Today's Segments:
Moorhead Friends Writing Group
Are you looking for tips on getting your writing published? Join Words to Live By for an exciting workshop on June 22, featuring two accomplished screenwriters and several local authors. In this episode, we chat with local author Chris Stenson about the event and his book, Sins of the Mother.
Dave Thompson News Review
Stay informed with News Director Dave Thompson as he reviews the latest news.
Matt Olien's Movie Review
Prairie Public's movie critic, Matt Olien, delivers his latest review. Today, he delves into "I Saw the TV Glow," a moody and evocative film exploring themes of escapism, gender identity, and the journey of forging one's own path.
Transcript of Moorhead Friends Writing Group Interview
Ashley Thornberg
Ever thought you might have a book or short story in you, but just don’t quite know how to go from ideation to publication? Independent book store Words to Live By is hosting an event this Saturday for writers and wordsmiths. Melissa Prusi and Steven Hopstaken are the authors of the Stokers Wilde books from Simon and Schuster. It’s a wildly imaginative series where Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde team up to hunt demons. Prusi is also a three-time Jeopardy champ and set a Guinness world record in 1990 for directing the longest live television show. Together they write novels and screenplays, and help aspiring authors get their work out there. They’ll be at the Words to Live By bookstore in Moorhead this Saturday from 11-6.
Chris Stenson, accountant by day, formed the Moorhead Friends Writers Group and organized the event. Working with fellow writers helped him get his own novel published, Sins of the Mother. It’s the first in the Maiden, Mother, Crone series. It’s a dark fantasy where a young girl, Isabel, is caught between two realms, as unseen forces battle for her very soul.
Chris Stenson
It is a dark fantasy based in urban realism. I mostly write horror, but this one is kind of like real life with magic.
Ashley Thornberg
There's a young girl in the book, Isabelle, and she is prone to headaches and almost like fugue states, so she doesn't necessarily remember how she got to somewhere, and it leads to her being involved in some kind of scary. I don't want to be giving away the plot here, but she keeps ending up in these places, not really sure of her involvement, and it's kind of walking this line between is she sort of psychic and knowing this, or is she causing this?
Chris Stenson
Isabelle, for most of the book, thinks she's losing her mind, losing her sanity, and really what's happening is other people are controlling her life. You know, this is one of the few books that you read where the good guys lose the first battle.
Ashley Thornberg
She ends up in a heap of trouble.
Chris Stenson
It's about a war for her soul. Who is going to win it? Is she going to take control of her soul, or is the darkness inside of her going to take over her soul?
Ashley Thornberg
You haven't finished this. No, no. So even you don't know what happens to Isabelle's soul.
Chris Stenson
Well, it's kind of how I write, too. I'm more of a what they call a pantster, kind of flying from the seat of my pants. Oh, okay.
There are people who write huge outlines, and they basically just have to fill in a few transitions to make their outline work, and I probably know five or six points in the book where I want to hit, and then I kind of let the characters take over. Sometimes I get surprised, and sometimes I wake up at three o'clock in the morning and the characters are talking to me and says, Chris, you should probably get up and write now. For a long time, I got up at five o'clock in the morning, and then that got old, and then my goal is to sit down and write every day.
When I wrote the first draft, my goal was to write 350 words a day for a year, which then is roughly a 360-page book, 365 words, roughly a page in a novel.
Ashley Thornberg
Okay.
Chris Stenson
And you know, most novels are in that 300 to 350 page, and so if you do that every day for a year, you've written a novel.
Ashley Thornberg
It's that simple. Yeah, you have it. There you have it, folks.
Chris Stenson
But it's, you know, but there's some days the water flows. It's like turning on a spigot some days where the water just flows and flows, and other days it just kind of drips outward. You write six paragraphs, and you keep a sentence.
Ashley Thornberg
Yeah. Well, talk to us, Chris, about how important it is to recognize that in yourself, because so many people have an idea, and then when it just doesn't go the way they've either been told the process is supposed to work, or they get to that first point of being stuck, and then they just kind of give up instead of learning to pivot. What have been some of the key metrics that you've put into play?
Chris Stenson
Well, I'm an accountant by trade. That's what pays the bills, and I am a lover of spreadsheets, so I track how much time I spend, how many words I write, and then I set my goal.
Ashley Thornberg
I hate everything about this.
Chris Stenson
Then I set goals, so if I hit my goals, I earn so much money a month that I can use then to pay myself so I can buy more books.
Ashley Thornberg
Okay, so there is a built-in reward system. Now, that I can get behind.
Chris Stenson
Yeah, so basically, if I hit my goals or go over my goals, and then I keep track monthly, daily, yearly, so I have my yearly goals, so I know how many words I need to write in a year, and I've kind of taken an average, and I keep track of it, and then I use that then to buy more books. I've been a lover of words and books for a long time. Some of the characters are based on some of my family members, and it's a dark book.
