Today, while sitting on the back porch with my younger daughter (who is autistic along with some other significant challenges), I had a moment… You know the kind of moment I’m talking about? The kind when you are SO TIRED. My sweet girl has some severe communication challenges, so when she asks me the same question a dozen times in five minutes, I feel like corn kernels in a sizzling skillet. My insides want to burst because it’s HARD. It’s not fair, and I wish I could help her.
Why am I telling you this, and what does it have to do with an interview with author Kristen Joy Wilks?
Funny you should ask. As in…funny.
We need humor. At least I do. How about you? Have you ever had a bad day but then you read or watch something that makes you laugh and you feel lighter?
Yeah, me too.
Which is why I wanted to highlight Kristen’s work. Although she has walked through some truly tough times, she has a gift for finding the lighter side and bringing it to us in books. So…
Who is Kristen Joy Wilks?
Kristen Joy Wilks lives in the beautiful Cascade Mountains with her camp director husband, three teenage sons, and a large and slobbery Newfoundland dog. She has blow-dried a chicken, fought epic Nerf battles instead of washing dishes, and discovered a smuggled gardener snake in the bubble bath. Her writing has appeared in Nature Friend, Clubhouse, Thriving Family, Keys for Kids, The Christian Journal, Splickety, Spark, and Havok and has even won awards. Kristen writes about the humor and grace found amidst the detritus of life. Try Chicken Crossing or Dandelion Floofums for free by signing up for her newsletter at kristenjoywilks.com.
Kristen and I first met at an American Christian Fiction Writer conference a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I was chatting with a writing mentor about how I needed a critique partner, and Kristen walked past at that exact moment. My mentor pointed to Kristen. “Her name tag says she writes young adult like you. Go ask her right now.”
Despite feeling terrified, I did it. Just walked up to her and asked. That dare from my mentor began a dear friendship that has spanned over a decade.
Since then Kristen has published several books in the genres of romance, young adult, and children’s books. And she has much more in store, planning to keep us laughing along the way. After all, her motto is:
“I promise you a kiss, a concussion, and a crazed animal in every book!”
And, as Kristen also says:
So, Kristen, why did the chicken cross the road?
The machinations of poultry are difficult to decipher. Add an infuriating youth pastor, a terrifying crash at highway speeds, and trap-building kids too bored for their own good and you have something a little more serious than a knock-knock joke.
After the local librarian foolishly agrees to haul a trailer full of chickens over the pass, an unexpected crash sends fifteen beloved hens scattering into the wilderness. Shelby and the exasperating Jack must locate, capture, and return the chickens to his nephew before the talent show at the boy’s new school on Monday. The problem: chickens are incredibly difficult to catch. Especially when dispersed throughout the wild. When they take refuge in a coop occupied by twenty identical hens and guarded by multiple NO TRESPASSING signs and a pair of bored mountain children who have been watching way too much TV, tensions rise and feathers fly. Can Shelby thwart an alarming collection of unlikely traps and find the chickens before they are devoured? Imagination and ingenuity go so very wrong in this epic clash of inventive child verses accidental chicken thief.
If you liked Jen Turano’s Flights of Fancy, Pepper Basham’s Authentically Izzy, or Bethany Turner’s Plot Twist you’ll love this book!
Here’s my full interview. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
JD: Where do you get your ideas?
Usually, ideas come from the weird things that happen in everyday life. Like that time a squirrel rampaged in our house and targeted my pillow (for poos) specifically because I had stopped feeding it in the warm summer months. Or my grandparents story about a motorcycle rider driving through a herd of bison at Yellowstone, boldly facing 2,000lb beasts known to trample with nothing but a motorcycle helmet and pure nerve.
JD: You use a lot of humor in your books. Where do you come up with some of your zany situations? How do you create humor on the page? (Is it physical actions, misunderstandings, or something totally different?)
I try to take note of the funny things that happen in everyday life. Like that time I was eating sardines for lunch, spilled fish oil on my jeans, and spent the rest of the day smelling like a warm can of tuna. Or the time my husband was looking at something in the attic, tripped, and ended up with one leg through our ceiling just hanging above our heads in the living room.
JD: You live in a unique place. Do tell…what’s it like to live off the grid? What are some ways you use your home setting in your writing?
It is only recently that I’ve begun to use my experiences living off-grid in my writing. You see, it is normal to me. We moved here before the term off-grid was coined. My grandparents started Camas Meadows Bible Camp on a stretch of undeveloped land in the 70’s. We plow our own roads in the winter, provide our own power with a generator and bank of batteries, pump our own water, and have to drive around bull elk as they bugle in the middle of the road every autumn, waiting to fight a rival. My most recent book does have several of our pet chicken stories blended into all the fictional craziness. This includes that time I had to locate my middle son’s chicken in the dark among a bunch of identical birds by patting her on the back and listening for a “honking cluck”. I also included some of the many traps my brother and I made in the forest just in case robbers/pirates attacked the house like in Home Alone or Swiss Family Robinson!
