Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 71

July 2, 2014

Naomi Elana Zener talks about Deathbed Dimes, writing, Hollywood, and so much more

Hollywood and the law--what could be more delicious in a novel? Naomi Elana Zener is the author of both Deathbed Dimes and satire fiction, which is posted on her blog Satirical Mama. She blogs for Huffington Post and her articles have been published by Erica Ehm’s Yummy Mummy Club. Naomi is also a practicing entertainment attorney and I'm thrilled to have her here. Thank you, Naomi!.

What sparked the writing of Deathbed Dimes?

Back in 2005, I conceived an idea for a TV series about estate litigators. I ended up shelving the idea, as I was preoccupied with building my entertainment law career. As time wore on, in late 2008 I watched "The Bucket List" with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, and devised one for myself. Item #1 was to write a novel. So, I dusted off the idea for Deathbed Dimes, played with it and came up with a unique idea for a novel that married fiction genres (think Helen Fielding meets John Grisham), as well as the zeitgeist of greed that permeates the underworld of estate litigation battles with a Hollywood twist.

The novel is set in the world of law and Hollywood, two worlds you know a lot about. Tell us about all of this, please.
I studied Estates and Trusts law, with a focus on Estate Litigation, when I pursued my JD and LL.M., so I knew a lot about the area of law. When I entered the fray of practising entertainment law, when I decided to write Deathbed Dimes, I thought that it would be fascinating to marry my knowledge of estate litigation with the zany world of the entertainment industry and those in it. Estate litigation battles affect everyone in every walk of life. I've read so many different cases about families fighting over money, from those disputing a $50,000 estate where the legal fees were triple that amount, to those that involved hundreds of millions of dollars and many disgruntled family members who felt entitled to inherit that wealth. In practising entertainment law, given that everyone dies, including rich and famous celebrities, it made sense to me to set Deathbed Dimes' story in Los Angeles, amongst the glitz and glamour of that world, even though the estate battle arc in the story isn't focused on that world.

How do you write? What’s your process like? Do you outline or just follow your muse (if there is such a thing!)

I outline. I make notes. I jot down dialogue as it comes to me to save for a character or a conversation that will appear in the short story or novel I'm working on. I don't fill notebooks of pages with ideas for a novel, or pages on end for a short story simply because I also like to let the story flow as it comes to me. Everything is my muse, from my marriage, my kids, to what I read, watch on TV/hear on the radio, and observe daily, and to people who flow in and out of my life. I always start to write from what I know and embellish from there.
  What’s your writing life like?

Wonderful. I love to write. I miss it when I'm not doing it. I love to enjoy family time, work (my writing secret identity is being an entertainment lawyer), leisure, but my characters, ideas, worlds, and the like are never far from my mind. That's why I'm weighed down heavily by a large bag full of notebooks and my iPhone to write when a moment of inspiration strikes.
  
What’s obsessing you now and why?

Several things. First, my second novel. I'm waiting for notes from my editor so that I can write the third draft to use for querying new literary agents (I left my last one). Second, my third novel idea that I've started to flesh out and outline. Third, a short story I'm trying to finally finish, but life is getting in the way.  

What question didn’t I ask that I should have?

There are many I could throw at you, but I tend to be open on my writing, but private about my personal life. I will offer that you didn't ask me who my favourite shoe designer is. For that question, I could never give an answer. It would be like trying to pick a favourite child. I love all of my shoes (well those that burned a deep hole in my wallet Carrie Bradshaw style).

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Published on July 02, 2014 08:43

July 1, 2014

Robin Black talks about Life Drawing, writing about craft, not knowing where a story is going, and so much more

Robin Black's unsettling portrait of a marriage, LIFE DRAWING, is one of the most arresting novels I've read. And, I have to say, that her first short story collection, IF I LOVED YOU, I WOULD TELL YOU THIS, which was published to international acclaim, was one of the best short story collections I've read. She's received grants from the Leeway Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, The Sirenland Conference, and she's also the winner of the 2005 Pirate's Alley Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition for short story. I'm so thrilled to have her here. Thank you so much, Robin!
Life Drawing is your first novel. What was it like moving from short stories to a novel? Will you go back to short stories or are you now madly in love with the novel? Do each of the forms have its own satisfactions? (and discontents?)
I went into novel writing like a whiny child, “But I don’t waaaaant to. . . “ I knew that there were professional reasons to do it and had signed the infamous two book deal so many post-MFA folks sign – if they are fortunate. The stories, first, and then. . A NOVEL! I was just so certain that I was a short story writer, that I had a short story writer’s mind - whatever the heck that even means. I had actually already written a bad novel, so all I knew about myself as a novelist was that I wasn’t any good. But then, the second I started LIFE DRAWING, I was 100% comfortable, and the second I finished I knew the next book would be a novel.
I have written one short story since then, and I was relieved that I still could, though it felt like using a part of my brain I’d almost forgotten I have. The part that understands compression and is as focused on what to exclude as on what to put in. You know, we writers are endlessly making analogies, and there are dozens out there about short stories and novels. Short stories are love affairs; novels are marriages, and so on. My latest take is that short stories are strict parents and novels are permissive ones. Short stories have curfews, and set limits. Novels don’t tell you when to get home and pretend they don’t know what you’re doing with your boyfriend in the basement.
I do love them both – and essays too - but I have this feeling I may have discovered, in my fifties. and very much against my own strongly held views, that I have the nature of a novelist.
I loved the tense, nerve-jangly way that the novel proceeded. How did you go about structuring the novel and was there anything about that that surprised you?
To be honest, everything about it surprised me. I don’t do outlines, my mind just doesn’t work that way. The one thing I knew, though, all the way through, was that somehow, by the end, I had to fulfill the promise of the big plot disclosure in the first paragraph. But that was all I knew. Except for that give-away in the opening lines, nothing was planned.But in some ways the most surprising aspect of the whole process was that unlike many of my stories which are written in bits and pieces, often patch-worked together and then reworked endlessly, this novel came out in order. I started on Page One and wrote through to the end with very few detours or changes until the revisions I did with my editor, none of which altered the plot, just cut a bit, reordered a bit, and added a couple of scenes. I have rarely written a short story in so straightforward a way and the last thing I expected was to write a novel in one kind of spurt – a year-long spurt, but still. It was weirdly straightforward. Though – and this really matters – that spurt arrived after first, writing that “starter novel” that will never see the light of day and then years of misery and doubt about whether I could write a decent novel at all. So whenever I start kidding myself that this was easy, I have to remember the agony of all that doubt. Or I can just ask my husband who has keen, keen memories of how angst-ridden I was for how long.
So much about the novel is about creative partnerships and whether or not they work. Do you think the two--love and work--can ever really be balanced? There were many ways in which I used my narrator Gus as a way to play with the notion of having a life very different from mine. I’ve been a mom since I was twenty-five; she is childless. I am very close to my own mother; Gus has no memories of hers. And I am married to a lawyer, while she, a painter, has been with a writer for nearly thirty-years. I think that many of us writers (or maybe all artists) who aren’t married to someone in the arts have a pretty romanticized notion of what that would be like. Sort of like Bloomsbury only maybe without quite so much partner swapping. And though it sounds funny, one result of really delving into the lives of my married artist characters was that I now think that though there might be some companionable aspects, it would also have the potential to be sheer hell. I’ve become ever more aware of how nice it is that my husband and I work in different enough worlds that there’s no competition. That when we’re sick of our own day jobs, we can go to one another for something truly different.
But as for balancing love and work, I haven’t always been good at it. I started writing seriously at about 40, and I knew that it was going to take something quite extraordinary with three kids at home, one of whom has special needs, to get lift-off in this pursuit and I think I was a pretty sub-par wife (and mother) there for a bit. I was an absolute workaholic, like a crazy person who has fallen in love with an activity. And I’m not even sure I regret that, because it gave me something I desperately needed without which I would increasingly have been a very, very bad mother and wife. But it was an uneasy balance at the time.
Your title is actually perfect for the book, on so many levels, beside the most obvious one. Can you talk about it?
I’m not great at titles, but when I hit on this one I was absolutely sure it was right. Leaving aside the obvious – my narrator is a painter who has trouble painting people – it is of course about what I feel I’m doing while writing. Drawing lives. Creating people, not depicting real ones, but animating something which has no life of its own. I have a short story in my collection about a portrait painter, and it’s called “Immortalizing John Parker.” In that, as in this, the overlap between what I say about the painting process and what I experience in my own creative life is pretty massive.And that includes the fact that like my narrator, Gus, I struggled early on as a writer with specific aspects of “life drawing” or, as we call it, character depiction. I was always very interested in psychology and in moral dilemmas, but I had trouble putting those things into bodies, drawing – there it is – lives, and even just physical appearances that would render my characters more than vehicles for me to work through emotional issues or other non-corporeal aspects of human life. I’m tempted to say that writing about visual artists is a good way for any fiction writer to learn about herself and about challenges she may have but not quite see, that jump outin the context of another creative pursuit.

