Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Sigrid Macdonald, author of Be Your Own Editor, Getting Hip and, her most recent debut fiction, Finding Lisa.

Originally from New Jersey, Sigrid lived for almost 30 years in Ottawa, Ontario, and currently resides in Weston, Florida.

She has been a freelance writer for years. Her works have appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper; the Women's Freedom Network Newsletter; the American magazine Justice Denied; The Toastmaster; and the Anxiety Disorders Association of Ontario Newsletter.

Sigrid is a social activist who has spent decades working on the seemingly disparate issues of women's rights and wrongful convictions; she has worked at the Women's Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey and Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and was a member of AIDWYC, The Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted. She owns an editing and manuscript evaluation company called Book Magic. Sigrid is a public speaker and a member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Ottawa Independent Writers, the American Association of University Women, and the Editors' Association of Canada. 

Norm: Good day, Sigrid, and thanks for participating in our interview.

How did you get started in writing? What keeps you going?

Sigrid: Hi Norm, thanks so much for having me.

I started writing in high school. The name Sigrid is Icelandic. My mother was reading a trilogy by author Sigrid Undset called Kristin Lavransdatter when she was pregnant with me. She named me Sigrid and my sister Kristin. When I was a senior in high school, I wrote an essay about the Icelandic sagas, and it was accepted for publication in a magazine in Iceland. 

Norm: What served as the primary inspiration for Finding Lisa?

Sigrid: I knew a woman by the name of Louise, who fell in love with a convicted felon. Nine months after she helped this man get out of prison early, and he moved in to live with her, she went missing, and I was part of the search team that went looking for her.

Lisa is a completely fictionalized version of Louise, and Tara, my protagonist, is best friends with Lisa, whereas I was simply an acquaintance of Louise's. But her disappearance affected me profoundly for many years.

Norm: What was the time-line between the time you decided to write your book and publication? What were the major events along the way? 

Sigrid: Louise disappeared in 1995, and I published the first version of Finding Lisa under a different name, in 2005. Then I wanted to change the story to make it more of a mystery, so I revised significant passages of the book including the ending and published the latest version with a publisher in Texas in July 2019. That's quite a long time between the inspiration and the final product, but I'm much happier with this version than I was with the 2005 version.

Norm: What purpose do you believe your story serves, and what matters to you about the story? As a follow-up, did you write the story to express something you believe, or was it just for entertainment? 

Sigrid: I'm a voracious reader; I read about eight books a month for pleasure, including audiobooks but not including the books that I read for my editing and manuscript evaluation work. So, of course, I wanted my book to have entertainment value, and I did my best to inject humor and elements of surprise whenever appropriate, but my entire life has been devoted to social activism.

I did my BA in psychology and graduate studies in social work. I've always cared about what makes people tick and why some people choose the wrong paths in life. One of my favorite authors is Jodi Picoult because she always picks a social issue to discuss in her novels from the plight of the elephant in the wild to boys with autism to school shootings.

In Finding Lisa, I wanted to address several topics: addiction, recidivism, campus feminism, working mothers, and our youth-oriented culture. Is it smart to date or fall in love with a man who has a history of addiction or violence against women even if he is clean and sober and has paid his price to society? Are campus feminists on the right track by creating safe spaces and trigger warnings and teaching young women that many if not most men are potential rapists or harassers? Having been involved with the women's movement for decades, I went out on a limb and really took a poke at the women's collective in my book. They act quite unfairly and are unnecessarily biased against men.

Last, I wanted to look at the way our culture romanticizes youth and makes a woman over the age of 40 feel old. In Hollywood, we constantly see older men being paired with much younger women and women over 40  restricted to roles that are much less sexy than those available to 34-year-olds. My character is obsessed with turning 40 and has a wild, passionate crush on a young man who is all wrong for her. Because Tara is so preoccupied with her fear of getting old, she misses several critical details about her life that are right in front of her nose. And suffice to say, she is not a good mom or partner in this state.

Norm: What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for readers who finish your book? 

Sigrid: I hope my readers will stop to think about how we should treat men who have been incarcerated and have a history of violence. When they get out of prison, should we incorporate them back into our lives, the workforce, and our hearts? Is this the kind and Christian way to behave, or is it reckless and self-sabotaging to take a risk on someone who has committed an evil act? And I hope that women will come away thinking that they're great no matter how old they are – 50, 75, or 103. We need to revere aging and wisdom the way Eastern cultures have always done. And by the way, I had a much easier time turning 60 than 40 because long ago, I changed my perspective to view aging as an inevitable process that brings many rewards as well as some losses.

Norm: What was the most difficult part of writing this book? 

