Episode 132: Mary Camarillo, award-winning author
Mary Camarillo is the author of the award-winning novel, "The Lockhart Women." Her poems and short fiction have appeared in publications such as TAB Journal, 166 Palms, Sonora Review, and The Ear.
Her latest novel, Those People Behind Us is set in the summer of 2017 in Wellington Beach, California. This captivating story delves into the lives of five neighbors navigating a town divided by politics, protests, and soaring housing prices.
Mary lives in Huntington Beach, California with her husband, who plays ukulele, and their terrorist cat Riley, who makes frequent appearances on Instagram.
Books & Links Mentioned:
Those People Behind Us by Mary Camarillo (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Lockhart Women by Mary Camarillo (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Beyond 70: The Lives of Creative Women by Stacy Russo (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Wild Crone Wisdom by Stacy Russo (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Josie and Vic by Debra Thomas (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Shinnery by Kate Anger (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Full Disclosure: We are part of the Amazon and bookshop.org affiliate programs, which means Lainey or Ashley get a tiny commission if you buy something after clicking through from link on this website.
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Ashley Hasty 0:00
Hello and welcome back to The Best of Women's Fiction Podcast. I'm Ashley Hasty, the book blogger behind HastyBookList.com, a college fashion and marketing instructor. And as of last November, a new mom. I am thrilled to be working with Lainey again this season. We have a fantastic lineup of authors for you. Without further ado, let's see who's up next.
In this episode, I chat with Mary Kay Amarillo, the multi award winning author of Those People Behind Us which Diana Wagman, author of spontaneous and extraordinary October describes as a fascinating and perceptive read about growth, acceptance and understanding people different than yourself. We discussed Mary's journey to becoming an author, her favorite books she's read lately, and of course, her latest novel. Stay tuned. Mary, welcome. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast.
Mary Camarillo 1:03
Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you.
Ashley Hasty 1:06
We have so much to discuss. I don't want to waste any time. For those listeners who may not have yet read Those People Behind Us when you share your synopsis.
Mary Camarillo 1:17
Sure, Those People Behind Us as publishers on October 10. It's set in the summer of 2017, where it's post-Trump pre-pandemic, which seems like historical fiction to me, it's set in a suburban coastal Southern California neighborhood, and divided by protest and politics and escalating housing prices like so many neighborhoods are these days, which really impact the lives of five neighbors. There's five characters, there's a real estate agent, there's an aerobics teacher, there's a hunted Vietnam vet who's taking care of his aging mother. There's a woman who's had a horrific tragedy that's turning away from her husband towards reckless behavior. And there's a young boy who is dealing with the abandonment of his father by slamming in a drum set and setting things on fire. There was a lot going on during this summer, when at the end all these characters realize that they have a lot more in common than they ever expected.
Ashley Hasty 2:16
You said quite a bit of your stories, not all of them in Southern California. What is it about that area that draws you to write books about it?
Mary Camarillo 2:25
I've lived here for about three years, actually longer than that in different parts of California. Huntington Beach, especially where I live, is a very interesting town. It's got kind of an outlaw vibe. It was an oil town. Back in the early 1900s. There was a big real estate boom here later. It was an affordable beach town. When my husband and I moved here we were both postal workers. This is a place we could afford to buy that was relatively close to the beach. It's a Surf City. It's officially called Surf City USA like the Jan and Dean song. It was a punk scene in the 70s and 80s. There's some skinhead culture here too. So there's a lot going on here.
Ashley Hasty 3:08
I am endlessly fascinated to hear about that initial spark of inspiration that leads an author to a fully fleshed out novel. Do you remember that first spark for this novel that made you think that's the story I want to tell?
Mary Camarillo 3:21
Yeah, I have some ideas, I was gonna try to write a mystery, like a murder mystery. I have some characters that didn't really want to be in a murder mystery. This novel is really a pandemic story. It came from the gym being closed and my husband and I walking around our neighborhood for exercise. We started making up stories about what we saw, like the neighbor across the street, left all the doors to the garage and the front door open all the time. So we thought, well, something really bad could happen there. And then there's somebody pounding a drum set. So that kind of inspired my drum character in Those People Behind Us. People were flying all kinds of flags, and we're wondering, what does that flag mean? And what are they thinking? What are their lives like? We also noticed a lot of wildlife, especially during the pandemic, even though it's a suburban area, we have coyotes and skunks and raccoons and possums and all kinds of birds and all kinds of trees, we paid a lot more attention to them on these walks. So that ended up in the story.
Ashley Hasty 4:23
I love that you are inspired by people and things that are happening around you. I imagine you would be much fun to get like a cup of coffee with and just people watch.