What’s your writing process like? Do you fly by the seat or your pen or do you know where you are going?
I make it up as I go along. I wander in the dark looking for light. I never outline – not only because I can’t think that way, but because the few times I’ve tried, the process has felt like paint-by-numbers to me, like I was just filling in the colors as opposed to feeling like a process of discovery. I strongly believe that for me, with my work, the more surprise there is in the process of writing, the more surprise and excitement there will be for the reader.But the fact is that even if I believed that outlining would help the work, I still couldn’t do it. I have very significant ADD and though I medicate for it which helps a lot, I’m still along, long way from being organized enough to plan a work ahead.

What’s obsessing you now and why?
Other than book release? I know that you, and any authors reading this, understand that when a book is coming out, it’s hard for that not to feel the only event in the cosmos. But in fact I am also focusing on the next book. There are two that I have in mind and I’m not sure which is going to bubble up first. I won’t say more than that because it’s all still at that fragile stage where it feels like if you breathe too hard, you’ll lose the possibilities.

What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
Hmmmm. I guess that I always want people to ask me about the essays I write about being a writer and on the craft of writing, because my other obsession right now is turning those into a book. Many are posts I’ve done the Beyond the Margins (beyondthemargins.com) but there are others too. I’m an absolute craft nerd, and have discovered in myself this very strong impulse – even need – to write about my experiences writing, the life of it, my own personal history with inhibitions and with discovered directions. So, as I puzzle through my fiction future, I am also working on that. Oh, and then there’s the book I’m writing with my daughter, who has special needs. And then there’s. . . and then there’s. . . Always more to talk about, always more to write!!

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Published on July 01, 2014 14:21

Lori Day talks about Her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip, and so much more

<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"> </span></b><img src="http://www.bravegirlswant.com/uploads..." height="560" id="irc_mi" style="margin-top: 0px;" width="468" /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zPy_vulGeOE..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zPy_vulGeOE..." /></a></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><i><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"> </span></b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">We need to empower girls and educational psychologist and consultant Lori Day has written a groundbreaking book: her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip, and so much more. A co-founder and member of the board of <a href="http://www.bravegirlswant.com/"&... Girls Want</a>, a think tank of girl empowerment experts who advocate for healthier media and products for girls. Don't forget to check out her <a href="http://motherdaughterbookclubs.com/&q... </a>for mother/daughter bookclubs. I'm honored to have her here. Thank you, Lori!</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">This is such an important topic. Was there a specific event that sparked this book?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">I’m a blogger for the Huffington Post, and an acquisitions editor at Chicago Review Press “discovered” me there when she read a post I wrote about princess culture. She then went to my website and read more of my writing, and reached out to me to ask me to submit a book proposal to her on anything I wanted to write about. It was so unexpected and so fortunate to be presented with such an opportunity. I decided to write about mother-daughter book clubs because our own club was the most transformative experience of my parenting journey, and also of my daughter Charlotte’s childhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I work in the girl empowerment space, with a special focus on media literacy, and I realized I could write about the kind of mother-daughter book club I would create <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">today</i> given the changes in girl culture and how much more difficult raising girls has become. I realized these clubs could serve as very practical media literacy vehicles on top of their traditional purposes of encouraging bonding, socializing and reading, and that moms really need more tools.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">I also thought it would be both fun and genuinely helpful to collaborate with Charlotte, now age 22. I’d always dreamed of writing with her. She is so incredibly talented, and wants to be a professional writer, so having her as a contributing author would 1) seriously make the book better, 2) be super fun to do, and 3) give her the credential of being a published author at a young age, as she pursues her own writing career. It all played out so well. Her reflections at the end of the last 8 chapters really helped the book blossom and added the genuine perspective of a young woman. But also, she’s a great editor. I mean that in a couple of ways. She’s a fantastic proofreader—much better than me—and she caught lots of small mistakes. She’s also a great developmental editor. We brainstormed all the chapters together, even though I did the research and writing on my own. One of the things that makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her Next Chapter</i> unique is that we wrote it as a mother-daughter team.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Can you talk about what you think is "female-empowering" literature and why it's so important? </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">I think there’s a difference between female-centric and female-empowering, and it goes for movies, music, gaming and lots of other media in addition to literature. You can have a book about girls that is full of stereotypes, and it would be female-centric, but not female-empowering. There’s a saying: “</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">You can’t be what you can’t see.” (</span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Marie Wilson, founding president of the White House Project). So we need girls to see and read about female characters who are heroines, and that does not mean they must save the world, but they must be the heroines of their own lives. It’s about demonstrating authentic agency in the arcs of their own narratives…being subjects rather than objects who are acted upon by other characters, or who are ornaments beside the adventures and self-actualization of male characters. That’s where empowerment lies. It’s important for many reasons, but two of the most important are that girls need to believe there is no gendered limit to their potential, and equally important is that boys need to see that too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><b> </b><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">What do you think a more modern mother-daughter bookclub would be? </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">I often joke about how it would not be about baking brownies! No offense to moms and daughters who love to bake together, and they should feel free—but that is what the term “mother-daughter book club” brings to mind for me, and a more modern club would be so much more powerful than that. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">If I were starting another mother-daughter book club today, there are many things I would do differently in response to how much more challenging our culture has become for girls. I would want to be able to tackle head-on some of the known impediments to healthy emotional development for girls and young women (such as gender stereotypes, sexualization, negative body image, "mean girl" bullying, obstacles to female leadership, etc). It would be important to me to have this sharper focus, and to build a club with other mothers who shared these same concerns and values, and whose parenting style, like mine, was to talk openly and directly about the sensitive and difficult passages our girls were navigating. I would take all of the benefits of reading girl-empowering literature plus the collaborative development of media literacy skills, and I would help our group harness all of that energy to push back against a marketing and media culture that tells girls their greatest value lies in how they look, and that the world they are inheriting places gendered limits on who they can be and what they can do. And all of this is exactly what I’ve tried to do with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her Next Chapter</i>! Mothers and other adult women who work with girls learn to identify the cultural obstacles that women face, to understand more fully why and how they occur, and to recognize in themselves how they as adults are affected. Moms also learn to use suggested books, movies, other media and group activities to create a place outside the modern girlhood box that their daughters can inhabit and in which they can thrive.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Can you tell us some of the practical tools the book offers? </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">I do give mothers and other adult women <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">practical tools</i> for getting at these tricky subjects--recommendations, original reviews and discussion guides for books, movies and Internet media that open up dialogue on these topics. Also included are group activity suggestions, insightful interviews with some of the leading experts on healthy girlhood, and lots of parenting tips to use at home in addition to the ones for use during club meetings. When we talk about the urgent need to teach children media literacy so they can deconstruct and subvert the thousands of unhealthy messages that bombard them every week, we often don’t give adults the tools to do that. Yes, it’s about the teachable moments everyday, but a lot of parents need more structure and support. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her Next Chapter</i> is a media literacy guidebook.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">As the mother of a son, I also worry about the images boys are fed, as well. Is that something you are looking at as well?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Absolutely. Although I talked about that throughout my book, I did not focus on it extensively from the male perspective because the book’s mission was to help mothers parent their daughters, and thus most of my focus was on what happens in our culture that makes it hard for girls to reach their potential and transcend our society’s laser-like focus on them as beautification projects or sexual objects. But it is that very issue that is also relevant to boys, because when we always depict girls in marketing and in media as sexualized and powerless—sometimes as degraded and violated—this is also what boys consume. And the message to boys is that girls are objects. What we know about that from the work of Jean Kilbourne and others is that when the female body is so often depicted in dehumanizing ways, and girls are so often shown as less important than boys (to the point of either being completely missing in the media kids consume, or present in token numbers and marginalized or objectified roles), it subtly conditions boys to view girls as inferior at best, and worthy of violation at worst. We are all aware of the many, many distressing events in the news these days about boys and men who abuse girls and women as if they are not fully human. Media and marketing, as examined in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her Next Chapter</i>, are shown in certain ways to be culpable for providing girls and boys a steady diet of toxic gender roles that hurt them all. And it is all profit-driven, which makes it all the more enraging. </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">What's obsessing you now and why?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Ha ha, good question! Porn. Seriously. I am absolutely obsessed with the current role of porn in our culture, and the fact that so many young boys (as well as some girls) partake of free 24/7 access to it on the Internet beginning at very young ages while they are just beginning to understand sex. As an adult society we don’t seem to be dealing with this well at all. When I was a child, men would sometimes leave Playboy magazines lying around, and kids would find them. But today, extremely violent, sadistic and degrading porn is viewed by large numbers of boys and men, and while there has been porn since cavemen could draw it on their walls, it has never been anything like this before. Porn has gone mainstream. It is heavily influencing the advertising industry, the fashion industry, the music industry, you name it. It is affecting boys and girls in their relationships, in the pressure boys put on girls or girls put on themselves to perform what is shown in movies, in the emptiness of relationships that are often exclusively sexual between kids who barely know each other, and so forth. As a former school administrator, it was so difficult to stay ahead of the kids on this, and I know that for parents it is nearly impossible. Other countries are much more concerned about it and taking action at the government level to protect kids, but at the risk of wandering to near the porn/free speech precipice, just let me say that the US could benefit from looking outside our own borders on this one!</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">What question didn't I ask that I should have?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Perhaps “What do you hope to accomplish with your book?” And this is </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">simple: to launch as many mother-daughter book clubs into the world as possible; to give mothers and other female role models the education and the tools needed to push back on our toxic media culture for girls and women; to change girlhood for the better. Kind of a tall order, I know!</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>

