Talking About Prairie Fire — Podcast Episode 31

Talking About Prairie Fire — Book Three — The Em Suite Podcast Episode 31

In this week’s The Djuna Shellam Podcast Episode 31, I’ll be talking about Prairie Fire, my third novel, and Book Three of The Em Suite Series.

I had planned on giving a reading, but in all honesty, I was pretty tired and making too many mistakes. Mistakes mean editing, and I mean there were lots of mistakes that meant lots of editing. No thank you.

I really just wanted to talk about my book. I loved writing it and, if I take Dot in the Weeds off the table, PF is my favorite. There. I said it. Prairie Fire is a favorite of mine.

It’s difficult talking about Prairie Fire in a way because if you haven’t read it or the two preceding books, well, anything I might say would surely give away something I tried terribly hard to NOT to give away when I wrote it.

Why Do I Love Prairie Fire?

So what is it I loved so much about writing PF? Oh, where do I begin?

Well, I’d been thinking about the plot for more than a decade. As such, because it took so long for me to get back to it after writing the first five chapters, by the time I actually jumped back into the book, those five chapters were essentially obsolete. More than that, it gave me a chance to stretch in a few different ways and open the story up.

The main character, Prairie, was so fun to write. She is nothing like me, but so much like other women I’ve met in my life. There were aspects of her I didn’t like—her penchant for one-night-stands and her insane focus on her career, but as I wrote her, she told me why she was like that, and I fell in love with her vulnerability.

In the Batter’s Box—Dot in the Weeds

The story also gave me the opportunity to share more about Dot and Em and how that extended family was developing. Without PF, DITW wouldn’t be half the story it is. And, believe me, it’s a story and a half. But more about that in next week’s episode.