Welcome to the third and final installment of our conversation with author and screenwriter Candace Salima. Click here if you missed part one or two.
Candace, in your novel “Out of the Shadows . . . Into the Light,” the enemy is a tribe from South America named the Anqiri. You’ve written the tribe very realistically, but they are in fact a fictional tribe. How did you make them sound so real?
The trick to making fiction seem real is to stick as close to reality as possible. I called my brother and explained my dilemma. I’d created a MO (method of operation) for my bad guy, gave it a unique twist, and had no explanation for it. I puzzled over it for weeks before calling my older brother, Jay Case, and asked him if he had any ideas. He called me back the next day and told me about the Anqiri tribe. When I asked how he found out about them, he told me he made it up. I then proceeded to flesh them out, make them my own (so much so that my brother told me at one point, that’s not what the Aniqiri did — I had to explain they were made up and I could do anything I wanted, he acquiesced) and in the process created something so real that the following conversation has actually taken place:
“I’ve studied South American tribes and I don’t know how I could have missed the Anqiri, how did you find them?”
It always gives me great pleasure to say they are completely fictional. I gave them a history, an ideology, traditions and so on — this is how I made them real.
What are your publishing goals for the future? Can we plan to see a lot of you?
My publishing goals are simple. To publish one fiction book and one religious book a year. Because I have just accepted the position of Executive Director in a First Response charity, more on that later, my time has to be carefully budgeted to add that in, because I won’t give up writing and I won’t give up my podcast (Imagine Podcast), nor will I give up the two most important things in my life, God and my husband. So yes, there will be positions opening soon as my assistant, possibly two or three assistants to keep everything running smoothly and well. I will be hiring someone to manage my websites and another to edit my podcast so that I can simply do the interviews and turn everything over — that will free up upwards of 30 hours a week for me — which will, of course, be taken up by the Charity — but I’m confident I will fit everything in.
Thank you for sharing your time and talents with us, Candace. We have missed you here on Families.com and hope you are able to rejoin us soon, but in the meantime, best of luck in all your endeavors.
Thank you for interviewing me, Tristi. I truly believe in the mission of www.families.com and wish for them, and you, the greatest of success.