Author Interview: Paula Cappa

About the Author:
Paula Cappa is a published short story author and freelance copy editor.  Her short fiction has appreared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Twilight Times, Every Day Ficiton and in anthologies Human Writes Literary Journals and Mystery Time.  Her writing career began as a freelance journalist for community mewspapers in New York and Connecticut.  Paula's novel Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural launched October 2012 and is receiving promising reviews.  A second novel is planned for release in spring 2013.  She continues to write stories every day and writes a short story blog at http://paulacappa.wordpress.com/.

She has a forthcoming short story to be published in Fiction365 and Insomnia Press in the spring.

Interview:
What made you want to become a writer?
I love reading the atmospheric passages of other novels and short stories, those other worlds of characters and their struggles.  Nathaniel Hawthorne comes to mind and Dickens as masters of this.  When I start playing around with words and sentences in my imagination, stories formed and I had to write them down.

Where do you get your inspirations from?
Everywhere.  from dreams or nature often times.  When I read poems, a phrase or word will strike me and it'll rest inside my head for a time and become a story or a character.  For example, I read the words ice-locked and hoarfrost in a poem, and those two words gave me a story about a man living alone on the top of a frozen mountain; all he has is his music.  I'm still working on this story and it's about five years evolving; it'll be my third novel if I ever get there!

Other than writing books, what else do you do in your free time?
I love reading historical novels and watching periods films.  Downton Abbey is my addiction!  Cooking is a great escape from books and writing and still creative.

If you could work with another author, who would it be?
Dead or alive?  I'd love to work with W. Somerset Maugham.  I think he writes the deepest human emotion.  Ralph Waldo Emerson too.  Modern writers?  Anita Shreve, maybe Joyce Carol Oates because she's so intense.

What are major themes of your work?
Supernatural events or spiritual events dealing with the afterlife seems to dominate.  What's beyond the curtain if death and how we are getting there fascinates me.

What do you think people look for in a book?
I think most people want to be entertained and maybe learn something new along the way.  I know I want an experience in a story, not just an escape.  I read to grow.  Fiction exposes me to the deepest relationships that is hard to find in everyday life.

Are there any recent works that you admire?
My all time favourite book is Mr. Emerson's Wife by Amy Belding Brown; historical fiction in Concord, MA.  I read it every winter.  It's so rich!  Anita Shreve's Fortune's Rock and Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund. 

*The questions and answers of this author interview are only for Ethereal Book Reviews to use.  If you would like to get interviewed, please visit our "Contact Us" page and send us an e-mail.