This week on a very special 10th edition of Finding Fiction Friday, I'm very excited to depart from the norm and talk a little nonfiction. Cynthia MacGregor is a prolific writer, with many books ranging from self-help to parenting to cookbooks and even the occasional novel. Not only that, but she's really a just plain nice person too, and boy does she keep busy. Please join me in welcoming Cynthia ... and first a little biographical info ...
Full-time
freelance writer/editor Cynthia MacGregor has over 100 published books to her
credit, 54 of them conventionally pubbed and the remainder e-books. She loves
to write—she even writes for a hobby as well as for a living. Notable in
“for-fun” writing are the dozen or so plays she’s written, all but the most
recent of which have been produced in at least one venue, although they have
not been money-makers for her. Besides writing books, she hires out her writing
and editing services and has written everything from web copy to promotional
video scripts to speeches to poems to ghostwritten books and blogs to
advertisements to…well “everything except grant proposals,” she says. Her
editing has encompassed books, magazines, business materials, and more. For
nearly two years she produced and hosted a TV show, SOLO PARENTING, on WHDT, a
South Florida station, and is hoping that in the future the station will
reinstate that show and/or another she has proposed to them. She lives in South
Florida with her Significant Other, enjoys cooking, and says, “There is no one
in the world I’d want to trade lives with.”
Cynthia, how did
you get started writing?
I’ve been writing
since I first learned to spell C-A-T. By the time I was nine I’d co-opted my
mother’s typewriter and kept it as a permanent fixture in my room. That same
year I wrote my first play, which was produced in camp that summer, and I still
remember the thrill after the final curtain when some counsellors in the
audience called, “Author! Author!”, I came out on stage, and they threw a
bouquet of wildflowers up onto the stage to me. At 15 I was doing what today
would be called interning—it wasn’t called that then—at the local weekly paper
in the community where I grew up (on New York’s Long Island), and I don’t even
remember what the first paid article was that I sold.
So let’s get
started by talking about your books. You
have written over 100 books in many different areas. But I’d like to know first about your first
book, and what it was like when you learned that book was going to be
published. What was it about and what
was that experience like?
In 1992 I was
editing a panoply of magazines for one publisher, working from home as a
freelance editor (independent contractor), and my then-best friend was
computer-typesetting the magazines, working with me in my home office. One day
she bemoaned the fact that Xmas vacation was approaching and she would be
required to keep her two then-young children entertained for two weeks while
school was out. This put a thought in my mind—why didn’t the publisher for whom
I was editing put out a one-shot magazine filled with activities moms could use
to keep their kids occupied? It was too late to get it out in time for Xmas
vacation, but we could aim at Easter. I would edit it, of course. I proposed it
to the publisher, but ultimately he nixed the idea. I was so taken with it,
however, that I determined to write it as a book if I couldn’t edit it as a
magazine.
This was before
the plethora of activities books that are available nowadays.
I wrote MOMMY,
THERE’S NOTHING TO DO and sent it off to three publishers, including Berkley,
one of the big houses in NY. Subsequently I got a call one day, “Is this
Cynthia MacGregor? This is Hillary Cige at Berkley Publishing. Is your book
MOMMY, THERE’S NOTHING TO DO still available? If it is, we’d like to make an
offer on it.”
I sprang up from
my chair in my home office and began leaping up and down in the air while
trying to keep my voice level and asked what her terms were, what the advance
was, what the royalty percent was, what pub date they envisioned—all while
trying to keep her from discerning that I was literally jumping for joy.
It pubbed in 1993
and was followed by two more activity books for Berkley, three for Citadel,
then three serious children’s books that tackle explaining tough topics (WHY DO
WE NEED ANOTHER BABY? WHY DO WE HAVE TO MOVE? WHY DO PEOPLE DIE?) for little
kids, then my six-book Abduction Prevention Library for young kids, and then
LOTS more books for adults (and a few more for kids).
We call this
“Finding Fiction Friday” and you have written a few fictional books, but it
seems you are very drawn to nonfiction.
How do you go about choosing what you are going to write about next?
I look to see what
topic might either fill a need or be particularly interesting to readers.
Is there a big
difference between writing fiction and nonfiction, from your experience?
Well, yeah!
Fiction requires more imagination; nonfiction requires more organization. Also
unless you know your subject pretty well nonfiction is going to require some
research, whereas I try to keep my fiction within bounds of what I know without
having to research arcane facts. If I were writing novels set in a different
time period or country I might have to do research, so as much as possible I
stick to familiar settings that I can write right out of my head without
needing to look stuff up. But the main difference is that I love writing
nonfiction MUCH more than fiction. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise since I
love READING nonfiction almost exclusively too. I rarely read novels.
Do you have any
other upcoming works or even just ideas bouncing around in your head?
I am gathering
information from individuals for another of my books that I don’t so much write
as collate people’s stories for and then edit them. I don’t want to say now
what it’s about. It’s the same kind of book as my MOM—IS THAT YOU? and LOST
LOVES REUNITED where people share their stories on a particular theme—the first
one I mentioned is reunions of adoptees with their biological families and the
title of the second one is self-explanatory. This book is another case of my
soliciting stories from real people on a specific topic, but I do not want to
divulge the topic yet.
