Ep. 51: Interview with Trish MacEnulty

In this episode, Melody dives into the fascinating world of historical fiction with the talented Trish MacEnulty. Join them as they explore her journey from a casual interest in history to becoming an award-winning author. Trish shares her insights on the importance of research, emphasizing how it enriches her storytelling and connects past events to contemporary issues.

They discuss the challenges writers face, from balancing life responsibilities to the intricacies of self-promotion. Trish highlights the value of writing groups, where constructive feedback can help refine one’s craft. From her wealth of experience, Trish encourages aspiring writers to persevere and embrace their unique voices. Whether you’re a seasoned author or just starting, this episode is packed with inspiration and practical tips to fuel your writing journey. Tune in for an engaging conversation that celebrates creativity, resilience, and the joy of storytelling!

Trish’s links:

Trish MacEnulty, author
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Ep. 51: Interview with Trish MacEnulty

Dave Hogan, Gina’s Pop
00:02
Welcome to Around the Writer’s Table, a podcast focusing on the crossroads of creativity, craft, and conscious living for writers of all ages and backgrounds. Your hosts are Gina, Melody, and KimBoo, three close friends and women of a certain age, who bring to the table their eclectic backgrounds and unique perspectives on the trials, tribulations, and the joys of writing. So pull up a chair and get comfortable here around the writer’s table.

00:42
Melody, A Scout
Welcome back, listeners, to our podcast Around the Writer’s Table. This is Melody, A Scout, joining you this morning. I am so excited to be here with one of my favorite authors and writer friend, and just all-around fascinating person, Trish MacEnulty. And I am Melody, A Scout, like I said. I write fiction and nonfiction. My book,  Soul of the Seasons: Creating Balance, Resilience, and Connection by Tapping the Wisdom of the Natural World is available at most online bookstores. 

I’m not here with my co-hosts today, Gina Hogan Edwards and KimBoo York, because we are alternating with our interviews with writers. This morning, Trish MacEnulty is joining me. She holds a doctorate in English from Florida State University. Her published works include the Historical Fiction Company Gold Award winner The Whispering Women, book one in the Delafield and Malloy Investigation Series, which is four books; the Dante Rossetti first place winner and Historical Fiction Company Five Star Award winner Cinnamon Girl; two memoirs; two standalone crime novels. Wow, Trish, I am impressed. So thank you for joining me this morning. Where are you coming from today?

02:26
Trish MacEnulty
I’m from my front porch in Tallahassee, Florida.

02:31
Melody
All right, where we have met. A number of your books are historical fiction and we’re going to talk a little bit about that this morning because I happen to be in a writers group with both Gina Hogan Edwards and Trish because we’re all writing historical fiction. I want to know what drew you first to historical fiction and why the particular time period that you chose.

03:04
Trish
Well, this is a pretty easy answer. It was Downton Abbey. I was watching Downton Abbey and I loved that series so much and I loved that era and I didn’t know a lot about that era, but when the series ended, I thought, what am I going to do? I want to stay in that world. And I remembered there were family stories about my paternal grandparents who lived in New York and they were part of, well, they were very well off, and so they were part of that society. And I thought, well, that’s so, you know, I want to know about them. I want to know about, I never met them. I never met either one of them. Of course, their fortune was completely gone by the time I came around, but I wanted to know about their world. So I just started doing some research of that era, the 1910s, in New York City, and became utterly fascinated. I actually chose my character as a society writer because I had another grandmother who had been a society writer.

04:18
Melody
Oh, is that right?

04:20
Trish
Yeah, yeah. And I also, yeah, that was on my mother’s side. Also for a brief time at the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, I also wrote a society column, which was kind of funny because I’m not particularly high society person, but it was a lot of fun writing it. And so that just seemed a very natural way to get into that world. Yet I also wanted to write about more serious topics. And so kind of put her in a position where she’s got to do some investigative journalism.

