Make-Believe Mondays With Barbara Ferrer

This morning on Make-believe Mondays I'm pleased to introduce Barbara Ferrer, one of my friends from RWAonline. Barbara also writes as Caridad Ferrer for Pocket/MTV Books and her first YA novel, Adios To My Old Life, just hit the bookstores on July 4th.

Barbara, first, tell us a little bit about the manuscript you’re working on now.

Barbara: It's kind of the ultimate case of make-believe actually. It's about a girl who, when she goes off to college, decides to try to pass herself off as a Cuban girl because she thinks it'll make her appear more exotic and interesting. It takes the reinventing yourself for college scenario to a bit of an extreme.

Debra: I'm intrigued and wondering if she will be able to pull it off.

Mark Twain said, “You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” How do you fill your creative well to keep your imagination in focus?

Barbara: For me it's music. A song or piece of music will often act as a trigger which will bring scenes to me whole cloth. Music evokes in me such intense emotion and imagery, that I can't begin to imagine my writing process without it. Whether or not I'm actively working on a manuscript, I'm always on the lookout for music or simply listening to old favorites.

Debra: It's interesting how many authors listen to music when they write. The cadence or rhythm in some writing is very strong.

Is there a point when your characters begin to come alive and you can see and hear them?

Barbara: Absolutely. And it's usually about that point that I start losing sleep, because they Won't. Shut. Up.

Debra: That must be exhausting!

As a child did any particular book or author pull you into their imaginary world?

Barbara: To this day, Ruth Sawyer's "ROLLER SKATES" transports me to 1890s New York City. Rarely has a book ever made me laugh, cry, and want to BE a character, more than "ROLLER SKATES" made me want to be Lucinda. I think it's where my fascination with creating worlds that are based on "real" worlds comes from. I admire tremendously the people who can create whole worlds and cultures and civilizations, but I much prefer playing games of "What if?" with the known.

"What if" is the best game of all. Anything can happen!

Barbara, thank you for joining us here on this Make-believe Monday to share a little bit of the magic of writing with our readers.

You can visist Barbara at http://barbaraferrer.com and at http://www.caridadferrer.com