Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 86

The sublime Hilma Wolitzer talks about the second life of books

You know that heady feeling when you read an author's book and you love it so much you want to find all of his or her other works and devour them, too? But sometimes an author's backlist is not in print. Thanks to Open Road Media and Dzanc Books rEprint series, that's changing, and I was thrilled to see that Hilma Wolitzer's early works are now coming back out as ebooks. 
I don't remember when I first met Hilma, though certainly I've followed both her and her daughter Meg, through their books for--well, forever. And I was thrilled to be able to meet both of them at an event I did at the wonderful Center for Fiction. I'm so honored to host Hilma here and even more thrilled that lucky readers can now snap up her backlist!  Thank you, Hilma.



I love a book in hand—an actual, as opposed to a virtual, book—as much as anyone.  Almost forty years ago, when the first copy of my very first novel, ENDING, arrived at my house, a process that involved the post office, I was thrilled by the heft of it, the heady scent of paper and glue and ink, the fact that my book looked and behaved just like all those other books by known writers when I placed it among them on a shelf.  And there was a permanent aspect to it.  Nothing as grand as immortality—my children and eventual grandchildren would provide a version of that—but my book still seemed final and lasting.   That was before I learned about bookstore shelf life, about returns and remaindering and shredding.  Before I came to fear that every cushion I sat on might have been filled with the confetti of one of my novels. 
ENDING received some wonderful reviews, but like most books that don’t become classics, it soon went out of print, out of sight, out of mind.  I wrote several others that met the same fate, as new writers and new books kept coming up like chorus girls.  Then, recently, Open Road Media resurrected all my seemingly perished novels as ebook downloads.  It’s true that you can’t heft them, you can’t smell the paper or the glue or the ink, or even slide them onto a shelf.  But the words and the characters and their stories are still here (or here again), and maybe I’ll find some new readers for them.  All these years later, many of the original ones are probably dead. 
I’m old now and a little cranky, so I didn’t come to digital technology easily or willingly, but I embrace (or at least air-kiss) it for the second life it’s given to my forgotten books and to so many books I’ve loved by others that have fallen out of favor.  I even own an e-reader myself, a not-so-guilty pleasure, and tonight I’ll read with considerable joy by its tiny rechargeable light.

Open Road Media partners with Dzanc to bring the backlist into the future

For a long time, one of the sorrows of my life was that my early backlist was out of print. Those books sometimes showed up on Ebay (and for either ridiculously high or low sums) and while those novels can be found in the library,  they weren't living their fullest lives out in the world. And that made me frustrated and unhappy.
Until Dzanc, partnering with Open Road Media, picked them up.
I'm thrilled to report that Meeting Rozzy Halfway, Lifelines, Into Thin Air, and Family will all be available as part of Dzanc's rEprint series this fall, which includes the likes of T.. C. Boyle, Abby Frucht, and me. And I'm even more thrilled to talk about Open Road Media in this blog.
Co-founded by former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedmann 2009, Open Road Media decided to go back to the backlists, find books that had never been available as ebooks, and publish them to new audiences. And not only that, Open Road will be focused on really marketing these books. I particularly love that they develop a marketing plan for each book each quarter, and if that campaign is not as effective as they would like, why, they develop another one. The goal is to keep selling every author's work. Open Road partners with retailers, offering them promotional ideas, and it uses video as what they are calling their "special sauce," filming many of their authors, and pushing its content to venues like Daily Beast, Huffington Post, and more.
Open Road can bring out lost literary fiction, mystery, science fiction, and romance, and it will be publishing up to 15-20 new titles a year, Open Road Originals and E-riginals, which are printed either through print on demand or short print runs, such as The Salinger Contract, by Adam Langer. Some titles will also be offered as print-on-demand, including a never published manuscript from literary legend Pearl Buck.

So thank you, Dzanc Books. Thank you Open Road. And thank you Algonquin Books. Publishing can thrive with innovation--and we lucky authors (and readers) will worship at your feet!

Rhonda Riley talks about The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope, writing a sequel, how we know the ones we love, and so much more

I first met Rhonda Riley at the amazing bookfest Booktopia in Bellingham, Washington. But I knew of her long before that, because I had fallen in love with her novel, The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope. The novel's about a young woman finding injured soldier Adam on her family's farm. He's not like her. He may not even be human. But even so, they fall in love. Sound magical? It is, indeed. Gorgeously written, the book really asks: how do we come to know the ones we love? I'm honored to have Rhonda here on the blog to talk about her creative process.  Thank you, Rhonda!  
 
