Author Paulette Wood is in THE HAVEN!

PAULETTE GAINES WOOD is the author of two books, THE NOBLE ANTHONY and HIS LADY CLEOPATRA, and THE NOBLE ANTHONY and HIS LADY CLEOPATRA: RETURN HOME. Wonderfully written, PAULETTE'S debut novel is an International Best Seller. That's a pretty great start for a first novel, but what is much more inspirational about PAULETTE'S accomplishment is she is living with the lifelong challenges of dyslexia.

Episode Transcript

(00:54):
Hello, James Patrick, and welcometo Season five of The Writers Heaven Show.
I am your host, Helena,And when I think about how we
started this show two years ago andconsider where we are today, I get
chills and I'm thankful, and it'sall because of you and the overwhelming support
you've shown us. So thank youfrom the bottom of my heart. We

(01:15):
have so much in store for youthis season, and I can't wait to
give you highlights for the upcoming season. But we're going to do that at
the end of the show because Iwant to introduce to you our first season
five guests. Paulette Gains is theauthor of two books, The Noble Anthony
and His Lady Cleopatra and The NobleAnthony and His Lady Cleopatra Return Home.

(01:38):
They're wonderfully written, and Paultt's debutnovel, actually both of them, is
an international bestseller, and that's apretty great start for a first novel.
But what is much more inspirational aboutPaulette's accomplishment is that she is living with
the lifelong challenges of dyslexia. Sohere to talk about her accomplishments as a

(02:00):
gifted writer and her process for writingis international best selling author Paulette Gaines would
welcome to the writers. Have youbeen poulltte? Well, thank you so
much for having me. Now youmust start off by introducing us to these
two gorgeous creatures here. Who arethey? Right? This is the noble

(02:22):
Anthony, a beautiful and very handsomeEnglish master, and his wife of many
centuries, the lady Cleopatra, whois an Abyssinian cat. Oh my goodness,
I mean immediately many questions jump up. Okay, you said wife,

(02:44):
they're different species, So how didthat evolve? Well, love is love,
okay, and that's really just whatit comes down to. They are
completely devoted to each other. Amatter of fact, Cleopatra really doesn't care

(03:05):
too much about anybody else, okay, but she is completely devoted to as
she calls him most of the time, her Anthony. Okay, okay,
that's just what it comes down to. Love is love. And she's sitting
on his head and I know,on both covers. That's how she well

(03:25):
outside of the family home. Thisis her mode of transportation, okay.
Because when they were together in ancientEgypt, when cats were well, as
Cleopatra put it, a time whenhumans were wiser and worshiped cats as they
should see. Then she had bearersto carry her around when she left the

(03:51):
temple to so now this is kindof a plan b. So because her
feet rarely touched the ground when she'soutside of the family home. Well,
Paul it I have to tell you, I absolutely loved your book from the
very first page. It was Iwas very drawn to it, very drawn

(04:13):
to the story. And as Iyou know, looked and did some research
about the genre, it for themost part came up as a children's book.
Was that your intention? Because Ias an adult and knowing some of
the history in terms of Egyptian culture, and also, you know, the

(04:34):
dogs. I have a dog,I'm a dog lover, So the themes
and actually the way that it waswritten. I'm not saying that a child
could read it, but it actuallyhad an attraction to me as well.
So was that your intention? Whenwell, I kind of wanted it to
be able to fit across genres.So, yes, there's something here that

(04:59):
chose children would enjoy. The boysand the family are you know, very
important in their interactions. But actuallymy biggest fans are adults, and there's
some little special things that I putin for the adult who's reading it or

(05:20):
might be reading it to a child. An example of that is that the
father of the family comes home oneday and his wife is so upset that
something's happened with Cleopatra, and she'sexplained it to him, but you know,
he just doesn't get He understands whathappened, but he just doesn't get

(05:41):
why she's so upset about it.And so he falls back onto what all
husbands do when they pretty much haveno idea what's going on, and simply
says to her, it's all right, dear, we'll work it out together.
Right. See, any adult readingnow, I can definitely relate to

(06:03):
thattand you're just trying to make mego away. I's trying to ease the
situation. Okay, So you know, let's talk about before we really get
into the process. I want tohighlight the fact that you have been able
to publish two books back to back, the first one in twenty seventeen,
the second one in twenty eighteen.And what we'll talk about how long it

(06:28):
took each book to be written whenwe talk about process. But you did
this with this challenge of dyslexia andI just want to, you know,
hone in on that a little bit, because I know there's a lot of
people that are either well versed ondyslexia and what it means, and others
who think that they know but don'treally know. How challenging was it to

