Category / Publishing

by Michael

Good News in Writing World

Chimamanda Adichie is offering the world another book.  I’m placing it in my to-be-read pile.  Her work is refreshing, precise, full, and intelligent.  Both her novels and her collection of stories leave me with a broader world, and I think of her as a gift to the reading public.

If you’re looking for something to read, Americanah is a good option after next month.  I read of the book that a part of its appeal is “its immense, uncontained and beating heart”.  Don’t you love looking forward to a favorite author’s next work?

It looks like Ms. Adichie will work into her novel everything from cultural analysis and race to loving long-distance and the politics of black hair.  Familiarize yourself with Adichie’s earlier work by stopping by her website.

by Michael

Interview with Julie Kibler, Author of Calling Me Home

JulieKibler_Headshot2013Your novel started from an autobiographical nudge.  Tell us about that.  About seven years ago, my dad told me that my white grandmother fell in love with a black man when she was a young woman, but their families tore them apart. It opened a window on my grandmother’s personality, who had never seemed very happy to me. She died almost 20 years ago, so I wasn’t able to ask her the details, but it seemed to me she must have lost her one true love, and thus, her life was never quite the way she imagined it could have been. Because I didn’t know the particulars of what happened, Calling Me Home is almost all fiction, but there are bits and pieces of real life in the settings and characters.

You navigated troubling waters because you dealt with two people—one white, one black—falling in love when they weren’t supposed to fall in love.  What helped your write these characters respectfully?  What aided you to tell their stories with love, if I can put it that way?  I suppose different things. One, there is a lot of literature out there that deals with forbidden love. We learn from those who came before us and have done such a marvelous job of portraying these characters. Two, I contemplated the experiences of those I’ve known who have fallen in love with the “wrong people.” Nobody intentionally sets out to do that—it simply happens. I’ve had conversations with people who had to give up love, or were conflicted by it. I’m a lifelong people watcher, so I think I tend to absorb many of the thoughts and emotions of folks in different situations, whether I experienced them myself or not. Third, true love is a universal experience, with feelings we all recognize and understand if we are healthy beings. You could say that I wrote of Robert and Isabelle’s love as love tends to happen—first, with a hyper focus on the two experiencing it, without regard to anyone or anything else around them, and later, with an increasingly wider focus on the world and how it would accept them. I allowed them to fall in love normally, so to speak, as young, idealist, impulsive teenagers do, and then I pulled the camera back enough to where the consequences came into view. Finally, though I don’t know the specific details of my grandmother’s real story, I feel a bit as though she were present, whispering to me of how it felt to love someone she wasn’t allowed to be with, and eventually to lose him.

I kept thinking about mothers and daughters as I read, partly because the story holds the experiences of a few mother-daughter pairs.  Do you like the idea of families, including mothers and daughters, interacting with your novel in any way?  I’ve been really pleased to hear from women who have read Calling Me Home and told me they are eager to pass the novel on to their mother, daughter, sister, and so on. Some have contacted me again, telling me how much that person enjoyed and sometimes related to the story. I do think it’s an especially appropriate story for making us think about our mother-daughter relationships—not just biological ones, but the surrogate ones we may have developed with other important people in our lives. I think it would be interesting to meet with a mother-daughter book club, or to participate in a group where mothers and teens read the book and discuss the issues. It was very interesting and gratifying to me to see my own mother’s and daughter’s reactions to reading the book and to hear their various thoughts.

You move from history to present day to tell a story about, among other things, friendship.  What were some of the hindrances to Miss Isabelle and Dorrie’s friendship?  In American culture, we’re most often steered toward making close friends with our peers. We tend to view those of other generations with a certain amount of mistrust, even—will they understand our feelings, will they approve or disapprove of our beliefs, actions, passions, when they are from such a different era? When we take that a step further, and encounter someone not only of a different generation, but different background or race, it adds yet another layer to what might already be considered an unlikely relationship. I think friendships like Dorrie and Isabelle’s would almost always to evolve from a situation like theirs—they originally had a business relationship, but the longevity and specifics allowed it to gradually deepen and become important to each of them.

But I also believe their friendship was almost inevitable—not necessarily because of their working relationship, but because of who each of them was and what each of them needed. Dorrie had a big heart and great compassion for her clients—not just a detached sense of seeing each one as “another head of hair.” Isabelle was very independent for an elderly woman, but also lonely. Dorrie was the person who reached out to her and didn’t forget her when she could no longer drive or get out and about. Dorrie was also patient with Isabelle—giving her lots of leeway with her crankiness, not taking it personally, and allowing her to share her deepest secrets on her own timing—until she began to sense it was critical for Isabelle to get that story out in the open. And Dorrie felt nurtured by Isabelle—something she didn’t always feel from her own mother. Not least of all, they made each other laugh, which is rarely a bad place to start a friendship.

Given the way your personal story related to Calling Me Home, in ways do you think readers can do what you’ve done?  Your work is courageous in turning toward a relative’s background for inspiration, for truth, for pieces of their story.  I struggled with my “right” to tell this story for several years before I began writing it, and throughout the process. I finally determined I was the only one who could tell this particular story exactly the way it came to me. For instance, someone else could write a story about an interracial relationship, from the perspective they chose or that chose them, and it would be completely different based on what they bring to the table—their own beliefs, passions, and life experiences.

