An Interview with Carrie Givens
Carolyn Givens is a good friend of FH editor, Janna Barber. They met at Hutchmoot several years ago, but got to know each other better when they attended a writer’s conference together last year, and stayed in the same cheap motel. Carrie recently self-published a book for middle grade readers called The King’s Messenger. She works at Church at Charlotte in North Carolina and does freelance writing and editing. In addition, she works with Story Warren, allies in imagination for families, and with ArtsCharlotte, which seeks to nourish the soul of the city through the arts.
What’s the inspiration behind The King’s Messenger?
I tell people that I “meet” my characters, because they have a tendency to arrive fully formed in my imagination just waiting for a story to live out. Smuggins is no exception–one day in a Great Christian Writers class in college we were studying Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness”–that begins, “When I consider how my light is spent…”–and we got to the final lines: “His state is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed/ and post o’er land and ocean without rest:–/ They also serve who only stand and wait.” And there stood Smuggins, an over eager messenger for the King who needed to learn that sometimes waiting is the hardest task of all. It started as a short story, and for a while that was how stories came to me–one at a time, usually whenever there was some lesson I was learning. Most of them were triggered by a specific line of poetry or Scripture, or a sermon or message. Over time, they grew into chapters, and when I had nine, and one was a final chapter, I knew I needed just one more to round it out. Later on, I went to chapel at the college where I worked and when it was done, my flat mate Christine came running up to me, “That was a Smuggins story!” she said. I’d though the exact same thing and had been sketching out the penultimate chapter in my notebook, rather than taking notes on the message!
Ordinary Time
It somehow makes sense that The Mosleys marked the year of their new record with a family move, from the only home their children have known, to a different place in a different state. Ordinary Time is an eleven-song journey through the crucibles of ache and joy brought on by family trials and the road. Produced with Phil Madeira and Jimmy Abegg, legendary songwriters and good friends of Stephen and Rachel Mosley, the record came out of a successful crowdfunding campaign (thank you to those of you who gave!) and a continual journey of writing, playing, and parsing out what it would look like to be singer-songwriters.
Not to say that the journey hasn’t been marked by moments of excitement. There was winning both the famed Eddie’s Attic songwriter shootout and the competition at Zac Brown’s Southern Ground. They were the artist of the month on NPR’s Folk Alley. And of course, there was the opening slot for Air Supply at Chastain Park. Yet the new record didn’t necessarily emerge from these places.
For all intents and purposes, Ordinary Time was born in an Airstream trailer, rocketing somewhere through the American West like a satellite still longing for the home ground of the South.
Read MoreMaking a Name for Myself
When I was fourteen, my family and I moved to Lepanto, Arkansas. Before that, we lived in a suburb of North Little Rock called Sherwood. We were only there for a year and a half. Before that it was Brinkley—also a year and a half, and before that was Greenwood, which was three and a half years. I went to three different schools in three different towns, which were in three different states (Florida, Arkansas, and Texas) for my first three years of school. That’s seven different schools I had to have a first day of. Seven different groups of students and teachers that I told my name to. Seven different populations who mispronounced or misspelled it. And seven different places where I had to correct them. Again, and again, and again.
Before we moved, I experienced my first real heartbreak. He was one of the preacher’s sons at the church we started going to after my dad got fired from his church in Sherwood. Timmy was six years older than me—yes, you read that right, and no, my mom and dad didn’t know about it until several years after the fact—but dating is probably too formal for what we had. We hung out at youth events. (The church was so young it hadn’t started a college ministry yet.) We talked on the phone. He gave me a ride home from church a few times, and we held hands in his pick-up truck. But then some of his college aged friends found out what had been going on and told him that he needed to break it off because I was too young for him. We’d been together for a couple of months by then, and I was devastated.
Read MoreA Run With AP and Friends
My daughter Laurel told me how wearing exercise clothes can make you want to exercise, so I bought the uniform of the runner—leggings—and it sort of works. Once I put them on, I feel like I’ve made a commitment to run.
This morning I really didn’t want to run—and when I say “run”, I mean “walk-run,” with more walking than running at this point in my 5K run app.
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