Laura Vosika grew up in the military, visiting castles in England, pig fests in Germany, and the historic sites of America’s east coast.

She earned a degree in music, and worked for many years as a freelance musician, music teacher, band director, and instructor in private music lessons on harp, piano, winds, and brass.

Laura is the mother of 7 boys and 2 girls, and lives in Minnesota.

Her latest book is Blue Bells of Scotland: The Trilogy.

You can visit her website at www.bluebellstrilogy.com.

Q: It’s rare to day to find an author who does nothing but write for a living. Do you have a day job other than writing, and if so, what is it? What are some other jobs you’ve had in your life? Have they influenced/ inspired your writing?

I have what I consider almost the best job in the world. I teach music lessons on harp, piano, brass, and winds. I love music, I love playing instruments, and I very much enjoy working with kids. It is an incredible thing to me that my ‘work’ is listening to and playing a variety of instruments. I’ve also taught general music, directed a school band, and worked as a freelance musician, on trombone, flute, and harp. My jobs in college were in the catering and accounting departments, hand-writing thank you letters to donors, giving tours, and teaching music lessons. In high school, I bussed tables at a country club and worked at Dairy Queen. Music has had the biggest impact on my writing. My characters tend to be musicians, although some of the settings, such as the country club, do make appearances.

Q: Tell us briefly about your book.

Blue Bells of Scotland has been a lot of fun to write. It’s the story of two men, complete opposites but for their identical looks and love of music, who fall asleep in a castle tower, 700 years apart, and wake up in each others times. Shawn is a self-centered, womanizing musician of the twenty-first century who suddenly finds himself with the fate of Scotland resting on his shoulders. Niall, a devout Highlander, must jump the hurdles of Shawn’s gambling debts, amorous fans, angry mistresses, and pregnant girlfriend—in addition to being expected to play Shawn’s sell-out concert—to find a way back to save his people at a battle that history says ended in slaughter.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

The rest of the Blue Bells Trilogy. Books 2 and 3 are currently titled The Minstrel Boy, after a song about a warrior-musician, like Niall, and The Castle of Dromore.

Q: Do you have a favourite character? Why is s/he your favourite?

I’m torn between Niall and Shawn. I think all of us would like to sometimes be as brash and headstrong as Shawn, saying and doing exactly what we please, getting away with it, and taking everything we want from life. But Niall is definitely the more admirable person, the kind we’d all rather have in our lives; he has a real appeal in his kindness and strength.  He has Shawn’s qualities, he has a sense of humor, and can be a bit impulsive and headstrong, too, but underneath it is always kindness and concern for others.

Q: How do you balance out the writer’s life and the rest of life? Do you get up early? Stay up late? Ignore family and friends for certain periods of time?

This is probably the question people ask most of me, because I have 9 children.  I stay up late and get up early. I have many hours a day while the kids are all in school. I try to set my priorities and use that time well. I don’t watch t.v. or go to movies or the gym, I make my shopping trips quick, for exactly what I need.  I bring research books to read while the kids play at the park. I edit while I wait at the orthodontist.

But I stop working when the kids want to talk or show me their newest Lego creation. Even as I answer these interview questions, two of my boys are having a battle, with the younger one hiding behind me, hanging on my leg, and firing projectiles and laughing at his brother, because he knows his brother can’t fire back over my laptop—see they know how to use my writing to their advantage!  We have regular family meals and prayers before bed. My computer is very co-operative in seeing that I have time to do housework by regularly freezing up on me. At those times, I go do laundry or dishes until it’s ready to behave again. I find this a pretty handy agreement between the two of us, as it saves me the stress I’d otherwise feel about having my computer freeze up, and it helps me balance writing with household work!

Q: The main characters of your stories—do you find that you put a little of yourself into each of them, or do you create them to be completely different from you?

I was asked this at a round table discussion last winter, and someone specifically mentioned Shawn. Shawn is a self-centered, womanizing, power-hungry egomaniac. I like to think I’m none of those things! But Shawn has qualities that I think most musicians have: drive, energy, determination, a bit of a perfectionist streak, a love of playing, a joy in performing. Yes, those parts of me are in Shawn. There are parts of me in Niall and Amy, too. Other characters, maybe if I looked I’d see it, but some characters are drawn from bits and pieces of other people I’ve known, and some, as far as I know, I’ve never met at all, but probably just observed their traits in the general pool of human nature.

Q: Is there an established writer you admire and emulate in your own writing? Do you have a mentor?

I love Ted Dekker’s writing, although I’m sorry to say I have not had time to pursue more of it. I don’t consciously emulate any one author, but as I used to be a voracious reader—when I had more time—I’m sure that my writing reflects all of them to varying degrees. I feel I have a whole group of mentors in the Night Writers of Maple Grove. There is a core group of about a dozen, 4 of whom have been together for 20 years and are very accomplished writers who come to virtually every meeting, year round, sharing their years of experience, encouraging, and helping others.

Q: Where you have lived and what you have experienced can influence your writing in many ways. Are there any specific locations or experiences that have popped up in your books?

Ironically, I grew up in the Air Force, living in many places. But only three—Boston, Virginia, and Duluth—have shown up in my writing. I never lived in Scotland. My experiences as a musician—the green room, backstage, tuning, favorite pieces, the great feeling at the end of a concert—flavor my work. My twins made at least one cameo appearance in Blue Bells of Scotland: when Amy tells Niall about her young cousins, one stuck on top of the refrigerator and the other at the bottom feeding pot pies and ice cream to the dog, that’s one of the favorite twins stories at our house!

Q: It’s one thing to write a book and another to edit it. How do you feel about the editing process? What was it like to edit your book?

I love writing. It’s easy to disappear into 1314 and emerge hours later with no concept of time having passed. No pun intended.  Editing, yes, that’s a completely different thing. The detail editing is fine. It’s the structural editing that I practically need to chain myself to the chair for. That’s when my house suddenly gets very clean, because it feels like going into a wrestling match with a 12-armed octopus, trying to control all the threads, all the subplots, all the timelines, all the characters, to get them all matched up, and all meshing.

Q: Have you ever had a character take over a story and move it in a different direction than you had originally intended? How did you handle it?

This is a topic near and dear to my heart! Yes, my characters seem particularly willful. Ironically, the worst offender is the mild-mannered, kind, and generous Angus who appears in The Minstrel Boy (Book 2 of the Blue Bells Trilogy). He showed up with a cup of coffee, let it be known I’d already met him in Blue Bells of Scotland, and proceeded to continue turning up and bringing coffee. This is a real problem because I had a very specific ending for The Blue Bells Trilogy and he’s making that quite difficult. Downright impossible.  I briefly considered going back and trying to write him out, but characters, although supposedly imaginary, have lives and minds of their owns, and writing him out would feel like murder. There is something about certain characters that simply insists on existing and on having their way and staying exactly where they put themselves. Call it our author’s intuition, but I’ve never yet regretted allowing a character to behave as they decide to.