For me writing has always been a process of getting a single idea, image, or sensation and following it without worrying about where it is taking me.  The question of “where is this going?” of “what am I trying to say?”  comes later in the revision and refining process.  Writing that first draft feels like lucid dreaming, like those  rare times in dreams in which I realize I am dreaming and therefore creating the scenes of the dream as I am moving through the dream.  Perception and creation are simultaneous, a buoying and lush process and completely non-editorial.  When I was a girl, there was a small swampy pond nearby choked with water hyacinths.  I discovered that if I moved quickly and did not pause, I could walk on them, crossing the pond.  If I stopped or slowed, I sank.  I still have a scar near my Achilles tendon from the time when a submerged stick skewered my ankle after I paused to marvel over the fact that I was walking on water.  In some ways writing feels a lot like reading.  Good fiction inspires me.  I read for the same reason I want to write, both satisfy a similar itch in the brain and the heart.  How-to-write books, though they may be helpful in the editing process, are the antithesis of creativity for me.  They make me anxious and hyper editorial.  And anxiety is synaptic white noise, it neutralizes my creativity.For those times when it I can’t find that creative “on” button, environment and structure are crucial.  Now that my book tour and vacations are over, I am working on a new novel, unrelated to The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope, while also researching a sequel to Adam Hope.  Once again I am discovering how significant environment can be.  I’m in the process of setting up an e-free writing zone and returning one of my computers to its virgin state. That is, I will be writing on a computer that is unplugged in a room without other distractions (BTW such computers have the advantage of being unattractive to other, especially younger, family members).  No phone, no Internet.  My “new” study doesn’t have windows. It’s lit by skylights. So I won’t even have the distraction of squirrels and butterflies.   I really, really hate to admit what a lazy, distractible person I am.  It’s necessary for me to create a good writing space and try to maintain a kind of schedule.  Believe me; I have tried operating on whim--my natural inclination. And I am not one of those people who can easily form habits.  But I find that if I make myself sit down and start writing, I will at least get something done.   If I feed the muse with space and time, she will eventually come back.

Meg Waite Clayton talks about The Wednesday Daughters, mother and daughter relationships, why characters misbehave, how chocolate sustains us, and so much more

New York Times bestseller Meg Waite Clayton is surely one of the most generous and funny authors around. (Yes, this description includes the fact that Meg came to my rescue at the circus-themed Pulpwood Queens Book Festival, cheerfully using her mascara wand to dot  on the freckles I needed to complete my clown outfit.) But really, Meg has done so much more. She tirelessly supports and cheerleads other writers and she's the person you want to go to if you want to talk about craft. Meg's newest book, The Wednesday Daughters is already a Top Summer Read from the Chicago Tribune and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and it's been picked by the Poisoned Pen British Crime Club.

The Wednesday Daughters is an off-shoot from her bestseller, The Wednesday Sisters, but it really stands on its own two glorious and original feet. It explores the bonds that make and sometimes shatter a family, the way mothers and daughters can switch roles, hand down secrets, as well as dreams and identities. The story begins when Ally, one of the original Wednesday Sisters dies, and her daughter Ally enlists the help of two of the other "daughters," to come with her to her mother's writing cottage to offer support and help her untangle her mother's personal effects. But when Hope finds a stack of her mother's old notebooks, all three of this next generation will confront their own hopes, doubts, and grief. 

I'm thrilled to have Meg here to talk about her book, and even more, I'm truly honored to be her friend. Thanks, Meg for both!

