A Blog Interview with Canadian Author Winona Kent

Welcome to Matter of Inquiry!

Today's guest author is Winona Kent, featuring her anthology of short stories written in various genres, including mystery.

Nice to have you on the blog, Winona. Before we get to the interview questions, please tell readers something about yourself.
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About the Author:
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Winona Kent is an award-winning author who was born in London, England and grew up in Saskatchewan, where she completed her BA in English at the University of Regina. After moving to Vancouver, she graduated from UBC with an MFA in Creative Writing and received her diploma in Writing for Screen and TV from Vancouver Film School. Winona has been a temporary secretary, a travel agent, a screenwriter, the Managing Editor of a literary magazine and a Program Assistant at the University of British Columbia. She's currently the BC/Yukon Representative and Vice Chair of the Crime Writers of Canada and is an active member of Sisters in Crime - Canada West. She lives in New Westminster, where she is happily embracing life as a full-time author.
 
Something not in your usual bio: “When I was 12 I ran a fan club for The Monkees 😊 And many years ago, I ran a semi-official website for the British actor Sean Bean 😊 I stopped updating it in 2012, but I kept it online because of the wealth of information that it contains. I originated the “Death by Cow” list – which details all of the ways Sean dies in his films.  http://www.compleatseanbean.com “
 
Author Contacts:
 
Twitter (X):  @winonakent 
Instagram:  @winonakent 
Facebook:  @Winonakentauthor 
Threads:  @winonakent 
Website:  http://www.winonakent.com

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​INTERVIEW:
 
JLB:  Do you write full-time, or do you have a “day” job?
WK:  I used to write and have a full-time day job. I worked from 8.30am until 4.30pm at the University of British Columbia. I had an hour-long commute in both directions. And then I’d come home and have a 2 to 3 hour nap, and I’d write from about 9pm until 1am. I also wrote on weekends and during vacations. I got 8 novels written that way, and then, in 2019, I was finally able to retire and become what I’d always longed to be—a full-time writer. The pandemic forced everyone to stay indoors—which I loved—and two more novels came out of that. But now that we’re trying to get back to the way we were, I find it really difficult organizing my writing time and my free time. A writerly friend gave me some good advice. She said, you’re used to binge writing and confining your writing to your spare time. Perhaps that’s what you need to do again!
 
JLB:  Are you self-published or traditionally published? How did you make the decision?
WK:  I have been traditionally published in the past. My first novel, Skywatcher, was a finalist in the last-ever Seal Book First Novel Award back in the 1980s. I got a very lucrative publishing deal out of that, with a huge advance. Then the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended, and the bottom fell out of the espionage market. My book was a tongue-in-cheek spy novel, and unfortunately it didn’t sell well. My agent decided to get out of the business and Seal/Bantam decided they didn’t want to extend my contract…so I published the next book (The Cilla Rose Affair) myself. It was right at the start of indie publishing, in the early 2000’s. I also self-published my next novel, Cold Play. I still sent out queries, though, and my fourth novel, Persistence of Memory, landed with a small press that looked promising. Unfortunately, they went out of business soon after they published my book. I kept writing, and querying, and my fifth novel, In Loving Memory, ended up with a New York company which also wanted to republish my four previous books. Alas, I didn’t make enough sales to justify them publishing my next book, Marianne’s Memory. So, once again, I turned to self-publishing. And then, that New York company went out of the fiction business altogether. So I negotiated my rights back for the five novels, and self-published those as well. And that’s when I decided to start writing my Jason Davey mystery series. I was already a seasoned veteran of the indie publishing scene, so I decided to just stick to self-publishing. My reasoning was that I could spend the better part of a year querying agents and publishers. But even if I did land an agent, it could take up to a further year (or more) to actually place the book with a publisher, and then a further year to two years for the publisher to bring that book out. And, as I was in my mid-60s, I just didn’t have the patience to wait. One of the huge advantages to self-publishing is that you, as the author, control everything. Which is what allowed me to bring out this new anthology of short stories very quickly, and in a way that really worked for me as an indie author.
 