Sigrid: The hardest part was getting the legal part right, so I had several interviews with the Nepean Police force. They were most accommodating.  

Norm: Do you write your book more by logic or intuition or some combination of the two? Please summarize your writing process. 

Sigrid: I've dictated all my books and short stories with a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking. And somehow, words just pour out of my mouth. It's like they're being channeled. I love to write, and I start by getting my main thoughts down. Then I go back and fill in the details. I rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Then I put my material away, and when I think I'm going to start screaming if I ever have to see it again, I start all over. I read it again, make revisions, and then I'm done. And I love every minute of the process. If I won the lottery and never had to do a thing from now until my passing, I would write every day.

Norm: What do you believe defines a character, and how does this apply to your principal character, Tara Richards? As a follow-up, are the characters in your book based on people you know or have encountered, or are they strictly fictional?

Sigrid: My characters are all entirely fictional, but I did give them a few of my own idiosyncrasies, and sometimes, I incorporated conversations that I had heard at dinner parties or elsewhere. For example, some of the dialogue with patients in the hospital, which was meant to be amusing, was based on things my dad said when he was dying of leukemia. A few racist remarks are verbatim arguments that I had with people who spoke derogatorily about the indigenous population. Lisa's old-world Italian family was inspired by many of the Italians I knew in New Jersey. But in general, I make characters up.

I like to define a character by strengths and weaknesses. All my characters are deeply flawed, and Tara is no exception. I also like to give them difficult choices. Toward the end of the book, Tara has to make a very tough decision. I illustrate this on the front cover of the book where a woman is standing in front of two paths on the road. Which one will she take?

What fascinates but also frustrates me is that several people have said to me that they were surprised that Tara was not always ethical because they viewed me as ethical. And I said, "What makes you think that I'm Tara? Just because I wrote the book in first person doesn't mean that I have anything to do with that made-up character!" She is not me yet a number of readers, particularly those who know me, insist on believing that I have created some alter ego of myself and had her doing things that I wouldn't normally do. Nothing could be further from the truth. The character is not me. Some readers have been disappointed in Tara's choices, but I wanted her to be flawed. It's important to me that she's not some Pollyanna.

Norm: It is said that writers should write what they know. Were there any elements of the book that forced you to step out of your comfort zone, and if so, how did you approach this part of the writing? 

Sigrid: Oh, yes! I am not a pool player so I had to ask a young guy if he would shoot pool with me a couple of times, and I also conferred with the staff at a local billiard hall. I know virtually nothing about hockey, so I consulted frequently with my boyfriend at the time about the playoffs and what he thought about them. If I feel out of my depth, I look it up online, or I go directly to a real-world source.

Norm: What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating Finding Lisa?

Sigrid: I'm accustomed to writing non-fiction, and I have never felt non-fiction writes itself. My years of academia weren't a struggle, but they weren't a breeze either. But when I started writing fiction, something almost mystical occurred. My characters began to write themselves. They became real to me. I could see them on a big screen. I would talk to them at night and ask them what they wanted to watch on TV, what were their favorite foods, what did they care about in the world? I was surprised that fiction was far easier to write than non-fiction.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and Finding Lisa?

Finding Lisa is available through Total Recall Press on Amazon in softcover and on Kindle and Amazon Canada

Norm: What is next for Sigrid Macdonald?

Sigrid: I have been toying with the idea of writing a sequel to Finding Lisa. I'd like to portray Tara as a much more content 49-year-old, but as you know, I didn't wrap everything up neatly at the end of the book, so if Tara does ever re-emerge, she will have a new set of challenges to face after she has resolved her fear of aging and feelings about the disappearance of her friend.

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, what question do you wish that someone would ask about your book, but nobody has? 

Sigrid: I wish somebody would ask, "Sig, are you a feminist? If so, are you aware that you gave your women's collective a rather unflattering title – that Women Against Rape forms the acronym WAR?" The answer to both questions is yes, but the response to the first question is conditional: yes but. I am a second wave feminist, and I'm not thrilled with the direction that third-wave feminism, a.k.a. campus feminism, has taken. I feel that radical feminism has gone too far and often unfairly maligns men. I did deliberately make many digs at my fictional women's collective because I'm not a huge fan of political correctness or assuming that all men are guilty of (fill in the blank) unless proven otherwise. Consequently, I call myself a dissident feminist, and I particularly enjoy authors like Christina Hoff Sommers, who wrote The War Against Boys.

Norm: Thanks once again, and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

Sigrid: Thanks, Norm, for reviewing my book and for conducting this interview. I've always admired your work at bookpleasures.com.