Q & A with J. A. Ricketts

1. What was your first piece in print (book, review, or article, etc)?

The Badger Riot is actually my first piece in print. However, in 2006, I wrote a play from a story of mine. It was called The Fairies Took Junior and the Performing Arts Group with Patricia Andrews at the Basement Theatre, Arts and Culture Centre, worked with me to bring it to the stage. You can read the play on my website www.jaricketts.com.

2. When do you like to write (time of day, day of week)? Where do you do your writing (location)?

I like late evenings (after the phone stops ringing) and early mornings (before it starts ringing again). Much of my work on The Badger Riot was written with pencil in exercise books (ten of them) in my car while I waited for my grandchildren to get out of school.

3. What character from your book(s) is the most like you? What one would you most like to be?

My own character is written true-to-life and is the young girl, Amanda Elliott. Also the character of Amanda’s father is my own father and is true as well.

4. What other jobs have you had besides being a writer?

I have been a telephone operator, assistant manager of a motel, owner and operator of a highway restaurant and gas bar, and hostess in the dining room of the Newfoundland Hotel.

5. Who is your favourite author(s)?

My very favourite author is Nevil Shute, whose books are now out-of-print. I read them about twenty-five years ago and now, in re-reading them, I have discovered that much of his writing is coming through in my own.

6. What are you reading now?

I just finished Ryan’s Commander by Johanna Ryan Guy. Now I am back to Nevil Shute’s In the Wet—for probably the fourth time.

7. What do you like to do in your free time?

Read . . . I also like to garden, especially pumpkins for my grandchildren. This year I tried corn and we had twelve ears of corn for Thanksgiving! :-)

8. What is your favourite food?

I loved nice thick cod fillet, pan-fried, with lots of lemon. However, I can do justice to a strip loin steak, as well.

9. What city/country would you most like to visit and why?

I want to go to England—not London, but rural England—and find whatever it is I am looking for that needs to be written about.

10. Make a question of your own and then answer it.

Is it possible for just anyone to write a book?

Yes, it is possible. If you have a story inside your head that is going to burn a hole there if you don’t get it out, that’s the first important thing. After that comes classes on writing, workshopping with other authors and being blessed enough to get a great, patient publisher. It can be done. I did it. I am just an ordinary woman who followed her dream. If I can do it, you can too.