What does your
family think of your writing career?
My family? Well,
my daughter has never said one way or the other. I’ve never discussed it with
my grandkids except for the oldest one, Justin, who has written a book himself
and keeps calling me for advice. My Significant Other is glad I’m following my
bliss but thinks I undercharge for the writing I do for clients—not talking
about books, now, but the other writing. My late mother was my biggest
fan—proud as could be. And that’s my whole family. (My dad died when I was just
14.)
You also have
other non-writing efforts that you are or have been active in. Tell us a bit about those.
Well, there’s
editing, there’s the TV show, and I think you’re probably thinking of one or
both of those, so that’s what I’ll answer about, although I’m also an ordained
minister. I don’t have a church but do lead services for the residents of an
assisted living facility on Sundays. And of course I perform the occasional
wedding, funeral, house blessing, and such.
The editing? Well,
back in the ’70s I was tapped to be theatre editor of a biweekly entertainment
publication in NYC, and eventually I was made full editor. Then in ’79 a
magazine publisher I was writing for asked me to edit a magazine for her. LOVE
GUIDE was a sexual how-to, not porny but helpful, instructive. LOVE GUIDE
failed, but the publisher kept me on as a copyeditor for some of her other mags
till a rival publisher hired me away to edit a mag for him, and that led to my
editing a slew of mags. All this was freelance work done from home—I was
telecommuting before that practice even had a name. I haven’t been a salaried
employee of anyone since the early ’60s. Although that’s about to change—a new
company that I think is gonna be the Next Big Thing hired me over a year ago to
edit and do some supervisory work for them when they launch, which hasn’t happened
yet—it’s been a long and laborious birth—but when the company launches I’ll be
working for them as a salaried worker although they will allow me to work from
home. My whole life is going to change when the company—Funn Networks—launches.
As for the TV
thing, that started, just like my first book did, with an idea for a magazine,
which I pitched to that same publisher. I thought SOLO PARENTING was a great
idea—there are so many single parents—mostly divorced but also widowed and
never-married—and I wanted to be the founding editor of the mag and have the
company I was editing for publish it. I came up with a proposal for it and
everything, but to do it right would require a serious investment, and the
publisher’s brother, who was his partner at the time, shot the idea down as too
risky. Well, I couldn’t take it to just any publisher—they’d swipe the idea and
give it to another editor to edit—but I did try two other publishers where I
had “ins,” but to no avail. So instead I started a website (now defunct),
TheSoloParent, I wrote a book, and ultimately I decided to try to turn the
concept into a TV show. I tried what I thought were all the local stations and
a number of networks to no avail, and then I learned of a local station I
hadn’t even known existed, WHDT, so I pitched the idea to them, and wonder of
wonders they said yes. So for nearly two years I produced and hosted SOLO
PARENTING, which was broadcast in South Florida, till the station ran into
money issues and canceled me. Meanwhile I had ANOTHER idea for ANOTHER TV show,
YOUNGER EVERY DAY, which they liked, but they had various not only financial
but technical issues. There is STILL a chance that they will move ahead with
one or the other or both shows some time in the future, but at the moment I’m
off the air.
To close the
interview, I have ten questions for you, plus one. Here they go!
- What is your favorite word? Don’t have one.
- What is your least favorite word? Don’t have one.
- What turns you on? A guy’s voice and personality.
- What turns you off? Body odor, bad breath, a guy who’s overbearing. But why are you asking me about my sex life?
- What sound or noise do you love? Music. Rain falling.
- What sound or noise do you hate? Someone talking angrily.
- What is your favorite curse word? Rats! Frick it!
- What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Video editor. Audio editor.
- What profession would you not like to do? Never really thought about it.
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? I do believe in God but don’t believe God is a person, a humanlike entity. If there is a heaven, I do not expect to be welcomed by a bearded million-years-old man. God is a spirit, a life force. God is in each of us and we are all in God. God just might be another name for the living universe. Whoever and whatever God is, He is not a little old bearded guy on a throne.
- What question have you never been asked, that you wish someone would ask you? “How would you like me to give you a million dollars?” Oh wait—those Nigerian scammers have already asked me that.
Cynthia, thanks so
much for spending time with us. Can you
let us know where to follow you, and where we can go to purchase your work?
My website is www.cynthiamacgregor.com. You can subscribe to my ezine, EZine Does
It, by writing to EZineDoesIt@cynthiamacgregor.com and putting SUBSCRIBE in the subject
field. It’s FREE, weekly, eclectic in content, but the “Note from the
Publisher” at the beginning of each issue has news of new releases and such. Go
to Amazon.com to buy my work (I am NOT the Cynthia MacGregor who wrote the
Irish joke book!). Many of my books were published by XoXoPublishing and you
can try going to www.xoxopublishing.com but the site’s been down and under repair
for a month or so already.
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Rudy and Trish are the main characters in our two published short stories in the "Evernight: Romance in a World of Darkness" anthologies. You can get to know them as well as get 23 other great stories! Here's where you can find them:
Fabulous interview!
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