INTERVIEW: C.S. Hale on ALL BAGS GO TO CLEVELAND

Do you have any tattoos?  Where? When did you get it/them? Where are they on your body?

I do have tattoos on my feet. Unfortunately they are radiation alignment tattoos. I got the first set about four years ago and the second set three years ago. They were able to reuse the second set this summer when I needed treatment for the new fibroids that showed up on the tendon in the arch of my foot. If I were to get tattoos of my choosing, it would be the links of barat leaves that my character Astrid had done on her arms in Fall From the Moon. Unfortunately, as a child I was witness to a rose on the boob tattoo that had stretched and deformed as the 70+ woman had aged. I’m still scarred by that image and hesitant to put ink on my body. I don’t want to scare people in my old age.

Is your life anything like it was two years ago?

*big sigh* Right now the answer feels like “no.” I also teach elementary so the pandemic has upended everything. If I ignore the mammoth changes that have resulted from that, it’s pretty much the same. I squeeze in writing in between all the classwork and homework I grade at night and on weekends and spend my summers holed up someplace, writing away longhand in a notebook.

How long have you been writing?

I fell in love with writing in first grade when I cut a picture of dancing strawberries out of a magazine and discovered that ANYTHING could happen, was possible, when you wrote. I didn’t start writing novels until 2009 when I figured out that the characters I’d been playing around with in my head for more than a year were actually a story. That one is still in a drawer but eventually will see the light of day when I have time to revisit it.

What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?

Just keep writing. Your skills don’t come all at once. There was a reason that Penguin held onto Cleveland for a year and didn’t want to say “no.” There was a reason they passed. My writing skills have vastly improved since I first wrote it, and that first edit post-drawer was painful. Write. Work on your craft by reading skill books, reading other’s work, and work with an editor or skilled feedback group. The more you are kindly ripped to shreds, the better your skills will become.

Tell us something about your newest release that is NOT in the blurb.

I was about halfway through writing Cleveland when Dave confessed to Angela that he has always been inspired by Stuart Little. My jaw dropped because Angela is Stuart – completely unlike the other members of her family. She needs to learn to go out and just DO things like Stuart. He didn’t let the fact that he was a mouse or only three inches tall hold him back. We all need to learn to not let our differences keep us from going out and following our dreams.

Angela Grimalke appears more blonde bombshell than the gremlin she is. But there is no denying her supernatural truth after her clumsiness gets her fired from her modeling career. Forced to work for her family’s upscale airline, she spends her days slinging luggage and wishing her parents would get off her back about finding a nice gremlin guy to settle down with.

Relationships were the last thing on her mind, not that her family would accept that.

For Dave Ford his frequent business travel made it next to impossible for him to find a woman who could tolerate his chaotic schedule. Which is why he appreciates Angela. Neither of them are looking for love, but Dave feeds Angela’s addiction for chocolate while she provides him with the chaos to keep him on his toes.

However, as Angela’s parents bombard her with a parade of “eligible” gremlin men at their weekly family dinners, she finds herself torn between who she longs to be and her family’s expectations. Will she give in and live the life of magic they want for her? Or risk it all by to confessing to Dave that she isn’t human?

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Catherine “C.S.” Hale has been writing fantasy since she could hold a pencil. When not holed up in a comfortable corner writing all her books out by longhand, she can be found somewhere by the sea, enjoying tea and pastries.