Interviews with Writers Big and Small on Wattpad

Interview with Mary L Tabor

This interview was first shown in the first edition of WattmagUSA in the July edition 2016.

I would like to introduce you to the talented Mary L Tabor who has recently moved from WashingtonDC to Hyde Park, Chicago. Who is a writer with many talents.Thank you for kindly agreeing to undertake this interview. Let's get ourselves comfortable as we settle down in our virtual café in our comfy chairs. Now I'll order. What are we drinking? Coffee? Tea? Or did you bring a bottle of wine from your son's vineyard with you? Oh and are we having cake? If so, which cake is your favourite?- Is there a memory attached to it that you would like to share?Reply: Chamomile tea—They say it calms and I'm always a bit nervous when being interviewed.The orange cake. Here's the memory from my story "The Woman Who Never Cooked": "After nearly three hundred days of reading titles, she was drawn solely to desserts, to Chez Panisse Desserts, Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts, Gourmet's Best Desserts, Silver Palate Desserts, and twenty-three others. Could she do it? Make dessert? The orange cake her mother made every year on her childhood birthdays? But one birthday her mother made the Wellesley fudge cake by mistake. This was her sister's favorite, a bittersweet chocolate cake the woman hated as a child but now had a taste for."

Lovely to speak to you again Mary, it's been a while since we spoke. How are you?

Reply: I've moved to Hyde Park, Chicago and have a view of Lake Michigan whose changing crystal blues inspire my new-found love: Painting, while I continue to teach and write.

That's a lot of miles to move to but how fabulous to have a view of water from your window. My grandmother would have been envious as she was a painter who loved to paint trees and water and said that every day there was a new sky to paint.

Readers, I would like to tell you that Mary was one of the first people I spoke to on Wattpad and although she is an exceptionally busy lady with writing, broadcasting etc., I was really taken back that she found the time to encourage me to write and stretch myself and she was interested in my comments and questions, so she left a lasting impression on me.

Now those of you who haven't read Mary's books, you should. The thing I so love about Mary is her open honesty, the no holds bar way that she writes.

The way she described hitting singleton unexpectedly really hit me between the eyes. It made me remember when that happened to me and I laughed and cried with her throughout the book. What is so different about Mary's book is her candor in the way she describes the sudden break down of her marriage, how this impacted her life and how romance came back into her life again.

Mary, you are such an enthusiastic and vibrant person. I think it must be the professor and parent in you that encourages everyone you speak to, for them to reach for the stars and push themselves further. It is a most wonderful quality.

Reply: How lovely of you to say. Thank you.

Mary, you wear so many hats, writer, professor, radio show host, columnist, parent, wife, do you think your different roles complement the others in your life and add depth to each of them?

Reply: The creative life relies on seeing. One can't see life's fullness, the layers one hopes to discover and recreate in the work if one is looking only in the mirror.

You say that you really love romantic comedies, weep over them, quote their dialogue. So tell me, I'm dying to know which one is your favourite and why?