What made you return to the daughters of the Wednesday sisters? Did anything surprise you in the writing?
I didn’t actually mean to write a sequel. I wrapped up The Wednesday Sisters with an epilogue, and thought I was done with their stories. But then I was talking with someone about his children, who are biracial, and it dawned on me that Ally’s daughter Hope would likely have faced the kinds of identity issues many children of mixed race do. I thought those issues would be really interesting to explore, and so many readers had asked if I would do a sequel that a sequel that involved the daughters of the original five friends seemed somehow meant to be.
One thing that surprised me was the role Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter ended up playing in the novel—which in part arose from how surprisingly Beatrix potter turns out to be. I sent Ally (from The Wednesday Sisters) on a mission to write a Potter biography, and I thought that was going to be it—her doing research on Potter in the English Lakes. But Potter is such a delightful character that I wanted to do more with her. She shows up in Ally’s journal entries, in ways that completely surprised me, but were an absolute ball to write.
Another was that Kath—who would not be made to do what I wanted her to in The Wednesday Sisters—took her own path again. I can’t seem to make her behave, which is I suppose the good news.
It turned out to be such a warm pleasure to revisit these old friends—and to see them through the eyes of their grown daughters—that I find myself wondering if there might be another Wednesday book of some sort, someday.
There's something so mesmerizing about the relationship of mothers and daughters, what we think we know verses what we need to find out. As Hope and the other Wednesday Daughters go through Hope's recently deceased mother's letters, they don't just confront her life, they confront their own. What do you think makes our mother-daughter bonds so important? Do you think we need to find a new way to navigate those relationships.
The fact that I revisit parent-child relationships here, having already considered them from various angles in all three of my previous novels, suggests how important it those relationships are to me, both as a daughter and as a mother. I think it’s particularly complicated for women of my generation, who grew up with 1950s-style mothers and are now trying to negotiate life as women in the 21stcentury. Some of us have chosen paths our mothers abhor. Some of us feel pressure to live the lives our mothers couldn’t, and so want us to. It’s impossible for a parent not to have dreams for his or her child. And yet at some point, we have to let go of our parents’ expectations for us, and then when it’s our turn, let our children loose to make their own mistakes. But sometimes I think we are getting worse at that rather than better.
What I loved so much about both The Wednesday Sisters and The Wednesday Daughters is that you look at the mother-daughter bond from the viewpoint of each. Did being a mother, as well as a daughter, color what you wrote? (I know, being a mother certainly has changed the way I look at my own mother-daughter relationship.)
I only have sons, but I have to say that being a parent has completely changed my view of my mom. Who knew when we were growing up how hard what she did for us was? The Wednesday Sisters was certainly meant as an homage of sorts to my mom and her friends. It gave me an excuse to talk to her and explore what her life was like, and trying to put myself in her skin really changed my view of her—for the better. And I do carry her mothering and my own into everything I write. I even lift some moments from my journals, and then fictionalize them. Quite a bit of what children do in my novels has been done by my sons.
So much of both these books are about writing, what it means to us, how it frees and sustains us. How much of what you think and feel about writing finds its way into your characters?
I think the best writing comes from exploring what we are passionate about, and I’m certainly passionate about writing. I’ve come to know myself so much better as a writer than I ever did before. And that was true long before I started publishing. In some ways, it’s easier to be your genuine self writing before you’re published, when there are no expectations for you. So I dip into that emotional space pretty regularly through my characters—I suppose in part to invite readers to try it themselves. (Really, jump in, the water is fine!) But like most writers, I came to writing first as a reader, and so much of how I think and feel about writing has roots in my love of reading, and the books that have really made me who I am, or at least brought out whatever good there is in me. When I sit down to write, one little part of me is Scout Finch.
What's your writing life like? I'm always interested in process, maybe because part of me always worries that I could be sharper, clearer, or that I'm somehow doing it wrong. What's your process like? Do you map things out, fly by the seat of your pen, follow your muse?
My answer to pretty much all the “do you” questions about writing is “yes.” I start any way I can, often in my journal. Since no one but me reads them, the pressure is off, which I need when I’m starting a project. Often I just sit down and write a word—any word—and hope other words will feel sorry for it and come sit beside it, in the next empty space. And once I spill ink, the words do come eventually. So the one rule I have for myself is to sit down and write every day. 2,000 words, or 2:00.
One of the things I find very helpful for writing an ensemble novel is a character scrapbook.  It is, quite literally, like your high school scrapbook or a scrapbook from your childhood—a collection of all sorts of bits that help me define each character. It often starts with pictures I’ve torn from magazines. I start with the physical, but it’s not one picture of a person, it tends to be one person’s eyes and another person’s nose and another’s physique and another’s wardrobe choices all put together on the page.  I set aside pages for each character, and for settings, too. There are also things nobody needs to know—like what car they drive or who their childhood boyfriends were—but it helps me to flesh out the characters in a way that makes them feel real to me. They need to feel real to me for me to make them feel real for the reader. I also add snatches of dialogue. And I continue adding to the pages of the scrapbook as I go along.
I also use outlines and flow charts.  One of the things I find useful about a flow chart set up by chapter and character is that you can see if, perhaps, you haven’t touched on any particular character’s story in four or five chapters.  It’s a very helpful visual aid.  Also, in my office, I surround myself with inspiring, thought-provoking pictures.
What's obsessing you now and why?
Chocolate. No, seriously. Chocolate. I’m thinking of using it in a big way in my next novel. My favorite thing to cook has always been brownies, and I once received a marriage proposal based on the fact that the suitor in question would get to eat my brownies until death did us part. Now I’ve got my eye on a class in making fancy chocolate candies.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
Whether I got to visit the gorgeous English Lake District setting? (Yes! Mac and I went just after our youngest set off for college, as we were facing the empty nest. It is seriously one of the world’s most magical places: waterfalls and lakes and mountain ponds, bracken-covered fells and green valleys, stone manor houses and cottages, friendly people, walking paths everywhere. Stop in Bath, England, on the way, and stay in the bed and breakfast there with a slipper tub at the foot of a lovely four-poster bed in the top-floor room—exquisitely romantic bubble bath! If you don’t find yourself madly in love with your traveling companion on that trip, you need to trade him in for someone else.)

Kim McLarin talks about Divorce Dog, race, motherhood, marriage, writing, and more

Kim McLarin is obsessed with the truth. Her new collection of essays, shaped like a memoir, Divorce Dog, explores the darker side of race, divorce, marriage, motherhood and more. A lot of these essays were originally published (to great controversy) in the New York Times and the Root, and I think the fact that Kim's work is so thought-provoking, is what makes it so great. I'm thrilled to have Kim, here. Thank you, Kim.

Tell us how the book sparked? What got you to writing it? And how did you change through the writing?