(06:54):
write. It is very I meanin early school, elementary school, especially
at the time, it was verypopular for students to stand up and read
to the class. And when you'redyslexic, you're kind of basically you just

(07:15):
don't see the letters and everything theway everybody else does. So it's like
you're translating from another language all thetime. And you know, to be
told that you're an intelligent person butstill have such a horrible time in some

(07:38):
subjects like reading, like spell Anyfourth grader can out spell me. You
know, to this day, Ihave very little idea of how the letters
actually go together. I find theold So yeah, it was. It
was very hard. And now thegood part is because I come from a

(08:03):
family of educators and my mother wasn'talways that patient with why I didn't read
well, But I think because ofthat, she let my brother and I
read anything anything that we were willingto read. She was willing to let

(08:24):
us read and matter of fact,some things. As I look back on,
I thought, oh, maybe thatone wasn't such a good idea.
But but and we had a littletown where I grew up. We had
ed one room library. Missus Allenwas our librarian. New York and New

(08:50):
Jersey very early and then later asmall town in southern New Jersey called Absecon.
Absecon's one claim to fame is thatit's the very first city mentioned in
the zip code directory. Oh abOkay, okay, okay, that's that's

(09:11):
our big claim to fame. Okay. And and one reason why I asked
a question about where you're from becauseI noticed that in your writing. Definitely
in the first book. I'm notsure with the second book. I think
with the second book you did alot of time. You had a lot
of time in Egypt. But Bouie, the city of Yuee in Maryland,
was the location for your book.You want to talk about that a little.

(09:35):
Well, I've lived in Maryland forDecember of this year, will be
forty years, and lived in Bouiefor about thirty seven thirty eight year or
something like that. Yeah, becausethere are and I never thought of placing

(09:58):
the family any place else because wehave always had good friends and neighbors here,
always felt a good sense of community, and that was one of the
things I wanted to relay in thein the stories people friends and neighbors coming
to help a family at a time. Also a community that's very accepting and

(10:26):
open. So everybody in the townknows Anthony and Cleopatra. You've put Bowie
Maryland on the map for sure,being you know, the best selling author
in people. Anyone who didn't knowabout Bouie and mary they do now,
they most certainly do. So,Okay, So with the challenges of dyslexia,

(10:50):
and and you had mentioned actually Ithink you mentioned this in the green
Room about a teacher who inspired youwith your with your writing very earth.
When I was in high school,I had a wonderful teacher, Marion Ross,
who came to teaching from a longcareer in the publishing industry, and

(11:13):
she decided as her retirement job shewanted to teach high school English. And
I was fortunate enough to have herfor both my sophomore and junior year.
And she when she looked at thethings that I wrote, Yes, she
was a teacher. She had tomake corrections, but she also looked at

(11:37):
the story itself and the characters andthe flow and how characters were developed in
everything. So she looked beyond myspelling mistakes, my punk into those types
of would and she was basically actingas your editor. And if she said

(12:01):
to me, you know, Ican't make you any promises, but I
think you might really have something here. Yeah. Well, for sixteen seventeen
year old it's like, you know, this was carved in stone, so
matter of fact in my high schoolyearbook where it's this line to talk about
you know what you want to doin the future, And in my book

(12:26):
it says whin a Nope Bell Prizein Literature. Ah okay, hey,
missus Ross had said it was goingto happen. Okay, okay, You're
gonna be up there with Tony Morrisonand the rest of them. That's awesome.
That's a great goal. So let'stalk a bit about your process then,
and how did you birth these characters. Well, that was very slow

(12:48):
coming because when I started out,well, most things were handwritten or typed,
and typing is very slow encumberance whenyou're trying to you know figure out
the letters, where they are andhow they are. But fortunately, as
I got older, computers came aboutwhat did we do before they came,

(13:15):
which helped a lot. But atthe same time, I mean, when
I heard about spell check, youknow, I thought this was put together
just for me personally, but forthe dyslexic. What happens with spell check
is that many times you are givena list a choice in the words,

(13:37):
and I don't necessarily know the differencein the various words. So organism and
orgasm get not really interchangeable. Yeah, that might be a problem. So
that in itself makes life very interesting. But as missus Ross had told me

(14:03):
years ago, you know right aboutthe things that you know. And my
family has always had lots of pets, and our friends had pets, so
this really came down to being whatI know, and so that's why.
But they have very distinct characteristics.So are they people in real life?

