TALK I Theresa Weir

   

Theresa Weir, author of The Orchard

Colin talks to author Theresa Weir about living life in the fast lane and Wisconsin.

CGB: Many writers write in coffee shops or studios. You, however, bought a church. Does that "I shouldn't be doing this" feeling that people often claim to feel when it comes to using the lord's name in vain or sneaking boos inside a sanctuary ever occur to you while you write? Even a sentence as harmless as "He lit a cigarette and tossed the pack on the dashboard." Does a part of you think, "Eh, I'll change it to candle"?

TW: It's really more about what the neighbors think.  One night I looked outside to see an angry mob of torch-carrying villagers  trudging up the hill to the church. I thought they were saying, "Kill the witch." They were actually saying, "This hill's a bitch."   So it's easy to misconstrue how people react to living in what was once a sacred space. I think everybody's okay with it.

You divide your time between St. Paul and rural Wisconsin. Everyone assumes the worst, so what's the easiest thing about living, occasionally, in the middle of nowhere? 
 

Nobody can hear you scream. 

One of the audience members mentioned having seen your book, The Orchard, out and about, in the hands of a stranger, and you lit up, adding that you'd always wanted to see a "live copy" of your book in the world. I love this idea of a "live book" vs. a "dead book," which I suppose is any book not being read, but just displayed. If you were to come across a "live copy" yourself, what would you do? Would you let the reader know? Or would you act like someone else and simply mention to that person that you too had read The Orchard by Theresa Weir and, as far as you could tell, your days of reading other people's books were over?

My middle name is Toiling In Obscurity, and I'd really hate to have to change it to I Think I've Heard Of You.   So I wouldn't admit to having read or written the book.

So, you're a genre-spanning author, who lives in two places at once and writes under the pseudonym Anne Frasier. Do you have a favorite anything?

My favorite thing is getting behind someone who's driving very slowly in the left lane. I love that.