Tiger writer! An interview with novelist Teri Case
In Nevada, Sloan family matriarch Janice is tired of her white-trash life dealing with debt, kids, her son’s motorcycle gang, and Harry, her drunk of a husband. She can’t shake her lifelong dream of singing at the Grand Ole Opry.
As Janice’s teen daughter, Carrie, plans her escape to college, Janice confronts the fact that she’s forty-eight and running out of time. She decides to leave her two young sons with Harry and move to Nashville for one year. But before Janice can leave, Harry’s worst betrayal yet destroys everyone’s plans, and detectives start digging up the family dirt.
Times are desperate for the Sloan Family. They might survive if they can become each other’s unlikely heroes. Do they have what it takes to confront the truth about their lives and each other and break free from their way of life on Tiger Drive?
As Janice’s teen daughter, Carrie, plans her escape to college, Janice confronts the fact that she’s forty-eight and running out of time. She decides to leave her two young sons with Harry and move to Nashville for one year. But before Janice can leave, Harry’s worst betrayal yet destroys everyone’s plans, and detectives start digging up the family dirt.
Times are desperate for the Sloan Family. They might survive if they can become each other’s unlikely heroes. Do they have what it takes to confront the truth about their lives and each other and break free from their way of life on Tiger Drive?
Teri Case, novelist
Teri Case is a native Nevadan. Her alcoholic father, bipolar mother, and nine siblings taught her to watch and learn from others and that laughter can lighten any load (at least for a few seconds). She often travels—watching, learning, and writing about people who want to matter. Tiger Drive is Teri’s debut novel. She authors the Vitality Stories newsletter, Goal Setting for Assistants, and has two children’s picture books. Teri runs the Tiger Drive Scholarship for students who want to reach, learn, and grow beyond their familiar environment by attending college.
She is a people watcher, a student of human behavior, currently struggling with the U.S. political environment. "I’m beginning to think I prefer dogs and cats to most humans. Having said that, I think all people matter and I’m trying to find things that I appreciate about each human I interact with and more."
She is a people watcher, a student of human behavior, currently struggling with the U.S. political environment. "I’m beginning to think I prefer dogs and cats to most humans. Having said that, I think all people matter and I’m trying to find things that I appreciate about each human I interact with and more."
What inspired Tiger Drive?
In 2011, I enrolled in an online creative writing class with San Diego State University. The instructor asked us to locate something in our immediate space and write about it.
I had two photos hanging above my desk. One of my mother when she was seventeen and working for a radio station in the early 1950s. The second was a photo of my dad when he was nineteen in the U.S. Merchant Marines during WWII.
They both looked so happy, so optimistic, on their own. They met when my dad was in his forties, and my mom was in her thirties at a veterans bar where my mom was bartending and my dad was drinking. They did not have a happy marriage and they did not create an easy life together. I found myself wondering when their lives derailed and how they became such train wrecks. So I started making up “their” stories. The truth was beyond my reach with my father being dead and my mom’s still protective of her secrets so speculation and fiction took over.
By the end of the online course, I had the first five hundred words of Tiger Drive.
How long did it take to write Tiger Drive?
I wrote the first craptastic draft in four months in 2011. I was between jobs for the first time in twenty-five years so I was able to write for four hours each morning—if I could manage without procrastinating and coming up with excuses to not write. Some days, I was “fighting the writing.” Once I returned to work, I promised myself I would edit and rewrite Tiger Drive on my evenings and weekends, but I had no discipline. In 2014 I left work again. Overall, it took me six years to come up with the final version. That includes at least thirteen rewrites, the last being in July 2017.
What is the Tiger Drive Scholarship? Why did you set the scholarship up?
Though Tiger Drive is fiction, I did grow up in a trailer park on Tiger Drive in Carson City, Nevada. I always knew I wanted more. While immersing myself into the fictional characters of the Sloan family, I drew from my feelings as a teen and was overwhelmed with the gratitude for the people in my life at the time who encouraged me and supported my dreams of pursuing college: specifically friends, their parents, teachers, co-workers, and the Rotary Club who would ultimately give me a large scholarship to start college after a close friend who was a “sure win” for the scholarship told them, “I don’t need the scholarship, but Teri Case does.”
Writing Tiger Drive made me want to pay this generosity forward and so the Tiger Drive Scholarship was born. It rewards students who are reaching, learning, and growing beyond their familiar environment and special consideration is given to financial need, work experience, and if the student lives on the ‘real’ Tiger Drive.
In 2011, I enrolled in an online creative writing class with San Diego State University. The instructor asked us to locate something in our immediate space and write about it.
I had two photos hanging above my desk. One of my mother when she was seventeen and working for a radio station in the early 1950s. The second was a photo of my dad when he was nineteen in the U.S. Merchant Marines during WWII.
They both looked so happy, so optimistic, on their own. They met when my dad was in his forties, and my mom was in her thirties at a veterans bar where my mom was bartending and my dad was drinking. They did not have a happy marriage and they did not create an easy life together. I found myself wondering when their lives derailed and how they became such train wrecks. So I started making up “their” stories. The truth was beyond my reach with my father being dead and my mom’s still protective of her secrets so speculation and fiction took over.