04:58
Melody
Yeah. I think that’s a great occupation for that character, Louisa, because it gives her access to a lot of different, not only levels of society, but a lot of different aspects that a woman of that era, let’s just say, might not necessarily have.

05:25
Trish
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. She is able to open doors that maybe other people couldn’t.

05:33
Melody
Exactly. I also appreciated that you used women from different classes and races in your books and demonstrated how they were able to navigate the era in which they lived. I haven’t read your series in order. I think the first one I read was the Burning Bride, and that takes place in Florida.

06:05
Trish
Yeah, I had to write about Florida because, you know, this is my home. This is where I grew up, especially St. Augustine, which is so rich in history. So that seemed like a perfect place, and you can’t write about St. Augustine without addressing the racism. I mean, at one time, St. Augustine was called the most racist city in the country.

06:32
Melody
Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

06:34
Trish
And you know the old slave market that they had, which, after you do some research, maybe it wasn’t as much of a slave market as they said it was, but they used that as a tourist attraction. And so there’s a lot to unpack about St. Augustine and about racism in that time period especially.

06:59
Melody
Well, absolutely. I learned a lot of things about Florida and St. Augustine I didn’t know before. And true confession, I did not used to be a history buff, so historical fiction would not have interested me in the past, but it has fascinated me in recent years. And I love how you’re able to tie in the events of that time with your storyline. I feel like I get an education when I read your books.

07:36
Trish
That is the most fun part, is incorporating the real things that were going on and learning about them. Learning about the anarchist movement in New York and all of the protests and all of the things I just didn’t know about, the conditions that we don’t understand. We don’t. People say the word socialism now and it’s a dirty word, but when you look back at that time period when they’re forcing children to work in factories, when people have no days off, I mean, these were some real issues that needed to be resolved.

08:16
Melody
Yes. And not only the political, but the social unrest of that period and labor unions coming into power and all of the things that were happening. It just gave me not only a unique perspective, glimpse back into that time area, but it helps me understand the events of today as well.

08:44
Trish
That’s what I think too. And I’m like you, I wasn’t that interested or involved in history until I started researching it. And then suddenly, I saw these parallels and learned so much that I, I think one of the things is that we always want to keep learning. I find that that’s true about historical fiction readers, is that’s one of the things that they say they love about historical fiction is that they learn something. I feel that way now too. I am not as interested in contemporary fiction as I used to be. I’m much more interested in historical fiction because I learn something.

09:29
Melody
Hmm. I would agree. I’ve asked you this question before, but I think our listeners would be interested to know as well. How do you decide–there’s so much. I know this from researching my own historical fiction novel that I’m currently writing. There’s so much happening in the world during this time period. How do you decide what to keep and what to let go of, what to include in your stories?

10:03
Trish
That is a balancing act, and I actually have read, you know, I also review books for the Historical Novel Review, and I have read some books that just, they just had to—it was like the writer had to include every single thing that they learned, and it bogs down the narrative. So that’s part of the editing process and that’s part of the reason you might have a writing group or a writing partner to read your work and maybe make suggestions, maybe let you know where it gets a little bit too involved in the actual research and it bogs down the story.

10:45
Melody
Absolutely. I had someone tell me that to include, offer the wisdom, to include what is relevant to the characters during that time period.

10:59
Trish
Yeah, yeah. You can’t include everything. And even if there’s something, you know, I love to do hands on experiential research. So for Whispering Women, I went to the Museum of Transportation, which is in Brooklyn, New York, and it’s got old subways from that time period.

11:21
Melody
Oh, my gosh.

11:22
Trish
You know, I want to describe everything. I want to talk about the ads on the subway, I want to talk about the texture of the seats. But if it wasn’t that she would notice, then I can’t really include it. So I have to think of those things that my character would actually notice, that would actually be relevant to her experience in that moment.

11:50
Melody
That makes a lot of sense, and then it helps clarify what you include in the storyline.

11:58
Trish
Yes, exactly. Yeah.

