Today we’d like to introduce you to Victoria Dougherty.
Hi Victoria, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I come from this eccentric, war-torn, immigrant family, and that’s had a tremendous impact on my life.
Communist snitches, political prisoners, bombshell women, dashing men, achingly beautiful love stories and wretched marriages, even a ghost or two.
These people and happenings were simply part of our household, and as a result, deeply unsettling bits of business were thrown around at our dinner table as casually as the F-bomb is dropped in rap songs.
“Did you hear about Uncle Jaroslav?” Heavy sigh, followed by an elegant pull on my Czech grandmother’s Carlton 120 cigarette. “He hung himself in his shed.”
“Why, Baba?” A wave of her hand, smoke curling around my toy poodle’s head, “Why not?” As I got older and really started processing all of this information, being a writer was the only thing that made sense to me. So, to make a long story a little less long, I started a blog called Cold (www.victoriadougherty.wordpress.com), where I write essays about the writing life, and finished my first novel, “The Bone Church,” and went from there.
Now, I’ve got two Cold War historical thrillers under my belt, with a third in the works, a book of noir short stories, and a new epic Historical Fantasy series that’s like Outlander, Indiana Jones, and The Time-Traveler’s Wife all baked together.
No matter the genre, my stories tend to be rich, thorny tales of love, history, and war – with a curse or two thrown in for good measure. Just like home.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have been struggles galore, but I have a lot of affection for them. At this point, I’ve worked with two New York agents, and gone through the maze of both traditional and Indie publishing. I won’t pretend it hasn’t been hard, but I’m grateful for every callus, each lesson learned.
When seeking representation and positioning my work to be acquired by an editor at a big publishing house, I’ve had to learn how to make my stories relevant to current trends, how to take criticism, and how to advocate for myself in a system where I have very little power.
As an Indie writer and publisher, the challenges are very different, but no less daunting. I’ve had to find and hire the right designers and editors, create and implement an effective marketing plan, and write punchy, compelling ad copy – it really is like running a small business.
In the end, whether an author is being published by a traditional publisher or is going it on her own, she is charged with making her stories great. It’s our job to light imaginations on fire, create fantasies, and help make sense of the world. That’s the great equalizer.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My stories are about lovers, killers, curses, and destinies. Whether I’m writing my Cold blog (www.victoriadougherty.wordpress.com), voicing my podcast of the same name (Cold is on Apple, Spotify, Overcast, and all the usual suspects), or writing thrillers and historical fantasy novels, I aim for a rich experience that creates a world a reader can live in.
What I do is the opposite of fast food fiction, and I’ll stay up long into the night in order to make a story sublime, raw, immersive, and heart-drummingly beautiful. If my reader reviews didn’t reflect that, I think I’d seriously have to think about changing things up. But thankfully, they do.
That’s what I’m most proud of. I feel deeply honored that so many of the readers who discovered my work through my Cold War historical thrillers (The Bone Church, The Hungarian, Welcome to the Hotel Yalta) were willing to follow me into a new genre – historical fantasy (Breath, Savage Island, and the forthcoming Of Sand and Bone).
I don’t take that kind of trust for granted.
What were you like growing up?
When I was a little kid, I wanted to be Carol Burnett more than anything else in the world. I watched her variety show every week, memorized her skits, wrote my own – even filmed a few of them on my older brother’s Super 8 camera.
During my darkest, loneliest childhood moments, Carol was always there for me. and I wanted to do what she did – make people feel good after a rough day or rough year.
Of course, I also just loved watching people spit strawberry milk out of their noses after one of my cracks, disrupting class, and earning a smack on the head from my teacher (this was a Catholic school in the late 70s and early 80s when teachers were not only allowed to do that but encouraged to by our own parents).
Somehow, even though becoming Carol Burnett was without a doubt my fondest dream, I became a novelist who writes some pretty serious stuff. That, of course, is my family’s influence on me. But there’s still a deep current of humor in everything I write.
Even my most somber essays on my blog – ones about death or faith or true love – tend to be embroidered with some manner of a joke. That’s all Carol.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.victoriadoughertybooks.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/victoria_dougherty
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/victoriadougherty.author
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/vicdougherty
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/VictoriaDougherty
- Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Victoria-Dougherty/e/B00JPMQ1HA/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1
- Other: www.victoriadougherty.wordpress.com
Image Credits
John Michael Triana