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Published on July 01, 2014 14:02

Elizabeth Silver talks about The Execution of Noa P. Singleton, death row, motherhood, and surprises in writing

<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rlVBUoX6ThM..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rlVBUoX6ThM..." /></a></b></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R-HBh8DGnlc..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R-HBh8DGnlc..." /></a></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></b>A woman languishes on death row. The mother of the woman she allegedly killed, an attorney, comes to her with a proposition. She'll do everything in her power to commute the death sentence to life in prison if she can only know why her daughter was killed.<br /><br />You have to read this, right? Elizabeth Silver is the author of the critically acclaimed novel, <i>The Execution of Noa P. Singleton</i>, an Amazon Best Book of the Year, Amazon Best Debut of the Month, a Kirkus Best Book of the Summer, Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year, Oprah “Ten Books to Pick up Now,” and selection for the Target Emerging Author Series. <i></i>Optioned for film by ImageMovers Production Company (Robert Zemeckis), the novel will be translated into Polish, French, Japanese, Russian, and Korean.<br /><br /> I'm thrilled to have Elizabeth here. Thank you, Elizabeth! <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;"> I'm always interested how a novel sparked? A college dropout on death row for murder--where did that come from? How did The Execution of Noa P. Singleton come into being?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.8pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">After years of writing fiction and toying with a variety of day jobs in writing-related fields, I switched directions, and in my late-twenties, attended law school. I entered my third year of law school and took a course in capital punishment, where I learned about the death penalty from some of the country’s top anti-death penalty attorneys in Austin, Texas. The course included a clinic component in which I worked on a clemency petition, visited death row, interviewed inmates and met with a handful of victim family members with my supervising attorneys. I also attended a symposium at the Texas State Capitol where several lawyers, journalists, filmmakers, and a solitary victim’s rights advocate spoke about the problems with the death penalty as it related to one potentially wrongful execution. Only one person on the dais represented the voice of the victim, surprisingly, and she was the mother of a victim ten years later still struggling with her position. While listening to each person express a different perspective on the issue, the complicated relationship between a mourning parent trying to forgive and an admittedly guilty inmate struck me as an intricate and conflicted bond ripe for exploration. It wasn’t about guilt or innocence necessarily, but instead about the fragility, doubt, and unease in each of these people. I also knew that I wanted my protagonist to be intelligent, self-educated, and someone with whom readers may be able to relate, despite her residence and status. Instantly, my new project was borne, although at that point, I wasn’t sure the body it would occupy or the story that would carry it along. I rushed home, and over the next few months before the bar exam, wrote the first and last chapters of the novel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">A lot of this extraordinary novel occurs in prison. Did you do research? What was that like? Did anything surprise you and turn the plot of the novel in a way you didn't expect?</span></b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">Most of my research came from my law school classes and my very first job as a lawyer. Right after the bar exam, my first professional lawyer gig was as a judicial clerk for a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas. All death penalty cases skip over the intermediate courts and go directly to this court. My first assignment as a clerk was to draft a death penalty opinion (the decision) for my judge. I spent the next two years drafting over two dozens opinions for the court, several of which were death penalty cases. I reviewed trial transcripts, researched the law, and on my lunch breaks and free time, wandered into local courtrooms to watch live trials. Meanwhile, I was writing the novel at night. As a result, once the clerkship was over, there was little I had to research. It was minutiae, like ensuring that the details were accurate: for example, the proper color of the jumpsuits for Pennsylvania's death row and the size of the cell and the state-to-state population, which changed from the point I began the book to the point it was sold and the point it was published. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">As for the turning plot, oh yes, so much surprised me. I had never written a story like this and hadn't a clue how it was going to proceed. I knew two things when I started: whether Noa was guilty and whether she was going to be executed. What I didn't know was how or why and this was the thrill of the writing. As a result, every plot turn, every development surprised me along the way. I was nearly finished with the first draft before I had any sort of motivation for Noa to even commit a crime because I became so fascinated with her childhood, which ultimately helped bring her actions full circle. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">I deeply admired the structure of the novel. Did you plan it out before you wrote, or did you just follow the characters?</span></b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">Thank you so much. I did plan the structure of the novel after those first few chapters, but only loosely. It wasn't until round two of edits with my editor that I wrote a timeline for each character and discovered massive plot and character flaws that were likely there because I was sticking to that original structure. Early on, I planned the book in six parts to represent the six months leading up to "X-Day," Noa's date of execution. I also planned for Marlene to write a letter to her dead daughter between each section. Apart from that very simple structure, though, I just followed the characters and allowed them to fall into place as time progressed (and regressed). It was also important to be introduced to both characters from their present state: prison for Noa and freedom and power for Marlene, and then to watch as they overlap and at times switch positions psychologically and emotionally. By the time we are nearing the end, we will have very different visions of these women based on their histories, despite the fact that they are in precisely the same place in the present day.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">You also write screenplays. Do you find you have to get into a whole different mindset to do that, or does it just come naturally for you? Is one easier for you than the other?</span></b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">I'm not sure anything comes naturally. I do love writing scripts of any form as well as fiction and I find it easier than fiction, in part because I know I might just be providing a blueprint for another team to use to tell the story. Scripts will have a director whose vision the story will ultimately become, actors who interpret your lines, cinematographers, soundtracks, costumes, settings, props, etc. With fiction, you get to play all of those parts for as long or as short as you crave. These are entirely distinct ways of approaching creativity and storytelling, and inherently require a different mindset and skill set. I have great respect for storytellers of any kind, and often the most difficult step is determining what medium the story fits. So many films should be stage plays and so many novels should have been written as short stories, and the list could go on. As for the mind of screenwriting, all I can say is that I simply enjoy it. When I feel stuck with my fiction, I know I can find great pleasure in writing a script, particularly because I love dialogue, but also because there is some liberation in the constraint scripts require. I'm a rule-lover. I like making lists and crossing things off of them. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">What's obsessing you now and why?</span></b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">My five-month old baby girl. She's simultaneously digging into my writing time and creating it, tightening my energy and multiplying it. On a more literary note, I'm also obsessed with everything written by Emily Rapp. Read her essays and memoir, if you can. They're devastating and beautiful and incandescent. I'm also obsessed with short stories, particularly Karen Russell and can't believe I waited until now to finally read her. Do you have a favorite collection I should add to my ever-growing night table queue?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">What question didn't I ask that I should have? </span></b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt;">Yikes, this is a bit like writing your own letter of recommendation, I fear. That was always so difficult for me. Thank goodness I'm not applying for any more graduate school. Thank you so much for having me on your incredible blog. It's been a tremendous honor getting to talk with you and get to know you. These questions were so much fun.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>