Book Club Reading CMHOne of my hopes while writing the story was that readers would think about and talk about the issues within, how they made them feel, and maybe even the memories the reading stirred up. I’ve included a photo here from a book club meeting I recently attended at an assisted living center. Though I’m in the forefront of the photo, the focus is on an attendee as she described a personal experience she had in 1945, coincidentally in the same area of Kentucky where Calling Me Home is set. It was a particularly meaningful moment along this journey for me as she is about the same age as Isabelle in my story, and she could speak firsthand about the era. The discussion in general with these folks was pretty fascinating, and this photo represents one of the really good days since publication happened.

To aspiring writers, I’d say this: If you have an idea for a story—even if it feels frightening—tell it. Write it the best you can.

What did you find difficult in your writing process (whatever you call your process for the novel)?  What was life-giving?  Strangely, once I gave myself permission to write this story, it flowed fairly quickly and easily. I always tell people, however, that when I’m drafting, I love revising, and when I’m revising, I love drafting. It’s all work. It’s work I love, but it’s work. Some days the work is easy. Other days, it’s a struggle to get five or ten words on the page. But honestly, for me, the most difficult part of writing is deciding to jump in. Deciding I’ve found the right story, the right conflicts, characters, voices, and so on. Once I get past that, I’m mostly off and running. The part where I’m off and running is life-giving. The part before that can take some time, and it feels like dying a slow and painful death. So I guess you could say that for me, writing is like living life in reverse. I’m not sure who you were writing to in this blog post you put up on April 5, but it was speaking right to me.

The journey your characters took was full of surprises, particularly for Dorrie.  Thinking about your journey to bring this novel about, did you have any notable surprises you can share?  I decided to set my story in a small town like the ones where my dad and grandmother grew up in northeast Kentucky. I knew the area somewhat, having been born in Kentucky and lived there off and on as a child, and visiting my grandparents in the Cincinnati and Newport metro area as a kid, then brief visits back as an adult. But it was mostly a child’s eye view, and a fairly modern one. I asked my dad to tell me about the town where he grew up, when he was growing up. I was shocked when he told me there was a sign at the edge of town warning black people to be gone by sundown. I had never heard of such a thing, and my story took on a whole new dimension as a result. It felt important to explore the history of these “sundown towns,” and I was blown away to learn all the different ways people of color were excluded from communities in every part of the United States, from north to south, east to west. It made setting Calling Me Home in the Cincinnati/Newport area seem even more appropriate. Though not the physical center of America, in a way, it’s a gateway between east and west, north and south, and what happened and still happens there is kind of the heartbeat of our country.

CMH_Cover_smallTalk about the work you’re doing now…for the novel.  I imagine you are still working on the book, even if it looks like marketing and not revising.  This is a great question, and it’s so interesting how you’ve worded it–“looks like marketing and not revising.” I was JUST thinking about this today as I attempted to do some work on my new story. I said to myself, “Wow, I almost feel like I’m still writing Calling Me Home. How on earth can I move on to something new?”

Between considering questions asked by book clubs, in interviews, through email, and in discussions of any kind, and simply still thinking about the story every single day, I do feel like I’m still working on it, sometimes harder than ever. It is challenging to find a new frame of mind, where I can devote mental energy to creating a new world, new characters, new relationships, while still focusing so much on the already published novel. I would really like to be immersed in something new, and am taking baby steps. In the meantime, I continue to promote Calling Me Home through social media, bookstore events and book clubs, and any other means that seems logical or beneficial, and that work won’t end any time soon.

I also felt it was important to try to give back in some way and have been looking for ways to involve myself, at the very least financially, with organizations that address some of the issues in my book—racism, single parenting issues, at-risk teens. I decided to partner with a local nonprofit called Santa Fe Youth Services in Fort Worth, Texas. I already knew of them and had a lot of confidence in the work they do. They help families with at-risk teenagers—kids who have been in trouble with the law, or struggle with drugs or alcohol, or have behavioral issues, for instance. The organization works hands-on with these families, helping them with parenting skills and conflict resolution and attempting to connect them with the additional resources they need to help their children succeed.

How can readers stay in touch with you and support your work?  I am most active on my Facebook author page (www.facebook.com/juliekiblerauthor), where I post updates about book news, links to interviews and articles, and interact with readers. I really enjoy getting emails and messages from readers, telling me their reaction to Calling Me Home, and try to answer each one, though I get a little behind on occasion. I have a website (www.juliekibler.com) where readers can learn about bookstore events, conferences I’m attending, etc. I’m a lightweight Twitterer: @juliekibler

Readers can support me most by telling friends and family (or hey, even strangers!) about Calling Me Home if they enjoyed it. Word-of-mouth is the single most important tool in building audience for a book. Readers, if you recently read a book and loved it, I challenge you to tell five or ten people about it—friends, family, coworkers, whether in person, through your Facebook page or on Twitter, through suggesting your book club read it—anywhere you talk to people. Why keep it a secret? Books are for sharing, and the author will appreciate your assistance in spreading the word!

by Michael

The Warmth of Other Suns Book Giveaway

Isabel Wilkerson, whose book is wonderful for a hundred reasons, wrote about the price of writing The Warmth of Other Suns and a “cave of obligation” over at More.  In celebration of the book being in paperback for a year, I’m giving away two copies.  Leave a comment by Saturday, midnight, CST, and I’ll choose.

I awoke to the cooing of pigeons on the ledge outside my window and the sight of the slate rooftops of rue Racine, gray and streaking soot from the centuries. I could make out the murmur of traffic below, the coughs from the room across the hall, the fumbling for keys and the turning of doorknobs, the whispers and knocking of chambermaids and, in the distance, the aah-ee, aah-ee, aah-eeof an unmistakably foreign police siren. I was in Paris, the last refuge of the man who had inspired me and, in a literary sense, rescued me. I was in the hotel where he’d spent his first night here, waking to the same sky and sounds that he hoped would save him precisely 66 years ago. I’d followed him as far as the trail would lead me. I was in room 703 of the Hotel Trianon in search of the Paris of novelist Richard Wright.