I had a horrible stepfather. A couple of those scenes actually happened in my life, but I learned a lot from it, and actually, him and I buried the hatchet many, many, many years ago, and we talked, and he apologized, and I understood, but as a middle schooler, you don't always recognize that, and I actually wrote a...
Ashley Thornberg
When you're being abused.
Chris Stenson
Yes, and it was more of psychological abuse. I believe physical abuse, the pain eventually goes away, but to me, psychological abuse doesn't go away because sometimes when you hear yelling and screaming, even if you're not involved in the situation, it sparks memories, and so I kind of used the book to come to grips with growing up and helped, I would say, heal because I believe that everybody needs a second chance, and you have to forgive people.
No matter how horrible they were in your life, you need to find a way to forgive and move forward because if you don't, you won't move forward.
Ashley Thornberg
Yeah. How long did that take you?
Chris Stenson
A long, long time. My parents divorced when I was small. Going to the farm and escaping to my grandparents and my father was a way that I could escape for a couple months growing up.
Ashley Thornberg
Yeah. Escapism is definitely explored in a book like this because it takes place in what you could refer to as different realms. There is this sense that there are other spirits, other life forces, other...
I don't know if dimensions is the right word.
Chris Stenson
Realities.
Ashley Thornberg
Other realities. Okay. Chris, I'm really intrigued by the fact that this book, you described it as autobiographical before we started recording.
It's about a young girl who is in between different dimensions of reality. So on the surface, that doesn't sound like it could be about you. Why do you think you were so drawn to exploring it through this lens of a different sex and gender and understanding of reality and time and space?
Chris Stenson
I think to hide from the truth a little bit. I mean... What do you mean?
Well, because if I came out with myself, people would recognize that.
Ashley Thornberg
Ah.
Chris Stenson
And Isabel is really me if I was a girl and had magic abilities. But there's some things as a girl that is a little different than being a guy where you can explore some more emotions than if the character was a boy. Because if I would have made me as the character, it would have been a way different exploration of the feelings that you have growing up.
I've had people ask me questions, beta readers and critiquers, but really not in-depth emotional. What was I thinking? Why did I write the book the way I did?
Ashley Thornberg
Mm-hmm.
Chris Stenson
And I've been thinking about this for a long, many, many years about when it came to that day where I really had to explain the book and what was going on.
Ashley Thornberg
That's when you finally realized.
Chris Stenson
Well, I couldn't hide from the fact that a lot of what happens in the book are scenes straight from my life with a little twist, not exactly the same, but fairly close. But the alcoholism. My father drank a lot.
My mother for a period of time really, really struggled raising three kids in the 70s and 80s on her own. And I love my mom dearly and I don't blame her for everything. There's a couple things I blame her for, but I understand.
And I'm not trying to paint her in a horrible light because my mother wasn't horrible. She just had struggles at times. I mean, kind of like Sharon, who's Isabel's mother in the book, she has her own demons that she's running from.
And we all have our own demons. And that's one of the things about my writing is I like to explore the darkness inside each person because everybody has some darkness inside them. And everybody also has some light inside them.
Who wins depends on, to me, your outcome in life. Those who can't overcome their demons or be disciplined tend to end up in trouble with the law or alcohol or drugs.
Ashley Thornberg
Yeah. Is it fair to ask, Chris, is it also an exploration of how to stay light when you're surrounded by darkness? Because Isabel, to me, never comes off as a dark character, even though she's disappearing into different realms and wakes up with blood on her at times.
Chris Stenson
Well, I disappeared in a fantasy life at times growing up. My father, in the dedication, I dedicate the book to my father and my wife and my daughter, who are great inspirations. But my father was the one who taught me the love of words and books.
And so when life was the worst, that's where I disappeared into. I would hide in my room in a corner with a book and disappear into that imaginary world. And at times, did I stretch the truth every once while talking to friends and saying what the things I could do?
Yeah, I did. But it was a way to cope because I didn't tell a lot of people how bad life was growing up at times or how hard it was. Because my mother didn't see a lot of it because she worked at night.
And a lot of the things that he did, he took out on me because he was frustrated with his relationship with my mother and marriage. And some of it is his life also. Have they read the book?
My stepfather passed away a few years ago. My mother has not yet. But she says she plans to buy it this weekend and then read it.
And I'm willing to guess that we will probably have some conversations.
Ashley Thornberg
That's author Chris Stenson about his novel Sins of the Mother. He'll be one of the authors at an upcoming book release party. It's this Saturday at the Words to Live By bookstore in Moorhead.
The event is from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and features Melissa Prusi and Stephen Hopstaken, co-authors of the Stoker's Wilde series, where they imagine if Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde teamed up to hunt demons. Stenson first interacted with them when they spoke with the Moorhead Friends writing group, which has about 40 writers from 13 states and Canada. They meet over Zoom or in person every other Tuesday from 7 to 9 p.m. You can find out more at moorheadfriendswritinggroup.com.
