As the school year winds down, and the mask mandates wind down (or wind up, depending on your perspective), and as summer looms on the horizon, it is good to see 2020 farther and farther away in the rearview mirror. A relative of mine recently stated how depressing it was that we were actually living out the script to the movie Idiocracy. "I didn't realize that movie was a prophecy," he said. Ha!
If you haven't seen that movie, IMDB describes it this way:
Private Joe Bauers, a decisively average American, is selected as a guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program but is forgotten, awakening to a future so incredibly moronic, he's easily the most intelligent person alive.
You laugh, but it's unfortunately a "way-too-realistic" comedic commentary on our present situation. Evil is viewed as good. Good is evil. Right is wrong. Wrong is right. Very Old Testament, Isaiah chapter 5-ish, if you ask me.
That's why it's always a treat to invite a new author to the Author Behind the Story Blog Series and bring to the world a sense of normalcy, where we can talk about writing and life as it pertains to sane folks.
Peyton, kick us off by giving us a quick bio.
In fifty words or less, who is Peyton H. Roberts?
I believe you can learn a lot about a person based on what they love. I love my husband Nick who I met in high school. I love our two adventurous kids, Sadie (7) and Nate (4). I love sailing and going to the beach. I love keeping in touch with friends all over the world. I love writing letters and heartfelt notes, and I enjoy receiving them too.
I love planning travel and going on trips, especially to tropical places and national parks. It always feels like a getaway exploring places where you can’t see any manmade structures. We are new travel trailer owners, and that’s affording our family all kinds of new opportunities to explore this stunning country.
As for my professional life, being a military spouse has led me to change jobs frequently, which has led to all sorts of unexpected on-the-job experiences. I’ve traveled across the country for magazine stories, interviewed a Presidential Cabinet member, washed trash cans, done live TV interviews during disaster responses, led mission trips to the Philippines, flown across the ocean in an Air Force cargo plane, taught public speaking classes, and filed police reports.
Turns out, this huge variety of experiences add up to great material for storytelling. It’s as if I was preparing to write novels all along and just didn’t realize it.
That's a long 50 words. :-) Just kidding.
You've already mentioned your family. Is there anything else you want to tell our readers about them?
I met my husband Nick at a church youth group event during high school. We started dating the week we graduated, which was almost 20 years ago to the day. The timing couldn’t have been worse. We had only five weeks together before he left town to start basic training with the Navy.
Three months later, 9/11 shook up the world and intensified his military career path. We’ve spent much of the two decades separated by long distances. In fact, 2020 was the first year we spent every single day together. It only took a global pandemic and a military travel ban to make it happen.
Our daughter Sadie is 7 and a total adventure seeker (like her dad) and a writer (like me). Our son Nate is 4. He is strong and athletic (like his dad) and has a good ear for music (like me). It’s neat to see the ways they’re wired to enjoy certain things.
We all love getting outside and exploring nature together, especially at the beach. We’re a boogie boarding, paddle boarding, body surfing kind of family.
That's awesome. And it is cool to see your kids grow up and develop such different interests when they came from the same two people.
Everybody seems to have a bucket list. Do you? If so, what’s on it? If not, why not?
When my husband retires from the Navy in four years, we would like to "roadschool" the kids for a year and explore as many national parks as we can. To prepare for that bucket list trip, we bought a travel trailer and will camp our way across the country this summer. Crater Lake, Yellowstone, and Grand Tetons, here we come!
During our year-long hiatus, we also want to take Sadie and Nate out to Guam. Nick and I were stationed on this tropical island in the Pacific for two of the best years of our lives. We want our kids to experience snorkeling reefs, exploring caves, and hiking to waterfalls. For us, Guam is a truly magical place, and the ultimate destination to create some epic family memories.
You don't hear people mention Guam as a vacation destination that much around here. Hawaii? Yes. Fiji Islands? Yes. Caribbean? Definitely. Guam? My guess is two out of five people couldn't even find it on a map. Just sayin'...
Besides storytelling, what talents do you have?
One thing I’m proud that I’m really good at is sewing. In middle school, I grew about six inches one year, and none of the store-bought clothes fit me anymore. Thankfully, my mom had taught me how to sew. I started making my own pajama pants, sundresses, and eventually, formal gowns.
At the time, I was motivated by saving money and having the right clothes to fit in with what all my friends were wearing. Through all that practice, I became really good at sewing. Now I can follow along most patterns, and I can design my own dresses and quilts.
The main character in Beneath the Seams, Shelby Lawrence, operates a sewing business from her house. Because of my expertise in this area, I was able to weave plenty of sewing metaphors into the narrative (see what I did there?).
I definitely see a thread...or is it a pattern? Either way, it was seamless...and no doubt will keep some of our readers in stitches. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Based on the different personality profiles out there (Meyers-Briggs, etc.), what profile was the latest one you took, and what were the results?
As far as personality types go, I’m an ENTJ, an enneagram 3 - Achiever, and my Strength Finder strengths are Strategic, Maximizer, Learner, Achiever, and Ideation.
Growing up, my mom was very interested in personality and preference tests, which is why I have no problem speaking in the language of assessments. I find them very useful tools for understanding myself better, along with how the people around me are wired.
Tying in writing, the enneagram proved to be an extremely useful tool for creating characters based on their motivations. Shelby, the main character of Beneath the Seams is an enneagram 3, Achiever (like me, but very much not me). Her husband Bryan is a 6, Loyalist. Maye, their neighbor, is an enneagram 2, Helper.
When trying to figure out what characters might do or say next, I often drew from their enneagram type. What might a Three do to cover up her faults in this situation? What might a Six be worried about in this scene? When the characters were new to me, the enneagram gave me a place to draw consistent characteristics that helped the characters come alive.