Only a few years before, I’d been in a deep forest, seeking a way out. On leave from the best job I could imagine—Chicago bureau chief of theNew York Times, where I’d won a Pulitzer Prize—I had jumped into the unknown to begin writing a book, the first I’d ever attempted. It was ambitious; I wanted to tell the story of the Great Migration, from 1915 to 1970, when six million African Americans, my parents among them, fled the Jim Crow South like immigrants within their own land, changing our culture, our politics, our country. The project was taking longer than I had ever imagined. I was in year 12 or 13, having interviewed more than 1,200 people, narrowed them down to three flawed and aging protagonists and buried myself in their lives as I retraced their journeys from the rural South to the big cities of the North and West. One of the major events of the 20th century, this was a story so big, I couldn’t see the end of it.

In the middle of what was quite enough, the moorings of my own life shifted around me. I moved from the Midwest to the South, where the people I was writing about had come from. My beloved father, who had tried nudging me into the safety of an engineering career rather than the uncertainties of writing, who had reluctantly abided my decision and then saved everything I wrote (“Isabel’s story on page A14,” he noted in his draftsman’s pen at the top of a New York Timesfrom the ’90s), passed away and would not see the fruit of my hardest labor. With his death, I inherited the role of caregiver for my wheelchair-bound mother, who had always been the proudly and lovably more difficult of the two. And within a year, my marriage of 14 years ended. As for the book I’d signed to write, I was toiling away but not moving forward.

Then I came across these words in the endnotes of Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy:

I was leaving the South

To fling myself into the unknown. . . .

I was taking a part of the South

To transplant in alien soil,

To see if it could grow differently,

If it could drink of new and cool rains,

Bend in strange winds,

Respond to the warmth of other suns

And, perhaps, to bloom.

These words from Wright, author of Native Son, a classic of American literature, were buried in the appendix to his autobiography, as if waiting for an obsessive like me to discover them. In these lines (which are deleted in the current-day edition), Wright contemplated the moment he fled Mississippi for Chicago as part of the Great Migration. He would become the poet laureate of this turning point in American history, whose retelling had taken hold of my life.

By the time I read Wright’s words, I had worked on my book for so long that people began to doubt if I’d ever finish it. Once, they couldn’t stop asking if I’d found my subjects or completed the prologue; now they avoided any mention of it. If I brought it up, it was as if I were talking about an invisible friend. But I saw those words, and a thin sliver of daylight broke through the forest leaves and assured me that I could finish this thing. They gave what I’d been researching all these years a purpose, a breath, a name. I raced to finish it. Published two years later, it was called The Warmth of Other Suns.

Finish reading Ms. Wilkerson’s article by clicking here.

by Michael

Nathan Bransford on Revision Fatigue

I’ve read Nathan Bransford’s blog for years and find it a chest of treasured tools.  He wrote recently about revision, a lovely mess I’m in the middle of, reflecting on a post by Jennifer Hubbard.

The best way to deal with revision fatigue is to trust in your heart that it’s a very useful and necessary feeling: what better time to turn a critical eye on your book than when you think it is an affront to humanity?

The good news is, as Jennifer says, it means you’re almost done (at least for now). The danger is getting discouraged by your fatigue and just calling your work finished and turning it in before you’ve given yourself some time to utilize that fatigue. It can be demoralizing, after all that time and effort, to revisit your work and be unsure of what it was all for.

Just know that the feeling will pass and instead let yourself simmer in it for a while. Power through and keep working. You’ll be glad you did later.

Nathan’s post is here.

by Michael

Eating Dirt: Miwa Messer’s Conversation with Charlotte Gill

I found and am posting a conversation with Charlotte Gill, author of the memoir, Eating Dirt.  I hope you enjoy this quick compelling interview from B&N:

Dear Reader,

I have the best job in the world, and Charlotte Gill’s Eating Dirt made me want to drop everything, ditch NYC, and head out into the wilderness to plant trees — and I’m hardly the only selection committee reader who felt that way.  Eating Dirt is more than a memoir about Gill’s 20-year stint planting trees in Canada; it’s also an exploration of the natural world, and our place in it, written with incredible verve and exuberance.

Charlotte discusses planting trees, writing about natural history, and wanting to be transported by fiction, among other things, with Discover Great New Writers.

You were a professional tree planter for nearly 20 years. You grew up in New York State, thousands of miles from the wilderness you describe in Eating Dirt. How did you get involved in the business?

I moved to Canada to go to college. Tree planting was a very common summer job for undergraduates, but I had never heard of it before. My roommate was a tree planter. She would return from summers spent deep in the woods looking fit, bug-bitten and suntanned. She told me stories about her coworkers—they sounded to me like crazy woodland gypsies. She showed me photos of clearcuts that went on in all directions as far as the eye could see. To me, this strange occupation looked both totally fascinating and deeply intimidating. But I knew I just had to try it myself. Certainly there’d been nothing in my upbringing that had prepared me for hard physical labor. If I had known what I was getting into, I would never have gone in the first place.

Planting trees is hard physical labor. You say that it’s one of the dirtiest jobs left in the modern world. Why would anyone want to make a career of such a thing? 

