Photograph by Kate Wilson
Today I’m thrilled to welcome Karri L. Moser, the author of The Weathering of Sea Glass. Karri L. Moser is a fiction and freelance writer. She has written for magazines, newspapers, the U.S. Army, as well as marketing firms and other organizations. Karri has also ghostwritten fiction in the romance and self-help genre. Karri currently lives and works in Maine. She draws inspiration from the small coastal tourist towns, beaches, and the unique history and culture of New England. She is the author of The Weathering of Sea Glass, Moose Pond Lodge, and the sequel to Moose Pond Lodge—The Thriving of Willows. When Karri isn’t writing, she loves to run, paint, garden, and tour around New England, all with a hot hazelnut coffee in her hand. Welcome, Karri.
SS: Can you share a bit about your background?
KLM: I grew up an Army brat. My dad served for over twenty years, and I lived on several Army posts before he retired from the military and moved our family to small town central Pennsylvania. I went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania in western Pennsylvania and graduated with a degree in English literature. This was where I met my husband, who was in the Army at the time. After college, I spent twenty years as an Army wife traveling with him and raising our children exactly how I was raised—moving all over, experiencing different regions of the country, and being part of a military family. My husband retired a few years ago, and we moved to southern Maine. We built a house while stationed in this area years ago. We plan to move again once both our children have left the New England area (our youngest is still in college in Maine). These moves, the people we’ve met along the way, and the regions we’ve loved living in have all played a role in my fiction writing. As far as my day job, I spent many of those years working as a freelance writer for several magazines, websites, and marketing firms all while doing my fiction on the side, including ghostwriting a few romance novels.
SS: What literary pilgrimages have you made?
KLM: I have always been a huge fan of the transcendentalist writers of New England—Thoreau, Emerson, and Alcotts. By chance, my husband and I got stationed in Massachusetts and lived on Hanscom Air Force Base, a few miles from Concord, Mass. While still in a hotel waiting for military housing to be available to us, I scooped up my three-year-old daughter and son on his first birthday and headed to Walden Pond, which was always a dream of mine. Laying eyes on it the first time was as magical as expected for any fan of Walden and the works of those great literary minds. We spent many summer days at Walden during our time living there. Exploring Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and Authors Ridge in Concord, the part of the cemetery where the greats are buried is also a moving memory and something I had always dreamt of doing. I encourage any writer who loves early American literature to make the journey to Concord.
SS: Do you ever incorporate something that happened to you in real life into your novels?
KLM: In my upcoming novel, A Home for the Windswept, the young couple making the journey from a small papermill town in Northern Maine to Nebraska with two young kids in tow break down in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. They are stranded for a few days before they can make the second half of a life-changing journey. When my husband and I moved from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, we broke down and were stranded in Danbury Connecticut for several days. While I based the PA town in the novel on a mix of where my parents live and where my husband’s family lives, the breakdown and feelings of being stranded, lost, and in limbo stem from our breakdown in 2000.
SS: Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) feels he discovers a story rather than creates it. Are you a plotter? Or do you let the novel develop organically?
KLM: I think I am a mix of both. He is one of my favorite current authors by the way. I always have the setting fully pictured and developed before I type a word, and the main characters, also. They are as real to me as anyone before I begin a novel. Also, with all three novels currently published, I have steadfastly known the last scene and final outcome. However, the theme and underlying connections between the characters develop organically as I write. I often don’t see the central theme until I am in the thick of it or even at the end. Then, I will work to incorporate it throughout after the fact.
SS: Do your books carry a message? If so, what would you say it is?
KLM: Yes. Even without always making it a forethought or a central theme from the get-go, all of my books so far feature a strong, independent, female lead trying to make her way under harsh circumstances or despite numerous obstacles–basically, the central ideals of women’s fiction. Each female lead perseveres, and I guess the message would be—women can overcome anything and make their own way in any storm or despite any misfortune. Women can and will persevere on their own terms.
SS: My heroines are much the same—they’re determined to attain a life for themselves. What books inspired you as a child? As an adult?
KLM: As a child, I was drawn to women writers. I loved all Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books and of course, loved Little Women. Both taught me that girls have pretty interesting childhood stories worth sharing and that inspired me to journal about my own adventures as a young woman. As an adult, I love Khaled Hosseini and Jeannette Walls. The family stories, generational changes, family secrets, harsh and unusual childhoods that shape interesting adults, and the cultural significance of their works really speaks to me.
SS: What’s something memorable you’ve heard from your readers/fans? What’s been the best compliment?
KLM: In my first novel, The Weathering of Sea Glass, Denny, one of the main characters, spends thirty-five years in prison. My dad was a prison guard in a maximum security facility for fifteen years after retiring from the Army. I asked him countless questions and listened to his stories of actual life and happenings behind the gates of the State Correctional Institution of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Once the book came out, he read it and another guard did also. Both said I got daily life and the reality of prison life right, which was a huge compliment. I had several other readers tell me I nailed daily life behind bars. Also, one of my characters in The Weathering of Sea Glass is bipolar. I heard from a friend who has a daughter with bipolar disorder, which I didn’t realize at the time I wrote it. He said I got that right, including the family struggles, medication side effects, and general chaos that the disorder can cause for a family. Hearing people approve of my depiction of that setting and personality disorder was a huge compliment as both topics were pretty sensitive.
