Ginny Moon By Benjamin Ludwig @BILudwig @MidasPR @HQStories #Interview

Hello Lovelies,

Today I have an interview with Benjamin Ludwig, author of Ginny Moon. Published by HQ Stories on 01/06/2017. Ginny Moon is available in eBook, Hard/Paper copy and audio book. I do hope you enjoy.

Kelly xoxo

Book Jacket 

The story of a lost girl searching for her forever home…

Everyone tells Ginny that she should feel happy.

After years in foster care, fourteen-year-old Ginny is finally with parents who will love her. Yet despite finding her forever family, she knows she will never stop crafting her Big Secret Plan of Escape.

Because something heartbreaking happened a long time ago – something that only Ginny knows – and nothing will stop her going back to put it right…

A fiercely poignant, inspirational story of a lost girl making sense of a world that just doesn’t seem to add up – Ginny Moon will change everyone who spends time with her.

‘Real You’ Interview with Benjamin Ludwig

• Please tell my readers a little bit about yourself and your publishing journey before the questions that would be super.  Plus anything else you wish to tell the members.   

By trade, I’m a middle-school language arts teacher, but I’ve been writing stories since I was nine years old, when I fell in love with books.  I wrote thirteen novels (all unpublished!) before writing Ginny Moon.  I write for the love of writing itself, which probably explains why there were so many books before the one that got published!  Currently, I’m writing full-time, hard at work on another novel.

• Describe yourself using three words?

Take your pick:

Cares too much.

Have some wine.

Doesn’t follow rules.

• What inspired you to write your first novel?   

Ginny’s voice, which came to me one evening in 2013 after I came home from my daughter’s Special Olympics basketball practice. I put my keys down on the counter and heard a voice ringing in my ears.  It wasn’t my daughter’s voice, or one I’d heard anywhere else.  It was driving, quirky, and desperate.  I couldn’t help but give it all the room it demanded on the page.

• What time of day do you like to write?  

Early in the morning, before the children are up.  I come downstairs at 3:30, make coffee, and get straight to work.  My best writing happens when I’m half-awake, I think.  Then I work on revising and editing later in the day, and steal moments from my other hours.

• What is your favourite book and why?

Without a doubt, my favourite book is Jim Heynen’s The One Room Schoolhouse: Stories about the Boys.  I love it because of the compassion that spills out of the narrator’s tone.  You can tell when a writer really loves what he’s writing about, and Jim Heynen loves farms, the earth, and the people who tend them.

• How did you pick the title of your book?  

I wanted a title that would be a statement unto itself, representative of the voice that created it.  Ginny herself is undefinable, and so I thought she herself should define the book.

• Are the characters in your book based on real people?   

No, but as the writer I’m every single one of my characters.   I can be as wild as Gloria, as unconcerned as Rick, as compassionate as Brian, and as over-protective as Maura, depending on the day.  

• What’s your favourite word?   

I want to say, “luminous,” but really it’s probably “levity” or “lilting.”  I really like the letter l.

• If you were a colour what would it be?   

Orange.  I love pumpkins.

• Do you plan your story beforehand or go with the flow?  

I plan it out, but in Ginny’s case, she was in charge.  Every time I tried to create an outline based on the scene she’d narrated, she would refuse to do what the outline said.  It was only after the first draft was complete that I was able to tinker with the events of the plot.

• Who is your favourite Author?   

I’ve loved J.R.R. Tolkien since I was twelve years old.  

• You are attending a dinner party with four fictitious book characters who would they be and why?  

The witches from Macbeth, (they count as one character though, don’t they?)  would be at the head of the table.  They’d be lots of fun, pronouncing curses and prophecies in rhyme.  Then Huck Finn, who could lean back with a grass stem hanging out of his mouth.  Next is Colonel Aureliano Buendia (from One Hundred Years of Solitude), who I think would get along great with Ramona Quimby.  They’d make a lively bunch, all together.    

• What book are you reading at the moment?

I’m reading A Catalog of Birds, by Laura Harrington.

• Where in the world is your happy place?

There’s this wonderful park near my house, a place called Wagon Hill.  It’s in the book, too – Ginny goes there twice with her Forever Dad.  It’s all walking trails over hills and along the shore of a river.  I love a good walk.  It gives me access to a different kind of thinking.

• If you had one superpower what would it be?

Invisibility.  I’d love to disappear so that I can hear what people say when I’m not around.

• If you could give any literary villain a happy ending who would you chose?   

That means I have to like the villain, right?  Hmm.  Probably Actaeon, who was turned into a stag when he stumbled upon the bathing Artemis.  He was devoured by his own hounds shortly afterward.   But now that I think of it, I’m completely against hunting, and Actaeon was quite the hunter.  So maybe the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. After all, he’s a wolf – you can’t blame him for eating up some little kid in the forest, especially if she’s carrying around a basket of cookies, right?  

• Are you working on a new project?   

I am.  I’m working on another voice-driven novel, which I hope to finish in the fall.  It’s about a little boy who becomes a poet.

 

• Do you have any upcoming events our members can attend?   

Lots!  But they’re all in the States.  My monthly newsletter lists them all, but also includes links to interviews, and – ready?  Ginny’s continued adventures!  She took over a section of the newsletter, where she continues to get into all sorts of trouble, and to meet some very interesting individuals.  I do hope people will sign up and stay in touch with us.  The link is http://benjaminludwig.com/mailing-list/.  

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