Mary Camarillo 4:32
My favorite thing to do that inspires all of my work really is just eavesdropping and making up stories about what people's lives are like. I'm really fascinated by that.
Ashley Hasty 4:41
You mentioned your background in the Postal Service. I want to take a step back for a moment and I'm curious about your journey to becoming an author. How did that background lead you to publishing your two novels?
Mary Camarillo 4:54
I finally got my degree, and then I worked my way up through management and postal service me Managing a finance office. And then eventually, I transferred over to the Office of Inspector General, which has oversight over the Postal Service. And I became an audit auditor and an audit manager, which meant that I was responsible for editing and writing countless audit reports, which sounds like a weird transition to fiction. But I noticed some similarities. Because for one thing, an audit report has to be interesting. Otherwise, no one's going to read it, although maybe people don't read them anyway. But also, audit reports have to report on something that's wrong, and say why it's wrong. And who the heck cares. And as a lifelong reader of novels, I think there's similarities there, I think characters have to have problems. The reader wants to know why the character is behaving the way they are, and they want to care. So there's got to be some effect, some outcome that keeps the reader engaged.
Ashley Hasty 5:51
I have to say, coming into this interview, I did not expect to see the parallels between an audit report and writing fiction, I get it, I can definitely see that
Mary Camarillo 6:00
I was the kind of person that showed up with a clipboard and said, Hi, I'm here to help you. And no one was ever glad to see me. No one really likes to be observed and written about. But it adds to fiction because I have lots of stories from the post office. My first novel, The Lockhardt women, is set at the post office, because there's so many stories there.
Ashley Hasty 6:19
I mentioned earlier that you've published two novels, you just mentioned your first one, The Lockhart Women and of course, Those People Behind Us.
Mary Camarillo 6:27
Here’s the Lockhart Women with their very shiny stickers.
Ashley Hasty 6:31
I was just gonna say you won a slew of awards to come here. Yes, drawing on your personal experience, the path that led you to where you are now. You have two published novels and all the awards. What one piece of advice do you think is most important for writers.
Mary Camarillo 6:47
I have like five, all five. First, I think it's really important to belong to a writing group to have someone read your work. But you also have to have confidence in your own voice and realize that you can't take everyone's advice. Second, this is something one of my favorite writers Richard Bosch says all the time is, don't be afraid to revise, you can only make it necessary to do it again. Third, the advice you need to support your writing community writers are incredibly generous. If you write reviews and go to the readings and write them thank you notes. They'll reciprocate. It's really amazing. I think you need to read like it's your job. And I think you need to support independent bookstores, I think it should be against the law to go into an independent bookstore and buy something.
Ashley Hasty 7:37
I love that. I completely agree. I think that's a great rule of thumb for not just all writers, but oh readers, as you mentioned, the revision process. I always like to hear about a writer's process. Most writers tend to group themselves into plotters or Pantsers. Identify with one or the other. Are you somewhere in between?
Mary Camarillo 7:59
I'm totally a pantser. I wish I wasn't. It's very inefficient. But first, I think of the character that I see what kind of trouble I can put them in, and then I can figure out if they can work their way out of it. I don't know where I'm going. When I start, I have the characters tell me what they're gonna do. I always overwrite, like, the Lockhart Women was originally 106,000 words. Finally, trimming it down to about 90,000 words, I had a scene in the Lockhart women where the lead character at the end of the story goes off to Cuba on an educational trip. And it was really fun to write. But it had nothing to do with the story. So I'm not afraid to cut. That's not the novel with Those People Behind Us. My real estate agent character, I had her in a writing group, which was also super fun to write about all the people in the writing group. But I finally decided this doesn't have anything to do with the story really. And I already have so many characters in Those People Behind Us. I really didn't need to add another cast.
Ashley Hasty 8:59
So I cut that too, would have guessed you as a pantser. Just based on that one comment about how you started out writing a murder mystery, but your characters didn't want to be a problem. I love that you followed where the characters wanted
Mary Camarillo 9:12
Just a slight spoiler alert, one of my characters in Those People Behind Us really wants to murder so I won't say anything else about that.
