Interview with Maddie Lock, author of ILLEGITIMATE

an interview with Jen Knox

Hello, Maddie! Thank you for answering a few questions for Unleash. To kick things off, tell our readers a little about how you came to be a writer across many genres. Congratulations on the newest release, Illegitamite, by the way (one I was honored to blurb).

In 2014 I was going through some old writing tablets—random snippets of stories I someday hoped to write—and found three pages about a dog that we lived next to in our first rental after my husband and I got married. She was always in the yard and had to amuse herself, while her family came and went, walking past her like she wasn’t there. My heart ached for her. So when I ran across the tablet I decided to finish her story and give it a happy ending. In my mind, it was perfect for a children’s book and would provide the message that all dogs need love and attention. That became Ethel the Backyard Dog, an early reader that I shared at schools and libraries. The next year I wrote about my rescue dog, Sammy the Lucky Dog. The rapt attention I saw in the children’s faces while I was reading was very fulfilling. Then, in 2016 I heard a long-held family secret of my German grandmother’s participation in a Nazi eugenics program and I felt strongly compelled to research and write about it. After a few twists and turns, it became a memoir. My interest and reading switched to creative nonfiction, and I fell in love with the essay format.

On your website, you describe copying words with a pencil when you first fell in love with books. How does that early memory influence the way you write today?

As a young rudderless child trying to make sense of my world, words provided a foundation for me. I remember thinking how magical it was that lines drawn on paper can translate into meaning. As those lines became words, then sentences and paragraphs and stories, I began reading and traveled the world, journeyed through time, and was never lonely. I began writing as soon as I could read and created worlds I wrapped around me like a comfortable blanket. I still feel that way today.

How has your time as a business owner influenced your storytelling and creative habits (if at all)? And can you speak a little about the business of writing as you prepare for a book launch.

For years I was in business to business sales and had no problem in promoting whatever product I was selling, whether it was advertising or services. When I first began my own security integration business in 2000, it was myself, a bookkeeper and one technician. We provided plug and play surveillance systems which at that time consisted of analog cameras with a tape recorder. Until the company found a firm foundation and grew to a good size, I was the one who contacted potential customers and “got them to sign on the dotted line.” So I was surprised to find myself shy in promoting my manuscript. Perhaps because it was so personal. The voice in my head kept saying “why would anyone want to read this?” And, I’ve always been camera shy, even as a child. Most of the early photos show me with an indignant scowl, or a pout, as if my personal space was being invaded. In today’s marketing world, everything is up close and personal. I’m working on adjusting to that.

You write about discovering difficult truths about your family’s history in WWII Germany. What emotional or ethical challenges did you face while writing about generational trauma?

As you can imagine, emotions— shock, avoidance, disbelief, sadness—ran rampant not only with myself but my cousins who were affected. Discovering my grandmother’s participation in the Lebensborn program and the influx of genetics we would never know, affected my cousins in ways I can only imagine. It was difficult to accept that our beloved Oma—the woman who raised me until I was six—would deceive her husband and family for “the Fuhrer” and his vision of the Third Reich.

As for me, the journey of finding my father and getting to know him was its own rollercoaster. His family had to accept my sudden appearance, which was not easy for them. My half-brother went through several phases of shock, anger, denial, and finally, acceptance. I felt very fortunate that my father welcomed my sudden appearance after sixty years, but I found myself feeling guilty of creating such turmoil in his life at the age of ninety.

What is the purpose of your writing? How has your writing purpose changed for you over time (if at all)?

What draws us to writing… The love of books and what they give us. I write to share my thoughts and hope that someone, somewhere, finds meaning in my words. I also write for clarity of my own understanding. Being an extremely visual person, I often find answers to inner chaos when I put my thoughts on paper; a different or new meaning presents itself.

You write for both children and adults. How do you decide what to write and when?

Right now I’m more in the adult phase. That may change; who knows! I do have a cool idea for another children’s book: We live on a lake in Central Florida and to go anywhere you have to drive around it to get to a main road. At one of the curves lives a trio that consists of two sand hill cranes and a beautiful duck. They are always together, and a story is forming in my head about how the cranes with their long spindly legs adopted the duck and tried to teach him how to be a crane.

Tell us about Illegitimate and where/when readers can buy it.

ILLEGITIMATE is a braided historical memoir prompted by my aunt’s confession of being a Lebensborn child, which she discovered later in life. She says she always felt different, as if she didn’t belong in the family, and through the years asked her mother if she was adopted. I discovered through my research that many of the Lebensborn children felt this way. As I began researching my family’s history to understand how and why this could have happened to such an average German family, I felt an overwhelming need to finally find my own biological father. My mother effectively severed any ties to him through a court order, and married an American Army officer who adopted me. Decades later I reconnected with my German relatives. Then, right before my 60^th birthday, in a small café in my maternal hometown, my aunt blurted out that she had found her real father, and turned our family history upside down. The revelation stayed with me, and I felt a strong compulsion to write her story. At the same time, I decided it was time to find out who my real father was, to see if I could find closure to my sense of who I was. So, my aunt and I had to know who our fathers were in order to know ourselves.

ILLEGITIMATE will be available on all online book platforms and retail sellers on March 10^th. Pre-order is available now: https://vineleavespress.myshopify.com/products/illegitimate-by-maddie-lock

Visit:

https://maddielock.com/

for more information and upcoming giveaways.

What are you working on next?

I have some ideas, but nothing firm yet. It would be fun to do another children’s book—something light!

Thank you, Maddie!