Thanks for joining us again for part two of our interview with LDS author Josi S. Kilpack. If you missed part one, click here.
Josi, how many books have you written, and what are their titles?
Seven books total. Five are women’s novels, “Earning Eternity,” “Surrounded By Strangers,” “Tempest Tossed,” “To Have or To Hold” and “Unsung Lullaby.” I have one young adult novel, “Star Struck,” and a Christmas book, “Rabboni: The Search for Christ.”
What do you plan to write in the future? Will we be seeing a lot of you?
My passion is LDS contemporary fiction that deals with life issues. I have lots of ideas in my head and I certainly hope to continue writing for many more years to come. However, one of the essential parts of writing is your audience. As long as I have people reading my books and wanting more, I get to write for them. If the readers stop wanting my stories, if my books are no longer in demand, there is no point to it. My challenge is to write what they want, which is why feedback from readers is so valuable to me.
I may at some point try and write Mormon characters for the national market, but as long as things are going well in the LDS market I’m not putting too much energy into that prospect.
Your novel “Tempest Tossed” seems to have attracted some negative reviews. Why do you think you’ve gotten the negativity? I must say, it’s my favorite out of all of yours, and I don’t understand that.
Most of my books are edgy. “Tempest Tossed” seemed to look over that edge. It deals with a woman who makes choices most of us would never make for reasons most of us don’t understand. I’ve found that people who know and love someone with some kind of addiction found the book very profound and even helpful in understanding these people, or understanding themselves. However, those people that don’t know and love an addict enough to make the story personal to them, found Janet unlikable, mean, and spoiled…period. They could not understand her choices, they could not make sense of Tally’s choice to marry her the way he did and they could not forgive her the trespasses she makes toward the people she loves. I have been disappointed in that, since one of my core beliefs is that we are best served by having empathy and understanding for people different than us. I tried hard to write Janet’s character in a way that would support that. But on the reverse I’ve had some very positive feedback as well. In fact, recently a friend gave it to her therapist who said that most people would be well served to read Tempest Tossed in order to understand the demons some people face down, so that instead of us as members spurning those that struggle to a depth most of us (luckily) don’t have to face, we could embrace and support them through their trials. I’ve also received very personal and touching letters from people who felt the same way. That makes the negative feedback much easier to swallow. And, no author expects everyone to love every thing they write. I’m just glad so many people got the point I was trying to make.
Thank you for sharing your time and talents with us, Josi.
Look for further reviews on Josi S. Kilpack’s novels here in media reviews on families.com.