The truth is that I was at a low point with my real work, writing fiction. Not low in terms of inspiration but in terms of dealing with the reality of being a so-called "midlist" writer, meaning great reviews and not-so-great sales. People, including my editor, suggested I write a memoir in the hopes of gaining readership. But I'm not really that interested in memoir. I believe there is a difference between what's real and what's true, and that the mania for memoir too often focuses on the former to the detriment of the latter. There is great truth in the novels of Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Graham Greene, etc, truth that has shaped my life, and that's where my heart was and remains. So the compromise was this book, a collection of autobiographical essays. It started with a version of the essay on online dating, which I'd published in The New York Times and which generated a lot of, um, feedback.

As to how I changed during the writing, I'm not sure. I hope I'm always changing, and I'm always writing, so it's hard to say.

So much of the book's issues--race, divorce, being a woman-- are thorny ones. Did anything surprise you in the writing?

The one thing that consistently surprises me in all my work is that on paper I turn out to be strangely more optimistic and even hopeful than in real life. It's not that I consider myself a pessimist; more like a realist. But when I read my work later, especially my novels, I'm always surprised at how hopeful they end up being. Of course it's relative. Some people (Happy Campers, I call them) probably think my work is pretty dark!

I loved what you said about the therapists you saw, how you could understand an issue without necessarily knowing what to DO about it (which is why I'm a cognitive therapy maven.) Do you feel that writing this book was, in a way, cognitive therapy, for you?

Hah! My ex-husband is a cognitive therapist so I know all about that field and while I  know it can be an incredibly useful and purposeful therapeutic approach I wouldn't say I was a true believer. I write as much to make sense of the world as to make sense of myself. Writing is therapy for me not in the sense that it lets me identify "errors" in my thinking (cognitive therapy) but in the sense that it legitimizes, at least for me, my interpretation of my own experience, which is so critical, especially for anyone who has grown up designated as "other" somehow, have grown up being told our lives, our history, ourselves, were illegitimate. Writing lets me feel heard and seen, which is really want all of us want, at heart. I'm with the great Joan Didion who said, "In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act."

At one point you remark how your sensitivity made you a writer--but it also made living in the real world so impossibly difficult and sad and depressing sometimes. How DO you think writers can deal with this in a way where they channel that extra sensitivity into our work, but keep it more at bay, perhaps in our lives?

I have no idea. I'm not even sure we should keep it at bay. Wouldn't the world be a better place if more people were more sensitive?

Tell us how and why James Baldwin saved your life?What's obsessing you now and why?

Well, there's a whole essay about that, so I can't really say it in fewer words. James Baldwin is my personal hero. I have pictures of him in my office and in my house. His courage, his relentless clear-eyed perspective on humanity and society and the world, his refusal to engage in magical thinking of any kind, his passion, his eloquence and finally his great compassion for what it means to be human in this world -- all of this inspires me beyond measure. He was also incredibly sensitive and he suffered for it, but the work he left behind will stand the ages.

What's obsessing me now is this whole cult of positive thinking and self-actualization, this obsessive American idealism and the way it bleeds so easily into magical thinking and the whole pervasiveness of it. The other day I said to someone, "Well, maybe I'll find the love I want and maybe I won't." She said, "That's so negative! It's almost nihilism. You have to think positive!" I laughed -- that's not negative, let alone nihilism! That's called accepting reality! Negativism would be saying, "I'll never find love." But this whole cult of positive thinking has so shifted our ability to look clearly at reality that people think being realistic is being negative. This is dangerous stuff. I'm far more compelled by the tenants of Buddhism than of the so-called "The Secret." I'm thinking of writing an essay on it.

What question didn't I ask that I should have:?

What's the biggest misunderstanding of your work?
That because I'm writing about serious topics my work lacks humor. Not to be immodest, but I'm funny. Sometimes hilarious.

Brenda Janowitz talks about Recipe For a Happy Life, how motherhood informs art, and why her hydrangea bush is obsessing her

So, what is the recipe for a happy life? How do we find it? And more importantly, how do we sustain that happiness? That's the question that propels Brenda Janowitz's glorious new novel, Recipe for a Happy Life. Brenda's the author of Jack with a Twist and Scot on the Rocks, and her work has appeared in the New York Post and Publisher's Weekly. I'm thrilled to be interviewing her here for the blog. Thank you, Brenda!


So how do you know what you know about the Hamptons elite?
I spent most of my 20s in Hamptons share houses, so I’ve spent a lot of time in the Hamptons, in Southampton particularly.
As for the Hamptons elite, I happen to know a lot of fancy people, so I’ve been invited to more than my fair share of grand Hamptons estates. And parties. Lots of Hamptons parties.