Planting trees is a sweaty, filthy job. It’s done by hand and on foot, often through very rough, steep terrain. There are heavy loads of seedlings to carry. There is bad weather and heat exhaustion. There are biting insects and sore backs, and all the other repetitive strain injuries that come with doing something a few thousand times a day. Most tree planters are in some kind of discomfort all the time. On the upside, tree planters go places most people would never get to see in the course of their entire lives. Some of these are stunning, wild geographies. We commute to work in boats and helicopters. We cross paths with exotic wildlife. And we make incredible friendships—a kind of soldier love. Writing the book, I wanted to explore what that attraction was all about. What makes anyone take on an adventure like this, even though they know they’ll get dirty, they’ll weep, they’ll wish they’d never said yes? Maybe we suspect we’ll get to the bottom of ourselves and discover some hidden well of courage and fortitude—often enough that’s exactly what happens.
There is also a love story inside the book. Can you say a little bit about that?

There is a character in the book named K.T. He was my boyfriend at the time. We shared our planting experience for several years, and the narrative follows our time together in the woods. I never intended to cover our relationship when I began Eating Dirt. I think it’s incredibly difficult to do justice to a workplace romance, especially when it’s going reasonably well. But as I wrote I discovered that our work and our companionship were intertwined. Together, we’d experienced exhaustion, stress, hunger, competition and danger. These are reasonably normal things to face on the job, but they’re also deeply revealing moments when you’re in a relationship. They distil one’s character traits. After planting trees, I knew he’d make a patient, caring, hardworking husband, which he is even now. We still talk about our old job. It’s a topic of fond nostalgia at our house.

You describe the biology and the planetary evolution of trees and forests in a way that’s easy to understand. Do you enjoy writing about natural history?

I’ve always loved reading natural history, and I find it a wonderful challenge to capture science in a way that’s engaging and easy to read. My research began with burning questions. Is planting trees a cure for climate change? Can it do all the things we hope it might ecologically, aesthetically and economically? I discovered that the answers were more nuanced and variable than I’d expected. Does planting trees work? It depends on what we want it to do. Do we want to renew a timber supply? Or are we attempting to recreate forest ecosystems in all their layered complexity? The answers lie embedded in the history of trees on this planet, which in itself is quite an elegant story.

You’ve planted over a million seedlings in your career. Have you ever revisited some of these places?

We don’t often go back. Ours is a forward-moving business, as is the logging industry. We plant the trees and move along to the next place. On the few occasions when I’ve gone back to see the trees that I’ve planted I’ve been astounded by their resilience as a species. It’s as if survival is part of their in-built design. You can plant a tree in a cupful of dry dirt sandwiched between two rocks and that tree will try to grow. That’s a forest’s only job—to build. The trees that I planted when I was a teenager are over twenty years old now. They’d be the size of exceptionally large Christmas trees. And they’ve still got a lot of growing to do.

Who have you discovered lately?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is just the kind of non-fiction I love—a book that begins with a deceptively tiny idea but explores themes as big as immortality. HeLa cells: they’re in practically every biology lab in the world. Their original donor, Henrietta Lacks, is brought back to life in vivid detail—her clothes, her children, even the color of her toenail polish.

In my other life I’m a fiction writer, and lately I’ve been indulging my abiding love of novels. Ever since reading Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief I’ve been taken with the geography of Florida swamps. I’ve never visited any of these places, but the heat and the humidity, the lush vegetation—well, it’s the perfect place to set a novel, which is why I knew I’d read Karen Russell’s Swamplandia. I’ve also got Heidi Julavits, The Vanishers on my bookshelf. Who wouldn’t want to read a story set in a school for psychics? When I read fiction, I love to be whisked off to other worlds where different laws of physics apply. I want to be transported.

Cheers, Miwa

by Michael

Dana Kaye on Setting Yourself Apart

The point is, having a quality product (in your case, a good book), isn’t always enough to make it. Neither is good publicity. Ultimately, there has to be a demand for your product and it needs to be set apart from the competition. In our neighborhood, there are tons of fine dining restaurants. But not a lot of wine bars that offer small plates.

As authors, what sets your book apart? Sometimes, it’s the price point (offering a $2.99 sale or discounting the pre-order). It can also be the content, telling a story in a unique way. You can also move to areas of less competition and try to reach a new audience through publicity and marketing.

I’ve been in this business long enough to see that a wonderful book with rave reviews doesn’t necessarily equate to success. It takes creativity, drive, and setting yourself apart from the competition.

by Michael

Bria Brissey’s Interview with Michelle Gagnon

I’m pasting Bria Brissey’s interview with Michelle Gagnon where she discusses her debut YA novel, Don’t Turn Around.  I found the interview here at shelf life:

Michelle Gagnon’s Don’t Turn Around hits shelves today. The first in a planned trilogy, Don’t Turn Around follows 16-year-old Noa, a computer hacker who uses her skills to stay off the grid, safely anonymous. Check out the trailer and first two chapters here. In honor of her YA debut, Gagnon chats about the inspiration for the book and shares what she learned from the hackers she consulted for the book.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where did you come up with the idea for Don’t Turn Around?
MICHELLE GAGNON: I was really fascinated by some of the things happening with Anonymous, the hackers group. I don’t necessarily agree with everything they’ve done, but I thought it was a really interesting use of technology and the fact that there’s a whole group of people who can take over systems and fight things from behind the scenes. And teenagers are such amazing computer whizzes, they are far better than most of their adult counterparts. I thought it would be interesting to see what a couple of teenage hackers would do if they actually formed their own group that targeted issues that were more their concern. Out of that, I got the idea for Peter’s group, Alliance, which is loosely based on the Anonymous model. And then Noa waking up on the table, that was just something that an editor and I had discussed. I kind of took the idea and ran with it, and I created this fictional illness that was only effecting teenagers.

