Terry Hooker is a Jersey shore girl turned Florida farmer. She has a BA in anthropology, an AAS in culinary arts, and a MA in library science. She has worked as a congressional archivist, historian, teacher, and professional chef; she’s even presented her research on the history and iconography of southern cemeteries throughout the Southeast United States. Terry has also edited children’s books and academic papers, and has published her own academic papers, magazine articles, fictional stories and books!
Let’s see what drives Terry as an author and the advice she’d offer to women wanting to break into the industry.
Q: Who has been your biggest supporter(s) throughout your writing career?
A: My daughter is my biggest supporter. She deals with me throwing ideas out at her and she gets to be the first to read each story.
Q: Where do you draw inspiration from in your work?
A: A lot of different places, actually. T.V. shows, strangers’ conversations, my own curiosity about myths and legends. I love the podcast, Lore. I learn a lot of interesting things on it that make me want to go research more.
Q: What does it mean to you to be an author?
A: It means I get to share with everyone all these stories that are in my head.
Q: What is your writing process like? Do you listen to certain music, snack, make loads of phone notes when inspiration randomly strikes?
A: I think about it for a few days, I sit and write in spurts, I never go back until the story is complete or almost complete. I usually hate it somewhere in the middle of it, then I edit it and let my daughter read it before finding ARC readers.
Q: Is there a genre or subgenre that you want to explore that you haven’t yet? Conversely, are there any that you’ll never write?
A: I have started a horror romance as well as a thriller. Both of these will be under different names, I don’t want the person looking for my paranormal to stumble into romance horror. That might be bad.
Q: What has been the hardest part of your career as an author so far?
A: Not losing hope. It’s a tough industry, trying to do everything is often overwhelming. Time management is a plus that I don’t really have.
Q: What do you consider o be your greatest strength and weakness as an author?
A: My greatest strength is the uniqueness of my stories which is also a weakness. Not a whole lot of people see the world the way I do, so it gets difficult to introduce them to it.
Q: Who is on your radar as someone you’d love to work with?
A: Andra Dill. I love her stories. And E.S. McMillan. She has so much emotion in her stories, I’d love to partner with her one day.
Q: At some point in our lives, we’ve all heard the negative comments: “You’re not good enough.” “You’ll never make it.” “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” “You don’t belong.” How do you move forward when faced with negativity?
A: I dwell on it, believe it for a bit, then decide I don’t care and move on.
Q: What advice would you give to women who are wanting to write, especially if it’s something others might perceive as “outside of the norm”?
A: Just do it! The norm is boring.
Last month, Terry released Coyote the Imposter, part of Tales From Forgotten Gods. This book follows the Native American deity, Coyote, who is a trickster and is very mischievous. Coyote gets word that someone is using her name to commit horrors, so she and her good friend, Crow, set out to investigate and stop this person from killing anyone else and ruining Coyote’s good name.
If you want to see more of Terry’s work, give her a follow on Facebook and Instagram! And if you’re looking for a thrilling new read, Terry is currently reading The Curse of Jean Lafitte by Mary Walsh and really enjoying it!
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