12:00
Melody
Great. Well, speaking of writing groups, I mentioned earlier that you and Gina and I belong to what did we name ourselves: The HistFic Girls?

12:11
Trish
Yeah, I think it was HistFic Gals. Yeah.

12:13
Melody
Okay. And what do you find are benefits and potential challenges of writing groups?

12:24
Trish
I think the biggest challenge, as we all know, is scheduling. You know, we’re so busy and it’s really hard to get together, so that the biggest challenge. I prefer a smaller group. Two people. Well, two other people I think is perfect, because you get two different perspectives. Well, and if those perspectives agree, then you know you’re onto something, and if they disagree, then you have to decide which one makes sense to you. I think sometimes in those larger groups, you can get so much differing advice and thoughts that it can just be confusing, and it can just make you drop whatever you’re doing because it’s overwhelming. Which is not to say that those are bad, because certainly in college, that’s what we did. We were in large classrooms. I say large, you know, 12, 13 people all critiquing your work. So then, at that point, you have to be discriminatory. You have to decide—I guess the word is not discriminatory. It’s discretion. You need to use discretion. Whose advice do you think resonates with you? Who’s going to be your ultimate reader? Because not everyone is going to be your reader and you figure out those people. And what happened with us with my friends and my colleagues in graduate school was that we identified those people, then we had our own separate workshops. To this day, sometimes I workshop material with one of my friends from grad school and one of my other friends, I don’t publish anything unless she reads it first.

14:31
Melody
Nice.

14:32
Trish
You make those connections wherever you make them. And right now, actually, I’m in an interesting, a different sort of group, an online group. We don’t really workshop each other’s work that much. We get together every morning and just write. And then we get together and we may talk about craft. We might workshop somebody’s seven pages. And that’s a situation where I’m going to listen to three or four people who I think resonate with my work. It doesn’t mean that the other people don’t know what they’re talking about, but they just might not be potential readers for what I’m doing.

15:17
Melody
Absolutely. That is one of the things that I appreciate about our little writers group, too, is I think we trust each other and we can give good feedback, and we ask good questions of the writer.

15:39
Trish
I think that’s the most important thing. When I was a teacher, when I was a professor and I would teach creative writing, that was paramount. I said, “Ask questions.” Don’t spend your time critiquing. Don’t rewrite the person’s piece for them. That’s not appreciated. But ask questions. Ask big picture questions, ask detailed questions. I think that’s the most helpful thing.

16:06
Melody
Absolutely. We also talked about, in one of our earlier podcasts, about the subject of critiquing and in getting feedback is the importance of knowing who your reader is, your intended reader, having someone whose feedback you trust, and to also be very grounded in your own work, in your own story and your characters. You know better than anybody else how they are moving in the world, what their backstories are. And while we, like you said, the challenges are getting a broad range of feedback, which all may be fine, but you ultimately have to make that decision, and you know your story and your character’s best.

17:16
Trish
Well, and I think that’s why questions work best, because if I’m in a situation where I get three different people having a problem with one particular piece, one particular paragraph or something, it’s up to me to decide how to fix that, and that works better. So, yeah, I think you’re right. It’s ultimately up to you.

17:47
Melody
Absolutely. So tell me, Trish, what does your writing practice look like?

17:56
Trish
I like to write in the mornings, generally from about 8 till noon, and then I stop, or sometimes a little before noon, because I’ll stop and I’ll go to a yoga class or a Pilates class, because by then my brain is just burned out. And that’s always been the best, when I’m most alert is in the morning. Afternoons, I usually, I might do something marketing or I might read, do research or just use that time to catch up with my friends. Or catch up with my what’s going on in the world. So I wish, and sometimes I will have a full day and I think when I was younger that was more feasible. But I’m just happy that I get those three or four hours every day, and I can get a lot accomplished in that period of time.

18:55
Melody
I’m with you on that. I find mornings to be my most productive time. I like peace and quiet. I don’t want music, I don’t want background noise. Just me and the computer. That’s when I have the best clarity on that.