This is your first young-adult novel. Why make the switch to YA?
I’d never really considered doing young-adult novels, but one of the things that a friend pointed out to me is that I’ve actually had a teenage character in almost every adult novel that I’ve written. He suggested that I work with characters who were just teenagers and tell everything from their perspective. It was fun to go back to that mindset of being young and having everything be so important and critical. Having all the emotions be so much more intense, and having such a very clear sense of right and wrong, which I think tends to get muddier as you get older.

I hear you had your own computer meltdown while you were writing. What happened?
I had such a computer meltdown! I have no idea. That’s the great irony of this book is that I am such a luddite — I spend a lot of time at the Apple store at the Genius help desk. And I had a bunch of hackers who were helping me with this book, and they thought that it was absolutely hilarious. And now, working on book 2, I’ve split my time between San Francisco and L.A. I fly Southwest, and one of the flight attendants on one of the flights a couple of months ago—while I was working on book 2—handed a glass of wine to the person next to me and spilled the entire thing on my keyboard. So that was the demise of my next computer. So apparently with each book in this trilogy I’ll be suffering from horrible computer failures that I’m going to have to claw my way back from.

So you worked with actual hackers for the book? How did you meet those people? 
I have a good friend who runs an IT company called Rocket Science. That’s a real thing. They don’t do exactly what I say they do in the book. They are more of an IT support company. But the place is full of 20-year-olds who know more about computers than any person has a right to. The head of that company is a good friend of mine, and he referred me to some people.

Did you learn anything interesting?
What they really drilled into me is that there’s a difference between hackers and crackers. Hackers there’s not really a malevolent intent behind it. They’re trying to test systems and find doors, but not necessarily do harm. If anything they consider themselves to be White Hatters who are doing this for the good of the companies and the networks that they’re infiltrating. And then there are crackers who are more like the equivalent of a teenager spraying graffiti across a wall. Not a graffiti artist, just trying to deface something. And the hackers very much look down on the crackers. I wasn’t aware at all that there were these two very separate camps, and that was something that they clarified for me.

Anything else you want to add? 
Going through this I really learned a lot about the foster care system, and one of my great sources of frustration was that it was really hard to find groups that were actually helping kids in the system. A lot of the stuff that I put in about Noa’s childhood and her upbringing was based on real stories that I found. Kind of by chance I found out about an organization call Rising Tides that another friend of a friend recently established. [Rising Tides is a] non-profit where you can directly support foster teens who are aging out of the system. You can directly help kids who turn 18 and have absolutely no one to rely on. It’s really amazing idea and an amazing group. So I’ve been working with them a little bit to start supporting them and helping them get off the ground.

by Michael

Author Interview with Camille Noe Pagan

I understand that titles are often changed throughout the publishing process.  Tell us how your title came about.

Hi Michael, thanks so much for including me on your stellar blog.

I was about halfway through the first draft of this novel when the title, The Art of Forgetting, came to me. It seemed spot on—and happily, my editor and publisher agreed! My agent tells me this is extremely rare, so I don’t anticipate it will happen for future novels.

What new things did you learn in writing this novel?  For example, did you already have knowledge of Traumatic Brain Injury?

I’m a journalist by day, and I was writing an article about brain health when a doctor pointed out that brain injury is extremely common in women under the age of 40—more than breast and most other cancers, in fact. I started to research the topic and discovered that even a seemingly-small injury could lead to significant personality changes. It wasn’t long before I realized I had a great book plot on my hands. I did a lot of research while I was writing Forgetting—combing through medical journals, interviewing neurologists and even people who’d experienced brain injuries. What I learned is that while there are often commonalities in individuals with brain injury, no two brain injuries are identical in their symptoms. As a novelist, this gave me leeway to be creative with my plot and characters.

It seems your characters negotiated their friendships with care.  All of them had their own unique qualities, their own memories, and perspectives shaped by remembered things.  How did you balance the many needs, issues, and negotiations which were at work?  

It was an extremely organic process: I tried to create characters who were true to life, from their larger motivations. I have to give a lot of credit to my agent and editor; this being my first novel, I made a lot of rookie mistakes—like having too many side characters—during earlier drafts. My editor, especially, helped me cull unnecessary information in order to streamline the story.

Who was your most challenging character to listen to, write, create?  Do you know why?

Julia, hands down. She’s a very strong personality—someone with natural confidence who rarely doubts her own decisions. For that reason, she’s magnetic to Marissa, who can be meek and wishes she herself was naturally more confident.

Even after suffering a brain injury that alters her personality, many of Julia’s (often unlikable, if realistic) traits remain. Some readers told me that they hated Julia from start to finish, but the response I hear more often is that readers have had someone similar to Julia in their lives at one point.

Your story has a lot about body image, physical activity, and health in it. From running and dancing to building young girls, there’s a lot there.  All of these are lengthy, relevant topics for children, youth, and adult readers.  What kind of reception have you gotten relative to those topics?  Any interesting feedback or stories from your readers?

You know, as someone who’s been writing about women’s health and psychology for more than a decade, I had a lot of material to work with and it felt natural to use it for my first novel. Women, especially younger women, spend a lot of time thinking about body image—not just their own, but body image as a concept, and what it means to be a woman comfortable in your own skin. I wanted this to be reflected in Marissa, who works at a women’s health magazine and struggles with some of the messages that her magazine conveys to readers.

The very best feedback I’ve received has been from readers who’ve suffered brain injury or who know someone who’s experienced brain injury. Not long after my novel was published, a woman who had copyedited the book contacted me. As it turned out, someone close to her had recently suffered a brain injury, and she said that my novel had been a source of comfort during that difficult time. It was the highest praise I could have received. To connect on that level, even with one reader—for me, that’s really the whole point of writing.

