Interview with Dawn Garcia
Dawn’s writing career to date includes freelance writing and
journalism. Many of her articles and stories trace the history of places with
unique significance. In each of the pieces I read, she included the human
elements that make the stories. Dawn's diligent research, like many writers,
makes her work special. It is that thing behind the story done without fanfare,
and often without appreciation by those who haven't dug under the trees to
expose the roots. She digs up the history that will remain relevant for years
ahead for new researchers.
Glenda: Dawn; please give us a peek inside your
upcoming novel.
Dawn: A young girl
abandoned. A father living life at the bottom of a longneck bottle. An
unexpected reunion.
What He Left Behind
is a story about 35-year-old Kyla Richmond and the search
for her absent father. It isn’t until she volunteers at the local homeless
shelter that she discovers the man who purposely walked out of her life when
she was nine. The man she discovers isn’t the man she dreamed she would one day
find. Instead, he is a man who lives under a bridge, slowly and painfully
drinking his life away.
Filled with
abandonment, homelessness, and alcoholism, this novel will put Kyla to the
ultimate test of forgiveness through the discovery of unconditional love.
Writing a story based on events in one’s own life takes
bravery in the best of circumstances. Dawn, however has gone beyond bravery to
a level of faith few people possess.
Glenda: I’ve read your biography on your
website. It’s amazing that you have the time to accomplish the things you do
with your volunteer work, children, web design business, freelance writing and
writing your novel. Then you sent me five articles you’ve written. There is no
doubt in my mind that you did a lot of research for those stories. They are
full of history, tracing the linear and familial chronicles of their
significance. I can only imagine that you must organize your time to fit it all
together. How would you describe the development of your writing career?
Dawn: I have been writing since grade school and
in high school, I started a teen novel but never finished it. I earned a degree
in English at the University of Iowa and a few years after graduation, I began
my journalism career. My main love of writing had been in the children’s market
but I only dabbled in it to the point of it never leaving my computer screen. A
year after I learned of my biological dad’s passing and the life he lived
before he died, I was inspired to write that first novel, What
He Left Behind.
As for organizing my
time, I am fortunate to have three great kids who help and are just as involved
as I am. They are compassionate about the volunteer work and they “get to go”
(not have to go) to off-site work meetings with me. Since infancy, each of them
has understood that I work from home and because of that, they have a great
opportunity to do fun and interesting things.
Glenda: Somehow,
you’ve managed to take the circumstances of your biological father’s life and
turn them into a life of volunteer work with the homeless. What would possess
you to be so bold as to walk up to a dirt-covered, elderly, homeless man with
no more than a sign “Anything Will Help” and give him a gift?
Dawn: I
thank God every day for what I have. I have so many blessings and I
want to share what God has given me. When I see homelessness, I want to help. I
think about how my father sat on a street corner doing the same thing as this
man. I have no idea why the man was begging for money but it doesn’t matter.
All it takes is one bad choice or one disaster and it could be any one of us.
There is so much more I want to do but I have to tell myself that little things
matter in the whole scheme of things. I can reach out to one person, one child
at a time and grow from there.
Glenda: In your book, Kyla involves her family in
her quest for her biological father. They are a strong support system, which is
something we all need in our lives. The circumstances of Kyla’s life draw from
your own. How close does the family in your book resemble your own family?
Dawn: I have a
good support system. I am close to my parents, even my stepfather who adopted
my two younger brothers and I after my biological father disappeared from our
lives.
Glenda:
Finally, what would you tell other writers are your most important tool, or
practice in writing?
Dawn: A lot of
Prayer, Time, and patience
Writers, like Dawn, know to draw from their own experience
and that of others to design a story or article. The feel of a story for the
reader often comes from that bit of reality that sets the story. We revise and
change the events and sequences. We research deeper into the smallest factoid.
Then we stretch that reality into a slim thread within the fiction.
Thus, Dawn engineers her writing career through her keyboard
into freelance, special interest, journalism, to writing a full-length novel.
However, that is not all that Dawn is.
Dawn is a giver in life. I doubt she realizes how much
giving she does. She volunteers a good portion of her time visiting shelters
and nursing homes, volunteering with church, cub scouts, and other community
events bringing that spark of hope to everyone with whom she interacts. That
hope includes me. I'm not homeless, penniless, or hungry. I am human and in
that, we all need hope in some way.