Can you tell us how your work as a lawyer has informed (or not informed) your life as a writer?
Being a novelist takes the same discipline you need to be a lawyer—you have to be able to sit at your computer, by yourself, for hours on end and write. You also have to do a ton of reading. If that’s not law school, I don’t know what is. And that’s the writing life, too.
Law is what I know. I guess that’s why I always start with a protagonist who’s a lawyer. For my fourth novel, my editor has made me promise that I won’t make any of the characters lawyers. So, I’ve made my protagonist something I’ve always wanted to be: a magazine editor.

What kind of writer are you? Do you have rituals? Do you outline? How do you write? And what was the writing of this particular book like?
I’m the sort of writer who just does whatever works. I’ve always written in the spaces between—those quick hours here and there between work, family and life.
I wrote my first novel without an outline, I wrote my second one with an outline, and for RECIPE, I did a little of both. At one point, I even had the entire book dissected into scenes on tiny little index cards.
I began work on this novel back in 2006, before my first novel was even published. But I don’t think I was ready to write this story just yet.
I picked it back up after finishing my second novel, which was published in 2008, and then worked on RECIPE for years. In the time since I began this novel, I met my husband, got married, bought a house, bought a car, and had two children. Shortly after getting my book deal, I lost my Grandma Dorothy, who gave me the initial idea for the book.
It’s been years of hard work and I’m so completely thrilled that RECIPE is finally out!

What is your personal recipe for a happy life? Or do you think there can be one?
I think a lot about this. I often have the discussion with friends: can you choose to be happy? Are some people just happier than others?
For me, I think that happiness is a choice. Yes, there are major life events that make choosing happiness impossible at times. When my mother had emergency open heart surgery, there was no happiness to be found until I knew she would be okay. But what I’m talking about is regular day-to-day life. You can either be doing your work, at the supermarket, or picking up your kids with a smile on your face, or you can choose not to make the conscious effort to be happy. When the day gets you down, you can either get angry or laugh it off. 
I’ve noticed that when I approach the day with a big smile on my face, it encourages me to be happier. And it makes those around me happier.
For me, the recipe for a happy life would include family and friends. It would also include books and the time to read them.

What's obsessing you now?
That’s a great question for me—I get obsessed with everything! This summer, I’m completely obsessed with flowers. We have a hydrangea bush out in the front of my house (ah, suburban living!), and I’ve been cutting the flowers and making arrangements. I read somewhere that cutting the flowers off the bush will make it stronger, so I’ve been researching how to take care of hydrangea. Fascinating stuff. And of course, my newfound love of gardening is creeping its way into my fourth novel. It’s amazing how whatever you’re obsessed with makes it into those pages, isn’t it?

What question didn't I ask that I should have?
These questions have been great! But I’d love to talk about the inspiration for the book.
As I said earlier, my Grandma Dorothy gave me the initial idea to write this book. But becoming a mother also inspired me, as did my own mom, who is my best friend.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I wasn’t ready to write a book about the bonds of mothers, grandmothers and daughters until I became a mom myself. Once you become a mother, there are so many things you learn—like the way your mother and your mother’s mother love you. You think you know love, but once you become a mother, you learn that there are different types of love. There are deeper ways to love. I couldn’t write a book about women who loved each other that way until I experienced it myself.

Lesley Poling-Kempes talks about Bone Horses, her love affair with the high desert, being haunted by story, and so much more.

There is something about a novel that exists in a terrain that's completely foreign to yours. Lesley Poling-Kempes' novel Bone Horses inhabits the Mexican high desert--and it's a stunner. Lesley is also the author of Canyon of Remembering, Valley of Shining Stone, The Harvey Girls" Women Who Opened the West, and Ghost ranch. I'm thrilled to be interviewing Lesley here on the blog. Thank you, Lesley!
What sparked the novel Bone Horses?
My love affair with the high desert of northern New Mexico, a love that began when I first came to Ghost Ranch on a family vacation as a child in the 1960s. Like my BONE HORSES protagonist, Charlotte, I was born and raised in New York, specifically in Westchester County. Unlike Charlotte, I loved the wild vast empty desert and wide blue sky of the Southwest on sight. I was always working my way back home to this exotic, magnificent place. After college I moved full time into the Indio-Hispanic world of Abiquiu. I began to write the real and imagined stories of my adopted community, first in non-fiction books (I had to come to terms with a thousand tedious footnotes!) that brought me some success as a writer and historian, and then in my first novel Canyon of Remembering and now Bone Horses.
For several decades my primary work was as a writer/historian. For my first 3 books (The Harvey Girls, Valley of Shining Stone, and Ghost Ranch) I interviewed and talked with literally hundreds of old-timers all over the Southwest. I heard remarkable tales of the early days in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona.
Sometimes a story haunts me, moves into my heart, and kindles the fires of my imagination. I knew the moment I heard the story of the wild horses of Ghost Ranch and the Shining Stone basin that I would write a novel that incorporated the tragic story of these long-ago mustangs. During the Dust Bowl the federal government, hoping to somehow save the last bit of grass on the high desert, ordered the removal of the wild horses that roamed the canyonlands. Sharpshooters waited by the watering holes and shot down the horses when they came in to drink. Their skeletons littered the desert for years – the same years, the 1930s, when artist Georgia O’Keeffe first came to Ghost Ranch and began to immortalize this same landscape and its bleached horse bones in her paintings.
I wondered what the loss of that wild herd did to the psyche of the local community. I began to think about how the history of a place is fashioned by what people choose to remember. About how what we come to accept as the real story is unavoidably shaded and shaped by the subjectivity of emotion and memory. History often includes partial truths, and sometimes outright lies. What if a family’s story was built upon half-truths or complete falsehoods? I wondered how our personal history, our sense of self, sense of our place in the world, could be substantially altered if we did not have the complete, unedited story of someone we loved and lost as a child.
These themes became the foundation for Bone Horses. The novel takes place in the late 1990s in the fictional town of Agua Dulce (Sweet Water) at the edge of the Apache Reservation on the high desert that is the New Mexico-Arizona border. I wrote about a place and people I would like to know: self-reliant cowboys, spirited Apache curanderas, Harvard paleontologists, phantom horses, and Charlotte, my proper Scarsdale schoolmarm who reluctantly visits New Mexico and accidentally unearths the long-buried story of her mother’s death. The truth is painful to excavate, but it can and does set Charlotte free.
What are you working on now?
 A book of non-fiction (that means more of those tedious but necessary footnotes!) titled Ladies of the Canyons. This mostly untold bit of mostly true history chronicles the lives of four women friends who came into the hinterlands of the Southwest from Boston and New York before World War 1. Single spinsters in their thirties, these intrepid women left the safety of family, home, and familiar hearth to embark on adventures and misadventures in the deserts and mountains of New Mexico and Arizona. Lots of great photographs. The book is under contract with the University of Arizona Press, due for release in 2015.