How would you like people to talk about this novel?  What connections would you instigate from the book, if you could do so?

I didn’t write the book with a message in mind; the most I hope for with any novel is that readers will laugh a little and maybe cry a bit, too. The books that move me most are both funny and sad.

Discuss this stage of your novel’s life.  It’s written, edited, and published.  What are you doing with, for, and because of it now?

After 18 months of promoting Forgetting—before and during the hardback release, and then again when the paperback came out two months ago—I had to step back and just let it be. Right now, I’m focused on making my second novel as strong as it can be, which requires solid blocks of writing time and mental focus. Which means stepping away from Facebook, Twitter and blogs. It’s not easy!

What are you reading these days?

I’m just about finished with Nora Ephron’s HEARTBURN; the woman was a comedic genius. I recently read Matthew Norman’s terrific debut, DOMESTIC VIOLETS, which reminded me very much of Jonathan Tropper, who is one of my all-time favorite authors (I can’t wait for his latest, ONE LAST THING BEFORE I GO). I also enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s GONE GIRL—that’s sitting on the NYT bestseller list for a reason!—and Deborah Copaken Kogan’s THE RED BOOK. I’ve read a few that I didn’t love, too, but mum’s the word on those. It takes a lot of work to string 80,000+ words together in a coherent manner, so even if I didn’t connect with a book, you’ll never catch me trashing it or its author.

Are you working on anything you can talk about?

Absolutely! I just wrapped up the first draft of what I hope will be my second novel. It’s about four childhood friends who grew up in the Detroit area, one of whom becomes famous, and what happens when they reunite in their mid-thirties. I’m also reworking a historical fiction novel that I wrote last year. It needs a lot of work, but I have my fingers crossed that it will be published one day!

How can readers follow you and support your work?

My website is camillenoepagan.com; I’m also on Twitter at @cnoepagan and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CamilleNoePaganBooks

by Michael

Interview & Book Giveaway With Alethea Black, Author of I Knew You’d Be Lovely

MW: Tell us about you, perhaps before, behind, or beneath the pages of your work.

AB: I lead a fairly simple life. I live in a house on a lake with a wood-burning stove and a little dog (a dappled miniature dachshund) who’s sleeping beside me right now. I’m a night owl, which is too bad, because I’ve heard the sun rises over the lake. But the moon rises over it, too, so it all works out.

MW:How did you start writing, and how do you sustain your writing life?

AB: I started writing after my sister gave me a 1994 volume of The Best American Short Stories. Something about the stories in that anthology gave me a feeling of having come home. For many years I sustained my writing habit by proofreading for BusinessWeek, but I was laid off in 2009 when the magazine was bought by Bloomberg.

MW: What can you tell us about your writing process?  What helps you nurture your work?

AB: I tend to write a lot when an idea is exciting to me and a project feels urgent — then I can really take the night owl tendency to extremes — and not to write very much when things aren’t hot. This is probably the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but it’s how things seem to work for me. I find ideas everywhere; the book I’m working on now takes its opening line from something a writer named Mo told me a couple of years ago at the all-night post office across from Madison Square Garden.

MW: Can you give us a view into your world of writing short stories?  What makes the form of fiction interesting to you?

AB: I like intelligent stories with humor and heart, and that’s the kind I try to write. The thing I love about storytelling — I’ve been thinking about this lately — is that sense it can give you that everything is somehow okay, even when things are stupendously, outrageously not okay. There’s a mysterious sense of consolation that  accompanies a well-told story.

MW: Your stories link through decisive moments.  Each one looks to emerge from or respond to a slice of time that is significant for your characters.  Did you always have that link or did that develop as you wrote?

AB: I had a teacher who told us that a writer should always be asking: “Why is this night different from every other?” I’ve tried to abide by that, even when it’s not Passover. The thing that interests me are those moments in life — even if they are subtle — when everything changes.

MW: How were you able to keep the stories fresh and engaging while keeping that common quality to them?

AB: Thank you for the compliment! I tend to write about everyday people in everyday situations but I try to find that spark of the extraordinary. If I can’t keep a story fresh and engaging, it goes in the trash and I start over. Life is short.

MW: The stories take place in the Northeast mostly—with my city being a shining exception!  Do you see geography as important either for your stories in the collection or for your self as an author?

AB: Who doesn’t love Chicago? Actually, I’m not very interested in geography, and I don’t think of myself as a regional writer in any sense. When other writers start to talk about geography, that’s usually when I take a nap. The landscape that interests me is the human heart.

MW: What are you reading or about to read these days?

AB: I just read CORPUS CHRISTI by Bret Anthony Johnston; I’m partway through VOLT by Alan Heathcock; and I’m about to pre-order THE WORLD WITHOUT YOU by Joshua Henkin.

MW: Are you currently working on things you can talk about?  If so, what?  And how can my readers keep in touch with you?

AB: My agent has my next book, a short novel called THE KEY, about a woman who’s missing her dead father when a stranger in Grand Central Station hands her a key. The next next book is about two brothers, one successful and one feckless, who spend a weekend together. I love hearing from readers — it’s been my favorite part of the publishing experience. They can find me at http://aletheablack.com.

Now for the giveaway.  If you’re interested in getting a free copy of Alethea’s collection, leave a comment with the title of the last book you read and a sentence about what you thought of the book.  And maybe tell other people to do the same.  Leave the comment by Friday 8, 11:59p.m.  I’ll choose a winner sometime Saturday and email the winner for a mailing address.

