Q&A with Nancy Joie Wilkie

 

 

 

Nancy Joie Wilkie is the author of the new story collection Faraway and Forever. She also has written the story collection Seven Sides of Self. She worked in the biotechnology industry for many years, and is also a musician. She lives in Brookeville, Maryland.

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?

 

A: I wrote four novelettes between January 2020 and February 2021, much of it while vacationing on Manasota Key, not far from Englewood, Florida. Out of sensitivity concerns, the publisher nixed one of those stories.

Fortunately, I had just completed writing another novelette in the summer of 2021 and was able to “swap out” the offending story with the most recent story.

And one story was actually written 25 years ago. When my editor read it for the first time in the spring of 2021, she pointed out that certain things had changed in the years since the story was written ... like the invention of the cell phone!

 

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: It is really quite simple. The title is meant to reflect the following...each story takes the reader further into the future and farther out into space.

 

My goal was to use to use these stories to say that as mankind moves out into the cosmos, he (and she) will hopefully look deeper inward, learn more about themselves, and better understand how they relate to the Universe.

Q: Can you say more about what you hope readers take away from the collection?

 

A: I’d like to think these stories might cause readers to examine the world and the universe it sits in a different way.

 

Maybe there are things about our origins on this planet we have yet to uncover. Maybe the natural order of things cannot be altered. Maybe there really is a Wishbringer off in some distant dimension pulling strings. Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to question someone claiming to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Check out my music on my YouTube channel ...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8lHf7RVGpdELpDT6A-himQ
... and check out my many greeting cards and prints ...
http://www.mindsights.net/01_mediaworks.php

Nous sommes du soleil! I love when I play!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Nancy Joie Wilkie.