Debra Dean, author of The Mirrored World, talks about following the path of a fool

Love. Madness. 18th Century Russia. How could you not be obsessed with a novel like that? I was, and so were the rapturous critics, of Debra Dean's The Mirrored World. Dean is also the author of Confessions of a Falling Woman, short stories (2008); and her debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad (2006), which has been published in twenty languages. I'm so honored to host Debra here on the blog today. Thank you, Debra! 

Following the Path of a FoolDebra Dean
I’m not sure how it is for other writers, but I’ve rarely chosen the story I end up writing. I’ve tried to choose, but the stories that stick are almost always the ones that arrive uninvited and then pitch camp in my consciousness. This is how I came to write The Mirrored World.            In the course of researching my first novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, I took a wrong turn on the internet and happened upon the fascinating legend of an 18th century Russian saint named Xenia. A member of the minor nobility and married to a singer in the Imperial choir, she suffered a great personal tragedy when she was twenty-six. In response, she began to give away all her personal possessions. Eventually she ended up on the streets in the worst slums of St. Petersburg and became famous for healing and prophecy, what is known in Russia as a holy fool. According to Russian Orthodoxy, these are people who, in order to experience the humility of Christ, choose not only to give away all they own but also to renounce worldly reasoning and to act like fools.            I had no intention of writing another novel set in Russia; I’m not Russian so it took a lot of chutzpah to do it once. But Xenia haunted me. I kept wondering ‘What kind of person does this?’ What causes a wealthy woman to give up all her possessions and become one of the homeless persons that she has served? What turns a person into a saint? Is it devotion? Is it a personality disorder?             As much as I love my stuff, I can imagine giving it up. When we moved to Miami, my husband and I left nearly all of our belongings in a storage locker in Seattle and lived without them for three years. With the exception of my Cuisinart and a few books, I found that I didn’t really miss any of it very much. When we finally bought a house here, we were faced with two equally unappealing alternatives: either have the whole lot shipped to Florida (including boxes of sweaters and down comforters) or fly back to Seattle, sort through the packed-to-the-rafters storage space, and pare down. I toyed with a third option: just stopping payment on the storage unit. What we own owns us, and how freeing it might be to simply let it go. Granted, it was a passing fantasy borne of laziness rather than saintliness, but it was a sacrifice I could envision myself making.                         But to give up my powers of reasoning? I am a professor and a writer: my intellect is my stock-in-trade as well as a personal vanity. On the day that I graduated from college, a favorite professor told my parents, “She’s better when she doesn’t think too much.” All these years later, I finally understand the truth of this, but at the time it stung. I have spent all my life trying to do the smart thing or at the very least to avoid looking stupid. This was my shortcoming in my first career as an actor: to be a great actor, you have to risk being publicly foolish. I started thinking about what other gifts might be available if one were to let go of the attachment to logic. And on the other side, I wondered what it must have been like for Xenia’s family to watch someone they loved behave like a mad person.            Once I start thinking this way, I know my course is set. It doesn’t matter what plans I have made for my life, the story is in charge now and for the next few years I will follow it.           

