Ancestry, Travel and Mystery
Help to Nurture a
Writing Career
by Jeff Ayers
Pam Binder’s historical novels
might be set in the Celtic past
of Ireland and Scotland, but she
lives out her passion of writing
and inspiring others to fulfill their dreams
in the Pacific Northwest.
Both Pam and her husband, Jim, are
from the Northwest originally, but they
traveled extensively in their childhoods.
Jim lived in Alaska, New York, Montana,
California, and Washington. Pam remarked,
“I spent my childhood summers
in New Orleans with my grandmother
and grandfather. My grandmother was a
character. Bright red hair, concert pianist,
published poet, inspirational speaker, and
opera singer. She was my inspiration to
follow my dream of writing.”
Pam’s novels of the Celtic past were
inspired by her visits to New Orleans with
her family. “My own ancestry comes from
Ireland and Scotland so I was always interested
in those cultures. One summer in
New Orleans, my father found two iron
statues of medieval knights in my grandmother’s
basement. I think I was about
eight or nine at the time. The knights,
which I now have in my home, fascinated
me and fueled my curiosity.”
Thoughts of Irene Zollinger, Pam’s
grandmother, still bring back fond memories.
She remembered, “When (Jim and
I) moved to the Pacific Northwest and I
wrote to her, she sent my letters back with
the spelling and grammar corrected, each
time with five dollars for the ‘kitty’ she insisted
every woman should have.” Sadly,
Irene passed away before she could see
how her influence helped steer Pam to the
world of writing.
In Aberdeen, Pam took three history
classes from the same professor who was
rumored to be a CIA agent, working undercover.
“He was a brilliant man. As he
lectured, he showed us slides from literally
every country in the world, which he
had traveled, and the history of all those
countries came alive for me.” The mystery
of the professor’s identity deepened when
she read in the newspaper the following
summer after graduation that he had been
murdered on a train in France. Were those
rumors about him true after all? She continued
to study history at the University
of Oregon and discovered that she wrote
differently than other people. Taking a
hiatus to raise her three children, she soon
learned that she needed to be writing.
Her decision to attend the Pacific
Northwest Writer’s Conference in 1998
would change her life forever. She volunteered
in the down time between classes,
and ended up driving the literary agent she
wanted to meet to an appointment. Liza
Dawson agreed to read Pam’s material and
read The Inscription non-stop on her flight
back to New York. She agreed to take Pam
as a client, and soon after the publishing
rights were sold to Pocket Books. Pam’s
first novel, The Inscription, was published
in paperback in January 2000.
Her first novel told the story of a
teacher from America who wakes up in
16th century Scotland and finds love in
an unlikely place. The success of it and
the follow up, The Quest, led to a stress
inducing assignment. Pocket Books was
planning an anthology of paranormal
romance stories. Pam reflected, “Their
marketing department loved my time
travel stories and approached my editor.
My editor said that they didn’t care what
I wrote, as long as it was 25,000 words, a
time travel set in Scotland, and that it was
done in six weeks. Of course I dropped everything
and met my deadline. I’m proud
to say that The Matchmaker received rave
reviews.” The anthology, A Season in the
Highlands, ended up on the New York
Times Bestseller list and Pam’s readership
exploded.
Two other novels followed, The
Enchantment in September 2001 and My
Secret Protector, a sequel to her first novel,
in June 2003. A consistent theme prominent
throughout her novels is “Time is an
illusion, and love the only reality.” She said,
“The theme came to me while my husband
and I were traveling in Scotland. Those we
met talked about people who lived over
500 years ago as though they were still
alive. It struck me that time didn’t matter.
The only thing that mattered was the
emotion, and the longest surviving emotion
is love. Maybe that’s a little corny, but Northwest author Pam Binder
said
it’s how I felt and how I look on all the
relationships I have.”
Though it has been almost five years
since she has released a new novel, Binder
has been far from idle. After her success
in publication, she decided to give back
to the Northwest community and help
others pursue their dream of becoming
a published author. She thought back
to the writer’s conference where she met
her agent and decided to join the board
of directors of the conference’s sponsor,
the Pacific Northwest Writers Association
(PNWA). After several years on the board,
Pam became the President of PNWA in
2006.
Under her ambitious vision for the
organization, she opened up the board
meetings for all members and brought in
speakers to teach after each session, helped
create an online writing magazine called
Author, and worked tirelessly to make
the annual writer’s conference one of the
most respected conferences in the country.
The conference has grown (attendance
in 2007 was almost 600), and agents and
editors look forward to traveling here from
around the United States and Canada to
meet potential future clients. Interactions
at the conference have led to the publication
of more new authors than ever
before. Membership in the organization
has also doubled, and a writing contest
sponsored by PNWA has grown from a
pool of Northwest native submissions to
an international contest with submissions
from such far away places as Australia and
the U.K.
When she is not writing or organizing
PNWA’s efforts, she can be found
teaching creative writing at the University
of Washington. Years earlier, she took
a course on Popular Fiction from the
University’s extension program and fell in
love with it. So much so, that she ended
up becoming an instructor in the program.
She worked for years as an office
manager for Chinook Middle School in
Bellevue, so the academic environment is
in her blood. Her love of writing and her
love of the Northwest have influenced
and inspired countless people.
Over time, her family has grown and
moved to different parts of the Pacific
Northwest, including Portland, Issaquah,
and Eugene. With a quieter life at home,
she starts each day by taking a forty-five
minute walk, during which she plans
how things will go. She will then head to
a coffee shop, where she will spend two to
three hours of writing. She said, “I can’t
write at home. Too many distractions.”
Surprisingly, she finds the more people in
the coffee shop, the easier it is for her to
write.
“Traveling, meeting people, and experiencing
life spark my ideas. They come
to me at all times of the day or night. I
used to write them down and keep a
folder, or dream box. Now I just accept
that my ideas will be there when I need
them.” Pam is currently working on what
she considers her best idea yet, and her
editor and agent agree.
She discovered a long time ago the
secret of why some people need to write.
“Writing is like breathing. You don’t think
about the why, it just happens.” The writing
community of the Pacific Northwest is
certainly lucky that Pam does her breathing here.
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