An extraordinarily talented writer,
Marcia Carter is a native of Roswell, Georgia. Southern
hospitality has made its home in her heart. Already one of America's
best authors, Marcia commands 
a
story with feeling and grace. Her words are a reflection of emotion
that can take you from laughter to tears in a single page.
Marcia was born on September 14, 1955, the eldest
of four children. In the following years, she found herself a
constant source of entertainment to her two younger sisters and
brother with her writing. In high school, two English teachers
discovered her talent and nurtured it. With their encouragement,
Marcia knew that her writing could go much further than entertaining
siblings. One of the teachers told her that she had the ability
to turn words into pictures in the reader's mind and that this
was no easy feat, that it was a God given talent.
Although Marcia never forgot her teacher's words,
writing took a back seat to marriage and two children, Stephanie
and Stephen. Between ice-skating lessons and little league games,
there was only time for a paragraph now and then - paragraphs
that over the years turned into hundreds of pages that have now
been assembled into her next book, Both Sides Now. After a divorce
and many years as a single parent, Marcia remarried and thought
her life was better than ever. But - seven months after the wedding,
she lost her son to a car accident.
Marcia's first book, Stephen's
Moon, was published in 1999 and has made itself at
home in the literary world. This tragic event in Marcia's life,
the loss of her eighteen-year old son, Stephen, in April of 1997,
served as a catalyst for her writing career. Turning tragedy
into triumph, Stephen's Moon is
about the loss of her son. It was written to help others who
are dealing with loss. The book has been widely received in grief
groups across the nation. Marcia is an adamant supporter of the
group, The Compassionate Friends, as well as a speaker for many
of their events.
Ora's Farm is the
story of a kindly old farmer and three children who are fortunate
enough to be his neighbors. Each child is dealing with an emotional
issue and Ora is their mentor, although he doesn't seem to realize
it, offering sage, simple advice to grow on. Children's issues
are brought to light through these 
three
children - divorce, a stepparent and the death of a parent. The
book has been well received by all ages.
Marcia's son, Stephen, is a character in Ora's Farm. His personality is as enduring
as hers, making him a well rounded and enjoyable character, good
natured and caring, just as he was while on this earth. Stephen
turns to Ora for comfort during his parent's divorce. The other
characters are Jessica and Kristin, dealing with a stepparent
and the death of a parent, respectively.
The character of Kristin comes from Marcia's stepdaughter,
Kristin Carter, who really did lose her mother to cancer at an
early age. The character of Jessica comes from Stephen's girlfriend
at age four. The three children survive it all with Ora's help,
growing to adulthood under his watchful, caring eyes.
Visit Marcia's publisher Black Sands Enterprises
online at
http://www.blacksands.com
"Ora represents the contributions, values and wisdom that
are the hallmarks of our grandparents' generation. Delightful
characters find his role in their lives indispensable as they
traverse the realities of today's childhood. Marcia, thanks for
the diversion. I can almost smell the gardenias." -Carla
Barnes Cherokee Tribune staff writer Canton, GA
Pageonelit.com: Where did you grow up and
was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest
influences and why?
Marcia H. Carter: I grew up in Roswell,
Georgia and reading and writing were definitely a big part of
my life. I loved the library. I found that I could travel a million
miles by reading and I could express my emotions in writing.
I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder and all the Little House books –
long before Little House on the Prairie was a TV show. Those
books taught me a lot about character development. A few years
later, I discovered Margaret Mitchell and Gone With the Wind
and my life was never the same. I longed to write like Margaret
Mitchell and look like Scarlett. Neither has happened, to date.
Pageonelit.com: Why do you write?
Marcia H. Carter: Thoughts constantly jump
into my head and it’s fun to channel all the thoughts and
create characters and scenes and develop plots. Writing is enjoyable,
more relaxing than a hot bath, more satisfying than a meal or
sleep. And it is therapeutic. In school, I thought all writing
had to be done by a rigid outline, followed to the letter. But
– when independently writing, I find that I jump away from
the outline and the story takes off, develops – takes on
a life of its own and that’s half the fun.
Pageonelit.com: Tell us about your novel
STEPHEN'S MOON and explain how the title correlates with
the story.
Marcia H. Carter: A classic example of writing
being therapeutic, Stephen’s Moon is a tribute to
my son, Stephen. He died at age eighteen in a car wreck. This
happened in April of 1997. The book is also a tribute to the
human spirit, to surviving something you never dreamed you could.
The title comes from a memory of my son. When he was a little
boy – eight or nine years old, he looked up at the sky and
asked me if I could see the moon. I said yes and he said, “It
looks like 
a
quarter falling from God’s pocket.” And it did.
It was the most profound thing I have ever heard and a memory
I will never forget. As my memories of Stephen are the key to
my survival, I felt that Stephen’s Moon was an appropriate
title for a book that tried to help others live with loss. I
have enough memories to sustain me until I see Stephen again,
and that moon, the almost full moon on a clear night that looks
like a quarter falling from God’s pocket, evokes one of
my very favorite memories.
Pageonelit.com: In your acknowledgements
for STEPHEN'S MOON you say, 'Charlie Walton and his
book WHEN THERE ARE NO WORDS, the book that saved me from myself.'
Please explain.
Marcia H. Carter: When you lose a child,
guilt comes to live with the parents. Regardless of how the child
dies or how old that child is, the parent somehow feels that
they should have been able to prevent it because in their mind,
from day one, it was their job as a parent to protect that child.