One of my favorite people on the planet, Lizzie Skurnick talks about her wise and hilarious Lizzie Skurnick Books

You all know and adore Lizzie Skurnick, right? She's the columnist for Jezebel.com’s Fine Lines and the author of ten teen books in the Sweet Valley High, Love Stories and Alias series.  She makes up words for the New York Times Magazine, and she's written for the New York Times Sunday Styles, the LA Times, NPR.org, The Washington Post and many other publications. Her poetry has appeared everywhere from Morning Edition to the Iowa Review toNew York magazine online, and she is the recipient of residencies or awards from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the AWP. An expanded edition of her Pushcart Prize-nominated chapbook of poetry, Check-In, was released by Caketrain Books in 2009. She lives in Jersey City and she has the coolest head of curls I have ever seen. Oh, and she's also hilariously funny.
So, remember all those teen angst books you loved and read in the 80s and 90s? Lizzie and Lizzie Skurnick Books are bringing them back, and I couldn't wait to talk to her about them. Thank you so, so much, Lizzie!


How did Lizzie Skurnick Books come about?
The short answer to that question is, the wonderful Robert Lasner and Elizabeth Clementson of Ig Publishing asked if I'd be interested in doing the series with them this past September, after I started posting covers from the era on the Facebook page for my book, Shelf Discovery. We were thrilled and surprised to find that most authors' works were available, and the authors themselves were happy to have their works back back on the shelves. (A few took them back to the original publishers with our offer, and they put them back in print themselves. This is vexing for my OCD, but as long as they're back in print.) 
The long answer is that, as a child, I read hundreds of books that I never forgot that made me who I am; then, at 35, began to write about them; and then, at 39, was given the wonderful opportunity to put them back into print when the publishing community began to jettison them in earnest. 
Why do you think the books we read as teens keep resonating through out lives? At least they do with mine--
We all know that adolescence is a time of great discovery, turmoil, and rich emotional experience (to say nothing of hilarity, unintentional and otherwise). Authors were mining this vein before their was any concept of YA. Remember, from the 30s to the 80s, our families, schools, and workplaces changed radically. There was the rise of feminism and civil rights; there were massive wars; divorce and sexual revolution changed the idea of family; our class structures altered radically. The concept of teenagers at all was fairly hazy until it was codified in the 50's, so in some ways, these books were also about the adolescence of our changing country. 
Of course, they also spanned all genres, from children's classics to domestic dramas to historical fiction to sci-fi to fantasy to thrillers to pure whimsy. (Psychic dolphins; spiritual awakenings; island survival.) So when you have a scene in Beverly Cleary's books about Ramona's father angrily slashing his wife's pancakes to point out they're not cooked, this is actually a scene about a marriage and a recession -- seen from the point of view of a child, when it's most terrifying. That sticks, because that's the kind of experience and conflict we all went through as children. 
So it's almost funny that teen fiction has this reputation of being light and fluffy, or dumbed-down. I often think that if an alien came down to earth, the best way to teach them about the 20th century in our country would be to add this period of literature. Plus some Updike and Baldwin, to be reasonable. 
Do you think, in the light of how YA has changed, that you would have been better off if you had had the books that are out now for teen readers, rather than the ones you had when you were 14?
I think the YA now is very interesting and wonderful in a different way, and I'm glad it's getting published. But I think it is, as my people say, a shande that the books we're republishing went out of print in the first place. You don't want the magical "Jacob Have I Loved" and "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" to be the only books that let readers know this literature was here at all. So I feel honored and privileged to bring them back both to readers that already knew them, and readers that will discover them. 
I'm also especially interested to see what new group of readers they find! When I published my book of poetry, I was really tickled to see that it seemed to go over big with lawyers and, weirdly, my childhood friends' parents. Maybe a splinter group of radical French Socialists will demand Norma Klein in translation. 
How the heck do you manage to do all that you do? You have the busiest, most wonderful life.
I am not happy unless I am doing 18 different things. One of my favorite stories is from a very famous author who told me that she wrote her books in the basement, while the children were sleeping, at the same time that she was creating felted art to try to sell to Bloomingdale's. (This was the 70s.) She had, she told me, no idea which venture would take off.
And I think if you look back at writers' actual lives, you'll find that a lot of them created and published and taught and critiqued and did silly things, all at the same time. Republishing all these old books has also taught me that it's important to publish as much as you can to make sure even one or two things survive. Many of my writers have written 30 books and even had their books made into movies and Afterschool Specials. Thirty books! And now, thirty years later, you can't find a one. I've written something like 14 books and contributed essays to 10? -- I have no idea how many. Only one is in print. And that's not even counting the hundreds of articles I have on the internet, which would all disappear immediately in a power outage.
So if I could say anything to younger writers -- not that you asked, but I am all advice after one cup of coffee -- if you have any interest in immortality, don't spend 10 years polishing one opus. Spend 20 years writing and writing, in hopes that you'll get to know yourself well as an artist, and get good enough to churn out one or two books that survive. (Or, frankly, if you're wildly talented, 30 that someone like me will treasure, and bring back in your dotage.)
What's obsessing you now and why?
After I read and loved "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up The Bodies," my friend Barrie insisted that I read all historical fiction extant, a genre in which she is expert. I'm about 50 books in now -- I can go from Eleanor of Aquitaine up to James I of Scotland. (In truth, there's a period around the Magna Carta and various Edwards where it gets a little hazy. One day I will get it clear who "Edward the Confessor" is.) Luckily there are about 571 books just on Anne Boleyn.
I'm also expecting a baby, and have found that these books all contain a significant amount of information about the stages of giving birth. (And periodically murdering or swapping out babies, but whatever.) So now I know all about "walking" and birthing stools, and when you push, and when you die from the "white leg." I'm hoping they've solved that one by now.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
What authors I am loving now! I'm going to take this opportunity to recommend another dear friend's mother, Judith Merkle Riley, whose hilarious and brilliant historical fiction sustained me the entire time I was planning and executing this pregnancy. If it was a girl, I was probably going to have to call her Judith. However, it is apparently a boy, and Merkle is a no-go.
How can people find and support Lizzie Skurnick Books and what's next for the company?
You can find Lizzie Skurnick Books in any bookstore, online or on-site, as well as, one hopes, any library. We're also about to start up a subscription service so you can simply swan around and get a new book each month, direct from us. We've got a few years' worth of books already in the hopper, so I advise the latter for completists. Look out for a list in the next few weeks! And go to www. lizzieskurnickbooks.com

