How did you meet?
Carroll and Nancy are sisters. Carroll met Lael at a mutual friend's in Minnesota,
but it was until all three of them connected a couple of years later at a BYU Women's
Conference that the magic happened. They got together for a few days prior to the
conference the following year, and have vacationed together every year since then.
That's sixteen years!
When did you get the idea for The Company of New Women?
In 1998, we traveled to Moab for a week of adventure in Canyonlands and Arches National
Parks. Nancy first brought up the idea of writing a book together, and it clicked!
Given the length of our friendship and what it has meant to us, it seemed natural
to write about three women whose lives are change by their association over many
years. (Carroll still has the notes she took in aqua ink during that first discussion!)
The novel gives intimate glimpses into the lives of three women. Did you draw
from your own lives in writing?
In Almost Sisters, Juneau (who is a writer) says she gets ideas for her writing
by observing life. That's true for us as well. While we do get ideas from personal
experience, we use them only as starting points. They take on a life of their own
as we write about them. Some of our most interesting ideas come out of the blue—the
inspiration that is part of the creative process.
The main characters, Juneau, Deenie and Erin, are Mormon. Is the novel meant
for LDS readership only?
Although the book is steeped in Mormon belief and culture, the situations the characters
deal with are universal. Non-Mormon women who have read the book have enjoyed it
thoroughly and have had no problem identifying with the main characters. So we hope
the book will have a wide readership.
How do three writers work together on a novel?
Lael writes Juneau, Nancy writes Deenie and Carroll writes Erin. We write the chapters
in which all three characters are together when we're on one of our working vacations.
(We joke that we need to get this trilogy done so we can have real vacations again!)
For instance, we wrote the St. George scenes in Almost Sisters at Stallion Springs
Resort in Tehachapi, California, fueling ourselves with peanut M&Ms and other forms
of chocolate!
Are you working on the next novel in the series?
Yes. The working title is Three Tickets to Peoria. The tentative release
date is May, 2007.
Writing a single novel is quite an undertaking. Why did you decide to write
a trilogy?
Actually, we didn't start out to write a trilogy! We knew from the beginning that
we wanted to have the characters interact with each other over many years—twenty-five
years to be exact. However, we didn't realize how complicated the issues would be,
how involved we would get in the lives of the characters, or how much material we
would generate. When we really got serious about publishing in the 2005, we realized
that we were writing either a 1000-page novel or a trilogy! We figured the idea
of a trilogy would be more appealing.
What years does the trilogy cover?
Willadene, Juneau and Erin first meet in 1980, and the third book will end in 2005.
So it covers a very interesting time-span, both in world and church history. Having
it cover 25 years allows us to show women in various stages of life.
Do you know what will happen to the characters in book two and book three?
Yes, though only generally. Carroll, who is our archivist, has the very long sheet
of butcher paper on which we first plotted the action of The Company of Good Women.
We marked off the twenty-five years, wrote down what was happening in the world
and in the church, and then filled in information about our characters and their
families. Of course, what we wrote has changed many times since then as the charachters
have developed minds of their own!