Stenson was doing some fundraising for the library when the director, Megan Kruger, encouraged him to do a little more, including some networking.
Chris Stenson
So she said, you know, do you want to start a group? And I said, sure.
Ashley Thornberg
Very confidently, I can tell.
Chris Stenson
Because I hadn't, I had no idea. I was part of another online writers group at the time. But I said, sure, I'll look into it.
So I did what everybody does, and you use Google. I googled how to start a writers group.
Ashley Thornberg
And I found one- Half of adulting is just googling things.
Chris Stenson
And I found a great group that had some really good things written down about how to run a writers group, things you can do. So I printed that out, set up the meeting at the library, and five people showed up. We started talking about, so what do we want to accomplish?
Started off by having writing prompts and reading each other's work. And then we slowly grew. I mean, you know, five at a time or a couple at a time.
And then COVID hit. Yep. And to me, that was actually the turning point in the writers group.
We turned to Zoom. And for two years, we just met over Zoom. But because of that, our social media presence grew.
And we kept adding members. Some of the members that I was with this other writers group, I invited to ours. And they've become really important to the group.
My novel signed with an indie publishing company. In 2021, I signed a publishing contract for my book. When I got that email at work that day, I was just ecstatic.
That, wow. Because my goal always has been to sign a traditional publishing contract. That has been my goal since third grade.
However, it did not go well. The company ended up having some issues. Luckily for us, a very, very good attorney was the author that took the blunt of what was going on.
And he wrote the letter that got us all our rights back. But it was really a waste of a year on Sins of the Mother. Because they kept asking my editor, kept asking questions, but we never got any place.
It was like they were stalling. But the good thing was, is during that time, I started writing short stories. Because I hadn't wrote short stories since probably high school, college.
Probably about a month after I signed my publishing contract, I signed my first short story contract. And by the end of this year, I will have published 12 short stories in different anthologies. And they're fun.
I really do enjoy writing short stories. To me, it's a challenge because I'm long-winded. So to get better at being precise.
Ashley Thornberg
If I had more time, I'd have written you a shorter letter. At this event, you have a couple of screenwriters coming who have worked professionally, who have sold their screenplays. Talk about, Chris, what they'll be doing at an event like this, and what it means to work with somebody who's operating on just a different level than you.
Chris Stenson
Well, Melissa Prusey and Stephen Hopsey Staken spoke to our group in 2021. What's the worst thing that can happen when you ask somebody something? The worst thing they can say is no.
We've had over 60 authors now speak to the group. And we have some very, very high-level authors. And people say, well, how do you get them to speak to your group?
Especially from Moorhead, Minnesota. And I said, I ask. I do the same pitch.
I use the same pitch every time that I approach one. I send them the message. And they either say yes or they say no.
Last year, I think I sent out 14 messages to get 12 writers to speak to us. That's a heck of a return on investment. And I've got to meet some of these authors.
And one of them, Dacre Stoker, the great-grandnephew of Brom Stoker, he was our first speaker. I reach out and try to get to know people. Because really what we're trying to do is get exposure to the Moorhead Friends Writers Group and to our writers.
Because we do have writers who are good enough to sign agent contracts, to sign big contracts. It is just we need to meet more people. And we need to be at the right spot at the right time.
Because really, a lot of it is being lucky. I hate to say that. But sometimes you have to make your own luck to being lucky.
One of our authors, who's a best-selling New York Times author, spoke to us a couple months ago. And she said she found her agent at the second writer's group that she ever went to. Oh, wow.
She turned in a chapter. There was a member of the group who did not tell anybody that they were an agent. And the agent loved her work, signed her.
And she's written 18 to 20 books since then. I mean, so I kind of asked, do we have any agents in our group? Someone?
Ashley Thornberg
Anyone?
Chris Stenson
And so on Saturday, June 22, we are having a book release party for our third anthology with special guests Melissa and Stephen at the Words to Live By bookstore in Moorhead, Minnesota. They carry mostly used books, but high-quality used books. She believes in quality.
Ashley Thornberg
How do you describe the role of an independent bookstore in a neighborhood?
Chris Stenson
I think besides a library, they're kind of the heartbeat of neighborhoods, at least in my world. In my world of words and books, indie bookstores are a must. And have a bookstore like Jill, who believes in local writers, supporting local writers.
She does carry all of the books of the Moorhead Friends writers group. But she also then promotes our group. And there's been many authors who have asked her to sell their books, and she's convinced that they should join our group.
Every author needs to have a bookstore. Amazon is great, but you really need a place where a person can come and pick up your book and feel it and smell it.
NOTE: Prairie Public's Main Street uses turboscribe.ai to generate transcripts of some of its interviews. The audio is the official record of the show.