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Texas Author | ||
| Julie Lake | |||
| Frequently Asked Questions |  |
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| Are any characters in
your books based on real people? Many people I know have inspired characters in my stories. Abby Kate Linden, for example, reminds me both of my oldest daughter and an adult friend of mine. Mrs. Linden is a little like my mother in that she worries about everything. |
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| Freddie Wilson is a composite of several people. (Okay, I admit it—he’s exactly like my evil brother who teased me as a child, except Jimmy had brown hair, not red.) The main character in my murder mystery is loosely based on a realtor I know. | ||
| Memories of fighting with my brother have given me a lot of story ideas. (We like each other now.) | ||
| Are you from
Galveston? No, but I have visited the island many times and done research there. I was born and raised in Dallas. For the last 20 years, I’ve lived in Austin. Recently, however, I discovered an interesting fact about my family. My grandmother’s family came from the Galveston area and made headstones for a living. They may have even been there during the big hurricane. I plan to research those relatives the next time I visit Galveston. |
| Were you ever in a hurricane? No, but I am a huge chicken so I had no trouble imagining how scary a hurricane could be. I also thought back to my childhood in Dallas, a town where tornadoes occasionally visit. When the storm sounded really bad, my family would go into the hallway at the center of our house. I am also a terrible swimmer, which helped me visualize how frightened people must have been during the 1900 hurricane when water covered the roofs of their houses. |
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How long
does it take you to write a book? I spent two years researching and writing my first book, Galveston’s Summer of the Storm. My second book, a murder mystery for adults, is twice as long and took the same amount of time to write. This means I’m either getting faster or spending less time raiding the refrigerator. |
| Are
you rich now that you’ve published a book? Not yet. I received my first royalties from my book five months after the book was released. This was more than two years after I finished the book. Most writers work at other jobs to make money. I’m still writing freelance articles to help pay the bills. |
| What
was the first story you published? When I was a junior in high school, I wrote an article about a new roller coaster in Dallas. It appeared in my high school newspaper, The Byline. In the years since, I’ve written everything from restaurant reviews and captions, to stories about insurance, eye surgery and break-dancing. |
This story about a roller coaster is the first article of mine published. |
