DORSET — Caren Simpson McVicker’s life has, at times, had an Odyssey-type feel to it until her family inherited her late mother-in-law’s home in Dorset, and moved there in 2014.
Having grown up in Oklahoma and New Jersey, and pursued careers in public relations and consulting, the seeds of writing as well as family and Cherokee heritage were planted in her vision of the future from a very young age.
McVicker and her husband Joe are now community stalwarts, and during the recent pandemic, she saw fit to finally complete the first of several stories brewing in her imagination.
To that end, McVicker’s debut novel hit the market last week: “Henderson House” (Inkshares, 2023, 436 pages, $18.99 softcover), is described as “an enchanting boardinghouse tale of sisters, secrets, and later-in-life-romances [which] invites you to pull up a rocking chair and lose yourself in the heartaches and hopes of 1940s Oklahoma.”
Correspondent Telly Halkias had a chance to catch up with the author and chat with her just following the book’s recent publication:
Q: This is your first book. How do you anticipate this dynamic might differ from any future efforts?
A: “Henderson House” is my first novel and although it is fiction, it was inspired by the life of real people (my great-aunt and my grandmother) and in some ways, I think that was limiting. Even though I created characters who were not my ancestors, I still felt a strong sense of duty to honor my great-aunt in this novel. Now that my characters have taken on a life of their own, I feel freer in writing the sequel, “Sequoyah Road,” and letting the story take me where it wants to go.
Q: From the technical aspect of writing such a book, the public is always interested in knowing logistical details. Describe how long it takes you from getting an idea to the book hitting the market — on average? How many drafts/proofs did you have to produce for this book?
A: Since this was my first novel, I don’t have much to compare it to. It took me a year to write the first seven chapters. At that point, I really didn’t know how to get organized around completing a full novel. I attended the Green Mountain Writers’ Conference in the summer of 2019 and took the Novel In Progress Intensive with Liz Inness-Brown, who was still teaching at St. Michael’s College at the time. That week changed my life. I had a first draft less than a year later.
I shared that skeleton of a first draft with several beta readers and got some wonderful feedback that I began incorporating into a second draft. By December of 2020, I was ready to enter my novel into the Inkshares All Genre contest with the hopes of winning a publishing deal. While it had been three years since I had written the first words, in many ways I feel like the first draft took a year from attending the writers’ conference and the second draft took another six months after that.
Once my novel was [announced a winner and] in the cue at Inkshares, it went through a first round of developmental editing and then a second round with small tweaks that had far reaching tendrils into the story. Then came copy editing and finally proofreading.
Q: In your capacity as a writer of historical fiction, identify the single most crucial human factor in your research and writing of “Henderson House.” Explain how such a factor helps you develop storyline, characters, etc.
A: The single biggest factor for me in writing historical fiction is taking a real account like a family story, memory, newspaper article, census document, or old photo and freeing it from its current form to take on a life of its own. Asking yourself “what if …” and letting your creativity take the wheel. A great example from “Henderson House” is Bessie’s story about winning the Memorial Day Fishing Derby. When I was doing my research for the book, it was the height of COVID, and I couldn’t travel. The wonderful librarians at the Bartlesville [OK] Public Library scanned every issue of the Enterprise-Examiner during the two-week time frame of my book which is set at the end of May 1941. Those newspapers were critical to my being able to paint an accurate backdrop for my story. Anyway, one of the articles I read was about the Memorial Day Fishing Derby. I started asking “what if” and turned that article into a lovely scene between Bessie and Frank as they are first getting to know each other.
Q: When a reader puts down this book for the last time, what do you want them to walk away with?
A: When a reader puts down this book, I want them to walk away feeling happy and hopeful. One blogger recently said “Henderson House” was like drinking something warm on a cold day or something cold on a warm day. I love that I gave someone that feeling.
Q: Finally: Anything you want to add?
The only thing to add is that through my research and getting more involved in my Cherokee ancestry, my younger child, Charlie, who will be a senior at Union College in the fall, became aware of how close the Cherokee language is to extinction. Charlie is now learning and speaking Cherokee and is developing online language learning tools to help preserve Cherokee language and culture for future generations. That’s a pretty amazing secondary effect to finally saying “yes” to the idea!
“Henderson House” is available on Amazon, and in bookstores everywhere.
