KRISTIN OAKLEY's debut novel, CARPE DIEM, ILLINOIS, won the 2014 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award for non-traditionally published fiction, was a finalist in the Independent Author Network 2015 Book of the Year, and a runner-up in the 2016 Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition. Its sequel, GOD ON MAYHEM STREET, which was a finalist in the Winning Writers North Street Book Awards. She is a Chicago Writers Association board member, the managing editor of CWA’s The Write City Magazine and The Write City Review, and a UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies adjunct writing instructor. In the summer you can catch her writing Leo’s story on the UW-Madison Memorial Union Terrace. When it cools down, she put characters in impossible situations while sitting in my favorite chair at the beautiful Verona Public Library. She is currently working on The Devil Particle Trilogy and the third book in the Leo Townsend series.
Dave Watson: Congratulations on the book. Did you envision this as a series?
Kristin Oakley: No, I had no idea it would be a series until I wrote the last sentence of the first draft of Carpe Diem, Illinois. Once that sentence was written, I realized Leo, my protagonist, had more stories to tell.
DW: What characters inspired you growing up? As a reader? Honestly, writers inspired me more than particular characters. My favorites have been (and still are) Stephen King because his easy descriptions make the story come alive, Michael Crichton because of the possibilities he imagined, Barbara Kingsolver’s ease of character development, Jane Austen’s tangled relationships, William Shakespeare’s genius, and until recently John Grisham because of the dilemmas he put his characters through. Lately, I’ve been learning a lot from the experimentation of George Sanders and David Mitchell.
DW: Do you see part of your main character, Leo Townsend, in you? You in him?
KO: A little bit. We love the power of the written word, we’re insatiably curious, we’re atheists, and we both prefer living in cities to living in the country. But he’s a man with a womanizing-and-alcohol-abusing past and I’m pretty boring.
DW: You grew up here in the Midwest, correct? Do you find this to be a great setting for stories? Actually, I grew up in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and have lived in Boston and Belgium, but I would say my roots are in the Midwest. I think the great thing about setting a book in the Midwest is the variety—big cities, small farming towns, touristy lakeside communities, sky scrapers, cows, cliffs, prairies, ice storms, and scorching heat. The people are as varied, too, everything from good-hearted to corrupt which makes for great stories.
DW: What's next?
KO: Leo’s on hold while I work on a young adult dystopian trilogy called The Devil Particle about a teenage boy who becomes the vessel for all the world’s evil. The fifth draft of the first book is in the hands of Waunakee High school students who are beta reading the manuscript for me right now. I’ve written two drafts of the second book and have lots of ideas for the third. I’m also collaborating on a creative non-fiction project that I’m very excited about and will be pitching to literary agents at this year’s UW-Madison Writers’ Institute.
DW: Finally, what is your favorite cinematic moment?
KO: There are so many . . . the scene in “Jaws” when Sheriff Brody sees the shark up close for the first time and says, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” I particularly love this because Actor Roy Scheider was so shocked by the size of the thing that he ad-libbed this line.
Clip: Jaws
Founder and editor of Movies Matter, Dave Watson is a writer and educator in Madison, WI.
Dave Watson: Congratulations on the book. Did you envision this as a series?
Kristin Oakley: No, I had no idea it would be a series until I wrote the last sentence of the first draft of Carpe Diem, Illinois. Once that sentence was written, I realized Leo, my protagonist, had more stories to tell.
DW: What characters inspired you growing up? As a reader? Honestly, writers inspired me more than particular characters. My favorites have been (and still are) Stephen King because his easy descriptions make the story come alive, Michael Crichton because of the possibilities he imagined, Barbara Kingsolver’s ease of character development, Jane Austen’s tangled relationships, William Shakespeare’s genius, and until recently John Grisham because of the dilemmas he put his characters through. Lately, I’ve been learning a lot from the experimentation of George Sanders and David Mitchell.
DW: Do you see part of your main character, Leo Townsend, in you? You in him?
KO: A little bit. We love the power of the written word, we’re insatiably curious, we’re atheists, and we both prefer living in cities to living in the country. But he’s a man with a womanizing-and-alcohol-abusing past and I’m pretty boring.
DW: You grew up here in the Midwest, correct? Do you find this to be a great setting for stories? Actually, I grew up in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and have lived in Boston and Belgium, but I would say my roots are in the Midwest. I think the great thing about setting a book in the Midwest is the variety—big cities, small farming towns, touristy lakeside communities, sky scrapers, cows, cliffs, prairies, ice storms, and scorching heat. The people are as varied, too, everything from good-hearted to corrupt which makes for great stories.
DW: What's next?
KO: Leo’s on hold while I work on a young adult dystopian trilogy called The Devil Particle about a teenage boy who becomes the vessel for all the world’s evil. The fifth draft of the first book is in the hands of Waunakee High school students who are beta reading the manuscript for me right now. I’ve written two drafts of the second book and have lots of ideas for the third. I’m also collaborating on a creative non-fiction project that I’m very excited about and will be pitching to literary agents at this year’s UW-Madison Writers’ Institute.
DW: Finally, what is your favorite cinematic moment?
KO: There are so many . . . the scene in “Jaws” when Sheriff Brody sees the shark up close for the first time and says, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” I particularly love this because Actor Roy Scheider was so shocked by the size of the thing that he ad-libbed this line.
Clip: Jaws
Founder and editor of Movies Matter, Dave Watson is a writer and educator in Madison, WI.
