Author Q & A: Former NewsTribune reporter releases 10th book

A former NewsTribune reporter recently published her 10th book. “Blackfire Rising” is a compendium of several novels, novellas and short stories published over a 15-year span.

Elizabeth Donald released “Blackfire Rising” on April 3 through Falstaff Books. For more information, visit elizabethdonald.com or falstaffbooks.com.

Donald was a general assignment reporter and columnist for the NewsTribune from 1998-2000. She went on to a long career in journalism in the St. Louis-Metro East region before entering freelance journalism in 2018.

Donald holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee at Martin as well as a master’s degree in media studies and an M.F.A. in creative writing, both from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Q. Think back to when you were a reporter for the NewsTribune. Were those experiences helpful in becoming a novelist?

A. The NewsTribune was my first reporting job after graduating from college, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and the years began with a 1. Many novelists started out in newspapers – Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion, Maya Angelou, Colson Whitehead – all the way back to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. The discipline of the newspaper reporter is excellent practice for the discipline of being a fiction writer, even though it uses an entirely different part of the writer-brain. When I was at the NewsTribune, I was a baby cub reporter who barely knew anything, and most of my energies were focused on learning my craft in the real world as opposed to the hothouse student newsroom. I wasn’t writing much fiction. But the experiences of being a daily news reporter, of seeing all walks of life from the unhoused to Congress, and turning those observations into stories that shone a light on the world for readers – all of that is the best preparation a writer can have.

Q. What did you enjoy most about news reporting in La Salle-Peru?

A. I loved La Salle’s small-town charm and the culture of the Illinois River town. It was new territory for me, after spending most of my childhood in New England and college in the south. I was never as fond of hard-breaking news and chasing ambulances as I was the news features, interviewing people and telling their stories. I became fascinated with the history and folklore of the midwest when I was in La Salle, and in fact the stories of Illinois river towns like La Salle and Alton have shown up several times in my fiction.

Q. For the benefit of those who remember your news reporting, tell us briefly about your fiction writing and about your newest project.

A. I began publishing short stories in 2001, about a year after I moved to the metro-east for my new job at the Belleville News-Democrat. It was a hobby I indulged in what little spare time I had between reporting and my family. Then in 2003, I snagged a book contract with a small press to write a vampire mystery-romance. I’d never written vampires, mysteries or romance, so no one was more surprised than me when it was the small-press equivalent of a runaway hit, winning awards and helping me and my son get our own place after my divorce. From then on, fiction writing was my second job, with novels and short stories and novellas in several genres.

Q. Why has that genre found an audience? What elements appeal to modern readers?

A. I think there’s an aspect to the supernatural that appeals to most readers. Certainly I was a fan from an early age: I wasn’t allowed to read Stephen King books, so I would sneak them out of my mother’s bookshelf and leave the dust jacket in its place so she wouldn’t notice one was missing. I’ve never really been a fan of gory hack-and-slash fiction; it doesn’t appeal to me personally, so I don’t write it. I prefer the Twilight Zone-creepy style, to explore our real lives through the lens of the fantastic. The best horror takes the things we fear in our real lives and turns them into monsters that can eat you. Stephen King wrote forty years ago that haunted-house stories are basically financial horrors that ring true to everyone trying to come up with the cash for a new roof and feels like their home has turned against them. What do we fear? Is it loss of love, of financial or professional disaster, of disease and death? There’s a story for each of those fears.

Q. Are you glad now for having made the jump from full-time journalism when you did?

A. The time was right for me to shift into a freelance and academic career. As a freelancer, I can scale my work load up or down as I see fit, and I can choose the projects I work on. When you’re reporting full-time, there’s a tunnel vision to the daily/weekly/monthly projects and all your energies are focused on it. I wanted more time and energy to focus on my other projects, on research and different forms of nonfiction writing, as well as my fiction career. Ironically, I think my schedule is busier now than it ever was when I was reporting

Q. What advice do you have for a graduate looking to try their hand at journalism and to work on a novel on a side?

A. A friend of mine once asked that question of Harlan Ellison, and immediately Harlan slapped him. “Go do anything else,” he said. “If there’s anything else you can do, do that. Be a plumber. Don’t be a writer.” So my friend went out, bought a book on plumbing, and brought it back to the convention. He presented it to Harlan, and Harlan laughed and signed it for him.

Short of physical violence, I would counsel a young journalist who wants to write fiction to engage those observational skills we use as reporters and widen them. You meet so many people from different walks of live and backgrounds as a journalist, and each of them has a history, a personality, trauma and joy and family and purpose beyond the tiny snapshot we get of them when we’re interviewing them. Be aware of history, of the footprints of those who went before us, and journal regularly about things you see and the ideas you get on the job. I know, at the end of a long shift the very last thing we want to do is more writing. But it’s important to carve out that time, a bit of mental space to reset your brain and let the words flow. You have a story worth telling. We all do. The only question is, are you brave enough to tell it?