Talk Wordy To Me Wednesday: My Interview with Contemporary Chick Lit Author Dahlia Savage

Welcome all!

Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with the Author of Indiscretion, and the recently released Graduation Day. I had the pleasure to read and review Indiscretion, which you can find here.

 

1.) Hi Dahlia, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?

I’ve loved to write since I was in the second grade. I’ve always enjoyed books and reading and one day I had this idea about a girl who meets an alien girl and they become friends, so I wrote it.  From there, I would write scenes and whatnot. Writing did fall to the wayside as I got older, but I would always have these story ideas but would never really act on them. About a year after I graduated from college I had a new idea, and I realized just how strong my interest still was, so I started writing again.

2.) What books have you written?

I have stories and pieces of stories saved on my computer and across various notebooks. However, Indiscretion and my recent short story, Graduation Day, are the only ones that have been published so far.

3.) What inspired you to write your latest book, Indiscretion?

It started out as a short piece for a creative writing class about a choice a woman makes to give in to her selfish desires and the consequences as a result. I started thinking of all that could wrong because of that choice, so I decided to lengthen it to include the outcome of her decision.

4.) Is there a message in Indiscretion that you want your readers to grasp?

I think my main message is that there is a consequence to every choice a person makes. Some are good, some are bad, and some are just downright disastrous. Indiscretion was a tale of disastrous consequences.

5.) I loved the cover for Indiscretion. Who designed it?

Really? Thank you! I wound up doing it myself. I spent a some time as a copywriter for a line of life insurance products and we had a graphic designer on our team that showed me some real basic tricks because we often had to submit our drafts with some sort of graphic to give him an idea of how we wanted the final layout to look. So, I don’t consider myself a graphic artist by any means, but I had a certain visual in my head for the cover and I wanted to keep it simple. Simple I can handle.

6.) Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

In the initial writing phase, do your best to avoid trying to perfect each scene and chapter. It’s hard to turn off that urge to “get it right” before moving on, but wanting to get it perfect can hinder you from actually finishing. That’s what editors and beta readers are for. If something is off or there’s a major plot hole, your editor and/or beta will catch it. The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, just get it done. It can be fixed in the editing stage. This is something I’ve had to tell myself a lot 😉

6.) Are the events in Indiscretion based on someone you know, or even your own life?

Goodness, no…while my imagination is definitely hyperactive, my real life could not be that crazy and drama-filled.

7.) What genre do you prefer to read? And what are you reading now?

I enjoy chick-lit, contemporary stories, and good dramatic stories, and recently I started reading romance. I just finished The Trouble With Love by Christina Jones. It was a good read about two sisters and their ups and downs with love and relationships.

8.)  Do you have a favorite author?

Two of my favorite authors are Lolita Files and Eric Jerome Dickey. I think they’re both awesome writers who like to change it up. I can’t really box them into one genre.

9.) Do you prefer bound, or electronic books?

Both. I enjoy sitting down with a good paperback or hardcover and going to the library to browse the shelves and picking out a few books to read, but the gadget geek in me loves storing a lot of books on my Kindle and having instant access.

10.) Have you ever gotten a bad book review? If so, how do you handle it?

Yes, I have and it was my first one! I would love to say I just immediately shook it off and that it didn’t bother me, but it did. It took me a few days to actually read the review; I just saw the star rating and my heart sank. Logically, I understood that not everyone was going to like it, but still it was disappointing because that story was like my baby and that review initially felt like being told my baby was ugly. When I finally read it, I found that it was basically the length of the story, so the baby was just too short, not necessarily ugly 🙂. Fortunately, a few days later, I got a wonderful review and then another and another…  

11.) Is there anything I haven’t asked that you would like to include?

I blog over at www.dahliasavage.com Besides that, I’d just like to thank you for the opportunity to hang out on your blog. This was fun.

Thank you Dahlia!

Dahlia Savage is a native of Detroit, Michigan. From a young age, she was gifted with an ability to combine her love for the written word with a vivid imagination.

After graduating school with a degree in business, she entered the workforce and gained a variety of experience she would later draw from, including over three years of marketing and communications, a few years as a freelance business and journalism writer, and 18 months as a flight attendant. However, she would return to her first love of writing fiction to balance out the business writing involved in her day job.

Although she currently resides in Tampa, Florida, she is and always will be a Detroit girl. She is currently
working on her next project while simultaneously attending classes towards a second degree and raising a son with her husband.–Goodreads Author Bio

Purchase Indiscretion:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HYJFAGY/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00HYJFAGY&linkCode=as2&tag=awerewo-20

Purchase Graduation Day:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JDKBYDK/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00JDKBYDK&linkCode=as2&tag=awerewo-20