Friday Roundup with Marilyn Barr

Before we let you head off, just a couple more questions...

Do you have any hobbies that you’d care to chat about? Skydiving? Baking? Traveling? Whatever interests you—we’d love to hear about it!

Outside of writing, I love to write song parodies. While my composing is technically writing, I also love playing swing, Disney, and classical piano pieces. In my family, everyone starts piano lessons between the ages of 6 and 8. There are only three of us who currently play but all of us can read music. When we gather around the piano it is like a holiday movie, where everyone sings and plays duets.

The piano in the picture is a family heirloom. For the last 5 generations, every kid has learned to play on this piano. When we moved, I listed it as my “priceless possession” to the moving company. They subcontracted a piano moving specialist to help it get from Ohio to Kentucky. It is a Washburn special edition which means it has guitar strings on the inside because Washburn is known for guitars. They only made a few pianos and only in certain years. Our piano tuner gets giddy when he plays it because the sound is slightly different than a normal upright piano.

Am I going to publish my songs and parodies? Two original songs plus a few parodies are in Strawberry Shifters Book 3: Go Scorch Yourself, coming to The Wild Rose Press in 2022.

What drew you to write for Wylder?

I never thought I could write a book good enough for The Wylder West series but I gave it my best shot...and here we are. I remember sitting in the Tuesday night TWRP chat when they introduced the series, and my reaction was there was no way I could submit a story. I loved Wolf Brides by T.S. Joyce but didn’t believe I could write something of that caliber. That night I dreamed of Nartan Sagebrush, and he told me we were going to write his story. I attributed the visit to the cookies I ate during the meeting.

Night after night I had visions of what are now scenes in Dance to a Wylder Beat. During the day, I was noticing signs and synchronicities everywhere.  I even received a box of Arapaho reference books on accident from the local library. I homeschool my son and had ordered a box of picture books on the Vikings. I need to apologize to the parent who ordered the Arapaho box. I kept it for the entire month. Nartan’s homestead is based on a picture I found in The Arapaho by Loretta Fowler, which was a book in that homeschool reference box.

I realized it was a calling to share my spiritual expertise with you wrapped in a deliciously, scandalous romance novel and not cookie-fueled dreams…and I couldn't ignore it - because I was outed in front of my mentor in a meditation circle. An Arapaho Shamanic practitioner in my circle received a message from an ancestor that someone in the circle was ignoring messages from the beyond. My mentor said to deny a calling because of self-doubt was to sin against myself.

With the added pressure from the spiritual plane, I wrote Dance to a Wylder Beat in three weeks. I never had words flow onto the page so quickly. Maybe it was that I opened sacred space at the beginning of each writing session or maybe it was my assembly of dreams which made the story creation so easy. Nartan’s incantations and spiritual practices are the ones I use in my energetic healing practice. Ikshu’s journey is parallel to mine when a traumatic experience took my voice and gave me night terrors…but that’s another story, called Sound of a Wylder Silence.  

Are you working on anything new? Do you have plans for a next story that you’d care to share?

I get asked the question every day whether Ikshu will get his own happily ever after. It would have been easy for him to post an ad like Nartan once he establishes his side hustle of making leather goods for the local stores. However, when Ikshu is dragged to the town’s Christmas party (remember the one in A Wylder Christmas?), his life is turned upside-down by a fellow Grinch who hides behind the tree. Once you meet Ava Wylder, you never forget her – even if you don’t have the voice to say it.

Ikshu’s book is Sound of a Wylder Silence. It is finished and submitted for possible publication in 2022.

 

It's been great having you here on The Wylder West blog this week! Thank you for joining us!   





 


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