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Published on July 01, 2014 13:45

June 6, 2014

SheBooks launches a Kickstarter campaign for Equal Writes for Women

I'm proud to be associated with SheBooks (they published my short stories, The Wrong Sister), and I want everyone to know about this important new campaign.

This is from Laura Fraser, the co-founder and editorial director:

 <div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Not enough women are able to get their work published today—even the best women writers. Almost three-quarters of the bylines in leading print and digital publications belong to men. At <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/shebooks\.net\/\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">Shebooks</span></u></span>.net, we’ve decided to do something about this problem: Publish more stories by women. We’ve launched the<a href="http://kck.st/1kbVVz7"> </a><a href="http://kck.st/1kbVVz7"><span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/kck\.st\/1kbVVz7\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">Equal Writes Campaign</span></u></span></a><a href="http://kck.st/1kbVVz7"> </a>to raise money to publish great reads by as many women writers as possible in 2014.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">I’m the Editorial Director and co-founder of <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/shebooks\.net\/\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">Shebooks.net</span></u></span>, which publishes short e-books by and for women. I’ve been a journalist and author for 30 years, and while I’ve been relatively successful—one of my books was a NYT bestseller—I’ve experienced how increasingly difficult it is to be published. One of my cofounders, Peggy Northrop, has been the editor-in-chief of four magazines, and a senior editor at many more, and she’s seen the space for women’s writing shrink and shrink. Getting published is difficult for everyone, of course, as content has been considered free on the Internet, and publishers are putting all their money into their top earners and basically ignoring the rest. But it’s particularly hard for women.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Why is that? It’s a complicated question, having to do with both socialization and sexism. On the one hand, we have what people call the "confidence gap," where women are reluctant to pitch to magazines--they don't have the sense that their work is worthy. And there has been some research that shows that if women do pitch, if they are turned down, they tend to personalize that, and think, "the magazine doesn't want me," whereas men might think, "they answered my email; I'll nail it next time." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">But the other factor is plain old sexism. It's still very much a boys' club, where male editors tend to trust male writers because they're part of the tribe. I've been in the writers’ collective called the San Francisco Writers' Grotto for 15 years, for instance, and I've seen equally talented men and women approach male editors at top-shelf magazines, and guys get the upper hand. I've had many personal instances of sexism in my career. One recent one was when an editor on a panel was describing a story in Italy he was considering. I approached him and said I'd like to pitch him on it--I speak fluent Italian and know Italy well. His immediate response was, "Oh, I was kind of looking for a <i>science guy</i>." He automatically assumed I don't write about science--which I have done, quite a bit--which is not what he might have assumed about a guy. And, well, a guy would have had the "guy" part of his remark down. Now, if you asked that editor if he was sexist and if he felt women should be equally published, he's a nice liberal guy who would have said "of course," and would have had no inkling of his deeper prejudices. Now, maybe it had to do with me and my writing. That's certainly a possibility. But his answer seemed automatic. (I did persist and check out the story, calling Italian journalist friends to get the scoop, and it turned out to not be the story the editor thought it was.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Shebooks wants to change inequities in publishing by giving great women writers a platform. We want to raise their visibility not only to our own readers but to other publications.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">My partners and I—the third is Rachel Greenfield, who was the EVP of Martha Stewart Publishing–have been excited by the explosion of digital media, which is giving readers new ways to find compelling stories. And we’re pleased to see writers find fresh ways to work and make money outside the usual channels.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">But even on these new media platforms, the problem has persisted that female authors, journalists, editors—and ultimately female readers—are being shut out of the revolution. Innovative digital publishing companies led by men and publishing mostly male writers are getting lots of investment and attention. But we know that women are voracious readers in every format—buying the majority of books and magazines and reading (and writing) the majority of blogs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"> So we decided not to wait for our invitation to the party. <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/shebooks\.net\/\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">Shebooks.net</span></u></span> was the result: a new media format, real money for writers (our writers all share in our profits), and engaging stories that women can’t wait to read, that fit the corners of their busy lives. We’ve been amazed at the quality of writing we’ve been able to publish.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">We hope lots of readers and writers will join our <a href="http://kck.st/1kbVVz7"><span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/kck\.st\/1kbVVz7\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">Equal Writes Campaign</span></u></span>.</a> We publish mainly seasoned writers, but if you’re an aspiring writer, you can pledge at our $35 level and one of our editors will take a look at your manuscript—for possible inclusion in a Shebooks anthology.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Please spread the word—and thanks so much!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Laura Fraser</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">co-founder, Shebooks</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Please pledge to join our Equal Writes campaign! <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/kck\.st\/1kbVVz7\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">http://kck.st/1kbVVz7</span>&lt... class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>

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Published on June 06, 2014 07:59

June 5, 2014

Heather Gudenkauf writes about Iowa, story world and her latest genius novel, Little Mercies

