If you were able to sit down with your favourite author and interview him/her on their latest novel, what would you ask?
I had the pleasure of doing this exact thing recently, only she’s not just my favourite author, but also a dear friend. So, when I sat down with Cindy Brandner in her home to discuss her new novel Flights of Angels; the third instalment in the Exit Unicorns series, we were in pretty familiar waters.
We took care of the uncomfortable photography part that Cindy really doesn’t care too much for and settled in the living room to chat. Sitting in the comfort of the familiar surroundings, I ventured into unfamiliar waters as interviewer.
I began by asking Cindy what the process is like for her when starting on the journey to write a novel.
“At the very beginning of the process of just imagining the book itself, it’s like everything is in a fog and I only see bits and pieces coming out of the fog. I don’t always necessarily know what they mean when they first present themselves,” Cindy explained, “but eventually as the book grows and becomes a bigger entity they start to make sense and I see where they fit.”
It seems contrary to high school English, but there are no outlines – beyond that of the historical framework which underpins the entire series – as the story is revealed to her, sometimes in small snippets of dialogue, or descriptive passage, a bit of narrative or secondary story lines. Cindy shared that she will often have chapters written for the end of the book before she’s written the beginning.
“That’s what I love about the whole process; is that it is very organic. I don’t know what’s coming so I’m just as surprised as the reader is sometimes. The characters have a life of their own, so they don’t necessarily do the things that I think they should do.”
The surprises the characters give her couldn’t be more startling than in the case of Casey Riordan, who she had originally thought would be a secondary and very minor character. What he turned into is one of three very main characters and part of a love triangle that is the centre marker for the story the Irish Troubles are woven around.
Fans of the series have become so attached to Brandner’s characters they think of them as old friends, or as one reader told the author, “I swear these people lived some time, somewhere and they chose you to take down their story.”
With characters you can so easily attach to, it is no wonder that loyalties have been formed on one or the other side of the leading men in the triangle. It’s created a fun interaction between readers and Cindy, with some fans claiming their favourite male lead as their very own.
I wondered if the experience of writing has changed for her now that she has three completed novels, and if so, in what ways?
“I think to a certain extent, it gets a bit easier,” she said, “in that technically I know what I’m doing better as a writer. But as to the story itself; it’s a fresh adventure every single time.”
When asked how this book stands on its own from the other two in the series; Exit Unicorns and Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears, Cindy had this to say:
“Structurally, I think it is really different. I never really thought of my work as having more than one level but I think this one can be read on a few levels. I wrote it with fairy tale elements in mind, but kept it grounded in the historical facts of both Russia and Northern Ireland of the mid-1970s.”
Her first novel Exit Unicorns was published in 2002 and ten years and two more books later she has built up a world-wide fan base, with readers in places as far-flung as Romania and Argentina and Ireland of course, though her core group of readers is in the United States and Canada.
In the fall of 2009 she went on a road trip through Northern Ireland with fourteen of her readers who had come from a variety of places around the world for the opportunity to see Northern Ireland through Cindy’s eyes. It turned into a journey of great emotion during visits to some of the sites from the books – such as the Bloody Sunday museum, run by a brother of one of the thirteen victims murdered that day.
“The history came completely alive for the women on that trip,” Cindy says, “and it added another dimension to the books for them – to see the actual ground where these events had taken place, the neighbourhoods the characters would have lived in, the streets they would have walked.”
“I’ve been lucky enough to make some good friends in Belfast that have been willing to share their history with me.”
One of Cindy’s favourite parts of writing is the research. Going to Ireland or hours spent in conversations, at her computer or with her nose lost in the bindings of a stack of books is something she looks forward to. Writing the historical events accurately is a passion for Cindy and she will devote weeks of her life to studying everything there is to know about a subject. To write the two chapters in Flights of Angels that take place in Paris, Cindy spent two months researching. Though she realized she didn’t necessarily need to know everything about Paris from the Revolution onward, she also knew that details from her research would find their way into the story and enrich it.
So, what’s next for Brandner?
“I think I’ll start on a piece about the Irish Famine that’s been waiting to be written, while I continue to write the rest of the Exit Unicorns series,” she hastily adds.
“I don’t think my readers will allow me to put the series on hold for too long.”
And how many books are there yet to come in the series?
“I know for sure there are at least two, but beyond that, I have to wait and find out.”
Shortly after the March 17 release of Flights of Angels, second editions of both Exit Unicorns and Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears will be released with new cover artwork.
Right now the books can be purchased at Caryall Books, from her website www.exitunicorns.com, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com – where you can also download the e-book onto any device that is Kindle compatible.
You can follow her on Facebook: Cindy Brandner – Exit Unicorns or subscribe to her blog http://angelsether.wordpress.com/?p=8&preview=true.
I sincerely hope you take the opportunity to read Cindy’s books and like me, you come to better understand the Irish people, their struggles and complexities, that you fall in love with the characters as though they are old friends, as well as take a glimpse at the talent of a curly haired Irish Canadian storyteller who lives right here in your own backyard.
–submitted by Dorine Lamarche