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by Michael

How Amina Gautier Became A Writer

I follow Kelcey Parker’s blog, phdincreativewriting, and Kelcey recently posted this interview with Amina Gautier.  I hope you find it interesting and inspiring.  You can visit Kelcey’s blog to see her other interviews by clicking here.

How Amina Gautier Became a Writer

This is the next installment in the How to Become a Writer interview series, which will post here at Ph.D. in Creative Writing every other Sunday until I run out of writers to interview, or until they stop saying yes. Each writer answers the same 5 questions. Thanks to Amina for saying yes!

1.     Why did you want to become a writer?

I came of age during the anti-apartheid movement in the US; I was an adolescent when Stevie Wonder recorded his anti-apartheid song, when the play Sarafina!toured New York, when the Cosby spin-off A Different World was weaving anti-apartheid material into its episodes, and when Nelson Mandela was not yet free. At home, my mother had a copy of Kaffir Boy and when I entered ninth grade, Nadine Gordimer’sJuly’s People was selected as the book in common, the one text all incoming students would have to read and discuss communally. I was surrounded by adult and peer discussions of apartheid, which also led to conversations wherein which it was easy to draw parallels between the restrictions placed upon native (black) South Africans during apartheid and on African Americans during slavery and after the Reconstruction, one of the most obvious being restrictions upon literacy and education. This atmosphere impressed upon me the importance, power and danger of literature. When factions attempt to create oppressed societies, one of the foremost ways they go about doing so is by banning thought-provoking literature. It is no accident that slaves were forbidden to read and write, or that women were long kept out of universities. Knowing this so early on made me believe that being a writer was the best thing one could be and that writing literature was the most revolutionary, dangerous, powerful, empowering and important thing a human being could do.

2.  How did you go about becoming a writer?

Short Answer: I have always been a writer.

Long Answer: I played with dolls and listened to music. When I was a child, I imbibed many elements of craft without any conscious effort on my part, learning quite a bit about writing stories from playing with my toys and listening to music. Any child who has played with toys—be it Barbie or Transformers—has the makings of a fiction writer. As any kid knows, there’s no game without a premise or story. Playing with dolls went a long way to helping me learn the intricacies of plot. No matter what I had in mind for Barbie and Ken, Midge or Skipper could always interfere. Enter subplot. Enter characterization. Enter forward moving action motivated by a character’s wants or desires.

The first stories I ever recognized as stories were actually songs. There was no way to live in my childhood home and not be exposed to music. When I was younger, I was part of an extended family and I had only to walk from one room to another to hear a different song i.e. a different story. My grandmother played gospel, my cousin favored hip hop, and my uncle preferred rock, but it was in my mother’s room, where she played soul music that I first absorbed stories. The songs I heard: Ashford and Simpson’s “Hi-Rise” The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” and “Since I Lost My Baby,” Luther Vandross’s “Superstar/Until You Come Back to Me,” The Stylistics’ “People Make the World Go Round” and “Children of the Night,” Aretha Franklin’s “Jump to It” and “Jimmy Lee,” Natalie Cole’s “Just Can’t Stay Away,” Blue Magic’s “Sideshow” and Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway’s duet “You Are My Heaven” were complete and linear narratives set to music. They had beginnings, middles, and ends. If you took away the musical accompaniment, you would have short stories.

In the more formal sense, I began with writing poetry, in the way that most elementary school kids in Brooklyn begin with writing poetry. My language arts teacher exposed us to poetry around the fourth grade and made us kids in the gifted class enter a variety of poetry contests. My poems won a bunch of these school-wide, district-wide, borough-wide, city-wide contests. One particular win allowed me to meet the mayor (Koch, at the time) and shake his hand. All of the contest wins came with trophies and savings bonds. All in all, it was a good deal and it wasn’t anything I thought very much about. When I got to Stanford, I majored in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis (the precursor to the minor which the university now offers). The creative writing courses were all taught by Jones Lecturers (former Stegner Fellows who stayed on to teach) and entry into the courses was by lottery only.

As lottery would have it, my number came up for the fiction workshop first, though I continued to write poetry. My fiction instructor shared an office with one of the poetry instructors and one afternoon I brought some of my poetry to Chris Wiman for some feedback. After showing him my poems, he promptly shot me down. And—here’s the thing—I let him. I realized that I had no desire to be a poet if I had to train to do it. This was partly because the rewards of it had come too easily to me as an adolescent and partly because I just wasn’t interested enough. That’s how I knew I was a fiction writer. I’d only been in the workshop for one quarter, but I already knew that if I’d shown my fiction teacher my stories and he told me I would never make it and advised me to quit, I would not have been meek and walked away with my tail between my legs. I would have ignored him, marched to my dorm, written ten brand new stories, and made him choke on his words. After only weeks, I was fully invested. There was no one in the world that could discourage me. In order to be a fiction writer, I was willing to be in it for the long haul, to work as hard as it took, to write as many hours as it required, to dump as many boyfriends as it necessitated and to lose as much sleep as I could afford.