Heather Gudenkauf is the New York Times and USA today bestselling author of The Weight of Silence and These Things Happen, and her newest novel, LITTLE MERCIES, will be out this June. I'm thrilled to have Heather here, writin gabout story world, setting and so much, more. Thank you so much, Heather!
A picturesque college town surrounded by craggy bluffs and thick woods and the desperate search for two missing children; a renovated bookstore settled near the banks of a rushing, winding river and the mystery surrounding the birth of one little boy; a close-knit farming community and a small, rural school breached by an intruder with a gun and unknown motives; a large Midwestern city where a social worker finds her world unraveling and a young girl who finds her world put back together again. All settings for my novels. Fictional accounts? Absolutely! Fictional locations? Not quite.I’ve lived in Iowa most of my life and in the years that I have been a student and a teacher, school has been canceled for snow, ice, wind-chill, and floods. I know that an impenetrable dense fog that can close highways and schools in the morning can be swept away in just a few short hours by a warm, soft breeze. One year, on the first day of school, high winds ripped the roof off of the section where my third grade classroom was located sending it crashing through the ceiling of another portion of the school where children sat moments earlier.
That’s Iowa for you. And in each of my novels I have woven meaningful real-life locations into my fictional settings. In The Weight of Silence the Willow Creek Woods was fashioned from Swiss Valley Nature Preserve, a beautiful forested area with the twisty Catfish Creek snaking through it. I have spent countless hours hiking there and this was where the seeds for my first novel sprouted.
Also plucked from my own life and dropped into my second novel These Things Hidden is River Lights, 2nd Edition, my favorite independent bookstore that is the blueprint for Bookends where much of the novel takes place. River Lights is nestled in a gorgeous 1870s building, the former Pusateri’s Grocery, with its original wooden floors and tin ceilings, located in the heart of downtown Dubuque, Iowa, the perfect home to match the shop’s warmth and charm. Visitors are invited to bring their dogs into the store and will be welcomed with an organic doggie treat upon arrival. But of course the best part of the bookstore is the staff. They are always there to ask about my family and are always ready with a book recommendation. I am never disappointed with what they suggest. While the bookstore in These Things Hidden is the scene of a very dramatic (even traumatic) event within the novel, whenever I enter the bricks-and-mortar storefront it feels like coming home.In my third novel, One Breath Away , the setting of the book, the small farming community of Broken Branch, Iowa, was inspired by the anything-but-broken real-life town of Wellman, Iowa. Wellman is a community of about 1,500 with a prominent Amish population and, along with my hometown of Dubuque, epitomizes what is common to so many Iowa communities: a wonderful sense of family and generosity to those in need. Wellman is also where this city girl learned about cattle farming and the difference between heifer and a cow – and there is a difference!
The setting of my current novel, Little Mercies is housed in bustling urban metropolis with a diverse population and a vibrant cultural backdrop. Within the pages of Little Mercies, a dedicated social worker faces her worst nightmare and comes to rely on those around her to help. During the course of writing Little Mercies I met a dedicated social worker who shared the joys and challenges of her work in serving families in crisis and in need. Her input was invaluable in the creation of main character, Ellen, as an authentic, believable character. In order to learn more about the medical profession and legal system I visited with doctors, a paramedic, an attorney and a chief of police. I even got the chance to tour a police station and walk through the steps of the booking process during the course of writing the novel. One of my greatest pleasures while writing Little Mercies was the people I met along the way and the wonderful conversations I was able to have with these home state experts that helped inform my writing.
Like the fictional townspeople in Little Mercies, communities all over Iowa come through for their friends and neighbors. A farmer you’ve never met will stop to help you when you are hopelessly lost on a barren county road (true story). When a virtual stranger’s son was diagnosed with bone cancer several Iowa towns took the family in as their own – saying prayers, sending notes of encouragement, raising money. Even a group of twelve year old boys without a second thought shaved their heads in allegiance with a classmate going through chemotherapy (another true story). The best thing about all of this is that that’s just Iowa for you. You could close your eyes and stick a pin in a map of Iowa and the inhabitants of any city, town, or burg would react in the exact same ways. These along with so many other reasons are why I continue to write about my home state – full of little mercies - Iowa.

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Published on June 05, 2014 10:10

Another astonishing debut: Maya Lang's The Sixteenth of June

To me, there's nothing more exciting than a wonderful fiction debut. Like Ulysses, The Sixteenth of June wraps around a single day in the lives of a family, even as it explores ambition, love, and the connections we make or fail to make. Maya was awarded the 2012 Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Fiction, and was a finalist for Glimmer Train‘s Short Story Award for New Writers. Her work has appeared in VQR and Publisher’s Weekly. I'm so thrilled to have her here. Thank you so much, Maya!

The Sixteenth of June is set over the course of a single day, much like James Joyce’s Ulysses, and so much of it pays homage to Joyce. So, my first question is, Why James Joyce? What made you decide on this structure and what were the difficulties you faced?
First, thank you so much for having me here. I always look forward to this blog and the questions you ask, so this is an honor.
I think there’s an old saying about how the writer doesn’t choose the subject matter; it chooses her. I was studying for comp exams in grad school one day when a sentence came to me out of nowhere, seeming to drop from the sky: Leopold turns the volume up as the hail comes down, so loud that Nora worries the windshield will crack and across it a giant web will bloom.
I felt like a cat that had just coughed up a hairball: What is that? Later, I realized the first word was “Leopold” and the last was “bloom.” I wondered if there could be a novel riffing on Ulysses while exploring the questions that bothered me about it. Namely, why do we revere a book that holds us at arm’s length? Do people truly love Ulyssesor do they just claim to? If I, as a doctoral candidate, couldn’t get through those unpunctuated passages or follow the references, who could?
Many Ulysses references snuck into that first draft unbidden. As I revised, I decided to incorporate more. I modeled each chapter after an episode in Ulysses and brought in excerpted lines. My goal was to weave these into the novel seamlessly (no attention is drawn to them with footnotes or italics) so a reader won’t necessarily be aware of them. Anyone who reads The Sixteenth gets a small dose of Joyce. I’m like the mom who sneaks veggies into the brownies.

I loved the whole idea that from a single day, a lifetime can evolve, that in just a moment, the course of a life can change. Can you talk about this please?
Gladly. It’s something I believe very strongly, that if you follow a character for a day—her thoughts, her internal dialogue—you can glean a sense of a whole life, its arc. The particular day in this novel isn’t an ordinary one, but its richest moments occur between events. I think life speaks to us in interstices, in the before and after. I can’t tell you a thing about my college graduation, but I remember the car ride home.

This mesmerizing novel is very much about love, and two brothers who both adore the same woman. Do you think there is such a thing as having a choice when it comes to love?
Whoa! Tough question. Amazing question. My gut reaction is that I don’t think we can choose whom or what we love, no. This is why breakups and death can be so painful, because a choice gets made for us and reminds us of our futility. As humans, we like to believe that we’re in charge. This is hubris. In love, as in writing, as in life, we are often surprised by our choices. We are drawn to certain things or people without knowing why.
I don’t mean to suggest we’re utterly without agency. Maybe you feel drawn to someone and make a choice to resist the impulse or to urge it along. But that initial attraction is quite mysterious. “I never would have imagined myself ending up with him.” “That’s not what I thought I would have chosen.” Our predilections and desires surprise us, but I think this is a good thing. There is always more to ourselves than we realize.

What was it like to write this particular novel? What were the difficulties—and the joys? What’s your writing life like?
This was the first long piece of fiction I’d ever attempted, and I started it when my daughter was three months old. As a strategy, I don’t recommend this. I was sleep-deprived, harried, exhausted, and I was in a new city (Seattle) with no family in the area.
I wrote the novel at nights and on weekends, an hour or two here or there, whenever I could. I felt like I’d discovered a little escape hatch into an imaginary world. I didn’t tell a soul about it other than my husband; I didn’t even think of it as a novel. This uncertainty was the hardest part. I basically felt like a crazy person with a secret. On the other hand, that solitude—writing for the sheer happiness of it—was wonderful. The difficulties and pleasures with writing are often one and the same.
What’s obsessing you now and why?
Current obsessions: “Breaking Bad” (I’m in the third season and can’t get over how brilliantly it’s edited), the comedian Louis C.K. (he’s a genius! Like Nietzsche doing stand-up), and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (a luminous, exquisite novel. I’m still trying to figure out how he pulled it off structurally).
What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
Hmm. How about this, since it gives me an excuse to share an invitation: What are you doing for Bloomsday?

