Authors have many different personal stories to tell on their road to publication. The stories are as personal and varied as the authors themselves. It's why I love to meet new authors and learn about their roads to publication and why they love to write. My guest today in My Writing Corner, Cara Bertoia has quite a unique story to tell.
Eventually, Cara succumbed to pressure from the family and returned east to take a hi-tech job in Boston. She also began working on her MFA in writing at Emerson. Her goal was to write the first realistic novel about casino life from the perspective of an experienced table games dealer. She says she is always amazed that normal and sometimes quite intelligent players become absolutely clueless in the casino. She says they repeat superstitious nonsense and no amount of logic can change their position, but maybe her novel will.
While in Boston she was offered the opportunity to join Princess Cruises as a croupier. Jumping at the chance, she spent the next five years circling the globe. Sometimes life exceeds your dreams, she says. After being awed by the wonders of Venice, the fjords of Norway, and the Northern Lights in St. Petersburg, Cara returned from ships with a very special souvenir, her Scottish husband, Ray. They went to work at the Spa Casino in Palm Springs, and now live in Hollywood, Florida, where she writes about her casino years while wistfully gazing out at the ocean.
Cara, tell us about your road to publication.
When I was a child, I grew up in a very crowded house. I have three sisters. The way I would escape all the mayhem was by reading. From the time I could pick up a book I became a voracious reader. At eight, I would read my parent’s novels, whatever books I could find. At night instead of counting sheep I would tell myself Cinderella stories where I got to be the heroine. But my first real writing class was when I worked in high-tech in Boston. I took a class at Harvard Extension, and the professor read my story aloud to the group. He asked me to do it, but I was too self-conscious, because it was the first story I had ever written. From that day on I was hooked.
The hardest part of writing is just putting down the first words. I love to think about writing, rehearse conversations in my head, and try to brainstorm plots. But since organization is not my strong skill, it can remain in my head for a long time. I wrote my first book because my husband yelled at me one day, “You’ve been talking about writing a book for years, you’ll never do it.” Obviously, he pissed me off so I wrote it. It was the kick in the butt I needed.
At the beginning of the Co-Vid pandemic I was querying. The Wild Rose Press decided they liked my book. I spent the next year working with my wonderful Editor Kaycee to make my book as good as I could. It was a very hard process, she made me take out a whole plot and add more chapters on the casino industry. Since I had so much time at home, I was able to get into a great head space to write.
What advice do you have for beginning writers?
Write, take classes and query. Learn how to take criticism because there will be plenty of it. When I was in grad school at Emerson, I sent an article in to a local Boston paper, completely unsolicited. Imagine my surprise when they printed it. I did not get paid but I got a byline. Then slightly tipsy after a glass of wine at lunch, I called a smaller local paper and told them they should hire me to write a weekly humor column. They were desperate for material, and I worked cheap, so they did. With the Internet, there are so many paths to get published. So go out there prepared to fail, and to clog up your inbox with rejection emails. Because each one means you are getting closer. Do it enough and eventually you will get published, and that will give you the courage to keep writing.
What is your latest book and how did you come up with the idea to write it?
My latest project is a short story called The Perfect Breasts. This is a very personal raw story. The genesis for the story was loss, longing, and love. I have published it for breast cancer month, and all the profits will be donated to cancer research. I have priced it at $1.99 because my main goal is to get my story read. I wanted to explore women's complicated relationships with their bodies. Are women their bodies? But the most important aspect is the loss of a loved one and how it affects the ones left behind. I was thrilled when one of my reviewers said it should be required reading for every woman.
Hannah Clein will always remember the day she went to a department store with her mother to buy her first bra as her last best day, “B.C.” before the cancer. She considered herself an ordinary child who loved challah bread, reading, and her family – often in that order.
With a normal life in the rear-view mirror, we follow Hannah over three decades, as she navigates the tricky transition from girlhood to womanhood. All her life, she just wants to belong. Be normal.
In a tale that explores a women’s complicated relationships with her body, and the love of her life, we learn the psyche is a funny thing. What are the perfect breasts? And how does the loss of a loved one affect those left behind?
The Perfect Breasts mixes family lore with imagination in a compelling tale of loss, longing, and love.
How about an Excerpt:
How do you come up with your plots?
It seems like we all like to solve mysteries. But the fun part is that I also get to create them. My husband Ray is also in the casino business, we met on a Princess cruise ship, where we both worked. The day he jumped ship to be with me, we drove from Los Angeles to Palm Springs and got a job at one of the Indian casinos that were opening up there.
We had known each other for two months, and we got married in Vegas a month later. The book came about because whenever we watched a movie set in a casino we always found a mistake. Those movies were my inspiration. We rewatched Croupier the other day and found five mistakes in the first ten minutes. The dealer pushed out the wrong amount of chips, picked up the cards the wrong way, switched money between hands, and didn’t clear her hands. We always said we could do better, so one day I decided to try.
What you don’t know reading my novel is that the series was inspired by actual incidents so coincidental and sad that if you made them up, they would sound like a contrivance. We arrived in Palm Springs and got married three weeks later. My husband’s roommate from the cruise ships was the best man at our wedding. Dave left his job at our casino and moved to Albuquerque to take a job as a shift manager there. Working there he met Julian and encouraged him to move to Palm Springs for greater opportunities. Even though they switched places they couldn’t avoid their fate. They were both murdered under mysterious circumstances.
How do you develop characters?
The characters in my book were familiar to me from my two decades working in the casino industry. Fortunately, my boss was the most charismatic tribal chairman in America. People always asked me, “What’s a nice girl like you doing working in a place like this?” Now I could honestly say, “Research.”
The characters in my head just kept letting me know how they wanted their story told. There were so many interesting stories to tell, since my co-workers were a fascinating group of people from all over the world. Everyone had a different story about how they got in the business, most involved escaping tyrannical governments. I had to research historical events to make sure I got it right. All the pieces of the novel came together in an organic way to capture that special time and place. It was important to me that my protagonist would be a strong woman running the casino. Because I worked with so many smart, strong, independent women.
What’s your next project?
I have been playing with a few ideas at the same time. The first idea is a retelling of the 1957 classic novel, The Best of Everything by Ronna Jaffe. It tells the story of five single women who live in NewYork City. When it was published, it was an immediate classic. A 65th anniversary edition has been released by Penguin Classics. Reading it transports you to New York City in the fifties, and the very real problems women always face.
I would change the setting to California in the eighties, to give the story a new perspective. What do you think? Does that sound like a good idea? Leave a note in the comments or email me at carabertoia@yahoo.com (Having spent the 80s in California, I think that would be fun!)
Cara says she loves to connect with her readers. She invites them to send her a picture with any or her work, and she will post those pictures to social media.
Here are the buy links for her featured book, The Perfect Breasts. She has published it on Amazon Kindle for breast cancer month, and all the profits will be donated to cancer research.
To learn more about Cara's book based on Cara's casino life, her social contacts follow as well.
Buy links:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CGMTYBFD?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420
The Perfect Breasts by Cara Bertoia - BookBub
The Perfect Breasts by Cara Bertoia | Goodreads
Social Contact Links:
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