19:14
Trish
Yep, same here.

19:15
Trish
Some people write at night, and I think that’s great. I also think if you have a job, you have less flexibility and you just have to write. You can. And believe me, for many years I had a job and I didn’t get a huge amount of writing done.

19:34
Melody
Yeah, you really do. And that’s what we talk about on our podcast too. It has to work for you. There is no one size fits all in a writing practice. For sure.

19:47
Trish
Yeah.

19:49
Melody
So where do you draw your inspiration from?

19:53
Trish
That’s funny because at first I thought I don’t draw it from anywhere, I just get up and write. But that’s not really true. I get my inspiration from doing research, and by that I mean book research, Internet research, and also experiential, because going— So this summer I went to the site of the World’s Fair 1939, and that has very much inspired me to write my 1939 book. So I think going places where historical things happened is very inspiring for me. I’m currently writing a book about the silent film actress Theda Bara, and how I got inspired to write about her was I was doing research for a different project. I was researching silent films shot in St. Augustine, back to St. Augustine, and I found out that the first film she ever made was shot mostly in St. Augustine.

21:03
Melody
Oh, wow.

21:04
Trish
Then learning about her and discovering her, because I didn’t really know who she was. I think I’d heard the name, but I didn’t know she was the most famous woman from 1915 to 1919. She was one of the most famous women in the world.

21:23
Melody
Wow. I didn’t realize that either. And I’ve been fortunate enough to read some of your drafts from that novel. And I am really excited to read the book when it’s ready, because this is a fascinating person.

21:43
Trish
Well, and going back to research, so I found out that she had an unpublished memoir, and I tried to find it, tried to find it. Finally found out that it was housed at the University of Cincinnati library. So last week, I got on a plane and I flew up to Cincinnati and I went to that library, and I spent the afternoon reading and researching. That evening, a friend from my writers group, my online writers group, hosted me. Then the next day, I went back and continued researching and completely… it was just such a wonderful and validating experience. I got everything I needed and flew back. But it was really eye opening.

22:38
Melody
I love that. All right. Research is an excuse for travel. Definitely.

22:47
Trish
Absolutely. Yeah.

22:49
Melody
Yeah. My character in my historical novel originates from, in the early 1900s as well, from Prussia. My story’s inspired my grandmother, who immigrated over in 1903 when she was three years old. As coincidence would have it, my brother married a woman that was born in that area in Moldova, which is right in that same area, and she immigrated and became a US citizen, and her mother came over here. I was able to interview her mother and what it was like growing up. Her grandfather was from that area and how his lands got seized, and he had to go into exile in Germany at the time because of the Russian Revolution and what was going on there. So that is just, I want to go there and visit because you can’t get sense of place so much. You can read about it and see pictures about it and listen to people talk about it, but there’s nothing like actually visiting a site to really get the energy and the feel.

24:19
Trish
That’s it. The energy and the feel. That’s what you get when you do that. We did that for the book The Butterfly Cage, which was this second of the Delafield and Malloy [series]. We went up to Wyoming, and what a fascinating area of the country it was. I probably would never have gone if I hadn’t had the excuse of: I was researching a book. So. Yeah, you have to go.

24:49
Melody
Yes. The other place they immigrated to, I’ve been to North and South Dakota, but I actually haven’t been to the original town where they landed when they came here. So that’s next on my bucket list to go visit that place too.

25:05
Trish
Good, good.

25:07
Melody
So I’m interested in, during your writing practice, what do you find the most challenging part of your writing process and the most rewarding?

25:20
Trish
So I think the most challenging thing about writing is life. You know, life just gets in the way. You have children to take care of, you have elderly or sick family members, you have a job, you have to pay bills, you have a social life that you want to have. So those things can make writing challenging. 

For example, I really did not write a whole lot for several years. I would write small things and I suggest doing that. If you’re in that sort of part of your life where you don’t have wide open spaces of time then write small, write essays, write poetry, write a journal. Those things will keep the writing spirit alive in you. But I had a full time job. I was taking care of my elderly mother and I was raising a teenage girl and I was in a rather unsupportive marriage. I was in a difficult marriage. There was not a whole lot of writing getting done.