I’ll be celebrating Bloomsday and the launch of The Sixteenth of June at the Strand in New York City. The Strand is one of my favorite bookstores on the planet, so I’m thrilled. I’ll be in conversation with the acclaimed David Gilbert (& Sons). Readers of your blog are warmly welcome: Monday, June 16th, 7 p.m., The Strand (Broadway and 12th).

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Published on June 05, 2014 09:28

Faith, The Shakers, Identity: Rachel Urquhart talks about The Visionist, one of the most extraordinary books of the year

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Baskerville; panose-1:2 2 5 2 7 4 1 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-2147483545 0 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Hoefler Text"; panose-1:2 3 6 2 5 5 6 2 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-2147482881 1342185547 4 0 407 0;} @font-face {font-family:Palatino; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611969 2013274202 341835776 0 403 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:JA;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:JA;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: small;">It's totally amazing that <i>The Visionist </i>is <a href="http://rachelurquhartwriter.com/"... Urquhart's</a> debut. Set in the world of The Shakers, it's about identity, faith, betrayal, and so much more. It's a book that's so richly imagined, so compelling, and so gorgeously written, that you feel as if you are living every page. And I'm not the only person raving. <i>The New York Times, The London Times, O</i> Magazine, NPR, and more, all were as dazzled as I was. I'm honored to have Rachel here on the blog. Thank you so much, Rachel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--EUpv9_yMo4..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--EUpv9_yMo4..." height="320" width="206" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span id="goog_508928375"></span><span id="goog_508928376"></span><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VG83JsIJYfQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VG83JsIJYfQ..." /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: small;"><i>The Visionist</i> is so much about identity, who we think we are, and who we can become. At one point one of the characters asks, “Is anyone who we think they are?" Do you think the search for that question is as important as the answer to it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">I think that you are getting at something very important, which is the fact that there are some questions we ask not because we expect a concrete answer, but because the inquiry itself is its own answer, one that helps us feel our way through the darkness as we try to figure out who we are, where we are, and what we are made of. Realizing that no one can be fully known is one of many human truths that allows us to understand and, one hopes, prepare ourselves accordingly for fact that nothing in life is certain. I believe that everyone is an imposter of sorts—even if it’s just because of the difference between the person we are perceived to be and the person we really are. That’s a generalization that applies to each of the characters in my book. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: small;">All the details about the Shaker community were so vivid and unsettling. What was your research process like? Did anything about your research surprise you and veer the story in another way?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">In the beginning, I researched this book as if I were a journalist doing background reporting. I started big—<i>Who were the Shakers? </i> I ended small—<i>How noisy is a room full of sisters working on looms? What’s it like to knead bread? Or gather up the brethren’s soiled bed sheets when you are not allowed to even speak to them? Or submit to the weird and frightening inspections carried out during the Midnight Cry?</i> The big stuff helped me shape the narrative in a crude but essential way. I needed to understand why the Shakers believed that all ties to one’s “blood relations” had to be broken; I needed to get a sense of what it might have been like to engage in ecstatic worship; I needed to try and see the world through a Shaker’s eyes, all the more so when the view seemed unsympathetic. All of that fed the body of my book. But it was the little stuff that thrilled and amazed me in its power to shape my characters. I never planned for Charity to have paisley-shaped lesions all over her body until I came across a photo from the late 1800s depicting the beautiful torso of a young woman suffering from <i>figurate Erythema</i>, a dermatological condition that is often brought on by stress. [Here’s the photo, just FYI.]</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e8OiCMinGSo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e8OiCMinGSo..." height="320" width="246" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">I had no idea that the old herbal recipes I came across in Shaker medicinal journals would sound like poetry, and so I couldn’t read something like, <i>“Take of Capsules of White Poppy, and dried and freed from the Seeds, two pounds…” </i>and not have it affect the language I used in certain sections of the book. Images of Shaker sisters plucking the fur from raccoon pelts by candlelight so that they could make mittens for the brethren were at once so homespun, so weird and so primal. I did my research hoping to find that kind of detail precisely because I knew it would be the making of the soul of the book. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: small;">So much of the novel is about faith, what we need to believe in and why and how we do it, but it's also a book about politics and property and how those two things have as much hold on people as faith does. Can you talk about this please?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">Going in, it was clear to me that, in general, the characters living inside the Shaker community would concern themselves with faith and purity, while the characters living outside, “in The World,” would concern themselves with money and power. What I didn’t see coming was the porousness of the divide between those seemingly opposite communities and pursuits. Simon Pryor, the inspector, pretends to have no faith at all, and yet without it, he knows is lost. His nemesis, James Hurlbut, is by far the greediest character in the book and yet there is a specific moment when he could have chosen the less craven path. Both men are haunted by an absence of faith and morality in their lives. Likewise, inside the Shaker community, money and power play more of a role than one would ever expect. Her dedication to her flock leaves Elder Sister Agnes just as determined to put her hands on the Kimball farm as is James Hurlbut. She is no stranger to manipulation and understands all too well the power wielded by Polly and the Visionists. And finally, she is not above using Polly’s little brother, Ben, as a pawn to get what she believes will be best for the community. After all, like many people who joined the Shakers, she lived a hard life before arriving in the City of Hope, and—like Simon Pryor, and James Hurlbut, and Polly Kimball, and eventually, even Sister Charity—she knows that good and evil, truth and lies, faith and politics, are never separate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: small;">I deeply admired the structure of your novel, the way all the myriad voices came together in a way that was both exactly right, surprising, and deeply satisfying. What was it like to build that structure? Was it always in you mind or did it evolve organically? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">I began with the idea that the voices would braid together very evenly—which is a highly impractical way to tell a story with multiple narrators and, ultimately, kind of pretentious to boot! That error taught me to think hard about form, and when it’s appropriate to employ a very specific pattern to one’s narrative, and when a pre-conceived structure simply gets in the way of the story. I also made the mistake of beginning each chapter with an archival snippet. Sometimes, it was a Shaker prayer or recipe or saying; sometimes it was a paragraph from a newspaper, or and advertisement, or a sentence from a travel journal; sometimes, it was even a quote from one of the great thinkers and writers of the time—Emerson, Hawthorne, Greeley—who happened to have spent time with the Shakers. The point was to begin each chapter with something factual that would kind of enhance the fiction to come. (And, I suppose that if I’m to be honest, the point was to prove that I’d amassed a ton of information and I kind of wanted to show it off.) But no one really cares about “real” facts when they are wrapped up in a story. The “snippets” got in the way of the narrative, so out they went. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">Once I’d freed myself from those two missteps, all I had to do was balance timing, tension and mood, and trying to figure out the sequencing nearly killed me. Time moves so slowly in the girls’ stories because they live inside this emotionally charged place where very little happens. Meanwhile, I had to invent all kinds of ways to slow the action down in Simon Pryor’s sections, so that his story would keep pace with theirs, and everyone would end up in the right place at the right time by the end. I ripped this novel apart and put it back together again so often and in so many different ways. Of course, I still wish I’d paced certain things differently, but I ran out of time and perspective. That’s just what happens, right?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: small;">What's your writing life like these days? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">I am not going to lie: it’s kind of depressing! I know I should list a thousand projects I have going, but the truth is, I am a glum ruminator before I sit down to write. I go into a kind of hibernation, and my mind runs thick as molasses, and I imagine that I will never write again. Eventually, I come out of it—and I’m relieved to say that I can feel my imagination waking up. <i>Finally.</i> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">I need to clear my plate of all family responsibilities (ha!), and place myself in the secluded wilds of Massachusetts—where I wrote <i>The Visionist</i> over ten summers—and just…begin. The new book is all in my head. I’ve written a few chapters, and an endless shaggy dog story of a synopsis. I’ve even made an Xcel graph of characters and storylines and sub-storylines. (That’s a first, believe me. It took me a week just to figure out how to actually use the program!) Very little of that will end up in the book, but it’s the make-work I felt I had to do to get the ball rolling. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: small;">What's obsessing you now and why? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">I am obsessed by two things. The first is <i>what</i>I’m going to be writing about: the gifts and burdens of legacy, and how the past shapes who we are but also, if we let it, who we can become. The second is, <i>how</i> I’m going to write it, which is to say, the reclusiveness. I am trying to prepare myself for the way I’ll have to live in order to produce another book. Sorry—that’s an extraordinarily self-absorbed answer, but it’s the truth! I may be over dramatizing things—oh, what I would give to be more British about writing!—but I think that immersing myself so deeply in my characters comes at a bit of a cost to my <i>real</i> life. Because if I’m working hard to see things from their perspective, I kind of lose my own, and it can be hard to find it again at the of the day. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: small;">What question didn't I ask that I should have?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: small;">Hmmm. Maybe, <i>Are you finally done talking?</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville;"></span></i></div>

