Debut Author Snapshot: Vanessa Veselka

Vanessa Veselka's eclectic résumé ranges from paleontology to union organizing, and now she can add novelist to the list. Her bold debut is Zazen, a scary and yet humorous look at a dystopian America where bomb threats and terrorist attacks are part of daily life. Waitress Della begrudgingly serves up tofu scrambles at a vegan diner, collects maps, attends yoga, and considers leaving the city. Then she decides to make bomb threats of her own. But when real explosions decimate her fake targets, Della's experimental rebellion takes a darker turn.

Veselka shares images with Goodreads that manifest her protagonist's inner thoughts.

Goodreads: Why did you choose the title "Zazen"? How does the word connect to your story?

Vanessa Veselka: Zazen is the Zen term for the practice of sitting meditation, but versions of it exist in all Buddhist practices. It extends beyond that, though, into the way we live. For me with Della, it meant, can you sit still on fire? Can you hold your place when everything is burning and you don't know where it's going or what will happen? I don't see it as a blissful sense of eternity but rather an uncomfortable discipline of the heart. It is related to Della's deepest desires to distance herself from the world she lives in.

GR: Who or what came first in your creation process: Della or her broken-down world?

VV: The first thing I wrote in Zazen was a conversation between Della and her brother, Credence, and the first line was "Do you think you could sit still on fire?" That line didn't make it in but almost the whole section stayed the same, and it's in the first chapter. But I didn't know then how much it would drive the narrative. I was freestyling, which is how I write, stream-of-consciousness dialogue until I hear a voice. The world then grew out of the way Della understood it. She wasn't created within it, but it in her, if you know what I mean.

GR: Describe your world-building process—bomb threats, terrorist attacks, vegans, counterculture. How did you choose certain elements, and what ideas for the world did you discard?

VV: Once I had Della's fear and frustration on the page everything tumbled in faster than I could manage it. I had too much world. I had to scale it back. I could have gone down any alley on any street and found a whole new story line. My rule for excising text was to avoid duplication. That was the ideal, but I'm sure some made it in.

GR: Do you have any favorite dystopian novels?

VV: I have not read any officially dubbed dystopian novels yet, though I should. I should probably start with The Road, since I like McCarthy. But Blood Meridian is just as dystopian to me. Heart of Darkness, Berlin Alexanderplatz, All Quiet on the Western Front—that's the thing about literature, somebody's world is always getting destroyed.