Interview with Karly Lane - author of 'For Once In My Life'
PHOTO OF KARLY LANE
Interview with Karly Lane - author of 'For Once In My Life'
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About the author:
Karly Lane is an Australian author who lives and breathes rural Australia. She writes a wide variety of rural and women's fiction. She lives on the beautiful Mid North Coast of NSW in the valley, her family has called home, for five generations. Karly has eighteen novels published with Allen & Unwin, with an nineteenth due for release next May. Visit her website for more info & contact.
Karly also writes under K B Mowle and has genres of fantasy and Romantic suspense available for order on her web site.
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INTERVIEW
A warm welcome to Karly Lane: guest author today! Can you tell us what inspired For Once in My Life?
After an unexpected divorce in my early fifties, my adult children were jokingly teasing me about setting me up on a dating app, which I thought was horrific…for me, but it sounded like a great idea for a book!
One of the themes in your novel is ageism. Does society have a different view of women who date younger men as opposed to men who date younger women?
I didn’t start out thinking about this as a theme, it somehow just became one, as things usually unfold as I go, however, I feel that it has been an issue in the past, maybe nowadays, not so much. Women seem to be making all their own rules with a lot more ease.
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Why did you decide to make Jenny a nurse? Name three qualities about her that stand out.
As I was writing, I found that there were some little bits and pieces of Jenny’s life that closely resembled my own and the nursing thing just seemed to fit the storyline. I had gone through a similar experience, after having my children fairly early and marrying young, my career aspirations really didn’t kick off until I was in my thirties.
Jenny is a nurturer, and this quality often makes a good nurse.
She is incredibly resilient.
She is fiercely loyal.
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There’s a romance in this novel (of course!). After Jenny goes on a few failed ‘blind’ dates set up by her daughters through a dating app, she begins to notice Nick the barman. What is it that makes him more appealing to her?
Maybe it was the fact that she’d just experienced three very different strangers she didn’t pick for herself, and who she probably would never have chosen. Nick would have caught her eye and was someone a lot better suited to her, personality wise, then the disastrous dates she’d just experienced.
Which scene was your favourite to write in For Once in My Life and why?
I really enjoyed writing the scenes that involved Beth, Jenny’s best friend and her daughters. There’s something really special about having a best friend who knows everything about you—good and bad! And adult daughters are your reward for not strangling them when they were terrible teenagers!
What message do you hope readers take away from reading For Once in My Life?
I’m not sure there really is a message in it, but maybe if someone is going through a similar thing—divorce later in life and trying to navigate romance after a long time out of it, that they might realise they’re not alone. Hopefully, they might get a chuckle out of someone else going through the ups and downs of online dating apps!
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The title of your novel and the story within reminds me of Steve Wonder’s song For Once in My Life. Is there a connection or is it just a coincidence?
It really does seem to fit doesn’t it. But it was just a coincidence—my last few titles have accidently followed song titles as well, with really no rhyme or reason, and this one was the same.
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For Once in My Life (Song by Stevie Wonder)
(A clip from his Lyrics)
For once in my life, I have someone who needs me
Someone I've needed so long
For once, unafraid, I can go where life leads me
Somehow I know I'll be strong
For once I can touch what my heart used to dream of
Long before I knew
Ooh, someone warm like you
Would make my dreams come true
Yeah, yeah, yeah (For once in my life)
For once in my life, I won't let sorrow hurt me
Not like it's hurt me before (Not like it's hurt me before)
For once, I have something I know won't desert me
I'm not alone anymore (I'm not alone anymore)
For once I can say, "This is mine, you can't take it"
As long as I know I have love, I can make it…
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You are a very prolific author with many books to your credit. Do you ever get writer’s block? If so, what activities help get the creative flow happening again?
It happens occasionally. My writer’s block is more that I’ve written myself into a corner or the plot suddenly has gaping holes in it because I don’t really plan anything. To fix it, I tend to start writing another book or go to another one I’ve started earlier to stop thinking too much about it. The problem usually clears itself up once you stop overthinking.
When did you realise you wanted to be a writer? Was there a special person, course, event or book that inspired you to take that direction?
I was always a huge reader, and one day, I simply ran out of the kind of books I liked reading, so I decided to write my own! I loved writing stories during English at school, but I don’t think I ever really thought about becoming a writer when I was growing up. I think it was just a natural progression from avid reader to writer.
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Please share a bit on your publishing journey and your writing style? Are you a pantser, plotter or a combination of both?
I started writing romantic suspense before moving on to Australian set family and community based storylines. I was extremely lucky that rural fiction was just kicking off in Australian publishing and they were looking for books set in small country towns.
I am definitely a pantser. Although at some point in the story, I do have to put in, side notes on my word doc to keep track of the timeline. That’s about the extent of my plotting.
Name two passions (outside of writing) that you actively engage in that fulfil your need to do something positive for yourself or for the world you live in? (It can be anything— including animal or environmental related).
Animals are my passion. I’m a member of the Guy Fawkes Heritage Horse Association and have a number of captured wild horses from the Guy Fawkes national park. It’s an incredible organisation—rehoming wild horses so they aren’t culled from their home in the national park where they’ve lived for over a hundred years.
I also have rescue pets. I think they do something positive for me instead of the other way around.
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What is your favourite place, a location you love, that inspires you creatively, emotionally and/or spiritually?
I love the New England area of NSW. It’s inspired a lot of my fictional settings and towns in past books. There’s something so peaceful and soothing about winter up there.
Do you have any new projects in the works and if so, can you give us a hint of what your next story is about?
I’ve got a couple on the go, but next May’s release is a bit of a switch, I’m setting my town in a rural, coastal town for a change. I think a lot of people who don’t live in small towns, have a slightly misguided idea of what a rural community actually is. There are lots of different rural areas in Australia, some are coastal, some are in the mountains, others are up north in the tropics, and there’s more inland and central. They take on all forms of landscapes and weather pattens. Some are drought prone, others have insane rainfall, but all have one thing in common—they’re small, close knit and usually isolated from larger cities and regional towns.
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