Heather Demetrios's Blog, page 16

What It's About

Today was a hard day. One of those days where I wonder why the heck I do what I do. I’ve talked a little bit before about the ups and downs of the actual writing process. Anne Lamott says it best in Bird By Bird and this is just one of the many, many keen observations in her treasure of a book:

My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested…when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time.

The combination of trying to do the work of writing combined with the business of publishing and the intensity of our social media culture can wreak havoc on the soul. It can, in fact, shred you to pieces. It doesn’t leave a lot of space to create and find those moments when you “feel better and more alive.” One person I spoke to today about the anxiety and pressure of it all used the word “maelstrom,” which is far more civilized than my term for it (begins with “cluster”). The other person (my husband) said: “Imagine…

For Your Halloween Pleasure

Earlier this month I participated in the Something Wicked Strikes series on the Exquisite Captive, I did a lot of research about jinn mythology, reading all kinds of Arab folklore about the creatures that fascinated me so much. Exquisite is the story of Nalia, a jinni who’s been trafficked from her homeland and sold as a slave to a human master. Before I started doing my research, all I knew about jinn was pretty much what every American knows: Disney’s Aladdin and I Dream of Jeannie. Wishes, magic lamps and bottles, harem pants. But as I delved more into the mythology I realized that there is A LOT more to the jinn than I knew. One of the types of jinn I discovered are ghouls. I’d heard the word before, of course. To me, it vaguely translated as “monster of some horrible kind.” But in Middle Eastern…

And Away We Went!

The next day, I hit the road. A car picked me up at my apartment in Brooklyn and we headed to Princeton, NJ for the first stop. It was definitely a little nerve wracking because I didn’t know any of the other authors. I hoped we’d all hit it off and, luckily,…

Answering the 777 Challenge

I was challenged by the fabulous Dark Caravan Cycle, but that would include some serious spoilers. Joplin is about a recovering addict named Joplin Canyon Winters who is just beginning her freshman year of college when the stock market crashes. It’s a modern novel, riffing off The Grapes of Wrath. There’s also a boy named Shane (he’s cute, of course), a Zenned-out banjo player named Finn, and a run-in with the Hell’s Angels, among other things.





So, without further ado, here are my lines:





What did it mean that the stock market had crashed? Pictures I’d seen in history books of stock brokers shining shoes, unemployment lines, and Hooverville slums flitted through my head. Fact: shit was bad in the 1930’s. The next few minutes were a flurry of activity, with books being shoved into backpacks, half empty coffee cups…

Dear Reader

Here’s the deal: when it comes to talking about my books, I could give you the politically correct mommy answer and say that I love all of them equally, but that I just love them in different ways. I could refuse to answer which one I would save first from a burning house or which one I would choose if you were super cruel and made me play a hypothetical Sophie's Choice game. But the truth is, I'll Meet You There is my heart in paper and ink. It hurt to write and after it was born I fucking loved it so much I knew I'd murder anyone who tried to hurt it. (Um. Watch out critics.). I love Something Real and Exquisite Captive to death and would take a bullet for them (please not literal ones), but after you read the letter below, you'll see why I'll Meet You There gets shotgun every time. Perhaps I suck at parenting.





The letter you're about to read was something that I wrote this summer to go out with advanced copies of the novel, which comes out this February. It was primarily intended to be read by bloggers and reviewers and booksellers in order to give them a little context. Parts of this are at the end of the book in the reader's note and acknowledgments, but I wanted to make sure this story was read, that people would know it wasn't just a summer romance YA (but there is romance--the gritty kind I like best). The books must have all been mailed out on the same day because…

Four Exquisite Nights

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Original Art: "The Dark Caravan"

A few months ago, I discovered Indonesian artist Renata Owen on Tumblr. Her work is vibrant, unique, and incredibly imaginative. Everything she makes draws me into her alternate universes and I knew her style would be perfect for a piece to celebrate the beginning of the Dark Caravan Cycle. I contacted Renata and told her my idea: I wanted to commission a piece that features a jinni in a bottle, just like my protagonist, Nalia, in Exquisite Captive. After sharing my work and ideas with her, Renata came up with this gorgeous original work, The Dark Caravan. here.


I asked Renata if I could interview her for…

Trust the Process

“Trust the process.” I would hear this…

Blog Tour Dates and Sites Announced!

Fire…

The Burning

What are you burning to tell the world?



The professor writes this on the board and turns to us, eyes alight. He’s encouraging the people who’ve volunteered today to remind students of this as they work on their college application essays. I’m one of those volunteers, a little nervous, worried that I won’t be able to really help the group of seniors from Cristo Rey Brooklyn High School that I’ve committed to tutoring for the next two days. It’s not that I don’t think these kids have stories—I know they do. My husband, a teacher at this school, comes home and tells them to me. These are kids who live in the inner city, who’ve had struggles and seen more than their fair share of challenges. They have some of the best raw material for a story that you could imagine. But I was worried I wouldn’t know how to draw out the story that would make a college admissions panel say yes, we want this kid? I can barely remember my college essay, just the fact that I started it with a quote from Hamlet. I’m not qualified to do this: I’m a novelist, not a memoirist or college guidance counselor. How was I going to help these kids craft the most important essay of their lives? I didn’t want to be the one who let them down. But my husband reminded me that these essays are personal stories, which, last time he checked are still stories.…