The Texicans
by Nina Vida
Paperback
296 Pages, Published by Soho Press
List Price: $13.00
Published in 2007
ISBN-10: 1-56947-477-X

About the book:

Nina Vida’s new novel The Texicans, was published by Soho Press in hardcover. It is Ms. Vida’s seventh novel. The Texicans has been widely acclaimed for its literary excellence as well as its radiantly fresh approach to western fiction. It tells the story of Joseph Kimmel, reclusive Missouri schoolteacher, who goes to Texas to settle his brother’s estate. Texas changes him. He battles Indians, rescues an escaped slave, marries Katrin, a young Alsatian immigrant, and becomes the biggest landowner in the Texas Hill Country, but it is his obsession with Aurelia, a mysterious Mexican girl with mystical powers, that nearly destroys him.

About the author: (from her website)
Nina Vida’s writing career began when her children went off to college and she enrolled in the University Without Walls program at California State University Dominguez Hills to pursue a long-deferred degree in English. One of the requirements of the degree was a semester of creative writing. Nina, who had never written fiction before, decided to write a story about her 38-year-old sister’s open-heart surgery. The professor said it brought her to tears. Nina’s husband had been a Navy journalist in the Korean War, and when he read the story he said he thought Nina had the makings of a writer and should try her hand at a novel. That was in 1980. Since then Nina has had seven novels published. The seventh novel, The Texicans, was published by Soho Press.

She is a native born Californian, lives in Huntington Beach and is a well known collector of antique Asian porcelain.

***** Beginning of Q&A *****

Q&A:
“What question have you always wanted to be asked in an interview but never have been?”

How much of what you write is based on relatives, friends or enemies?

“What is your answer to that question?”

I’ll never tell!

“Why did you pick the genre you write in?”

I didn’t pick the genre I write in.  It picked me.  I’ve always liked literary and not-so-literary fiction – but I guess I just love good fiction, well written, stories that cross genres, that can’t always be categorized, that sometimes contain mystery, or magical realism or history or romance, or suspense, or all of the above.  I truly love writing about the way people change, for better or worse, when they’re put in calamitous situations.  I usually write about an incident that wreaks havoc with the lives of my characters.  What happens to them and how they do or don’t adapt is a subject that really excites me and keeps me chained to my writing desk.

“What kind of research did you do for this book?”

In preparation for writing The Texicans I read and read and read about the early days of Texas.  I made five trips to San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country.  In San Antonio I met and interviewed and became friends with Frances Kallison, who was born in San Antonio, and was a Texas historian and an expert on all things Texan.  She died at 96 the year before the publication of The Texicans.

“What’s been the hardest thing for you when writing your books?”

The hardest thing for me when I’m writing a book is not trying to leap ahead too far, to just concentrate on what I’m presently writing, and let the story unfold on its own.  I used to outline, but I soon discovered that the outline and the story always parted company at some point.  So now I just have a general idea of what I’m trying to say in the book, and I let it surprise me.  It’s something like rearranging furniture.  You have an idea of how you want the room to look when you’re finished, so you start moving furniture with the outcome in mind.  But then you stick a chair in front of the fireplace to get it out of the way, and it looks great there, and it sets the arrangement off in another direction, so you move the couch somewhere else and the coffee table somewhere else, and before you know it the plan is out the window.

I’ve always wonder if authors have a routine. “When and where do you write? Do you have particular time of day you find you’re more creative”

I try to write every day when I’m writing a book.  Sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes I just think about the writing and make notes.  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a brainstorm, get up, climb the stairs and start writing.

“What authors do you read when you’re not busy being an author yourself?”

I read Anne Tyler and Margot Livesey and whatever entices me.

“What’s the best thing about being an author?”

The best thing about being an author is that it takes you away from reality.  Time stops.  Worlds open.  You turn around and it’s dinnertime.  Another thing that’s great about it is being in touch with the people who read your books.

“What question would you like your readers to answer?”

The question I’d like your readers to answer is:  Do you think the pundits are right, that the book as we know is on its way out, that we’ll all be reading online or from Kindles, and does it matter to you if that happens?

Thanks, Shoshana, for a lot of intriguing questions! Nina

***** End of Q&A *****

Tags: Nina Vida