SS: Where and when is your book set? How did you decide on the setting? The timeframe?
KLM: A Home for the Windswept, which will be released April 2021, is set in Maine and Nebraska during the recession of 2008. It is a cross-country journey of a young family forced to find a new way to survive after the town paper mill closes due to the recession and tech boom combined. Believing man and man’s greed has taken all from them, they decide to go move to Nebraska to repair the aftermath of tornadoes for a living—believing God’s wrath will provide. It takes place over the course of several months and is broken into three parts—Maine, the journey, and Nebraska. Having moved from Maine to Nebraska in 2011, I loved the landscape and fell in love with Omaha and the Nebraska countryside, which is why I chose it as the final destination for my characters. It is kind of my homage to Nebraska just as The Weathering of Sea Glass was my homage to Maine and the coastal tourist towns.
SS: Mark Rubinstein (Beyond Bedlam’s Door: True Tales from the Couch and Courtroom) says “without chaos, there’s very little story to tell.” What’s the central conflict in your story? What’s the source of chaos?
KLM: The central conflict is man versus society and man versus nature. Basil, the main character and his wife, Darcy lose everything due to man’s greed and a changing world around them, namely the advances in technology that kill the paper industry. As I stated before, they end up believing God will provide and make up for what man took. God’s wrath will provide, only they soon realize man versus nature can be a dangerous fight they are unprepared to win as they set out to live in tornado alley. The source of chaos is a world changing for a twenty-three-year-old couple who were content with their small town, predictable existence in Northern Maine. Their world, and the entire town is upended and thrown into chaos once the mill closes. Then of course, the tornadoes lead to literal and figurative chaos for the young couple.
SS: Are there any books on writing you find particularly useful and would recommend?
KLM: Stephen King’s On Writing is my favorite. I believe it is the perfect mix of writing inspiration, practical writing tips, and personal memoir. I recommend every aspiring writer read it.
SS: Pantser or Plotter?
KLM: Plotter. But, I’m not afraid to go with a new idea or direction if the story leads me that way. I’m flexible, but definitely plot an outline before I can begin.
SS: Your favorite guilty pleasure?
KLM: As much as I hate to admit it, I am an avid fan of several of The Real Housewives shows on Bravo. Not all of them, but more than I care to admit. I will live tweet with other fans during the shows. Watching an hour of that nonsense with a glass of wine is relaxing to me.
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Karri’s works are available through Amazon:
Also through B&N:
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An excerpt from A Home for the Windswept, which will be released April 2021:
“So? Any word?” she asked as she pulled the curtain closed. Darcy stepped over a pile of matchbox cars to take Basil’s coat from him as he stomped snow off his boots.
“Yeah. Exactly what I expected. Looks like we’ve got maybe three months of work if we’re lucky, then nothing.” He leaned down to peel his boots off and shook snow from his dirty blond hair. When he stood and stretched his long arms over his head, his hands touched the ceiling. His shirt lifted enough for Darcy to see the scar just below his belly button. Defeat filled his icy blue eyes. “That’s all she wrote, Darcy. The mill will close. All of us will be out of work.”
“No. They’ll get another contract, merge with another Canadian plant just like in 2000 when they got bailed out at the last minute.” Darcy leaned down to straighten his wet boots. He stepped past her towards the kitchen.
“This ain’t like 2000. People don’t need us anymore in 2008. They don’t need paper. With phones, computers, cheaper paper across the border, and all, the mill is dead, or so it will be soon.” He threw his arms up and tapped the threshold between the living room and kitchen with his hands.
Darcy scooted across the living room in her worn-out slippers from two Christmases ago. She lowered herself onto the couch and ran her pale, puffy fingers through Orion’s black hair. The two-year-old reached up and moaned as he slowly woke. Basil opened the fridge and took out a beer. Orion rubbed his eyes and sat up looking for his dad when the cap popped and hit the linoleum.
“We’re gonna be okay. Right, Basil? We’ll figure out something.” She said into the air not making eye contact as Basil huffed. She glanced down at her belly then at both kids. She knew he didn’t have an answer, but the question floated out of her mouth anyway. Basil paced and swigged. Her eyes followed his lanky frame around their tiny trailer. She wanted to grab his arm, steady him, but she knew it was pointless. He needed to pace just as she needed to be still.
Darcy thought back to the high school dance when she first kissed Basil as they awkwardly swayed back and forth, trying to stay in step with each other. She told him about her plans to go to college to study astronomy to discover and name a new star. She wanted to peer at something no one else had ever seen before. Darcy remembered Basil smiling at her just before he leaned down for that first kiss. He whispered as he drew her chin up towards his mouth, “Winsockette ain’t a place for stargazers and dreamers.” He was right.
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