(14:26):
And you made them animals? Didyou? Is this really George your husband?
Oh no, no, the actuallythe lady Cleopatra has a lot of
my brother. Okay, okay,but they kind of came to me themselves,

(14:50):
like we've had a lot of cats. We have a beautiful Norwegian forest
cat right now, named Sophia whowe got into shelter, and she had
amazing green eyes, three different shadesof green in her eyes, just like
we describe Cleopatra. She's nineteen yearsold and she is the queen of our

(15:18):
house. Okay, so much ofCleopatra actually came from our Sophia got it,
got it. But many of theother animals in the book were either
pets of ours or pets of ourfriends, like the character of Boudhicali,
who's a big calico and the catburglar of the community. Well, we

(15:45):
had a big calico named Boudha Cali, twenty two pounds at her height,
full figured girl, and she didsteal. She stole my wedding ring,
she stole the car keys. Shewould go into draws and pull out socks.
She was quite a cat burglar.Now. Of course, in the

(16:07):
book, she starts out with smallitems like that, but of course then
she moves on to bigger items likethe five piece set of lawn furniture writing
lawnmower that she brings home to herfamily and no one will ever forget the
more. Sunday morning, they wokeup and found a small child sitting at

(16:30):
the foot of the bed. Yeah. So yeah, I expanded on the
personalities of a lot of animals thatI've known. Yeah. Masterfully done as
well, because the characters truly cometo life. And you know, as
I was reading it, I wasthinking, surely these are based on real

(16:53):
life experiences of your own or peoplethat you know that may have told you
about their experience. So tell me, as you were writing the first book,
did you know that you were goingto create write a second book?
And is this? Are these twobooks in a series of books? No,

(17:15):
I when I wrote the first book, that's real. Matter of fact,
I even said to my husband becausewhen the first book came out and
people immediately started talking about, oh, what is the next one? And
I said to him, Okay,you need to know that's all I had,
all I got in me right now, everything about first book. And

(17:41):
so actually starting the second one wasreally very challenging and kind of scary because
the first book stories had been inmy head for years. I have been
telling family and friends these stories forever. For the second book, I had
to come up with completely new things. And as any would be, the

(18:04):
author knows this that moment of doI have anything else? And do I
have anything else to say that peopleare going to enjoy as much as they
did for a first book, becauseyou don't want to lose or disappoint the
you know, the fans that youhave got. And that's one thing that

(18:27):
I read in the reviews for yourbook, people who had read the first
book. Almost every review was askingwhen is the second one? Is the
second one coming out? So youcame and you brought the the demand.
Then you filled the demand for it, and the reviews for the second book
are just as good as the firstone. So I think that you hit

(18:49):
the mark and doing that in sucha short period of time, especially when
you're saying that you the stories thatyou had put in the first book,
you knew for years, you hadthem, you've been telling them for years.
But for the second book, wasthat like a clean slate and you
just kind of had to build it. Truly was, And it was kind

(19:14):
of fascinating for me too, becauseI came up with this new character,
you know, because the main partof the second book is this adventure they
had in ancient Egypt, and Icame up with this character called ben l
and sitting there, you know,writing his history. Some I really had
no idea what I was going todo with him and what part he was

(19:40):
going to play. But as Iwent on, that came to me,
and he really became a kind ofneat and interesting character. And in one
era he's playing this game called Setee, which is one of the most ancient

(20:03):
board games ever found. Yeah,and I was going to ask you about
that. Why did you pick ancientEgypt as the place that would be your
location in book two? Well,this is where they came together because the
Egyptians did worship cats, all right, and to use these two animals,

(20:25):
the Mastive is a very ancient lineof dogs, and so is the Abyssinian,
an ancient line of cats, andthe Egyptians did worship them. They
found mummified cats, so it justseemed to be the perfect place for them

(20:48):
to come together. And it soundslike you did a lot of research too
and bringing that authenticity to your rent. Well, you know, I grew
up watching a lot of what myfriends call togun sandal movies. Okay,
okay, so like Elizabeth Taylor andCleopatra, Yes, okay, and so

(21:15):
it's kind of an error. Ialways liked, but there were definitely things
that I discovered as I went along, and but it was just perfect for
them. Today, a mother catis referred to as a queen, and

(21:36):
so that made sense for Cleopatra tobe queen of the of the Temple of
the Set. The set is theEgyptian god with the face of a cat
and the body of a woman,and so this is who Cleopatra calls on
for assistance. And that They're justthings that just clicked in my head.