 
JLB:  Do you write from an outline?
WK:  Back at the beginning of my career, I didn’t work from an outline at all. And because I was working at an unrelated job at the same time, I often found myself thrashing about, struggling, trying to keep my thoughts organized while I constantly lost track of where I was in the story, in the plot, in the entire process. After that, I spent a lot of time creating index cards that always told me where I’d been…but never where I was going. That all changed when I went to film school in 2003-4. There, I learned how to write screenplays, starting with a beat sheet, progressing to an outline, then a treatment, then finally, the full script. I realized that I could easily adapt those techniques to novel-writing, and it worked! Those skills made it easy for me to continue working and writing and, most importantly, I never again lost track of where I was going with the story. I invested in some excellent outlining software (Plottr), which adapts easily to my visual learning style and works with my individual quirks and demands. And, of course, the outline that I start out with is never, ever, what I end up with at the end of the story. There’s nothing in the rules that says you have to stick with what you’ve first created.
 
JLB:  How many drafts (revision passes) do you do on a typical book before submission to your editor/publisher?
WK:  Usually about six drafts. The first draft is like a scriptwriting beat sheet—everything in bulleted point form with as many notes as I can think of to enhance the story. In the second draft, I turn those bulleted points into fiction. That probably takes the longest amount of time. The third draft builds on the second draft—that’s where I think more, add more, go off on tangents, cut stuff out, maybe change the ending or alter a character’s trajectory. The fourth draft is where I get ruthless. Descriptions are finessed, or shortened or cut out altogether. I hunt for better words. Storylines are tightened. Draft five is what I always think will be the final draft, but I’m wise to that deception now, and I put the manscript away for a couple of weeks and go and do something else. Then I tackle draft six, which is the final pass. Proofreading, spellchecking, grammar checking, punctuation, and also I keep an eye out for things which poke out and really need to be smoothed down (for want of a better description). And only then is it ready to go to print.
 
 
JLB:  What is your next writing project? Anticipated release date?
WK:  I’m working on the fifth novel in my Jason Davey mysteries. It’s called Bad Boy and it has a rather shocking beginning—my main character witnesses a suicide which has a profound effect on him. The plot then goes on to involve a stolen package of music manuscripts composed by Sir Edward Elgar. For various reasons, this book has been fighting me all the way since its inception. But I think I’m through the worst of it now, and I’m anticipating a March 2024 release.
 
JLB:  Which of the trivia questions did you select to answers?
WK:  See below.

• An author (living or dead) you'd love to chat with:  My favourite author, Monica Dickens. She was Charles Dickens’ great-granddaughter and a novelist in her own right.
• What type of music do you prefer?  Late 1950s Rockabilly and 1960s British Invasion bands
• Your worst job ever:  Typing invoices for the installation of cookers and fridges at the South Eastern Gas Board in London, England, when I was a temp working for Brook Street Bureau in 1973. I lasted a week.
• Your pets:  I don’t have pets anymore. But in the past, I had a series of ordinary, indeterminate breed rescue cats from the SPCA. Their names were Winnifer Pushkin, Sweeney, Purrface, Kinkle, JR Mewing, Cat Stevens and Motor Purr.
• Your hobbies:  I’m heavily into family tree research on Ancestry. I’m trying to track down my mysterious great-grandfather. I know all about him from about 1897 onwards. But I can’t find his birth record or who his family really was, or even if his last name is what he was born with. I also knit (mostly berets – I have quite a collection).

 
JLB:  Thanks for visiting with us this week, Winona. Before we finish, show us your anthology. 

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TEN STORIES THAT WORRIED MY MOTHER
Genre: Short Story Anthology (including mystery, time travel, espionage and mainstream fiction)

A collection of ten short stories featuring four prize-winners, three mysteries, two previously unpublished works and one where the hero manages to spare-change John Lennon at the premiere of A Hard Day's Night in 1964.
 