 Although I say that, and I did— Well, what I did was I turned it into a book. Actually. I’m going to show it to you. It’s called My Mother’s Requiem. And this is the story of those years when I was so overwhelmed. So both the challenge, but it also gives you the material to have things to write about. So I don’t always write historical fiction. Some of my fiction is just about my life and the things that I’ve experienced. So that’s one of the challenges. 

I think the other challenge, of course, and I believe many writers will relate to this and that is self promotion. You know, we talk about self promotion, people talk about self promotion like it’s a bad thing. But I really admire people who are good at self promotion because how else are people going to know about this great book you’ve written or this great product you’ve created, or this great song that you recorded, unless you go out and tell people about it? So I admire that very much in people and I am trying to be better at that. In fact, when you were doing my introduction, in my introduction it mentions the awards for those books I’ve written.

28:06
Melody
Yes.

28:07
Trish
That wasn’t originally in my bio. I had to have another writer say, “Oh, wait a minute. Didn’t these win some awards? You need to mention that.”

28:17
Melody
Yes.

28:18
Trish
Really? You know. Because I just blow that stuff off. But you should. So promotion is great, but it is a challenge for a lot of us. A lot of us are not comfortable doing it.

28:35
Melody
Oh, that is true. Myself included. I can talk very easily about my work one on one with people. But as you mentioned getting into that mindset of just naturally talking about not only your books but your achievements.

28:57
Trish
Yeah.

28:57
Melody
And yeah. Successes in the writing field. What would you have to offer new writers?

29:09
Trish
Well, I would say going back to our conversation about writing groups, surround yourself with people who are supportive and successful and believe in themselves because their belief in themselves will rub off onto you.

Persevere, Persevere. Persevere. Have faith in yourself. 

Remember that nothing is wasted. I wrote, for several years, I was just writing poetry, not to publish it, but just to get out my feelings. It turned out that when I was writing this memoir, My Mother’s Requiem, I needed some of those poems. I just took the line breaks out and I put them in the book. You might think, oh well, this will never get published. Doesn’t matter, keep it, because you never know when you might need that one phrase from that little piece that you wrote 10 years ago. In fact, I’m kind of working on another memoir, and I just went and got my old journals from that time, and some of that is my old short stories from that time. I have a stack on my table and eventually I’m going to get to that.

30:39
Melody
I like that. That’s one of the things Gina cautioned me when I was writing Soul of the Seasons because I ended up cutting out about 100 pages. I mean, I could have written so much more. But she said, don’t throw them away. She said, you can use that, that can be a springboard into another book or use that material in workshops, or whatever. That was a great piece of advice because sometimes even a single paragraph or a line can be an inspiration into a whole new project.

31:16
Trish
True, true. And as you do start promoting yourself, you might use some of that material in a newsletter. That was great advice that she gave you. Like, don’t throw that stuff away because you never know when you’re going to use it. It’s good.

31:37
Melody
Exactly. So you have written, what is it, 10 books? 11? 

31:42
Trish
I don’t know

31:45
Melody
Something. Both fiction and non-fiction, series.

31:52
Trish
I’ve written five historical fiction books, four in the series and then one that’s sort of the ancillary Battle Annie. And then before that I had two memoirs. I had a short story collection and then two standalone books. So, yeah, I guess 10. I guess 10 is right.

32:17
Melody
Yeah. That’s quite a body of work, I have to say. And what do you think you have learned about yourself during your writing process?

32:29
Trish
Well, I am not sure the answer to that question, but I have learned certain things. Not necessarily about myself, but I have learned perseverance. I’m in my 60s now, and I haven’t yet written that blockbuster. It hasn’t come out yet. Although, who knows? Maybe someday one of those books from the past will suddenly get people’s attention. They’ve all been critically reviewed, gotten great reviews. By critically, I mean, they’ve gotten reviews from critics, and they’ve been great reviews. I’ve gotten a lot of great reviews. 

