I expect I’ll have to.

AdC: The reviews on Stealing Midnight have been great. What is your reaction to that? Did you expect them to be?
T.M.: I had no idea if the book was any good or not. I have absolutely no gauge whatsoever when I’m writing a book if it’ll turn out okay, and by the time it’s done, even less of an idea because I’ve read it so many times at that point that I hate everything about it. To be completely honest, I told one of my best friends that I was pretty sure this last one was a train wreck. She very pointedly reminded me that I say that after every book, and so I needed to stop worrying. The reviews so far have been humbling, and I’m grateful that people like the story.

AdC: What can we expect from you next?
T.M.: I’m working on a three book series for historical romances that I absolutely love and adore, the subject of which I’m jealously guarding because it is awesome, and my agent is shopping it around. I think Stealing Midnight is the last book for the Mullen family, sadly; so if readers want more they need to bug my publisher and bug their friends to buy a book. I would absolutely be thrilled to write more about this family, and it breaks my heart to leave them. See above: too many books to write, not enough time.
Thank you so much for taking the time to ask me some questions, and I’m glad you enjoyed Stealing Midnight!