Friday Night Reads: Sarah Angleton
This week I'll be hosting my twenty-first #FriNightReads! It's where I read the first chapter from an indie author, live on my author Facebook page. This Friday I'll be live-reading from Sarah Angleton's Launching Sheep & Other Stories. It's a quirky journey through often hilarious historical footnotes. Now, here's more from this week's indie author...
How did you first start writing?
I think I started to take writing seriously in the third grade. That’s when I wrote my first award-winning story,
“The Secret of Devil’s Eye Canyon,” as a teacher-required entry into the Illinois Young Author’s Competition. The story was, well, maybe not brilliant, but also maybe not bad for a third grader. I became a state finalist, which meant I got to attend my first ever writing conference (for kiddos) on the campus of Illinois State University. Of course, I thought I was pretty big stuff. And I fell in love with the craft.
My mother, an avid reader and a demanding editor, encouraged me to read literary fiction starting when I was pretty young, and never let me turn in a paper that hadn’t been critiqued at the sentence level. I loved the reading. I didn’t always love the editing. But I did grow to appreciate it as I got older and discovered that not only was this writing thing more than just a passing phase, it was also hard work. And it was worth it.
Why do you love it?
There are probably a lot of reasons I still love it. The biggest is that I have never lost my love of reading. Just getting wrapped up in the lives of well-drawn characters or imaginative settings, or even diving into the mind and passion of a nonfiction author for a while, really feels like a wonderful privilege. I love to be able to provide that experience for others. And, more selfishly, while reading a book takes a little while, writing a book takes a good long while. I really enjoy every single step in the process of bringing characters and stories to life because I get to spend so much time with them. I even enjoy the painstaking, sentence-level editing. (Thanks, Mom!)
More on Sarah:
Sarah Angleton is the author of two historical novels, Gentleman of Misfortune and Smoke Rose to Heaven. She is also the author of the humor collection