Writer Interview
Linda Alexander
http://lindajalexander.tumblr.com
What inspired you to write?
Life. Even as a young girl I wrote. I’d squirrel myself away in my bedroom when I was angry at the world—particularly my parents—and write. I still have many of those longhand snippets. Writing has always been my catharsis, the one way I could get in touch with my emotions.
How long have you been writing?
I’ve written professionally since the late 1980s. That was for local newspapers; I’d interview bands in town. From there, I discovered soap actors from my neck of the woods—Washington, DC area—and began to do interviews for the local paper. It occurred to me that if I could do that locally, I could probably sell nationally.
Fortunately Soap Opera Update agreed and bought my work. I had written fiction, or attempted to write fiction for publication during this period, receiving in return long wonderful rejection letters. I was basically told I didn’t “color well enough between the lines” for category fiction. I was focusing on romance novels. I turned to nonfiction in book form … and voila!, suddenly received acceptances and contracts. I’ve since published two novels but my “specialty” is biographies, specifically entertainment-related bios of classic Hollywood stars.