Why I love Producer/Director/Writer Michael Medeiros' upcoming film TIGER LILY ROAD

I have no clue how or when I met director/producer/writer Michael Medeiros, but we got to talking via email and FB, and at one point I was even sort of in the running to be the “weird-sounding voice he needed for a minute” in his spectacular new film, Tiger Lily Road. (take a gander at clips here.)  I’ve been following the whole process of his film and when Michael sent me a disc of the finished film, I was promptly and totally knocked out.
First of all, the film looks and sounds breathtakingly great, thanks in part ot cinematographer Nils Kenaston and director Medeiros. The movie has moments you don’t forget: the luminescent glow of snow punctuated by the determined tromp of bright boots. Two glossy eggs being beaten in a bowl. A purple sweater that’s so saturated in color you can’t take your eyes off it. All of it ties together against a teasing backdrop of impish music from Ilosz Jeziorski. The performances are so full of nuance, that even a five minute clip featuring a convenience store checkout girl who refuses to sell a hot dog because the buyer is four cents short is a revelation because of both her carefully applied sludge-colored lipstick and the calibrated roll of her eyes.
Medeioros told me that the idea of the film came from a dinner party, when he met these two fantastic women and neither one of them had a partner, and he couldn’t figure out why. He began to think about Callie Khouri’s groundbreaking film, Thelma & Louise, and wondered: are we still stuck over a precipice? Or have we crashed and flown on? If the women, Annie and Louise, in his story, have not evolved beyond that moment in mid-air, what’s holding them back? What do women really want and is it possible? And if it isn’t, then what is? In short, Tiger Lilly Road is a film about women figuring out their options without men. Two best friends and an old woman share a rural Connecticut house, and they are bemoaning their love lives. Why don’t they have successful relationships with men? “It’s over for us,” one character, who used to be the town bad girl, flatly tells the other, and that does seem to be the case. They swear off even trying for men for a year, but then a sexy, young fugitive stumbles into their midst, and each woman begins to have an idea of what she wants—and why—and makes plan to get it. But if you think you know what’s going to happen,  you’re wrong, because the film keeps breaking the ground from under your feet and rearranging it in off-kilter ways, and it’s so deliciously different, that even my very critical teenaged son came in and sat down to watch.
“I wanted to use theater trained actors for their ability to conceptualize complex characters,” Medeiros told me, and the performances are amazing. Rita Gardner, who was in the original production of the Fantasticks with Jerry Orbach, is hilarious and moving as the old woman of the bunch who seems more connected with life and her sexuality than the younger women do. Two-time Emmy winner, Tom Pelphrey, and uber talented stage actresses, Ilvi Dulack and Karen Chamberlain give incandescent performances. So do Tom Nardini and Sarah Shaefe.
Outrageous, smart and deeply subversive, this dark little fairy tale shocks, surprises and pops with provocative dividends. Come on, you know you can’t wait to see it.

MICHAEL MEDEIROS wrote and directed the 2007 dramatic short film,Underground, which played festivals in the UK, France and the U.S. Michael grewup in Hawaii where he became enthralled with the theatre and soon moved to NYto train as an actor with legendary coach, Uta Hagen. He most recently receivedcritical acclaim at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in Camino Real. Film & televisionprojects include, X-Men First Class, Synecdoche New York, Sometime In August(Hamptons –Golden Starfish), RoboCop2, Person of Interest, Son of the MorningStar and Law & Order. He is a founding member of the writer’s lab, New RiverDramatists.