Colorado Press WomenLocal authors share their writing experiences
Three local women authors — Francine Mathews, Jacqueline St. Joan and Hannah Nordhaus — shared anecdotes about what, why and how they write, inspiring book-loving members and guests at the annual CPW authors meeting held in November.
Francine Mathews, author of The Alibi Club, has published 22 books in the last 18 years. She publishes under the name Francine Mathews as well as Stephanie Barron, her middle and maiden names.
One of her book series, published under Stephanie Barron, is written in the first-person voice of Jane Austin. She noted that 159 of Austin's letters exist, and she uses the letters to capture Austin's language. As a fiction writer she takes these historical documents and fills in the gaps. "I love history for the possibilities," Mathews said.
"There are moments in people's lives that make you say 'what if'," Mathews said. That question is the impetus for her novels. She writes about real people, but fictionalizes their stories. Her next book, to be released in spring 2012, is Jack 1939, inspired by a photo of President John F. Kennedy juggling on a street corner in Germany.
Jacqueline St. Joan, who wrote My Sisters Made of Light, was inspired by a Pakistani friend and teacher who had been involved in rescuing women condemned in "honor crimes," violence against women often perpetrated by their own families. After writing the first draft, St. Joan decided it was too risky for her friend to write the book as nonfiction, so she transformed the story into a novel inspired by her friend's actions. The book is a finalist for the 2011 Colorado Book Award for Literary Fiction.
Moving from nonfiction to fiction was difficult, she said. To make the transition, St. Joan read and attended workshops, learning to add color on every page. "It's like a painting, you have to keep going over it with color and wash," she said.
As part of her research, St. Joan spent a month traveling through Pakistan on a human rights tour and found the people to be "gentle, kind and sweet."
Half of the proceeds from the sale of her book are being donated to a nonprofit in Pakistan to build a shelter for victims of honor crimes. St. Joan has raised $9,000 toward her $15,000 goal.
Hannah Nordhaus, whose first book is The Honeybee's Lament: How One Man and a Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America, started her journey with a magazine article. She got a freelance assignment to write an article about beekeeping for Delicious 
Living magazine and struck up an email relationship with beekeeper John Miller. After publishing an article in High Country News, which won a Stanford University special citation for Western Environmental Journalism, Nordhaus was contacted about writing a book about modern beekeeping.
The book is a nonfiction portrait of Miller, a fourth-generation beekeeper who travels to the central valley of California each February with 10,000 honey bee colonies - about half a billion bees - to pollinate almond trees. The three weeks spent in California is when beekeepers make all their money for the year. Even though the three weeks of work brings in millions of dollars, many years the beekeepers don't break even because of the ever-growing hive losses due to disease and the Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious epidemic where bees abandon their combs for no known reason.
"The book is a character study more than a work of journalism," Nordhaus said. "The story is rich on so many levels. Honey bees are rich with metaphorical possibilities."