3.  Who helped you along the way, and how?

Odd as this may seem, my Latin teachers helped me to become a good writer. I started studying Latin in fifth grade and continued with it all the way through high school to AP Latin my junior year, after which there was nothing left to study until college. The rules of grammar, which I found confusing or irregular in English, made sense to me when I viewed them through the lens of this non-native language. Exposure to Latin will, of course, improve anyone’s vocabulary, but the focus on word formation, etymology, derivatives and nuanced language will serve the fiction writer a good turn. Since no one expects secondary school Latin students to prepare for lives as theologians or priests, much of the material students learn to translate is secular rather than ecclesiastical. Thus, Latin exposed me to rhetoric and poetry. Although I learned first through another language, I was already well-versed in scansion, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, irony, litotes, caesuras and all of the other rhetorical devices long before I ever got to AP English. My study of Latin made me hyper-aware of language, syntax, diction, and rhetoric earlier than I might have been expected to care about the formal qualities of language. Thank you—ago tibi gratias— Mr. Doddington, Mr. Schroeder, Mr. Mulgrew, Miss Bennett, Barb Watson and David Demaine.

4.  Can you tell me about a writer or artist whose biography inspires you?

I’m not particularly interested in any fiction writer’s biography. Perhaps I would be if I were reading poetry or autobiography, but when it comes to fiction all I need to know about the writers that I read is that they write damn good stories and don’t cut corners. Just as Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan never met a shot they didn’t like, I’ve never met a story I didn’t like. For just a small investment of my time—somewhere between five and thirty minutes depending on the story’s length—I can read a story that will make my heart and mind grow by leaps and bounds. That’s a great return on investment if ever I’ve heard of one. Unfortunately, I’m not as open-minded when it comes to novels. Given the tendency of many contemporary novels to disintegrate three fourths of the way through, I’m hardly willing to invest hours or days of my time into one unless multiple trusted sources can vouch for it. If, by some chance, I am roped in to reading a novel that dies midway through, I make it a point to never read anything else by that author ever again. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

I am, however, inspired by lines and passages in stories. If I’m in a funk, reading the last line of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” or the opening paragraph of Stanley Elkin’s “A Poetics for Bullies” or the “Be a Martin” scene in Philip Roth’s “The Conversion of the Jews” will always bring me back to a better frame of mind.

I have always been inspired by the section of John Gardner’s Art of Fiction, in which he says:

To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that one out of a hundred people who read one’s work may be dying, or have some loved one dying; to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write, as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. That is not to say, of course, that the writer who has no personal experience of pain and terror should try to write about pain and terror, or that one should never write lightly, humorously; it is only to say that every writer should be aware that he might be read by the desperate, by people who might be persuaded toward life or death. It does not mean, either that writers should write moralistically, like preachers. And above all it does not mean that writers should lie. It means only that they should think, always, of what harm they might inadvertently do and not do it. If there is good to be said, the writer should remember to say it. If there is bad, to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living.”

Gardner’s suggestion that literature can soothe the desperate and that good literature is a matter of life and death rings true with me. Literature has certainly saved my sanity. Therefore, whenever I write, I am always mindful of Gardner’s inspiring advice. It reminds me that my reader has many faces. He or she is not just a person with leisure reclining on a sofa. He or she is also a nursing home patient, the quiet teen who turns to books when shut out of reindeer games and socializing and reads late at night in corners of the house/apartment when parents are asleep, an infirm person who rarely has visitors, the adolescent who closes the bedroom door and buries himself or herself in a book to drown out the noise of adults fighting, the retiree who has been waiting decades to read literature at leisure. Knowing this prevents me from cutting corners and taking shortcuts as a writer, it deters me from writing gimmicky material, veers me away from sentimentality, forces me to write however many drafts the story requires.

5.  What would you say in a short letter to an aspiring writer?

Dear Writer,

1.     Get Out of Your Own Way:

In his rap “Bad” LL Cool J rhymes “You want a hit? Give me an hour plus a pen and a pad!” Bravado aside, his lyrics boil the writing process down to its bare essentials. In terms of accoutrements, all a writer needs in order to write is pen and paper. All of other the niceties are a bonus, like sprinkles on ice cream, nice but not necessary. Real writers can write anywhere, anytime, anyplace. You don’t need a certain time of day, peace and quiet, the right circumstances, the correct placement of the constellations in the sky, green apples or any type of rituals. You don’t even need a muse. These esoteric needs are actually self-imposed obstacles and roadblocks aspiring writers place in their paths. If you spend your time awaiting optimal conditions to begin writing, you are setting yourself up to fail. Writers are not picky. When we need to write, we will write on whatever is handy. I have written on computers, typewriters, and word processors. I have written by hand. I have filled spiral notebooks, Trapper Keepers, legal pads. I have written on index cards, construction paper, receipts and cereal boxes. I have even written on myself. I am a writer. I write.

2.     Don’t try to write something ‘new.’ Just try to write something good.

Although fiction is not as old as poetry in terms of genre, it is at least four hundred years old (if not older), if we date it back to 1605 with Cervantes’s Don Quixote, which many cite as the “first novel.” Plenty of stories have been written since then and most, if not all, stories have already been told. Writing a short story as a series of emails is neither new nor innovative, since it is based on the premise of writing a short story as a series of letters, a technique which is at least as old as Samuel Richardson’s novels Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1748). Same thing goes for writing the story in the form of a photo album, homework assignment, map, radio broadcast, telegram, or PowerPoint presentation. Ditto for writing the story in second person, first person plural, or the point of view of an animal/inanimate object/ghost. This is not to say that the writer should eschew experimenting with these forms or any others; it is merely to say that the writer who does so in the belief that adopting any of these forms makes the story “new” is a writer who is not well-read enough to discern. There has been a tendency among aspiring writers and workshop students (at least in my own classes) to offer the following commentary as praise when discussing a fellow student’s story: “This is good. I’ve never seen it before. It’s very original” which erroneously conflates quality, originality and lack of exposure, when all it really means is that the person making the comment needs to read more and read better.

3.     Remember what Yoda told Luke: “Do or do not. There is no try.”