Besides the usual things authors face, has there been an unusual event that changed your perspective about being an author?
The most dramatic event that changed me as a writer was when my husband deployed to a combat zone for several months after our second child was born. At that time, our daughter was a busy three-year-old, and our son was just 12 weeks old. My hands were full. My nights were sleepless. And even with the help of loving grandparents, I was overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for them on my own. During that season, I completely stopped writing and set a goal to simply get through those long months, one meal, one bedtime routine at a time.
I made a commitment to myself to spend the first 20 minutes of our son’s daily naptime writing. I set a goal to write at least 500 words—any words—during that time. After nine months of keeping this promise to myself, I began craving a bigger project. The Lord led me again to the next step. I committed to writing my first full-length novel, Beneath the Seams, which I can hardly believe is out this week!
The novel is a huge accomplishment, no question. But what I celebrate today is that I honored my identity as a writer. Over the course of three years, I kept the promise to myself to write every day. Carving out a daily writing practice truly is the secret sauce of becoming an author.
Carving out time to write is so important. If you don't, it won't happen.
And thank you for you and your husband's service, by the way!
Tell us about what project you are currently working on.
A few years ago, I transcribed the love letters my
grandfather wrote my grandmother aboard the USS Midway. He deployed just six
weeks after their wedding in 1951 when the Korean War was underway. They were
madly in love, and his letters are overflowing with affection and longing. On
top of that, he was a trumpet player in the Navy Band. The letters offer
insight into what the military music scene was like during that era.
The collection of love letters is called My Dearest Bea, and I hope to publish it around their anniversary next April. Together my grandparents operated a school in Pensacola, Fla., for 40 years, and I know their former students and anyone with a connection to the Navy will enjoy sitting down in a cozy chair and reading these sweet letters.
As a writer, what is “success” to you? And has that “definition” changed over time as you have traveled down the writer’s path?
As a young writer, success sounded like seeing my name on a book cover. But after this first publishing experience, I would absolutely measure success differently.
Last week I finished reading Beneath the Seams one more time. After all the revisions, all the rounds of edits, all the tweaking details and scenes, I still teared up reading the ending. To be moved by my own words when I know story by heart feels so rewarding.
To hear from readers that the same stirring is happening in their hearts is my new definition of success.
If you had one person you could meet (think outside the Bible here) and could spend as much time as you wanted with that individual, who would it be and why?
I would love to spend the day with my great grandfather, who was a U.S. Vice Consulate working out of the U.S. Embassy in Czechoslovakia and Switzerland during the 1930s. He passed away in 1941, leaving behind his widow and my grandmother. For my next novel, I would like to fictionalize their mother-daughter journey to America during WWII.
In planning to write this story, I would love to know more about my great grandfather’s personality and how he swept my great grandmother off her feet and whisked her away to a new life beyond the streets of Prague. I think their story will make for an exciting and meaningful historical romance. It sure would be nice to meet him, to capture his features and personality traits just as they were.
Sounds interesting.
Why do you live where you live?
It’s cliché, but it’s true: Home is where the Navy sends us. We are currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area while my husband finishes his graduate program at Stanford University. Our family of four are living in a tiny apartment on campus in family housing, which has been a weird and wild place to wait out a pandemic.
But as the Navy goes, we won’t be here long. This summer, we will move to Virginia Beach. That sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But what it really amounts to is unscrewing everything we own from the walls, boxing it all up, shipping a car, watching our kids say goodbye to their best friends, eating last meals at favorite restaurants, waving farewell to familiar Pacific vistas, and then finally, driving away, closing out a chapter of our lives spent here.
Then we have to start writing the next chapter, finding a new address in this ridiculous housing market, enrolling the kids in new schools, helping them get plugged in to new social circles, identifying every kind of doctor’s office, dentist, after school activity. Moving is exhausting, and we’re, once again, just getting started.
We just moved after being in the same place for over 24 years, although we had moved a lot before settling into that location. However, this move was just "across town," so I identify and don't, all at the same time.
We know “Readers are leaders, and leaders are readers.” Is there a book you’ve read in the past five years or so that has helped you become a better you? If so, which one was it, and how did it affect your life?
I love the collection of essays called Fearless Writing by William Kenower. It’s a lesser-known writing craft book that I stumbled upon one rainy morning browsing the library’s shelves while the kids were occupied in the children’s area. The book reads like a love letter to writing.
At the time I found the book, I was just settling into my commitment to write Beneath the Seams. In reading his words, I felt at home as writer. And the advice in the book applies as much to life as to writing. I am certain anyone can read this craft book and walk away inspired.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers about you, or anything we didn’t cover?
It’s strange to say this the week my book releases, but I never set out to become an author. At various points in my life, I’d find myself writing a story, not knowing why I was writing it, but sensing that I was doing the right thing.
It was like watching a baby roll over or pull up to standing for the first time, and you think, how did they know to do that? Writing has always been that way for me. It’s as if I have this internal clock pushing me toward the next milestone.
And now a novel with my name on it is out in the world, which is a wild feeling. Because that means the story isn’t mine anymore. It now belongs to readers. I look forward to hearing how the story will land in their hearts and what magic might result. It’s an exciting part of the journey!
Peyton, we thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer some questions and allow our readers to get to know you and your family.
Readers, if you wish to get to know Peyton even more, you can find her at the following locations on the web:
Beneath the Seams (Scrivenings Press) is available on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and at indie bookstores.
Visit my website // Subscribe to my emailnewsletter // Book Club Kit
Twitter // Facebook // Instagram // LinkedIn // Goodreads
Until next time,
Kevin
PS - We also have a special announcement! Kevin's latest novel, The Letters, was recently announced as a finalist in the 2021 BRMCWC Selah Awards in the Speculative Fiction category!
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