By the end of the online course, I had the first five hundred words of Tiger Drive.
How long did it take to write Tiger Drive?
I wrote the first craptastic draft in four months in 2011. I was between jobs for the first time in twenty-five years so I was able to write for four hours each morning—if I could manage without procrastinating and coming up with excuses to not write. Some days, I was “fighting the writing.” Once I returned to work, I promised myself I would edit and rewrite Tiger Drive on my evenings and weekends, but I had no discipline. In 2014 I left work again. Overall, it took me six years to come up with the final version. That includes at least thirteen rewrites, the last being in July 2017.
What is the Tiger Drive Scholarship? Why did you set the scholarship up?
Though Tiger Drive is fiction, I did grow up in a trailer park on Tiger Drive in Carson City, Nevada. I always knew I wanted more. While immersing myself into the fictional characters of the Sloan family, I drew from my feelings as a teen and was overwhelmed with the gratitude for the people in my life at the time who encouraged me and supported my dreams of pursuing college: specifically friends, their parents, teachers, co-workers, and the Rotary Club who would ultimately give me a large scholarship to start college after a close friend who was a “sure win” for the scholarship told them, “I don’t need the scholarship, but Teri Case does.”
Writing Tiger Drive made me want to pay this generosity forward and so the Tiger Drive Scholarship was born. It rewards students who are reaching, learning, and growing beyond their familiar environment and special consideration is given to financial need, work experience, and if the student lives on the ‘real’ Tiger Drive.
Who is your favourite author and why?
This is always such a difficult question for me to answer because it depends on my mood or if it’s fiction or non-fiction. But without a doubt, a book that singularly influenced many of my young adult choices and helped shape my life today was The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel. For years, I cringed sharing this fact because Hollywood had done a horrific job turning the book into a movie, and whenever I mention it, most people only know of the movie. I can’t remark on Auel’s writing or her mad research skills, but what has stuck with me is the story of a young woman taking control of her life in what seemed like impossible conditions and in an environment she was clearly different. I always felt different in my family. The character, Ayla, became an example for me. I’ll forever be grateful to Ms. Auel for writing.
What books are on your bedside table?
The Dog’s Mind by Bruce Fogle (research for my second book)
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan
Deep Work: Rules for a Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
How has social media helped you with writing Tiger Drive?
Social Media didn’t really impact Tiger Drive until I reached the later edits and publishing phase, but at that point, the impact was significant because group interfacing apps such as Slack and Facebook Groups have allowed me to collaborate with and learn daily from others who are in the creative trenches, particularly those at the publishing phase. I am involved in three different Slack groups. One is small and my two partners were insightful and helpful beta readers of Tiger Drive. In a second group, several are published authors, and they have readily answered all of my questions about publishing Tiger Drive, giving me confidence to charge into the publishing arena.
I do have a website newsletter and after inviting some of my newsletter readers to be beta readers in the Tiger Drive Squad, I was able to make the final edits of the novel and move forward.
Where social media is helping my current writing project is the above collaborations and being able to interact with readers, friends, and family via Facebook and Instagram which makes writing less isolating. A few days ago, I asked my Facebook friends to share their favorite stories about their dogs so I could collect ideas for my new book.
What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?
The best advice I can give to an aspiring writer is to set a timer for twenty minutes each day, sit your butt in the chair, and allow yourself to write a craptastic first draft.
This is always such a difficult question for me to answer because it depends on my mood or if it’s fiction or non-fiction. But without a doubt, a book that singularly influenced many of my young adult choices and helped shape my life today was The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel. For years, I cringed sharing this fact because Hollywood had done a horrific job turning the book into a movie, and whenever I mention it, most people only know of the movie. I can’t remark on Auel’s writing or her mad research skills, but what has stuck with me is the story of a young woman taking control of her life in what seemed like impossible conditions and in an environment she was clearly different. I always felt different in my family. The character, Ayla, became an example for me. I’ll forever be grateful to Ms. Auel for writing.
What books are on your bedside table?
The Dog’s Mind by Bruce Fogle (research for my second book)
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan
Deep Work: Rules for a Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
How has social media helped you with writing Tiger Drive?
Social Media didn’t really impact Tiger Drive until I reached the later edits and publishing phase, but at that point, the impact was significant because group interfacing apps such as Slack and Facebook Groups have allowed me to collaborate with and learn daily from others who are in the creative trenches, particularly those at the publishing phase. I am involved in three different Slack groups. One is small and my two partners were insightful and helpful beta readers of Tiger Drive. In a second group, several are published authors, and they have readily answered all of my questions about publishing Tiger Drive, giving me confidence to charge into the publishing arena.
I do have a website newsletter and after inviting some of my newsletter readers to be beta readers in the Tiger Drive Squad, I was able to make the final edits of the novel and move forward.
Where social media is helping my current writing project is the above collaborations and being able to interact with readers, friends, and family via Facebook and Instagram which makes writing less isolating. A few days ago, I asked my Facebook friends to share their favorite stories about their dogs so I could collect ideas for my new book.
What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?
The best advice I can give to an aspiring writer is to set a timer for twenty minutes each day, sit your butt in the chair, and allow yourself to write a craptastic first draft.
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