Alison Gieschen – Author Interview
1. What inspired you to start writing?
Life got rough for me in my teenage years. I had to leave the hundred-acre farm I grew up on, all my friends, most of my animals, and everything I knew and loved. I was a transplant. I moved from upstate New York to North Carolina in the 9th grade and was bullied horribly because I was a northern girl, thrust into the heart of a very Southern state. Writing was my solace. I kept a journal and wrote down my thoughts, fears, and dreams, and poured everything I was feeling into words so I could shut that book and take away the pain. One day, in the tenth grade, I had to write an essay. I submitted it to my teacher not thinking much about what I had written. Apparently, my teacher was blown away. She wrote a huge A++ on the front of the paper and a long response on the back. She told me that my writing was beyond my years and that my essay was thought-provoking and brilliant. It was at that moment I knew I was meant to be a writer.
2. Is writing your full-time career?
I went to college to become a writer. I completed my bachelor’s in English and thought perhaps I would like to be a journalist. I tried in vain to break into journalism but every door I tried to open was locked. During that time, I met the man of my dreams and we got married. My first baby was born a year later. Motherhood took precedence over my life as I had two more babies over the next three years. I still loved writing, so I decided to mix children and my writing and became a school teacher. I started out teaching high school English but found that most kids that age were apathetic about writing. It was soul-sucking. I made my way to the younger grades and became a writing specialist for elementary school. I loved it. I sparked the imaginations of young, impressionable human beings and did my best to foster a love of writing.
Currently, writing is my secondary job. My main job is getting around the world on a 43-foot sailboat. My husband and I sold everything we owned and are circumnavigating the globe. We have been out for seven years and have finally reached the Pacific Ocean. The good news is that I have lots of time to write. I have written several manuscripts that are sitting unpublished. Writing is the easy part for me, publishing is the hard part. I have self-published four books, but I have finally found a home with Defiance Press. I’m hoping to continue this journey with Defiance and eventually get all my books in print. They range from children’s books to epic sagas about our adventures at sea. I also have a blog and YouTube channel. I spend many hours on the keyboard of my computer, writing, editing, and producing images and words.
3. What is the most surprising thing you discovered while writing your books?
What surprises me most about my writing is the organic way in which my stories grow. I have an idea for a story. I sit down at the computer. I begin to type and the story plays in my head like a movie. I simply write it down. I can’t explain how this happens and sometimes, I am amazed by the plot twists, recurring themes, and intricacies that develop of their own accord. I become obsessed with the story and life takes a back burner. The story that develops seems to have a mind of its own and it takes over me, consumes me, and my fingers can barely keep up with the scenes unfolding in my mind. My latest book, The Seven, required extensive research as my characters originated from all corners of the globe. As they were created, I had to know the truth behind where they lived, the facts about their occupations, and their cultures. Everything about their fictional lives is steeped in factual information. This was a deviation from my normal writing process but adding the factual details enhanced my understanding of who these people were and embedded even more vivid details into the movie playing before me. Writing The Seven, was an epic and surreal experience.
4. Are there any secrets from the book (that aren’t in the blurb), you can share with your readers?
The Seven is fiction, but for me, this book is based on many realities. Each character and location has a personal connection to my life. Many of the descriptions of the locations are places I have been. The beauty of these places left an indelible print on my memory. Writing the scenes from where they lived was as easy as closing my eyes and describing the picture that unfolded in my mind. Some of the characters are purely a work of my imagination, others are patterned from people I have known or read about. What is consistent throughout the seven people is that I have either been to the location they are from, or I developed a character from someone I have known. This provided me with a personal relationship and connection to each of the seven stories.
5. Are you working on anything at the present you would like to share with your readers about?
If you love adventure stories, I published the epic saga of the first five years of our sailing journey, Riding the Waves of Reality: Tales of Turmoil and Triumph. It is available on Amazon. I have completed a book about the next leg of our journey, sailing the Mediterranean. The manuscript is complete and will be the next book in the queue. I also have a children’s book almost ready for the printers. A seven-time international award-winning illustrator is illustrating it. She only takes two books a year to illustrate as she also has a corporate job. She loved my story “Seanna”, a coming-of-age story about a young mermaid, so she agreed to be the illustrator. Seanna is a story that incorporates my obsession with mermaids with my love of the sea and life beneath the ocean. Yes, I went so far as to give my daughter the middle name of “Ariel” (from The Little Mermaid).
