Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Today's Special - - Barbara O'Neal


It's such an honor to have Barbara O'Neal visit with us today!  This multi-award winning author (she's won SIX RITAS!) recently took time from her busy schedule to answer a few questions for PJ.   Let's find out more about  Barbara's new book and what keeps her busy when she's not writing those award-winning stories.


Welcome to the Romance Dish, Barbara!  It’s such a pleasure to have you with us today.  Congratulations on the release of The Garden of Happy Endings.  Please share with our readers what they can expect from this book.
Thanks so much for having me--I’m very excited about this book.  The Garden of Happy Endings is a story about second chances and starting over and the power of nature and spirituality to heal terrible wounds.  Sisters Elsa and Tamsin are two very different women thrown together when each faces a crisis--there is love from the past, and the possibilities of love in the present, and the enduring power of a marriage that has fallen apart.  I love this book--it was very challenging book to write, but in the end, I felt deeply proud of the result. 

As an animal lover and “mom” to two big dogs, I love the role animals play in your stories.  Are the dogs featured in your books a product of your imagination or based on dogs you’ve known?  We’d love to hear about the animals who share your life!
Most of the dogs in my books are based at least in part on the dogs I have known in my life.  Being able to write about them gives me a chance to extend their lives, share their fantastic-ness with other people.  Charlie, in GARDEN, is based on a dog I used to hike with. He was a giant of a flat-coat retriever--smart and exuberant and wonderful.  I loved  writing about him in this book.   My own dog is a chow-and-no-one-knows mix, Jack.  He's a curious mix of stalwart shepherd who will not come down the stairs in the morning until all of us (including all three cats) have also come down and terrified neurotic who once went through a plate glass window in his fear over fireworks.  He's also a very, very pretty dog.  Everywhere I go people comment on his beauty.  
We also have three cats.  It always makes me feel like a bad mom not to mention them.  Rafael and Gabriella arrived as twin tuxedo siblings when I was just getting into GARDEN, and they definitely are in the text if you look. 
Janga (who recently reviewed THE GARDEN OF HAPPY ENDNGS for us) has a question:  Your characters always fully engage me – head and heart – from the first pages and haunt me after I close the book.  What’s your secret for creating such memorable, deeply human characters? 
This review was so incredibly gorgeous, I honestly got tears in my eyes reading it. So thank you for that.  
I don't always know exactly how to answer this question.  My stories are very much based in the characters who show up on the stage of my imagination, and they reveal themselves as I write--showing flaws and virtues and secrets I never suspected until I'm well underway.  For example, I didn't realize that Elsa and Joaquin had walked the Camino until we were well into the book. I didn’t realize he would be so challenged by her return, either.  That was all very interesting. 
You’ve written books in a variety of sub-genres, under three different names and won multiple awards including six RITAs and another RITA nomination this year for HOW TO BAKE A PERFECT LIFE.   Congratulations!  How do the emotions surrounding this latest nomination compare to the first one?  Do all those lovely ladies have a special place of honor in your home?
The emotion of being nominated for a RITA never wanes for me. If I get a call, I’m overwhelmed and thrilled and teary-eyed.  That might sound like a saccharine, canned answer, but I assure you it is true.  It really means a lot to me to be able to please a body of my peers.  
I keep the RITAs in a row on a bookcase in my office. 
I’m fascinated by the fact that you’re a long distance walker who has walked a portion of the Camino de Santiago Compestela, a collection of old pilgrimage routes that cover Europe.  How did you get into this activity?  Will you tell us about your trek on the Camino de Santiago Compestela?  Any advice for readers who may want to try long distance walking?  
Walking part of the Camino in 2010 was a profoundly stirring and enriching experience.  It was something I'd had on my bucket list for about five years--I ached to visit Spain, had read a lot about the Camino because I did a medieval novel about a pilgrimage (A Winter Ballad), and I love that kind of long, long walk.  A friend of mine knew I loved it, and when she said a group of her friends were going, I leapt at the invitation.  (Same friend and I are talking about a second trip, to walk the entire route, in 2013.) 
I'd actually torn the meniscus in my left knee just before I left, but I knew if I had any treatment for it, they'd tell me what a bad idea it was, so I went anyway and hobbled along in braces the whole way.  It made me feel like a medieval pilgrim in a way!
This was my third long-distance walk--the first was 100 miles in the French Alps, an experience that changed everything in my life, quite literally.  
The benefits are many. Walking is human speed--you can see what you're passing.  You hear the birds.  You have breath to talk to others along the route, and time to think about yourself, your life, the world, books, God, life--everything.  AND you can eat a ton at the end of the day because you've burned thousands of calories.   I'd advice anyone who wants to try it to find some walking groups in your area, or sign up for one of the charity walks, like Avon's Breast Cancer walk, and start training with others.  You'll find out that way if it is something you like.
What an amazing experience!  I can't imagine anyone undertaking those long distance walks and not being changed in some way.  Have to admit, I also like that "eating a ton at the end of the day" part! ;-)  


What are you working on now?
I'm currently working on my next book for Bantam, about a group of food bloggers and an organic farm. The research has been obscenely fun.   
That's my kind of research!  


Where can readers find you on the internet? 
Facebook:  facebook/BarbaraSamuelONeal
Twitter: twitter/barbaraoneal

Note:  Barbara is also a regular blogger at thegoddessblogs.com 
Do you have a question for our readers?
I’d love to know if you’ve ever grown a garden that healed you of a wrong or a sorrow or a broken heart? 

22 comments:

  1. Hi Barbara! Welcome to The Romance Dish! I just had a long comment disappear on me ::frowning:: so I'm off to get a cup of coffee then I'll try again!

