Author Interview: E. V. Legters

Author Interview: E. V. Legters

Today I am pleased to welcome E. V. Legters on to the blog with a quick interview! She’s come up with some wonderful answers!

Q&A

What is your favourite thing about writing books?
First, thank you for this opportunity. Writing is a process of discovery I enjoy whether working on a book-length manuscript, short story, or blog. Or writing answers to questions such as yours! I never expected to be a novelist versus short story writer, but have found I connect deeply to the long-term, total immersion required by a story that extends over a couple hundred pages. Short stories often also take me months to write, but the quality of immersion is different, and not only because short stories – or mine – tend to take place over shorter periods of time. Novels embrace multiple narrative arcs simultaneously, and settling into these has come to feel completely natural. Now that I’ve left my rather frenetic U.S. life for a far calmer one in Portugal, the long-term commitment to the long-term process of writing novels has become even more satisfying.

Who is your favourite character in your book and why?
I’m very fond of Persephone in my first novel, Connected Underneath. A teenager hoping to find adults in the room, she has held a soft spot in my heart since the day I first met her. I am also attached to Daniel in Vanishing Point. One day years and years ago, I saw a rather ragged young man walking along a road in my town, a sort of man not typical there. I never saw him again, but imagining his narrative turned into a short story and then the novel. He is mysterious, and a live-saver.

What is your favourite drink to consume while writing?
Tea while I’m working, wine after! Tea options are limited here, but good Portuguese wine is available for as little as three euros a bottle . . .

How do you research your books?
I haven’t needed research for work that’s been published, but have just finished a manuscript that takes place in South Carolina in the 1970’s, where I lived briefly. That took some research to refresh my memory, and more extensive work to correctly represent the political and social situations of the times. I took the typical routes, with online newspaper archives critical, and libraries, where I found personal memoirs and hard-to-find copies of dissertations and self-published local histories.

About the Author

Website.

How do you research your books?