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Published on June 05, 2014 09:21

May 28, 2014

Maggie Shipstead talks about her extraordinary new novel Astonish Me, why she never became a ballet dancer, the Arctic, and so much more

Maggie Shipstead's smart, funny first novel Seating Arrangements was a national bestseller, a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and the winner of the 2012 Dylan Thomas Prize. Her new novel, Astonish Me, is something quite different, both a meditation on what it means to be good at your art, and a human drama about love, jealousy and ambition. It's already racking up the raves. The Boston Globe calls it, "elegant and forceful," NPR called it "flawless," and Ron Charles at the Washington Post said, "This is a novel that you must read."

I agree. And I'm honored to have Maggie here. Thank you, Maggie.

Your novel is so different from your first, Seating Arrangements, moving from sharp comedy to the haunting tragedy of what might have been. What was the writing like for you? Did it feel different to switch gears? What surprised you about this particular book?

Astonish Me was probably the most pleasurable writing experience I’ll ever have, mostly because I didn’t set out to make it a novel. I had a fellowship at Stanford for two years, and in my second year I wrote a short story about a retired ballet dancer named Joan and her rivalry with her next door neighbor in California. At the time, I’d also started working on what I thought would be my second novel. After I was done at Stanford and done with edits for Seating Arrangements, I took a break from the novel project to revise the ballet story, and the story started to expand. By the time I finished my initial “revision,” it was ninety pages long, which I think we can agree is a little bit lengthy for a story. I showed it to my agent, and she saw room for more expansion, so I went back to work. It was only about five months between when I started to revise the story and when I finished the sale draft, and for most of that time I felt like I was somehow cheating on my so-called real novel (which has since died) with this funky ballet side project. But then my publisher ended up buying it two weeks before Seating Arrangements was published, and I thought, oh, okay, it’s a book. The accidental nature of the whole process gave me a lot of freedom: I was really writing for my own enjoyment. Astonish Me’s tone is meant to mimic that of a ballet, especially toward the end, and that was a refreshing departure from the prickliness of Seating Arrangements.

Astonish Me is a great title, and though it was said, I believe, by a ballet master, it resonates for lots of other things going on in your novel. Can you talk about this, please?

Yes, Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes, would tell the artists working for him to “Étonnez-moi,” which was sort of a command and sort of a dare and sort of a rallying cry. I think that’s what we hope for out of live performance: to be profoundly moved, to be astonished by what human beings can do. I just read a quote from David Mamet that the point of theater is to provoke “cleansing awe,” and I thought that was exactly right. As you suggested, though, Astonish Me as a title is also meant to speak to those moments of emotional extremity when we’re shocked, even nearly obliterated, by our own ability to feel. When she first encounters Arslan, Joan is astonished by his dancing but also by the intensity of her desire for him. Their meeting is a real bolt of lightning for her. And even the people we know best are still unknowable on some level and remain capable of turning our worlds upside down.

Did you dance yourself? What was your research into the ballet world like?

I danced for a year when I was five. This was not a success. But my mom is a lifelong ballet lover, and she managed to turn me into one, too. We probably saw four ballets a year from when I was five until I was eighteen and left for college. Since then I’ve kept going to the ballet when I can. So I started writing with a decent amount of baseline knowledge for a layperson. But of course I’ll never know what it’s like to inhabit a dancer’s body—I have an entirely different, much more mundane relationship with my body. I was traveling when I was writing Astonish Me, and I lugged a hardback ballet reference book with me, but mostly I relied on the extremely portable internet, especially YouTube. For every variation I included in the book, I watched and re-watched multiple versions: different dancers, different eras, different productions. I watched behind-the-scenes videos that some companies post of rehearsal and class. I watched documentaries and listened to how dancers described their experiences. Then, unavoidably and alarmingly, I had to imagine the rest.

One of the more aching things about your novel is the whole idea that someone could be good, but not quite good enough to be a star, and what that means and how we deal with that. Is there a way to deal with such a thing, or are we condemned to always yearn?

I think most artists are probably condemned to always yearn to be better (or more celebrated), but I think acknowledging that yearning is helpful as far as dealing with it. My work is never quite what I want it to be, but I’ve made something like peace with always being a little disappointed with myself. If you’re an artist and you think your work is perfect . . . to me, that’s a red flag. I don’t think that kind of self-regard is good for anyone as a human, and I doubt it’s great for the quality of anyone’s work, either. Isn’t the striving part of the point? For some people, though—and maybe this will be me at some point—the process stops being meaningful enough to justify the frustration.

What’s your writing life like?

For the past few months, my writing life has been pretty nonexistent because I’ve been promoting this book. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to work pretty soon, though. When I’m really working, I usually work six or seven days a week. I don’t have a strict schedule. I’m not a morning person, so I usually get up around nine and then fritter away a few hours walking my dog and having breakfast and checking to make sure the Internet is still there. I usually work in the afternoons and evenings. I like to leave the house if I can. Writing Astonish Me, I was in Paris for three months, and I usually went to Starbucks. That sounds so lame and unromantic, but they let you sit there forever and they have outlets and giant coffees, which most French cafes definitely do not. I’ve written both my books during periods when I was living places where I didn’t know anyone and had a lot of time and solitude to work with. My challenge now is to figure out how to be productive and also have something resembling a social life.

What’s obsessing you now and why?

The project I’m working on now involves both the Arctic and the Antarctic, so I suppose I’m obsessed with unforgiving landscapes and the general scale of the earth. I’m in the UK at the moment doing stuff for Astonish Me, but I’m heading to Norway next week, eventually making my way up to the far north and then flying way up into the High Arctic to a group of islands called Svalbard. There’s an organization that runs a trip aboard a tall ship for artists interested in the Arctic. So I’ll be sailing around Svalbard for the second half of June. I would really like to see a polar bear.

 What question didn’t I ask that I should have?

Can't think of a thing!

