REVIEWS
Read the review of The Road to Caledonia in the Cape Cod Times at
INTERVIEW WITH WRITER ERICA SCOTT
On April 5, 2023, Meg sat down with fantasy/horror writer Erica Scott, author of Crowned in Darkness, for an interview. Here is a transcript of that interview.
Erica Scott
Hi, this is Erica Scott. And today I’m interviewing Meg Clark promising new author with a unique voice. Hello, Meg and welcome. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Meg Clark
Hello, thank you so much for having me today. Well, I live on Cape Cod right now with my three-year-old golden retriever who’s sitting here beside me, hopefully she’ll behave and not start barking or carrying on. I’ve had quite a background, if you go to my website, which is Margaret, dash Clark dot com, you’ll find that over the years, I’ve had quite a succession of jobs in various areas. After a break of several years, I did go back to college, and I received my PhD in English, and American literature and American history, looking at World War One and war propaganda. And from there, I went on to teaching at a college in Florida where I became the Dean of Arts and Sciences. And then I decided, I missed home because I’m originally from Massachusetts. So about eight years ago, I moved back to Cape Cod, where I do some teaching some freelancing and some writing. Interesting fact about me, I got my PhD and my AARP card on the exact same day.
Erica Scott
Well, that’s wonderful. Thank you for sharing, and congratulations on your accomplishments.
Meg Clark
Well, I was just going to say, you know, part of the recurring theme, and what I write is, it’s never too late to pursue what you’re after, and almost reinvent yourself.
Erica Scott
I think you’re right, it’s never too late to go back out, or what you’re really passionate about. All right. My first question about your book is, how did your story first take shape?
Meg Clark
Oh, well, I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and every year, they would have what they call old home day. And they always had one townsperson that they would celebrate as a townsperson of the Year. So, my book started out by being a story about that, having 10 different characters who are being considered for this honor.
And then I guess, thinking about it, I thought that’s kind of sweet and everything, but there’s not a whole lot of guts to that. Is that really going to hold the interest of a reader? And I happened to read about a case here on Cape Cod that happened, I believe, in 1976, where they found the body of a young woman in the dunes. And I thought, well, this is really, really intriguing. So, it became a part of my book. Thus, this nice little story turned into a murder mystery thriller, in which a young man, well, he’s not so young, he’s 40, who does the interviewing of 10 candidates for townsperson of the year, and with each interview that he does, another clue as to the identity of this young woman who washed up on the dunes 20 years earlier, begins to take place. And then there are some real twists in it. Ultimately, the question becomes are you really who you think you are? So, there’s a murder, mystery, intrigue, a lot of things going on. And it started out as being just a sweet little historical novel, and that’s not how it’s turned out.
Erica Scott
Well, it sounds fascinating and definitely right up my alley. That sounds like something I’d enjoy reading. Are there any particular themes or messages that you hope come across to your readers?
Meg Clark
I think one of the themes that I often look at is reinvention and what it takes to really find your voice. And how does your voice change over time. In the book I’m working on now, Henry Latham is 40 years old, he lives with his mother, his mother’s very domineering. Everything that Henry says or does gets filtered through his mother. And during this course of interviewing these different people, he comes into his own. He comes to see that even after 40 years, he really does have the ability to be his own person. And so that’s kind of a theme throughout my writing is the ability to constantly reinvent yourself, and to change. I’ve lived in a lot of different towns, in places all throughout the country. And I find that every time I move, I have the opportunity to reinvent myself, now I can become somebody different. And so that’s kind of a theme of my work that goes on is I guess it’s never too late. And you can start over and pursue that which you always wanted to do.
Erica Scott
Absolutely, those are great things. What elements of writing do you rely on most to transport your audience?
Meg Clark
Most of what I write is character driven, as opposed to plot job. And I go into an awful lot of character development. And another thing that I that I do is really show a lot of attention to detail in world building, I find that that really becomes important to set up that setting really solidly. And to bring various elements into that setting. Most of what I write has a historical novel aspect to it as well. So, I do a lot of research into what was happening during that that time period. And a lot of the pop culture icons of those times. So, I really rely on a lot of that world building part. The other thing that I do is a lot of literary allusions, probably too many.
In the first book that I wrote a neighbor commented and said, Well, if you don’t read all this literature, how are you going to get these allusions? So that’s, that’s one thing that I think I have to, to work on a little bit. Being an English major, I keep throwing in some of this other literature, and then I think it gets too heavy. So that’s one thing I’m working on.
Erica Scott
Next, I’d like to ask about which authors inspire and motivate your work.
Meg Clark
Oh, wow. Um, I’d have to say right away Anne Tyler. I love her work. I love the way she does a lot with description. She doesn’t do a lot with dialogue. And that’s very instructive to me in that she will describe a lot of the characters and put the characters and situations so that you very often come to know the character through the narrator. And I think that’s an interesting technique that can go one of two ways. So, I do like the way she handles that. Kristen Hannah is another one of my favorite authors, Marie Benedict, mainly because I do love trying my hand at writing historical novels and Marie Benedict is such a master with her books, historical novels, particularly if you look at Carnegie’s Maid and The Only Woman in the Room. She just does phenomenal research. This is my all-time favorite book. Everybody should read this book. I’ll hold it up. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. David Wroblewski wrote this in 2008. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is an American Hamlet. And what I love about it is the protagonist and his young boy is mute. But throughout the course of the book, he finds his voice both literally and figuratively. And really is a great, great book of character development, but also with description. He has two full pages of the sun coming through a cobweb. Now, at first blush that sounds like how can you use that for two pages? But he does it in a masterful way. And again, that’s this wonderful, wonderful world building that he does. So those are the artists that really kind of inspire me.
Erica Scott
Wonderful choices, great discussions. Lastly, what is your preferred writing style? Are you an organized and clear-cut writer and more of a fly by the seat of your pants writer?
Meg Clark
I would say I’m an organized writer. That’s generally how I am in life. I have to do lists, my to do list is broken down into minutes, and I assign how many, how many minutes I work on this task, how many on that I really need to loosen up, I’m just too bound up. But I do plot outlines, I generally outline the entire book, I have post it notes everywhere, I have descriptions of all of the characters right down to what they eat for breakfast. And so, I do a lot of detail work. A lot of it gets thrown out. Because I try, you know, to incorporate it. And then I think, oh, I’ve got way too much in here. But I am organized, and I stick to it. But sometimes I find all of a sudden, the book starts writing itself and it takes off in a direction that I had not anticipated. And I think where did that come from? That’s not in my outline. You know, that’s not in any of my list. And so, I find out sometimes if I let myself free up, the writing becomes better.
Erica Scott
Well, that’s great. I’m very, I’m very unorganized. So, I feel like if I can find a happy medium between me and you, that would be golden spot would be the great place today.
Well, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. And I just want to thank you for joining our listeners, and I hope you have a wonderful day.
Meg Clark And thank you very much for having me. And I’m pleased that Poppy was relatively quiet. She didn’t do any barking, which is something new. So, thank you so much for having me. I’ve enjoyed it.
Meg Clark 