Ashley Hasty 9:21
We don't want to give away too much. Lanie and I and our best of women's fiction podcast listeners, too, are always looking for new books to add to our TBR piles. I'd love to hear about your reading world. What are you reading right now that you'd recommend? I'm going out
Mary Camarillo 9:36
I’m on a book tour. And I've set up this book tour to partner with other writers that I really like. My first book tour is with Stacey Russo, who wrote this book called Beyond 70. The Lives of Creative Women and I am beyond 70. So this relates to me, but it's completely inspirational. It's about all these artists and women writers and photographers that either have been artists their whole life or they started later in life like I did. Stacy has another book coming out called Wild Crone Wisdom. I just love this cover. Yeah. And she's my first conversation. The second one is with DebraThomas, who I think you featured a few weeks ago. This is her beautiful cover Josie and Vic. Deborah and I both write about Southern California. And we both have characters that are not celebrities or wealthy or can solve all their problems by inheriting their trust fund. Finally, there are more real people really looking forward to that conversation. I'm going to be at Barnes and Noble with one of my favorite human beings, Kate Anger, who wrote The Shinnery. This story is set in Texas, and it's based on a real life story from Kate's family. Long story short, it's a young woman who gets put into indentured servitude by her father to pay off a debt. She gets shipped to town with his family, and she's completely unprepared for all the treachery, deception that happens to her. You might say, Well, what does that have in common with Southern California story, but both of our books really rely on setting in place
Ashley Hasty 11:10
Four excellent recommendations. Finally, I want to share how people can find you. What is your website? And where do you hang out on social media,
Mary Camarillo 11:18
My website is easy to find. It's marycamarillo.com. I have two Facebook accounts, you can follow me on my author account, Mary Camarillo Author. And then I'm on Instagram with my cat Riley, who's lurking around here somewhere. He's a 15 poem, flame point Siamese. And he acts as my manager of marketing. So there's all kinds of pictures of him with different books.
Ashley Hasty 11:40
Can you tell us anything about what's next for you in your next project manuscript?
Mary Camarillo 11:46
It's really too soon to talk about what I'm working on. But I can't say there's probably going to be set in the 70s, which is truly historical fiction now. So I'm excited about that. Yeah, what I'm really hoping to do next is have a lot of promotion and suffer from the new book, but I'm really going to try to enjoy it. It's so easy to just stress out about all the things you should be doing and you didn't do and look at what that author won all these awards. And what are my Amazon rankings, let me look at him again, I really want to just sit back and enjoy it. I was a little more stressed out with my first novel, and I'm hoping this one will just be more celebration. I wrote two books, that's something to celebrate, right?
Ashley Hasty 12:26
I think that could be number six for your list of advice for authors.
Mary Camarillo 12:32
You can check in with me in a couple of months and see how that’s going.
Ashley Hasty 12:36
Easier said than done. Sure. But keeping that in the back of your mind is important. We write because we supposedly love it right?
Mary Camarillo 12:44
I do love it. I mean, I'm really looking forward to switching gears, the marketing publicity portion is different brains than the creative part. And I'm looking forward to just getting back to creating more work.
Ashley Hasty 12:56
Absolutely, I think we ask a lot of writers to not only write a book, which is nearly impossible, and then of itself, but then also completely switch, really the personality that it takes to sit down and write a novel, turn that completely around and then market that novel to the world. It's a lot of conflicting requirements.
Mary Camarillo 13:21
With my first novel, I was so naive, I had no idea I was really going to have to give an elevator pitch or tell anybody what the themes were, I thought I would just say, why don't you read it? It was a big awakening. For me.
Ashley Hasty 13:36
I do think it helps, as you mentioned, relying on the writing community, like you are partnering up with other writers to help with the marketing of your own book, doing it together with that community that is so supportive is beneficial.
Mary Camarillo 13:52
Yeah, with the look of women, I really didn't get to do that. Because it was a pandemic. So I did a lot of stuff on Zoom. I think now people are a little bit tired of Zoom. So I'm really excited to go out. And even if there's only four or five people in the audience, I think it's gonna be really fun. And I'll have somebody to talk to. So yeah, we're excited.
Ashley Hasty 14:10
Yeah, before we wrap up, is there anything else you wanted to talk about that we haven't covered yet?
Mary Camarillo 14:15
No, I want to give a shout out to you and the best of women's fiction because you do all this for other writers. And it's so appreciated and so generous of you. I'm gonna thank you for that.
Ashley Hasty 14:25
Oh, thank you. It's completely our pleasure. It is so much fun to get out from behind your own computers. And although we're still sitting at a computer, it's nice to be able to talk in real time with another human being. We really enjoy getting to talk to authors. And personally I love a peek behind the process and how you got to where you are and the person behind the book.
Mary Camarillo 14:49
I love that I just saw on Instagram where you showed the behind the scenes process for you like all the work that you do, I don't think people really have an idea of how much work was the same. Appreciate
Ashley Hasty 14:57
Thank you again for joining. From a podcast sharing your book and your experience as an author with us and our listeners, it's a pleasure chatting with you.
Mary Camarillo 15:06
You too. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Ashley Hasty 15:09
For links to the books mentioned in this episode, the author's social media and more, visit bestofwomen's fiction.com. You can also see the video version of this same episode. I'd love it if you'd follow me on Instagram at Ashley hasty. You can also subscribe to the podcast right here and if you enjoy it, please share with your friends.