Properly fed, this guilt can destroy the parents. Survivor’s
guilt is astronomically strong because a parent is not supposed
to outlive a child. It is out of order. When There Are No Words
deals very honestly with the guilt and how it can destroy your
life or how you can look guilt in the eye, and keep on living.
Mr. Walton lost two children on the same day and survived to
tell the story. The sheer fact that he had lost two children
and was still alive to talk about it gave me strength. All of
his words made sense to me and therefore, I say the book saved
me from myself and the guilt that would have consumed me had
I let it.
Pageonelit.com: ORA'S FARM is based
on a real person, Ora Coleman. Tell us about your relationship
with Ora and how you came to write this book based on him.
Marcia H. Carter: I met Ora Coleman in 1998. Ora is a
farmer in Roswell, the very town where I grew up, yet I had never
met him. Two different people approached me, telling me I should
meet him and write a book on him. I said I would love to meet
him, but had no plans of writing a book. My plans rapidly changed
as I followed him around his farm and watched his interaction
with children, sharing with them his genuine appreciation of
life, no matter the circumstance. When a child asked about his
family, he 
said that his dad
and mom and four of his five brothers had gone on. He said with
a sincere smile that he would join them again one day and that
if the next life was any better than this one, he didn’t
know how he could stand it. I immediately saw the potential of
writing a book that addressed the problems children face, placing
Ora as my center character. He would help the children who frequented
his farm learn to appreciate life to the fullest, regardless
of the fact that life isn’t always a bed of roses. My three
children characters were taken from real children and their very
real problems - the death of a parent, divorce and a stepparent.
Ora goes with me to book signings if they aren’t
too far from his farm. He enjoys it and the readers love him.
He never meets a stranger and the book buyers leave with a smile
on their face. It seems that they are as charmed by his wit and
wisdom as I am.
Pageonelit.com: What has been your feedback
from readers and book reviewers regarding your books? What do
they like about the books?
Marcia H. Carter: The most common remark
I get is that the books are honest and down to earth; the readers
say they feel that I am talking to them casually. Most reviewers
comment on the strength of the characters and the emotion that
both books evoke. Several have said that they are taken from
laughter to tears
and back again in a single page.
Stephen’s Moon easily became a favorite among
grief groups because parents identify with the pain of losing
a child. But many others have written me, saying that the book
helped with the loss of a sibling, spouse, parent, aunt, uncle
or friend. One lady told me that she felt the book was not only
appropriate for death, but the loss of anything – a job,
a relationship, loss of innocence.
As for Ora’s Farm, a surprising number of readers have told
me that they were fortunate enough to have had an older figure
like Ora in their lives as children and that it was fun to go
back and reminisce. There is something very special about the
relationship between the older generation and the young –
wisdom passed, lessons learned, the emotions of the children,
the kindness of the old man.
Pageonelit.com: Tell me about your publishing
experience -- The good, the bad and the ugly..
Marcia H. Carter: I immediately found that
grief is not a subject widely received. No one wants to think
about it- it’s not a popular subject. I know I didn’t
want to think about it – until I had to. So you have the
people who have suffered loss desperately seeking reading material
and the publishers saying I don’t know about this - it doesn’t
seem like a good risk. I can’t say that I even looked very
hard for a publisher. I didn’t want someone telling me what
needed to be changed in Stephen’s Moon and I didn’t
want the book put on a back burner until the time that the publishing
company deemed it right for release, even if they did accept
it. The book was much too personal for that, so my editor suggested
to my husband that we look into self-publishing and we really
liked what we found.
We had planned to go the traditional route with
Ora’s Farm, but we had discovered
so many advantages with self-publishing, we self-published again.
There is so much control and as my books are like my children,
I like doing all the hands on things. The book is never going
to mean as much to any publisher as it does to me and as the
author is responsible for the majority of advertising either
way, we just ran with it. We were able to get my books into major
bookstores immediately and we knew exactly where to go to promote.
We have found a goldmine of information on self-publishing and
find it very fulfilling.
Pageonelit.com:What's next?
Marcia H. Carter: A novel called Both Sides Now. The characters are so
real to me that I dream about them - and unlike my other two
books, these characters are fiction. The story begins in 1970
in Atlanta (of course) and follows the three main characters
through two decades with Vietnam, Watergate, the Iranian hostage
crisis and the Gulf War as a backdrop. The three girls deal with
the usual love and loss in their personal lives, but the second,
more sinister plot involves the unsolved murder of a classmate.
The murder took place on Christmas break of their senior year
and even though the three girls know who did it, they can’t
prove it. This endangers their life later on and the suspense
builds as they become unlikely heroines, not victims. I still
have a lot of work to do, not sure when this will be complete
– I hope to have it ready for release by next year.
Pageonelit.com: What was the last book you
read?
Marcia H. Carter: Sole Survivor by Derek Hansen. It was
very enjoyable and a great break for me. My mind needed a break
from my own writing to avoid writer’s block and when this
happens, I try to find a book that is very different from my
style of writing – usually a male writer and a very good
story to clear my head. This book did the job and was great reading.
Pageonelit.com: Do you have any hobbies?
What are they? How do they enhance your writing.
Marcia H. Carter: Travel. I love it almost as much as
writing. And I write a lot when I travel. I get up early and
take the laptop out onto the deck of wherever I am, knowing that
I don’t have to be on a schedule - such a luxury. I have
written about many places blindly. I research it as much
as possible – for example, Savannah and Philadelphia are
cities used in Both Sides Now and I had never visited either
when I wrote about them. When I did visit, I found that my research
had served me well, but I was able to go back over the text and
watch it turn warmer, take on depth and come to life.
