Sondra Helene is the author of Appearances, her debut novel, published in April 2019. She is a writer and board member at GrubStreet, Boston’s centre for literary arts, a former president of Friends of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and is a member of Hadassah and Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Sondra lives in Boston with her husband and two poodles.
Welcome Author ~ Sondra Helene
What childhood memories brought you much joy?
I grew up in a close-knit family, surrounded by my parents as well as loving grandparents, aunts and uncles. I was the oldest of three siblings. My sister Margie was three years younger than I was and my brother Marc was ten years younger. As he got older, he used to joke that he had three mothers!
I was very close to my grandparents. They would visit at least once a week. When I went to college and as a young adult, I would speak to them every day on the phone and often visit to have lunch or take them grocery food shopping as they got older.
I grew up in a town called Marblehead, Massachusetts. We lived on dead-end street and all of the kids on my street were about the same age. On summer nights, we would go out after dinner and play kickball, softball, four-square and jump rope until dark. I loved having the comradery of the kids on my street. We were like one big family.
Who was your mentor in your growing years?
My Auntie Phyllis. She is my mother’s sister and loved me like a daughter. She always took a great interest in my life and I love her like a mother. Whenever I had a problem, she was my first phone call. She was my confidante.
How hard have you worked to get here?
It took me ten years to complete “Appearances.” I took writing classes at a place called GrubStreet in Boston. It’s one of the premiere writing centers in the United States. I started with Jumpstart your writing and took Memoir classes, personal essay, fiction and Novel in Progress classes. I also took classes at Gotham Writers Workshop in New York, The Fine Arts Center in Provincetown, Ma and Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy.
What inspired you to write Appearances?
What do you do when your 43 year-old sister, who never smoked, gets diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer? And on top of that what do you do when the people you love most this world, your husband and your family, can’t stand to even be in the same room together?
Appearances is a fictionalized version of things that happened in my life. The motivation I had for writing it was that my sister died from lung cancer when she was only 46 years old. She didn’t smoke, ate healthy foods and always exercised. Her diagnosis was a shock and it changed me forever.
After she died, reeling from grief, family drama, and the stress caused by not being able to bring together the people I loved, I had to process my feelings. One of the first things I did was to immerse myself in writing at GrubStreet, which is one of the premier writing institutes in the county. GrubStreet saved me.
For ten years, I took every class from Jumpstart Your Writing to Memoir, Personal Essay to Novel in Progress. During these classes I was able to be with my sister even though she was no longer here. After a while, I realized that I had a story to tell. It’s a universal story about marriage, losing a loved one and the complex dynamics that make up a family.
How many drafts did you write before you reached publication?
Many! At first I started writing a memoir, but after about five years, I decided to fictionalize things and turned it into a novel. I probably wrote the first draft in one year, but during writing workshops, I expanded the drafts, went deeper, changed things, and overall improved my writing and the story. I probably have about ten different versions of the story!
It took me a while to get the right book cover with my publisher. I wanted something that resembled two sisters walking, but I didn’t want to reveal their faces. We nailed it!
What is the message I want readers to embrace in the story?
I hope Appearances will inspire my readers to look at their own relationships and put things in perspective, healing those that need help, and sharing experiences with loved ones while they can. It talks about the power of forgiveness, revealing that everyone is fighting their own demons. Appearances shows that we all carry our traumas with us, even as we move forward and enjoy our lives. And as the author Nora Ephron writes, “Above all, be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.”
Who would you cast as Samantha?
Sandra Bullock
What amazing experience did you learn while writing Appearances?
I learned that perseverance was the key to success for me. I believed in my story and never gave up on my dream of publishing my novel. I wasn’t afraid to take advice from other writers and learned a lot from my instructors and other students in my classes. After many “nice” rejections from agents, I continued on…writing and editing and taking some of their suggestions into consideration. And then the day came that Brooke Warner from She Writes Press wanted to publish my book! I’ll never forget waking up in the morning to her acceptance email! So my message is…Never give up!
What’s next for Sondra
Right now I am working on promoting Appearances and going on a book tour!
What advice would you give to anyone wanting to become a writer?
Start by sitting down and writing. Share your work and be open to suggestions by fellow writers. Be patient and persevere.
Connect with Sondra
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