Maighread Mackay interview

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

When did your love of books begin?

From even before birth! My mom read to me when I was still in the womb, and it has carried on all my life.

When did you start to have the wish to become an author?

I’ve always written since I was a child. My mom was a poet, and I loved her work. In school, my favourite subject was English, and I loved writing stories as assignments. As my children came along, I wanted to give them something of their own from me, so I started to write short children’s stories. I never thought I could write a whole book, but I had a story to tell, so I went for it.

How have you found the process for becoming an author?

Daunting, frustrating, fun, exhilarating… so many different emotions. These days, you need to be many things if you wish to sell some books. Author, marketing person, salesperson, trade show personality, social media person, office manager to manage all your expenses and sales. It certainly isn’t for the faint hearted.

What would you say to those wanting to become an author?

You have a story to tell, so do it the very best you can. Join writing groups; take classes on writing; research, research, research; get a good editor to help you polish your work; edit, edit, edit. There is one group on FB that is an excellent source of help – 20books to 50K. The writing community is very helpful, so find other authors to talk about book stuff. Find your tribe.

Tell us about your book/books:

I have published 4 novels. They are: Stone Cottage, Murder at Mother’s, The Haunting of Hawk’s Ridge Hall and Finding Charli and are part of the Lake Scugog Mystery series. Since I am a Canadian Author, all the books are set in Canada and use Canadian English and spelling. The genre is magical realism. I like to describe it as the ‘what if’ of genres. You take an ordinary person who has an extraordinary experience and then see what happens. How does that experience change them (if it does) and what happens next? The stories in and of themselves are a great read, but they also have a little bit extra that may have the reader going “huh, never thought about it that way”. 

What do you love about the writing/reading community?

How helpful everyone is and willing to support other Authors, whether it be a retweet; a bit of advice for a new writer; help with some of the technical problems an Author may be having… just the all round support. Also, it’s great when our readers post a review of books. That really helps the Author to show their work and get new readers.

If you could say anything to your readers what would it be?

I hope you are willing to try my books and I’d love to hear from you. C’mon down the rabbit hole with me and let’s have some fun.

Where can people connect with you?

My website is: https://www.mhefferman.ca and I have a contact page on there. I will reply to anyone who contacts me.

My FB page is facebook.com/@maighreadmackay

Twitter is twitter.com/@maighread.mackay

Tiktok is tiktok.com/@maighread.mackay

Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/maighreadmackay