Intimate Interviews

A Naughty Class with CynthiaDagnal-Myron

We'd love to get to know you better. Can you tell us more about yourself?

The logline of my life story would be something like "Feisty Black girl from inner city Chicago will stop at nothing to make her dream of becoming a music critic come true."

I grew up on the now notorious south side of that city nurtured by a large family of musicians and dancers and some of the strongest women I've ever known. One of those women was actually Emmett Till's invincible mother, Mamie, who was my 5th grade teacher. And being immersed in music from the day I was born, I eventually began writing about it in "Creem," "Rolling Stone" and lots of local and national papers and magazines during my college years. And soon, the "Chicago Sun-Times" made me an offer I couldn't refuse. It was a fantastic job for a woman in her 20s, traveling with all the popular bands and celebrities of the 70s and early 80s. But it was also exhausting and introduced me to a competitive and sometimes cutthroat world that we're now being introduced to through scandals making headlines right now. So, I left that world behind after five years of nonstop "overboogie" as we called it back then and moved to the beautiful Southwest where I married a Hopi Indian artist, moved to his picturesque, other worldly reservation in Arizona, and gave birth to our amazing daughter. I also started to freelance for several women's magazines and started to write poetry and fiction stories mostly for my own amusement. And when I read about Margaret Atwood writing for Wattpad, I decided to follow her lead. And that was the beginning of yet another wild adventure!

What made you take up the pen and start writing?

I started writing before I could actually "write." As a toddler, I would babble little stories to myself and pretend to write them down with a pencil, pen or crayon. I was in love with books and wanted to create my own, I guess. And I've still got all of the diaries and journals I wrote from middle school on--what a wonderful story they tell!

What inspires you as an author?

I don't know if this counts as inspiration or not, but if I had to take that psychological test that asks if you hear "voices," I would have to say "Yes." Characters start nudging me months before I ever start writing. They're in my dreams, they nag me while I'm trying to read a book or watch a TV show or listen to a favorite song, trying to tell me how their story could unfold. So, while I always tell people I'm a dedicated pantser, the stories I tell have been "dictated" to me almost completely before I begin. All I have to do is jot down and what I've been "told," and make a few minor adjustments along the way. So, I don't have to wait to be inspired. The stories find me.

What inspired you to write your first steamy scene? Could you tell us more about that experience? Was it a slow buildup to a not-so-innocent kiss, or did your characters jump right into the action?

I think the first steamy scene I wrote was a not-so-innocent kiss that quickly escalated--it's been a long time since that first sexy story. But I wrote it because I felt that most of the really steamy scenes I'd read or even seen on the screen weren't... well, physically "accurate." Not for women, anyway. They didn't turn me on as a viewer or reader because I was always wincing and thinking, "OUCH." There was too much sturm und drang and not enough attention to what most women really want and feel, I think because so many of the movie ones were and still are written by men. So, I decided to try to write scenes that would feel more real to women and be somewhat "instructive" for men who really cared about pleasing a partner. But I also tried not to be too "clinical" about it--another turn off for me. I wanted those scenes to flow just as smoothly and compellingly as the rest of the story, without getting too technical or minutely descriptive. Took me a while to strike the right balance, but by actually "becoming" my lead female character as I was writing those scenes, I started to feel more comfortable and confident about them. If "we" didn't feel it, it wasn't working.