I was pleasantly amused when I read a story which mostly revolved around Weaving and it was natural that I interview, the author of the Book “South of Center” by Andrea Carter.
Read the Review of South of Center before you go through the author’s talk below:
“When you have a story to tell, just start to write it. You don’t have to start “at the beginning”. Just start with what interests you and let the story evolve. You will likely reach a point where you stop to re-organise your thoughts and map out a plot. I’m not sure how people are most comfortable approaching the process to their story, but for me, it’s important that the plot is loose, leaving space for the characters to surprise you, offering new paths to explore that will enrich the story.” Says Andrea Carter, author of South of Center
Speaking of the extensive research done, she says,
“ I lived in Chile for a total of 8 years and in Bolivia for 1 year, and spent lots of time in the town of Tocopilla because this is where my husband (who is Chilean) was born. We stayed there for several months with his family. I am indeed fortunate to have been welcomed as part of this Chilean family. They not only offered love and support, they also gave me access to real people with real stories (something not so easily available if you are there as a tourist, for example).
In addition, my husband told me many, many stories of events and characters from his childhood in Tocopilla, and I was able to incorporate these into ‘South of Centre’. I was fascinated by the superstition of my mother-in-law and her friends, by the saints and virgins, and also by the gypsy culture, which is so evident in Chile, so I asked lots of questions and I observed. Once a Chilean man told me,
“Sometimes things get so bad that the only thing left is to laugh. And so we laugh.” It was important to try to bring humour into the story because it’s a big part of life in Chile.
The theme (not the plot itself) is something I discovered about South America… basically, there are so many events, so many reasons for relationships, and so many stories that quite simply remain unexplained. And no matter how persistent you are, it is often impossible to get to the bottom of them. Many questions go unanswered and relationships simply go undiscovered. While this is intriguing, it’s also frustrating and sometimes sad.
In addition, I have always had underlying questions about poverty and corruption, and although not limited to South America – or Chile in particular – the corruption there is often very obvious. Yet it continues. “
But why a story on weaving?
“I wanted to tell a story around the traditionally feminine activity of weaving, I wanted to examine relationships in terms of destiny, to see how people enter into and exit each other’s lives, leaving the question of destiny literally hanging on a thread. Clorinda manipulates the story through her weaving. She hides corruption under her daisies, and in the end, the real stories are hidden under a much kinder, more gentle facade.
Before this book, I had started another story based on my husband’s grandmother. In that process, I inserted a totally unknown character and called her Clorinda. She was just meant to be inconsequential, on the periphery, but I recognised something special in her; she had the potential to be a very rich character, so I abandoned the story about my husband’s grandmother and decided to write instead, a story about the surprising character called Clorinda.
With her obsession for the cultivated life of this older man and with her own amazing talents, she manipulates the threads, weaving Sr Ortega into her own world, as she would have it. Because of my own real fascination with Chilean cemeteries, much of Clorinda’s relationship with Sr Ortega unfolds after he dies and is buried.”
Thank you Andrea 
You can read Andrea’s blog here: http://www.andreacarter-stories.com/