Interview with Rachel Kovaciny

1. Please tell me a little about your current work in progress.

I’m writing a retelling of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” set in the Old West.  Seven white orphans abandoned along the trail to Kansas are taken in by a wagon train of former slaves.  One orphan idolizes a beautiful immigrant who is a healer and seeks to learn how to help sick people from her, only to discover she intends to do away with her stepdaughter.  I call it One Bad Apple, and I’m planning to release it in early 2020.

2. Where did you get the idea for this book or series?

I got the idea for this particular book when I was teaching one of my kids American history a couple years ago.  One of the great things about homeschooling is that I often learn new things right alongside my kids.  I got a book about African Americans in the Old West out of the library for them and, while reading it with her, discovered there was this whole westward movement called the Exoduster Migration I had never heard of.

The Exodusters were freed blacks living in the post-Reconstruction South who got fed up with the oppression they faced and set off en masse for Kansas to start new lives. I thought that would make a fantastic setting for a western because I’ve always wanted to write a story about a wagon train, and there’s a lot of conflict inherent to that movement.  I ended up placing this book a little earlier in time than the actual Exoduster Migration, for various reasons, but that still works because many black pioneers did head out west before the Exodusters, just not in such great numbers.

I’d been wanting to retell Snow White, but couldn’t figure out how to work in the seven dwarfs since my retellings are non-magical.  But having them be white children surrounded by black people still gives them that sense of otherness, and that vulnerability that “seven little men, no bigger than your thumb” had in the version of Snow White I grew up reading.

3. Do you write in more than one genre?

Yes.  Besides my Once Upon a Western series, I’ve also written a lot of short stories set during WWII in the European Theater of Operations.  And I write a column about Wild West history for the Prairie Times as well as articles on various subjects for Femnista.

4. Tell me about something that you believe makes your writing unique or worthy of attention.

There aren’t many authors who retell fairy tales as westerns, much less build a whole series around that concept.  And most fairy tale retellings involve magic of some sort, but mine do not. 

5. Is there anything about your personal history or personality that manifests strongly in your writing?

I grew up watching classic cowboy movies with my dad, and until I was in double digits, I would tell people that when I grew up, I was going to be a rancher.  I have a deep love for learning about people living in times and places different from my own, and for seeing how their lives were similar to mine, and also how they were different.  I try to communicate that in my books.  Also, I’m a Christian, and my books have a distinctly Christian worldview, though I do my best not to let them become preachy.

6. What else would be helpful for readers to know about you?

I don’t know if this is helpful, but I think it’s pretty cool that I was born only a few miles from where Jesse James robbed his first train, and that one of my babysitters was an elderly woman who actually met Jesse James and his gang when she was a young girl herself.

Oh, it might be helpful to know that I have two blogs.  I write about movies and writing at Hamlette’s Soliloquy, and I write about books at The Edge of the Precipice. 

7. Excluding your own work, what author or book would you recommend that more people read? Why?

This is a hard question because a person’s taste in books is so subjective and personal.  I do think Jack Schaefer deserves more readers these days because he wrote such nuanced, intricate stories, like Shane, and gets overlooked in favor of more renowned authors like Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour.

8. Which of your books do you most highly recommend? Why?

Well, Dancing and Doughnuts is my newest release, and it’s such a fun story that I think most people would get a kick out of it.

9. Which break, event, decision, or fortuitous circumstance has helped you or your writing career the most?

Winning the Sleeping Beauty retelling contest from Rooglewood Press in 2016 and having my story “The Man on the Buckskin Horse” published in their anthology Five Magic Spindles really jumpstarted my writing career.  All my books and stories since them have built on that foundation.

10. What question do you wish you would get asked more often?

What’s your favorite John Wayne movie?  Almost no one ever asks me that.  It’s The Sons of Katie Elder, by the way.

11. Do you have a catch-phrase or quote that you like? What is it? And why do you choose it?

Write what you love.  People like to say you should “write what you know,” but with a little patience and digging, you can know a whole lot about any subject with a library card and the willingness to do some research.  But if you don’t love what you’re writing... what’s the point?

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In my own writing, Book 3 (I'm still working on the actual title) of the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire series is starting to come together. After an intriguing prologue, I'm taking up the thread of Charles and Antonio and their special mission to France. An explosive end to chapter one is in the works. If you haven't read Threading the Rude Eye and Power to Hurt, the first two books in the series, get them now and post a review. These exceptional books need more reviews. Look for links to all my books in the left hand margin of the blog.

Yes. I mean you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Bonus Post - Cover Reveal

"A drifting Civil War veteran tackles the task of figuring out who's been spiking the apple cider at a Kansas dance hall owned by a family with twelve daughters."

Obviously not the cover of one of my books, but the cover of a friendly writer's book. Rachel K. (who is currently reading my book Smoke) writes western novellas based on fairy tales. Her site is here. Check it out. Not long ago, I reviewed her previous book, Cloaked. This book is the second entry in her Once Upon a Time western anthology series. Notice the texture on the clothing, the detail on the shoes, and the lines in the hardwood floor on that cover.

Dancing and Doughnuts is set for release in August 2018 (she must write like a woman possessed to get another book out that soon--apparently her habit of mixing espresso and speed really helps--of course, I jest; she's probably just extremely diligent), and is a retelling of "Twelve Dancing Princesses." No doubt it will feature dancing in western footwear, horses, (but not dancing by horses in western footwear), and--I hope--some shoot'em up action. I'm looking for a scene where doughnuts are tossed into the air and the hero shoots through the holes to demonstrate his proficiency with a shooting iron. I know James Garner already did that with...oh, here it is:

but I would still like to see it with doughnuts--maybe a dozen at a time. That would make a great scene in the retelling of Odysseus' homecoming--shooting an arrow through a dozen doughnuts (rather than the axe heads, or handles--depending on the translation). Just imagine that Odysseus was a mighty warrior...who liked to bake. But I digress; my apologies.

Dancing and Doughnuts already has a Goodreads page. Check it out along with Rachel's other books.