The most important thing—oh, you asked about the most rewarding—I would say, is that feedback from readers. I got an email from a reader of the historical mystery series, and she said she’s in some foreign country doing some teaching, and she feels very isolated. She said that my characters gave her company and that she loved that so much and I just thought that was the service. It was so rewarding to hear from her that that meant something to her. So I think more than anything, the reward. Of course, the reward is when you have that day where you’re like, whoa, I finally got that scene figured out. Yay. But the other reward is hearing from readers that your work somehow touched them.

34:11
Melody
That is so true. I like that. So do you have a favorite of your books?

34:20
Trish
No. Because they’re all my favorites. Okay. I will say I love my historical mystery series. Really fun to write, but this book might be the one: Cinnamon Girl. I don’t know if you can see that.

34:38
Melody
Yes, yes.

34:39
Trish
First of all, I love the cover, too. I really love the cover. This is weird. This is kind of an interesting book because it’s…you know, I have these autobiographical books, and then I have my historical, and then this is kind of both. This is somewhat autobiographical, and it’s also historical. And I think that I did some of my strongest writing. It’s a little more, I would say, literary than my historical novel series. And so I feel very proud of the book. It’s categorized as Young Adult, but I think the real market for it is boomers, people who lived in the 70s. Yeah. It’s about a girl coming of age in 1970. And I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from readers who said, oh, that it brought back an era.

35:39
Melody
And that book got an award.

35:41
Trish
It did. It got—yeah, it did—it got a couple of awards. I wish that it had more readers, to be honest with you, because I feel good about this book. So, yeah, that. I guess if I had to pick a favorite, it might be that one.

35:57
Melody
Nice. I have not read that yet, so that was next on my list. So. Yeah. Tell me your most recent one that’s come out. Is that Battle Annie?

36:09
Trish
Yes. Yeah.

36:11
Melody
And that is available now. Where can our listeners find your books right now?

36:20
Trish
They’re all available on Amazon, but I believe that you can go to a bookstore, your favorite independent bookstore, and they can order it through Ingram.

36:34
Melody
Oh, okay.

36:36
Trish
Yeah. That was a fun book. I mean, it was a surprise because I just started writing it as a short story because I wanted something to offer my readers and for free that was a little shorter. Then I thought, oh, I love this character so much, I have to keep writing it. So then I turned it into, it’s a fairly short novel. Then, the response to it has been great. People really enjoy reading about Battle Annie.

37:05
Melody
So nice. Excellent. I read an excerpt from that book as well, and I think your readers will be very happy with that. She was a fascinating character.

37:19
Trish
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s one of the ones where the research… there’s not much out there about her. And so, I had to make up her story. That’s all fictional except for the very first part. But then you research all of the ancillary stuff. So maybe you’re not researching her as much as I researched the city of Baltimore, researched the trains, because what I didn’t realize is that you couldn’t get a train from New York south, because the river was in the way, so you had to take a ferry to New Jersey, then get on a train. So even if you’re not actually researching a character, even if your story might be mostly fictional, you have to research everything around that story.

38:23
Melody
Absolutely. Well, Trish, thank you so much for doing this interview today. Honestly, we could probably talk another hour.

38:31
Trish
Yeah.

38:32
Melody
Thank you to our listeners for joining us again, spending your time with us. You can find links to Trish’s work and her books on the website where our podcast AroundTheWritersTable.com. Thank you again for joining us. Have a great day.

38:51
Gina’s Pop
Thanks for joining us around the writer’s table. Please feel free to suggest a topic or a guest by emailing info@aroundthewriterstable.com. Music provided with gracious permission by Langtry. A link to their music is on our homepage at AroundTheWritersTable.com. Everyone here around the writer’s table wishes you joy in your writing and everyday grace in your living. Take care, until next time.

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