C.P.
Stiles lives and writes in Washington,
DC. The Call House: A Washington Novel
is her first published novel, but she has a drawerful of new novels just
waiting to be published.
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
AUTHOR WEBSITE
BOOK WEBSITE
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE
About the Book:
A
war on vice In Washington, DC—a city constantly awash in scandals? Hard to
believe, but it really
All
Mattie Simon knows is that she want adventure and her hometown doesn’t have
any. She wants independence, maybe some romance.
All
Andrew Stevens wants is to do his job as a newly-elected congressman.
But
Washington has a way of changing people—even when they get what they want.
Fast-paced
and funny, The Call House takes you
back to a time of relative innocence, when people flocked to Washington, DC, in
the 1940s to do good works and instead got caught up in sex, money, and
politics. What else would you expect?
ORDER YOUR COPY:
Amazon
Thanks for this interview, Caro. Can we begin by having you tell us about
yourself from a writer’s standpoint?
Thanks for
inviting me.
I’ve been
writing all my life. Honest. I’ve had writing jobs and I’ve taught writing, but
my real passion is writing fiction. Especially novels. I keep trying to learn
to write short stories but as much as I enjoy reading them, I just can’t seem
to figure out how to write them.
When not writing, what do you like to do
for relaxation and/or fun?
I read a lot.
And yes, I’ll admit it, I do watch TV – mostly for news and movies and I can’t
pass up a good series when I can watch it all at once. I probably spend way too
much time with my dog. The rest of the time I like hanging out with my family
and friends.
Congratulations on your new book! Can you
give us the very first page of your book so that we can get a glimpse inside?
THE war changed everything. But that was later.
This was February 1941, and Washington had
yet to become the city it was meant to be. Nation’s capital? World capital? If
you’d visited Paris or London, if
you’d been to Boston or New
York, then you knew Washington was
still a small Southern town. Provincial and unsophisticated.
But if you were elected to Congress from
Muskegon, Michigan, or Carbondale, Illinois, if you came looking for work from
Greensboro, North Carolina, or Smyrna, Tennessee—Washington was the biggest
goddamn city in the world. A Mecca for
men of ambition. A refuge for women who refused to marry. And the closest thing
to the Promised Land for anyone out of a job.
Ambitious and earnest, unmarried and
adventurous, people poured in on trains and buses, crowding each other out of
rooms in rundown boarding houses and bumping up against one another at night in
the smoky bars on Capitol Hill or down on F Street where Negroes weren’t
allowed to take a seat unless they could play the piano.
It was February 1941—boys were men, women
were girls, and everyone was more innocent than they’d ever be again.
But Mattie Simon didn’t know any of that
when she stepped off the train in Union Station, wearing a navy poplin
shirtwaist dress with a white collar and matching navy-blue pumps. She carried
a smooth cardboard suitcase tied together with rough twine.
Would you say it’s been a rocky road for
you in regards to getting your book written and published or pretty much smooth
sailing? Can you tell us about your
journey?
Rocky –
definitely. But I hope it’s a journey that will be useful to other writers.
Maybe 10 or 12 years ago, I finished the novel. Sent it to an agent. He loved
it and had a lot of good suggestions. He sent it around and while the comments
were good, no one was ready to buy it. So, I rewrote and he sent it around
again. A funny thing happened – this time the comments weren’t as positive. In
changing the book, I didn’t make it better.
We agreed to let
it sit a while.
Two years or so
later, I came back to it. Then put it aside. I did this several times. Then
last year, I was lucky enough to have some uninterrupted time and I guess with
enough distance, I was finally able to be a little ruthless in editing and I
could see a way to make it work.
By this time,
the whole publishing landscape had changed and I knew I wanted to go with a
small press instead of trying for one of the big, traditional ones.
For some reason,
I just wasn’t able to really move on to another project until I go this one
right.
If you had to summarize your book in one
sentence, what would that be?
Washington has a way of changing people, even when
they get what they want.
What makes your book stand out from the
rest?
That’s a tough
one for me to answer. I think it all depends on what other books someone is
reading. Maybe it’s that the city of Washington, DC, is the main character as well as
the setting.
If your book was put in the holiday
section of the store, what holiday would that be and why?
You know, when I
wrote the book, I thought it was literary fiction, but the editors who read it
thought it was historical fiction. I guess that’s accurate since it’s set in
the 1940s.
Would you consider turning your book into
a series or has that already been done?
I can’t really
see it as a series. I do know there were a lot of different ways I could have
told the story – but I think it’s pretty much complete the way it is.
What’s next for you?
Speaking of
doing a series. I’ve got an idea for one. I’ve got at least the first three
books in mind. Now I just have to write them. I’ve also got another novel I
started a few years ago. Since I’ve learned how to be ruthless in editing my
work, I want to see if I can get that one in shape.
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