JD: What are some ways you bring setting alive for the reader?
I try to focus on one small detail in the setting that is unique to that location and describing that thoroughly to draw the reader into the setting.
JD: You’ve written about some places you haven’t visited. How do you research locations and bring that to the page?
Yes! I loved researching fun local recipes for Athens Ambuscade! Researching a location that is unfamiliar can be difficult. I read articles on Greek cuisine, both what one finds in a restaurant and what I normally prepare in a home. I interviewed people who had visited Athens as tourists and also people who lived in Greece and enjoyed the area as locals. This provided wonderful information about the scent of the earth and foliage up on the acropolis as well as other important details like the smell of lemon and orange trees lining the streets in Athens and the problem of stray pets. I looked at travel sites for tourists and read about the complaints locals had about tourists. Warnings about wearing slick shoes on the white marble of the ancient citadel and complaints about crazy driving and smog down in the city. I created my own recipes using a mash-up of multiple versions of the same dish and taste tested the results. Research took time, but was well worth the effort and actually gave me several plot elements as my story took shape.
JD: What themes do you gravitate toward and why?
God’s care during hard circumstances, everything going wrong all at once, and rampaging animals. One, I love animals! Two, everything does indeed seem to go wrong all at once, especially when you live off-grid and are in charge of your own electricity. Three, we have been down incredibly dark roads, but God provides tender care and even humor right smack in the middle of it all!
JD: How do you make your characters seem alive and come off the page?
Humor and sarcasm can really bring characters alive. At least for me. With three teenage sons and one pesky husband, my life is full of sarcasm, ha! Also, discovering what really bothers the character and putting those things in their path regularly. It really stretches the character’s patience and shows you who they are inside. Plus, it is wicked fun!
JD: You’ve helped me up the emotion in scenes. What is a tip for making the reader feel what the character is feeling?
Don’t say what the character is feeling, show that emotion on the page. The stronger the emotion, the less you should talk about it and the more you should paint a picture of it for the reader.
JD: You write some romance, so how do you infuse the page with romantic tension while keeping the tone light and the rating PG?
It has been over 200 years since Pride and Prejudice was published and yet it is almost universally considered the finest romance of all time. The last time I read it, I noticed how the characters don’t touch. Yes, they dance. However, it is just presumed that they touch while dancing. Ms. Austen does not talk about physical touch. There isn’t a kiss. They don’t even hold hands. Yes, they do in the movie, but not in the book. Yet, she causes the reader to fall in love with her hero. I read this book every year and I fall in love every single time. It is magic! It is not an attractive body or scintillating lovemaking which cause people to fall in love. We love Darcy for who he is, what he sacrifices for the woman he loves, and who he becomes in order to rescue her and her family. So, I try to take a page from the finest romance of all time and take a long hard look at who my characters are and what character journey will cause my readers to fall for them.
JD: What is your process for beginning a project? Are you a pantser (outlines are for suckers!) or a plotter (gimme some highlighters and a chart!)? If you outline, is there a method you’d recommend?
I started out as a pantser and the results were very confusing. Slowly, I have developed the style of outlining that works best for me. I usually start with a funny story or circumstance. Then, I imagine the types of people who would be most challenged or annoyed by that circumstance. Then I use the six or seven point outline from the book Story Engineering by Larry Brooks. Warning, he goes on and on about why he is right and you are wrong in this book and so I skipped a lot of it to get to the info I needed, ha! Then I use the fifteen beat outline system from the book Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. Then I might put my story into the three act, four part, eight segment outline from Stealing Hollywood: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors by Alexandra Sokoloff if I need more detail in my outline. Then I will do a simple chapter outline. I put either a scene or a sequel or both into each chapter. For a scene, I show goal, conflict, and disaster. For a scene, I have the characters reacting to all of that craziness from the previous scene. Once I have something written down for each chapter, I can start my rough draft. I usually end up adding a few chapters as I write because they just show up out of thin air, ha! I fast draft and it usually takes me about a month to get the rough draft down and then at least a year to edit it until I’m happy with the results.
JD: What is the most unusual place you’ve gotten one of your writing ideas?
My grandmother once had a horse who went sledding, on purpose, on her back with all four hooves up in the air. She would hike up a hill and then slide down, again and again. I really need to put this into a story and soon!!!
JD: What advice would you give to pre-published writers?
Write!!! That is the only way to build your gift. Write short stories, long stories, fiction and non-fiction. Get it critiqued by writer friends and make changes and then write something new. Also, read!!!