6. Have you ever been on any sports teams? If so, what sport?
The hundred-acre farm in upstate New York I was taken away from was a horse farm. I lived and breathed horses most of my life. They are still present as my sailboat has a huge horse head on the spinnaker, and is named Equus, (Latin for horse), so even after selling the horse farm my husband and I built and lived on for 30 years, I am now carried by my sea pony. That being said, for the thirty years I was married and raised my children, I had a very successful equestrian program in the sport of equestrian vaulting. One of my books on Amazon, Julias Vaulting Dream, is an introduction to the sport of vaulting through the eyes of a child. Our little team was started with just a few of my traditional riding students who wanted to try vaulting. From there, it bloomed into the largest team on the East Coast of the US. My athletes and horses dominated the East Coast competitions, so we branched out and competed nationally, and then, internationally. I attended two World Equestrian Games (WEG), 2010 and 2018. WEG is the Olympics of the equestrian world and is held every four years like the Olympics. My job was to lounge the horse for the vaulters, the horse and I were a team. The riders could only shine if we did our job flawlessly. The crowning moment was in 2018 when my daughter, (yes, my little mermaid) placed 8th in the world.
7. Share something your readers wouldn’t know about you.
I have fear issues. I have PTSD. It wasn’t the trauma of being bullied in high school. On our maiden voyage across the Atlantic, our first ocean crossing, we got caught in a horrible storm. It was the perfect storm scenario, two fronts converging on us from opposite directions, trapping us in its chaos. As the weather deteriorated, the clouds closed in, the winds built in intensity; so did the waves. Within hours, we had twenty-foot waves crashing on the deck of the boat. Things went downhill fast. Our dinghy, which was strapped to rails on the front of the boat, was ripped from the deck. It crashed through the lifelines but was still tethered, threatening to demast our boat. I had to watch with horror as my husband had to go out on deck and cut it free. The giant waves loomed above us like monsters waiting to drag us and our boat to a watery grave. He managed to cut it free and I watched as it was swept away in the blink of an eye. I knew if my husband didn’t make it back to the safety of the cockpit, he would be swept away just as quickly, and I would be alone, in the middle of the Atlantic in the tempest. It was horrifying. Thus, the PTSD. Now, when the winds begin to increase beyond what is predicted, the waves start growing larger than anticipated, my heart begins to pound and those memories come flooding back. It is a demon I have to squash as the rest of our voyage has had no unpredicted storms that have trapped us. While we have had our share of chaos, we have always prevailed. The story, and a surprise encounter to help me with my fears, are in my book Riding the Waves of Reality.
8. What is the best part of your day?
Sunrise. Hands down. I do love sunsets, don’t get me wrong. They are colorful and glorious. With every gorgeous sunset, especially when you are crossing an ocean for weeks at a time, there seems to be a quiet and peacefulness at sunset. The wind starts to settle, the waves become gentle, and the entire horizon is a brilliant palate of colors painted above a cerulean blue sea. We often toast to a successful day as we watch nature’s display, but before you know it, night closes in like a giant black curtain. It always has to follow, it is inevitable. For me, sunrises are just as beautiful. I’m often on watch for sunrise. I plan it that way. I wait in anticipation of the moment the giant yellow orb emerges like a giant egg yolk from the surface of the ocean. Then, as she breaks the seal, the colors start to fill in. Like fingers, the colors creep into the sky, reflecting around the clouds and merging on the horizon. Every second I stare transfixed, the colors are changing, moving, transforming their palates into different shades. As I sit there staring in wonder at the miracle in front of me, I have to remind myself to breathe. I take a huge breath, knowing I am the only person on the planet, at that moment, sitting on my boat in the middle of the ocean, with that view. Unlike the sunset, this is the dawning of a new day, with light, sunshine, and untold adventures.
9. Favorite quote.
“I do believe you understand what you think I said. But, I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Robert McCloskey, an American diplomat and spokesperson. He made this statement while speaking about the complexities of communication, particularly in international diplomacy. It’s a clever way of pointing out how easily things can be misinterpreted, even if both parties think they understand each other.
10. Favorite artist and favorite song?
Counting Stars by OneRepublic
“Counting Stars”
Lately, I’ve been, I’ve been losing sleep
Dreaming about the things that we could be
But, baby, I’ve been, I’ve been praying hard
Said no more counting dollars, we’ll be counting stars
Yeah, we’ll be counting stars
I see this life like a swinging vine
Swing my heart across the line
And in my face is flashing signs
Seek it out and ye shall find
Old but I’m not that old
Young but I’m not that bold
And I don’t think the world is sold
On just doing what we’re told
I feel something so right doing the wrong thing
And I feel something so wrong doing the right thing
I couldn’t lie, couldn’t lie, couldn’t lie
Everything that kills me makes me feel alive
