An Interview with Clinton Foster, author of Willing to Believe and By the Wayside.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, your writing.

I am 40 years old. A father of five children, two of whom are adopted.

I day-dream a LOT! I love to stare at the stars and the moon, especially. As a child, I would spend hours on the front porch in the evening, summer and winter alike, just staring at the moon, wondering of the other people throughout the world looking at the moon at the very instant. I wondered whom they are, and what they were doing. I was curious to the details of their lives. Why were they looking at the moon, was it a quick glance or a prolonged scrutiny? Were they wondering about me? I would make up names and places and reasons and what they had done that day and what their plans were for the morrow. I still do that to this day at times. I also like to watch and listen to people, their word choices, their mannerisms and the like. The only problem with that, however, is if you find an interesting subject, your notes have to be made quickly in your mind - women think you are ogling them, and men get accusatory, if you watch one subject too long. A quick glance, a sharp eye, helps to increase your imagination as you try to fill in the blanks.....

Willing To Believe is a romance, is it not? Why would a man write a romance, it is not usually a male-dominated genre?

Willing is not a romance, but it is a love story. It is the tale of a man yet uncertain about whether or not he even loves his girlfriend, whether they are just friends "with benefits" as most relationships today could be termed, or if there is something more. Through a chance work opportunity, by meeting an elderly gentleman on the exit threshold of his life, he begins to learn the value of what love really means, what it ought mean, and of what we are willing to do to maintain that love at all costs. It is specifically told as a first person narrative through the eyes of a young man, because unfortunately, it seems my experience that most men just go through the motions in relationships. In doing so, men miss out on the greater, profound fruits of a lasting love.

You think you are an authority on love?

Hah! Not hardly! I do, however, believe it is not something that should be taken for granted.

Tell me about your next book, By The Wayside.

By The Wayside is the story of a young woman who has been sexually-assaulted as a child. Her mother, absorbed in her own interests, doesn't want to believe her. As such, she grows up believing that her thinking is wrong, that maybe what she experienced was her own fault, and the cause for her family's difficulties. As the years pass, she continues making poor choices and her struggles get more complicated. It is her fight to find herself, to believe in the six-year-old that no one else had, so many years before.

Anything else in the works?

Currently, beyond trying to promote my first two endeavors, I am trying to finish a novel I started some ten years ago. Namesake is the story of a poor family caught in the politics of a small coal-mining town governed by “foreigners’ just at the outset of World War I. As war looms and a drought strikes, the town roils in strife as the two major employers are both Germanic and the wages they offer to their workers seem to be aiding the enemy. The plot intricacies are as complex as John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, but the story line is as personal as James Herriott’s non-fiction. I hope to have it released by mid-spring of this year.

Publishing through Amazon, Createspace and Lulu, have you had much success with these markets?

Well, I guess any success is better than none. The hardest thing I find is getting the word out. Willing has been highly-acclaimed by its readers. One local library, receiving a sample copy, enjoyed it so much that the staff purchased twenty copies as a Christmas present for their adult reading group. Otherwise, it has been very touch and go, with very limited success. Still, if no one knows about it, almost any success, any recommendations, means nothing

Much of the web can be used for free. How have you utilized its services?

Again, I have published through three websites, and am in the process of pitching the books to the big chain stores via the web. I have my own website, at: www.clintonfoster.com . I am found via twitter, at: authorcfoster, and on youtube, at: clintonfoster. Otherwise, I have added pages to social websites such as Facebook and Myspace, I run ads via Craigslist and other "classifieds." I have set up my own blog about my books and my writings, at www.clintonfoster.blogspot.com. I am always prospecting new ideas, but in truth, I'd rather spend my time more fruitfully, just writing. Also, I'm always willing to trade links with others, anything to get the word out.