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Published on May 28, 2014 17:44

The fabulous and funny Nick Belardes talks about A People's History of the Peculiar, being psychic, being impatient, and all things bizarre

I first met Nick Belardes on Facebook . How could I not want to befriend-for-life someone who loves books, has a warped sense of humor and a heart as huge as Jupiter? Best of all, Nick's one hell of a writer. He's the author of Songs of the Glue Machines, Letters from Vegas, and he illustrated Jonathan Evison's NYT bestseller, West of Here. His journalism has appeared right on the home page of CNN, and he's contributed to The Nervous Breakdown, The Weeklings, Latino Rebels, and more. But wait, there's more! Nick also works with the indie movie studio Hectic Film, where he's acted in The Lackey, and he wrote the upcoming feature, Infernum.

A People's History of the Peculiar is a most wondrous book, full of strange facts you really need to know, all of them guaranteed to delight, shock, and just tickle you. Nick asked me to write the foreword, which was one of the most fun pieces I ever wrote, and I'm frankly honored to be associated with anything Nick writes.

Nick, you are too cool for school. Thank you for coming on my blog!

So what sparked the idea of this book?
Years ago I’d been on a writing panel with Brenda Knight, author of Women of the Beat Generation at the Yosemite Writers Conference put on by author Bonnie Hearn Hill. When Brenda went to work for Cleis Press she helped launch the mainstream imprint Viva Editions and asked me to write a quirky book. I can’t even begin to describe how interesting Brenda is. She once called me a spider shaman after I survived a black widow bite. Allen Ginsberg came to one of her readings (one of the weirdest and coolest American poets ever), and she has bizarre ties to the Mothman story (I go into detail about this in A People’s History of the Peculiar). She’s had great success with Viva Editions. Some of her clients have gone on to Oprah fame. Some are exciting word-lore lovers like Arthur Plotnik (The Elements of Expression and Better than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wollopingly Fresh Superlatives) and philosopher-writer Phil Cousineau (Wordcatcher and The Painted Word). So, how could I say no? I studied and taught history, so that’s why there’s so many weird tales from the past in the book. I think the truth of it is Brenda collects authors who hunt knowledge in strange ways and I’ve fallen victim.
What really surprised you in your research? And how did you ever stop researching with amazing facts like these?
I think what surprised me about researching A People’s History of the Peculiar was how accessible the weird really is. Strange stories from the past, weird disease, weird science—all easy to dig into in university library archives and internet news stories. I was amazed how willing people were to talk about the bizarre stories they’re connected to when I called to interview them. Scientists examining Teddy bears in space. A man who has Alice in Wonderland Disease. A guy obsessed with animation who worked on one film for four years. Really made me think how we’re all utterly connected to this strange cosmos. Look at writers. You’re weird. You searched for inter-dimensional portals as a kid. You probably have all kinds of writing habits that people might think are ripsniptiously strange (You see? Arthur Plotnik taught me that cool word). I was obsessed with books, maps and clay as a child. I mean really obsessed. I built entire clay armies and giants out of clay too and waged epic wars. Each clay soldier was armed with a toothpick sword. The giant? A butterknife! Caroline . . . I’ve never stopped researching. I can’t. There’s a man who lives though he has a flat brain. There’s a little part of a cell called a telomere that tells us how long we will live (I don’t want to know). And Mateo Ricci in the 16th century taught the Chinese how to build memory palaces. I can’t stop finding these facts so amazing.
Why do you think truth really is stranger than fiction?
There’s a story in A People’s History of the Peculiar about a man with Cotard’s Delusion. He thinks he’s dead. He wonders why the clocks are still working. Shouldn’t the ticking have stopped? What an interesting POV he would make for a novel. But would it fly? Maybe this has already been done. Maybe it’s too weird to pull off. Of course I know how weird novels get, how the worlds we build can create any kind of believability in the reader’s consciousness. But would anyone want to journey with such a narrator? Perhaps. Either way, Cotard’s Delusion is real, and so is Capgras Syndrome where people think everyone is an imposter, including their pets. Have you ever thought your turtles were imposters, Caroline?
I know the answer to this, but I want your answer--why do you think people absolutely NEED a book like this? (And need it, they do.)
Every toilet needs a book next to it (Throw away those People Magazines for some real kooky knowledge). Every date needs a spark of weird conversation, like, “Did you read about that wastewater job guy who rebuilt photos of people flushed down the toilet? Remember that nude photo of me you ripped up and flushed? Thanks a lot!”
What's your writing life like?
Every project requires unique sorts of channeling of knowledge or characters. Some books I’m more excited to write the rough draft. Others I prefer the research or revision. I don’t write everyday. But when I know I need to get a project done, suddenly I’m in a trance. I’ve fallen through that portal you were searching for as a kid that you talk about in the foreword to A People’s History of the Peculiar and I’m in another dimension. I insanely write and words pour out through an invisible spigot of the imagination. I start logging my word counts. A thousand words a day. Five thousand words a day. Some days upwards of ten thousand. Ros Barber, who wrote The Marlowe Papers (a novel all in verse), once told me a great writing day for her is one hundred words. What? Can you believe that? I think for me, because I prefer fiction, it really depends on the question of have I propelled the story? Has the character done what he/she set out to do? Are they tormented enough? Does my scene have a beginning, middle and end? For A People’s History of the Peculiar it was more about, did I capture the essence of a few interesting tales of the bizarre? That book was written in two months. I was obsessed with finishing it. I had to get a certain amount of strangeness out each day. Bam. Done. Next freak show tale. I should also add that I love to write in interesting places. Homes. Universities. Coffeehouses. There’s a dark inter-dimensional time portal at Texas State University called Boka’s Livingroom where I wrote half the novel Big Spoon, Little Spoon that my agent is currently pitching. I love that place, though most writers I’ve met say they loathe the darkness.
What's obsessing you now and why?
I’m impatient. Aren’t all writers? I have yet to meet a patient one. Not a single creative writer has a lick of ability to wait for anything. When’s the band gonna start? When’s the movie gonna begin? Even while channeling characters it’s like wrestling spirits. Oh, now they’re all reading this saying, “I do! I have patience!” Liars. Every single one of us is an impatient liar. I propose that for at least the next few moments we all admit to ourselves that we are impatient to see our next love, whatever that may be—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenplay—turned into what we intended it to be—a finished product. A book in our hands or a film on the big screen. This obsession has me waiting impatiently as my agent pitches Big Spoon, Little Spoon, a novel about a brother and sister living on an island in a river. You see, where I’m from in Bakersfield, California, the Kern River, which is a very deadly river, passes right through town. When the water’s flowing there are islands that people live on, where cops I call Robocops (and so does the narrator) sometimes come in with knives and shred the tents of the homeless. I’m obsessed with this particular novel selling. I want the narrator, a boy named Sugarfoot, and his sister, Tender, to be able to speak to people all over the world. Can you tell yet that I’m obsessing? I was obsessing recently over a counterculture memoir set in the 1990s, but decided to shelve that again to obsess over a literary fantasy titled A Serendipitous Garden of Lies, a project currently more worthy of my time. Characters from that novel are really speaking to me and want their stories told. They are poking me in the nose as I type this. All of those characters have their own obsessions, and now it’s my job to help all of us obsess and be tortured.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
The other day I was lucky enough to be a guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory when someone named Marty called in. Marty was clearly disturbed by our conversation of Salem witches and talking dogs and the maidservant Tituba declaring she could fly around on a stick.

Marty: I happen to be a redhead . . . And your guest was talking about the Salem Witch Trials. I always assumed redheads were witches. And I was always really concerned about that.

George: Has anyone ever called you a witch, Marty?

Marty: I do have some psychic powers . . .

I suppose the question is: do I have psychic powers? And the answer is yes, an emphatic, yes.

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Published on May 28, 2014 17:29

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