And yes…they really did worry Winona’s mother.
 
"At times Winona almost flies under the radar as an unsung hero on the Canadian fiction scene… I’ll simply suggest this – find a comfy chair, sit back, relax, and take some time to go on a fast-paced and fun jaunt into Winona Kent’s imagination."
- A.J. Devlin, author of the “Hammerhead” Jed crime fiction series
 
Universal Buy Link:
https://books2read.com/Ten-Stories

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Synopsis of Stories:

1. Tower of Power. One night in the life of a rock and roll radio newsman. Winona’s first published story, winner of the Flare Fiction Competition, originally published in Flare magazine in September 1982.
 
2. Dietrich's Ash. Inspired by an unfortunate situation that arose from a disputed property line between Winona’s house and her neighbour’s house when she was growing up in Saskatchewan. Okanagan Short Fiction Award winner. Originally published in Canadian Author & Bookman. Winter 1985 and anthologized in Pure Fiction: The Okanagan Short Story Award Winners. (Fitzhenry & Whiteside) 1986. Also broadcast on CBC Radio, Ambience. 1982
 
3. True Confessions. A Temp with nothing much to do, a tea lady named Mrs. Thatcher, and a rooftop garden overlooking a builder's yard. Originally published in Green's Magazine, a small Canadian literary journal, Volume XII, Number 4, Summer 1984.
 
4. Creatures from Greek Mythology. A student with a crush on his Social Studies teacher. A high school dance. A fine arts student who paints rainbows around her eyes. (Second Prize Winner, WQ Editors Prize). Originally published in Cross-Canada Writers Quarterly. Vol 6, No. 1, 1984.
 
5. The Man in the Grey Eldorado. The first draft of this was written roundabout 1977 or 1978, after Winona had spent a glorious few weeks at the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts at Fort San (a former TB sanitorium). Inspired by The Man from UNCLE, this is one of only two previously unpublished stories in the collection.
 
6. Herd Maintenance. Winona wrote this in 1981 while she was working as a Temp at a federal government office on the Canadian prairies. This is the second unpublished story in the collection, although it did enjoy a brief life as a short, unproduced film script while she was at Vancouver Film School in 2003-4. The typewritten letters in the story are real. The names have been removed to protect the innocent.
 
7. Perhaps an Angel. An adventure involving the two main characters from Winona’s time travel romances, Charlie Duran and Shaun Deeley. Originally published in Carnival, a collection of short stories by Fable Press authors, in 2013.
 
8. Easy When You Know How. Another Charlie Duran/Shaun Deeley short story, in which Mr. Deeley manages to spare change John Lennon at the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night, and snag one of his plectrums (ie guitar picks). The story is also included at the end of Winona’s time travel romance novel, In Loving Memory.
 
9. Salty Dog Blues. Jason Davey, Winona’s professional musician / amateur sleuth, was originally featured in a standalone novel, Cold Play (2012), working as an entertainer on board an Alaska-bound cruise ship. In Salty Dog Blues, Winona took Jason back to that nautical setting, and gave him a very tongue-in-cheek mystery to solve. Salty Dog Blues was specifically written for and originally appeared in the short story anthology Crime Wave, published by Sisters in Crime-Canada West in November 2020. The story was a finalist in the Crime Writers of Canada's 2021 Awards of Excellence for Best Crime Novella.
 
10. Blue Devil Blues. This is a short story that was originally written for the anthology Last Shot: Four Tales of Murder, Mystery and Suspense, published in June 2021 with stories by Alice Bienia, Dwayne Clayden, Peter Kingsmill and Winona. It tells the tale of how Jason got his permanent gig at the Blue Devil jazz club in London's Soho, and also manages to include Winona’s obsession with the London Underground.

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