An Interview with L. P. Simone

L. P. Simone lives and writes in Washington, DC, where she has worked as a history and writing teacher, a librarian and an advocate for human rights.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

As a young person, I lived in my imagination. During long car rides, or when trying to fall asleep at night, I made up my own adventures, sometimes with the people in my life, friends, family, enemies. Sometimes I borrowed characters from books I loved, or shows I was watching. I loved a tv western and many adventures in my imagination with the characters of that one. But I also loved to invent stories and people and worlds. It’s fun. It made me want to share those stories with people. I must admit, I was not much of a reader as a kid. I thought most of the books we had were pretty boring. It wasn’t until my mother gave me some more advanced stories, that I discovered what books could do and the places they could take you. Now I read everything.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I have had so many weird and rewarding jobs in my day. In high school I transcribed medical reports. For one day, I packed worms for fishing and tackle stores. Yes. It was a real job. I didn’t mind touching the worms, but I can’t remember why I didn’t go back after that one day. During college I drove the student shuttle buses around town. That was fun.

My focus in college was international relations and Latin America in particular. After college I worked in an office that dealt with human rights, particularly in Latin America. I found that work to be extremely important and rewarding. However, the stories I heard of the disappeared, or tortured, took a toll on me. I couldn’t remove myself at home from the nightmares I followed all day. After my children went to school, I went into teaching. I taught Latin American History in high school. I loved teaching. What I really wanted to do, though, was teach writing. I worked first as a librarian in a middle school and then moved to teaching writing. I love to help students develop their skills. I get the biggest reward from watching students deepen the emotional content of their stories.

And as hard as it is to believe, I also earned a doctorate. My research related to Young Adult Fantasy and the portrayal of evil over the course of sixty years. I read a lot of fantasy. I still read a lot of fantasy, but now I do it for fun.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

I had so many different titles for this book, I’m not going to lie, it took forever. It always does. I called it Ghost Story for the longest time. Then it was Homecoming. I had some titles that were so bad I can’t even bring myself to think about them. When the title Charlotte’s Ghosts came to me, it just felt right. I was afraid people would be unhappy that it was too close to a beloved classic, but so far nobody seems to be bothered. I imagine it makes it easier to remember. But what that title conveys that none of the other ones did is the truth about our hope for what comes after someone we love dies. When those we love disappear, sometimes after a long illness or sometimes suddenly as a fallen soldier, you have to wonder, I know I do, where the spark that was them went. While Charlotte’s and Jeremy’s stories are not traditional ghost tales, their stories are the true search for what happens after someone dies. Some of us are lucky enough to feel it deeply inside us without it manifesting as a ghost. Some, like Charlotte and Jeremy, struggle more. Through their connection to one another, they each find a way back to the love they lost.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

The process of independently publishing a book takes so much time and requires coordinating so many things. First I felt true relief. It was “Thank God. It’s done.” Then it hit me. The only word is elation. It was an amazing journey, moving something from your imagination to reality. But what really knocked me off my chair was hearing what people thought of the book. It’s one thing to have a writing group or friends tell you they enjoyed it. It is entirely another to have total strangers read it and say nice things about it, like giving it a five-star review or awarding it a gold medal.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

I know I’m supposed to envision the perfect reader when I write a book, but I don’t think of that as an eleven-year-old girl or a fifteen-year-old boy. I think the perfect reader for Charlotte’s Ghosts is anyone who is struggling over the loss of a loved one, whether that’s a week or fifty years ago. What I hope a person, no matter who they are, takes away from the story is that the love you knew didn’t disappear when that person died. It hurts deeply, powerfully and it feels like the end of all happiness. I know from experience that the pain doesn’t ever go away, but, I believe with all my heart what Helen Keller wrote, “All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” I hope my readers will learn to search for the person they lost within themselves. It doesn’t make the pain go away, but I hope it helps chip away at the sharp edges of that pain.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

It may sound corny, but the most fun, and so the most rewarding I suppose, is hearing from readers that they enjoyed the story. I know not everyone will love it, but if even one person who reads it comes to feel the love of someone they lost in a new way, I’ll feel like I did my job.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

I have two picture books and two middle-grade novels completely drafted.

One picture book is nonfiction about the dangers humans pose to the health of the oceans. It has been very tricky trying to figure out how to make it plain how dangerous humans are to life in the ocean without making the five-year-old who hears it feel like bycatch or the Pacific Ocean plastic gyre is all their fault.

The other picture book is about Iggy, a dragon who just can’t do what all the other dragons do. He can’t breathe fire, or roar as loud as thunder, or even get off the ground to fly and soar in the clouds. What he has to figure out is what’s most important to him—being like all the other dragons, or being a friend.

The two novels are very different from each other. One is about a boy in a castle who must leave behind the only life he has ever known because he’s been accused of a terrible crime. He realizes that the prince he has served his entire life is actually a terrible tyrant, and so he strikes out to warn a nearby kingdom that they are about to be attacked. It’s mostly about finding your people.

The second novel has a full cast of characters who are all working against one another. Basically it’s got forest animals who are part of a secret security force that monitors life among the city’s wildlife (I live in Washington, DC, with all kinds of secret agencies, after all), a gazillionaire who wants to be king of the internet (human), a megalomaniacal scientist who does what megalomaniacal scientist do everywhere (rule the world), and a coding prodigy named Dylan whose goal in life is to create the best online game designer ever.

Stay tuned.

Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.