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  2. Hi, Barbara! I'm a long-time fan of your books, those you wrote as Barbara Samuel, Ruth Wind, and Barbara O'Neal. I love being able to buy your older titles now as ebooks.

    My gardening skills are in the minimalist category, but the gardens that live in my memory and my imagination are touchstones for me. Both my grandmothers were devoted gardeners, and I spent hours with them in their gardens. I never see a dahlia that I don't think of my maternal grandmother in her "house dress," sun hat, and gardening gloves carefully selecting which of the heavy-headed, crayloa-colored blooms she'd cut for the arrangement that would be placed on the altar at her church. The prayer garden with its willows and old roses was a favorite retreat for crying necessary tears during my undergrad days, and I borrow Marianne Moore's defintion of poetry for my fiction. I try to create "imaginary gardens with real toads in them."

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    1. I'd say my gardening skills fall right alongside yours, Janga. Though I have improved over the years, I have yet to achieve "green" status. ;-)

      The prayer garden sounds lovely. We should all have such a retreat for those necessary tears.

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    2. Sorry to be so late replying. I tried earlier and I kept losing replies.

      I love the idea of the prayer garden, too. And Janga, I love your poetic descriptions of the dahlias.

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  3. I find gardening very therapeutic. I’ve never used it as a cure for a broken heart, but gardening has helped me deal with numerous other bumps in the road.

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    1. I agree! There's just something about digging your hands into dirt or, in some cases, ripping out weeds with vigor that is great therapy!

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  4. Hi Barbara, I love your books. I can't wait to sink into this one but today is book club day and another book to think about. Yours is up next. : )
    I am not really a gardener but grew up with a grandmother and mother who are. They really inherited the green thumb. In my rose garden I have a wrought iron sign that was always one of Gran's favorites: "The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth, we are nearer God's heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth."

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    1. "The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth, we are nearer God's heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth."

      Oh, how lovely! I've heard the second part of that quote but I don't think I'd ever heard it in its entirety.

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    2. That's a beautiful quote, Robena!

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  5. My stepmom loved nothing more than creating beauty from a plot of dirt. Several years ago, when she and my dad were visiting for a few months I had to have surgery that required a six week period of recovery. I came home from the hospital, in severe pain and down in the dumps over the idea of my impending enforced inactivity, to discover my 70-something stepmom had been busy while I was under the knife. My gardens were all dancing with multi-colored spouts that teasingly hinted at the burst of color that was to come. Over the next several weeks, I spent time in the yard each day, lifting my face to the sun and healing my body as my gardens sprang to life and filled my soul with joy.

    These days, I fill my gardens with colorful flowers each spring in honor of my stepmom. She's in a nursing home, in the final stages of Alzheimer's but her gardens (I still think of them as "hers" even though they're really mine) sing her praises as they drink the cool rain and dance in the sunshine. It doesn't bring her back to us but it eases my heart some to carry on for her.

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    1. PJ, that is a very touching story. What a grand heart your step-mother has...and yes, those flowers are singing her praises. What a lovely visual.

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  6. Congratulations on your book release. I'm planning on reading it as it sounds great. I like gardening and often help my mother with hers. I do think it's relaxing - quite therapeutic.

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  7. Congrats on your new book, would love to read it. I don't grow a garden but would love to. I do put out a few tomatoes every year. I really enjoy doing this but not sure I will get to this year. I am going to have to have some back surgery done but may get my tomatoes out first. I hope so.

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    1. Quilt Lady, one of the sisters in this book is obsessed with quilting. Perhaps you will enjoy that part!

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  8. There's something about digging in the dirt that I find very rewarding (especially when you get vegetables or flowers) but the act itself is a great physical and mental release. When I was a child we didn't have a garden but I spent all my summer days just sifting and playing in the dirt - I didn't even need the results of actually growing something lol. It sounds like a lovely story and I like the fact that you have animals included.

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    1. I agree that digging in the dirt is therapeutic! And there are animals in ALL my books--hope you'll find one or two and give them a try.

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  9. Hi, Barbara! Welcome to the Romance Dish! We are thrilled to have you with us. What a lovely interview! Wow, six RITAs? I really need to pick up your books!

    I'm not a yard/garden person...and that's not without trying. My thumb is most definitely not green. LOL! I do have fond memories of how delicious the tomatoes were that my grandmother used to grow! :)

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  10. Thanks for having me, Andrea. Yes, fresh tomatoes are a reason to garden all by themselves. The trouble is, once you've eaten them straight off the vine, all others pale in comparison.

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  11. We have had many gardens over the years and places we have lived. I can't say any of them were planted to heal body, mind, or spirit. They are, however, therapeutic. I find weeding them restful and fulfilling. At my age, they are also killing my knees and my back, but I do enjoy working them. Many good memories are associated with the gardens, aside from the many good meals they have provided them. I can remember the summer our girls were 18 months and 21/2 years old.. We placed our vegetable plants along with our flowers. I looked out one morning .

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  12. I'm very sorry to say that gardens are not my friends. The interview is lovely, P.J. and Barbara, but I have terrible allergies to plants, flowers, trees, pollens..yada, yada(thank you George Costanza.) I get terrible welts just from touching some plants along with sneezing, wheezing,itching, watering eyes and again..Yada yada! However, I do have a lovely garden of books at my fingertips, and I cultivate them and give all of them the love and attention they deserve because they have been cultivated in the minds of some of the most brilliant authors I know.

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  13. I'm not the gardener in the family. I do appreciate the green efforts of others though & enjoy.

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