Sarah McCoy

Sarah McCoy is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of the novels Mustique Island; Marilla of Green Gables; The Mapmaker’s Children; The Baker’s Daughter, a 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee; the novella “The Branch of Hazel” in Grand Central; The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico; and Le souffle des feuilles et des promesses (Pride and Providence).

Her work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post, Read It Forward, Writer Unboxed, and other publications. She hosted the NPR WSNC Radio monthly program “Bookmarked with Sarah McCoy” and previously taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso.

McCoy lives with her husband, an orthopedic sports surgeon, their dog Gilly, and cat Tutu in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

A great deal! It’s the name of the setting, Mustique Island. Immediately, readers are docked on the shore. I don’t think the title could be more specific about what you’re going to get: it’s a book about an exclusive, privately-owned tropical island. Google the name and you’ll see it’s real and notable for scandal and secrets. The title has been Mustique since I saved the first page as a word document and thought, “This could be a book.”

What's in a name?

In Mustique Island, the spark of inspiration for the three protagonists’ names came from real people mentioned in Colin Tennant’s autobiography, but everything beyond that is entirely of my own imagining. Their names, Willy May, Hilly, and Joanne, are fictionalized variations of reality. These three women are surrounded by public figures whose lives have been well-documented in the press and further speculated by the world. Princess Margaret, the Tennants, Mick Jagger—you can go online and pull up books written about and by all of these named individuals. I carefully chose to include information already suggested (gossip magazines) or documented (newspapers) in the public domain.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

I don’t think teenage Sarah would be surprised by the content so much as the fact that I am putting that content out publicly for others to read. By that I mean, as a teenager, I was terribly aware that there was an implicit “good girl” code of behavior. Adhering to that social protocol made a young woman acceptable and liked by superiors (parents, teachers, neighbors, adults). I struggled with depression, which was often catalyzed by my sense that what I felt inside had to be masked— everything from my burgeoning sexual desires to simply wishing to speak my mind when my opinion did not fall in conservative line. I knew that the real Sarah was not a good girl by the good girl code. So I felt both like a fake and a failure. This novel speaks openly to all of those topics.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I love writing endings. They are the climactic catharsis of the storytelling. It’s so satisfying to write endings!

I tend to write my way into a book. My beginnings often get chopped, reformatted, reversed, and definitely rewritten multiple times. I’m one of those writers who believes that I’ve got to know the ending before I can write the beginning. It’s the omnipresent author’s duty to set forth a story navigation (even if the reader doesn’t implicitly know there is one) so that we end up on course. So, I’d say beginnings are trickier. I need to know my characters well enough to give the readers only the most significant bits for the oncoming journey, but I don’t really know my characters well enough until I’ve journeyed with them to the ending. That make sense?

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Characters are autonomous spirits. They are muses that come to writers via some mode of story sharing. It could be a visual image, a song/sound, a touch, taste, idea, or feeling. My characters tend to come to me as voices. I heard Willy May’s Texan twang first and it drew me to her.

That said, all characters are filtered through the writer’s lens of interpretation. They connect to writers most able to understand or most willing to investigate their fundamental conflicts. Willy May, Hilly, and Joanne certainly connected with me as empowered females searching for their footing in the world. The Caribbean culture connected with me as a Puerto Rican. The solitary island setting connected with me while putting this to paper during the pandemic lockdown.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Everything is fodder for inspiration. I warn my family members, friends, and neighbors of this on a continual basis. Nothing is out of bounds simply because I haven’t the ability to compartmentalizing my experiences. It’s all me. Trying to pick one as the lead inspiration would be like trying to separate different hues coming through a sunny window. The molecular structure and natural variants within the glass changes the light. It’s a multifaceted rainbow and a single ray of sunshine all in one.

In Mustique Island, 1970s music, photographs, magazines, films, newspapers, politics, the British royal family, my own family members’ history—all of it influenced the writing.

Visit Sarah McCoy’s website, Facebook page, Instagram page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico.

The Page 69 Test: The Baker's Daughter.

Coffee with a Canine: Sarah McCoy and Gilbert.

The Page 69 Test: The Mapmaker's Children.

My Book, The Movie: The Mapmaker’s Children.

The Page 69 Test: Marilla of Green Gables.

The Page 69 Test: Mustique Island.

--Marshal Zeringue