I was able to interview Heather Munn just after she was nominated for a Christy Award for How Huge the Night. It was a huge privilege, and she is a precious lady of God. I look forward to reading more of her work in the years ahead! Please join me, as we talk about her writing!
How was the idea
conceived for this story?
My mom knew about this village in France. The story is based on a true story.. about a
little village in the middle of nowhere that became one of the safest havens
for the Jews in Europe. A town of about
3,000 people that saved the lives of about 3000 people. The village is not far from where I grew up,
because my parents were missionaries in France.
So that’s how my mom knew about this village. There is a non-fiction book about this same
village…Less Innocent Blood be Shed by Phillip Howe. Mom found that American’s didn’t know about
this heroic village. She started the book when I was about 13…she wrote the
book and rewrote it several times…and got really tired of being told to rewrite
it. So my dad suggested that I help her
rewrite it, so I agreed to help her.
She gave me her manuscript, so I treated it sort of like an
outline. We did change the ending, but
we collaborated on that change. How Huge
the Night is the first published work for both of us.
When I completed a chapter, I would send it to her, and she
would give me feedback. We worked
together really well.
Your novel was nominated
for a Christy Award…were you surprised by this? It was awfully exciting! (lots of laughter) I really believed in this book a lot, so it
is a kind of validation for this story.
Do you have another
project in progress? We are working
on a sequel for How Huge the Night. We are working in much the same way we did on
this novel…she wrote the manuscript, and I reworked it. We just finished the rough draft. This novel follows the life of the younger
sister, Nina. She was a character that I
sort of reinvented. She represents things that are really important to me. Adults tend to like Nina’s character, and
the young adults tend to think of her as a weak person. There are so many images in media of really
strong kick-butt, beautiful women that are just unrealistic. This is unfair to
young adults because they become unable to recognize real strength in the real
world. That’s something that I want to shine in the sequel. That’s what the protagonist struggles with in
the story. There are a lot of things
that the main character struggles with.
Is Young Adult an
audience that you are passionate about?
I don’t think I’ll write in the genre all of my writing career, but it’s
something I’ve fallen in love with because sometimes so many adult novels are
so neatly categorized…romance, police procedural ect… and young adult novels
allow me to explore real life issues in a more realistic way, and that’
something I really like.
Do you think you will
always write historical fiction? I
don’t see myself doing much contemporary fiction. I really like history and the drama that I
find in the past. I do biblical
retelling…some short pieces and that’s one of my very favorite things to
do. Kind of like a read aloud
pieces. I have a site where I post my
short pieces…secretplaceofthunder.blospot.com.
I hope this will minister to others.
What is your writing
schedule? Writing half the
day…pretty much all the time. I work on
a farm part time. I’m working on a
community garden. I start writing at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. If I get on a roll…I’ll write into the evening,
but writing half the day is writing full-time for me. I tried writing an eight-hour day at one
point, and I just got burned out. So
this is what works well for me.
What is God doing in
your life? God has been impressing
on me the bigness of life and the smallness of us. This is something that is deeply intertwined
with the sequel of How Huge the Night.
The main character is reflecting on some pretty bad things that have
happened and she says to herself, “God never promised that any of these people
would live. And God never promised that my mistakes would never hurt people I
love.” The world sort of lets you
imagine that the opposite is true, but it’s not real.
I suffered a miscarriage earlier this year, and it made me
realize that we all really want to guarantee the survival of our children, but
that is not something we can do with either modern technology nor with God. God is alone is sovereign.
To get to know Heather more, please visit her How Huge the Night website!
No comments:
Post a Comment