(22:03):
What's next? Do you have anyother projects that you're working on that are
they still in alignment with our maincharacters here? Are you thinking about?
Well something? There is a thirdbook, a working title is The Noble

(22:26):
Anthony and his Lady Cleopatra share playhouseStories. And since they have lived with
so many families over the centuries.A matter of fact, the second book
they even mentioned a time that theywere with President Lincoln. All right,

(22:48):
but they've met other animals and they'vehad adventures with other animals and those families,
and so I thought it might bea nice time to share some of
those stories that they know of.Do you outline? Do you take now?
I tried when I started writing thefirst book, I tried outlining because

(23:12):
well, I had read this iswhat authors do well, whatever works for
and with all this Roman numerals anda's and b's and one and two,
and it's like, okay, Iwill never get anything done. What works
for me is to kind of writelike a shopping list. So for each

(23:36):
little section, I write a listof things that are supposed to happen in
each section. And sometimes those thingsmight be moved around a little bit and
they might be expanded on. Butthat gives me a guideline of this is

(23:56):
what's going to happen, and you'llput down the things that you want to.
I want to be sure, andthat's a good way to help me
so that I don't forget something important. Or you can look at your list
and say, oh, I needto add such and such here. So
when they have in the chapter inbook one, the oh what is it?

(24:22):
They have an adventure I can't eventhink of the chapter with right now,
which is really bad. But thechild falls into the ice and part
of the rescue team comes, youknow, to get Anthony and the boy
out of the freezing water and saveboth of them. Well, I realize

(24:44):
you need to know a little bitabout the two men who are going in
to save them, Okay, Andthat came to me and looking at my
list and this happening, and asthese guys are talking to Anthony and encourage
him to keep the boy up outof the water and to keep paddling.

(25:07):
Yes, how do they know totalk to an animal and to try to
calm them? So that's why weneed to know a little bit about the
rescuers, okay, okay? Andso what advice would you give to an
aspiring writer who's looking to one daybecome an international bestseller? It sounds very

(25:32):
simple, and I hate to soundlike a Nike commercial, but I have
to say, just do it.Just write or in my case, because
I wasn't good at writing, tellyour stories. And we live right now

(25:52):
in a wonderful time. There isa thing called self publishing. You are
not just in the hands of waitingfor publishers. If you would accept or
reject you you can go ahead andget it out there yourself. Don't wait
till you're seventy years old to start, right, Okay. So that's my

(26:14):
say, Although you can start atany time, Yes, you can start
at any time. And definitely ithas been very rewarding. Matter of fact,
when I was in my teens,I would tell family and friends that
I felt, if there was tobe any acclaim and success in my life,
I would prefer for it to comelater in my life because I felt

(26:40):
I would appreciate it more than ifyou know, you have a big blow
up thing when you're twenty. AndI always thought of the actor Orson Wells,
who did have the biggest fame inhis career when he was in his
twenties and kind of spent the restof his life kind of chasing that fame

(27:00):
and never really getting back to thatpoint again. So I figured, yes,
if I'd taken a few knocks inthe head and had some disappointments by
the time I got to the success, yes I would really understand it.
I would really appreciate it know howvaluable it truly is. Well, Paul

(27:22):
that thank you so very much forvisiting us in the Haven. Really really
appreciate your insight and for the greatgolden nuggets that you've dropped for our Dreamcatchers
who are listening and Dreamcatchers thanks forjoining us today in the Haven. You
can stream this and other shows onany of our nine streaming platforms including iTunes,

(27:44):
Spotify, iHeartRadio, YouTube, anddon't forget to tune into our newest
streaming partner, the American Legacy Network. This season is shaping up to be
even greater than the one before,with more interviews with New York Times bestselling
authors, award winning filmmakers, platinumselling songwriters and new This year, we
will showcase the work of award winningplaywrights. What's not to love about all

(28:07):
of that? Well, hold onto your seat and check out our website
at www dot Writers Havens Show dotcom for more exciting happenings than the Haven.
And that's all for now, Butuntil next time, catch fire on
purpose. Hello, dreaming people,and welcome to another exciting season of The

(28:34):
Writers Haven Show. I'm v Helena, your host and executive producer. Since
twenty seventeen, we've invited you intothe Haven, where we showcase the passion,
process and projects of writers of literature, television, film and music.
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(28:55):
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(29:18):
having show with being Helena. Ilook forward to seeing you in the Haven,
and until next time, catch fireon purpose.