TBR: Burner and Other Stories by Katrina Denza

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

The stories in BURNER explore technology’s influence on the way we communicate with each other for better or worse. Some also touch on the ways in which women are compelled to inhabit their own power in a patriarchal society.

  

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

Burner was so fun to write. Having worked in restaurants in my twenties, I know the environment and the family-like relationships that can develop. I had a great time imagining how my character might try to seduce a man who’s clearly not interested in her, and especially not intellectually. There’s No Danger Here was probably revised the most drastically. In its earliest drafts the story was over six thousand words. I chipped away at it until the narrator’s understanding of what she really wanted revealed itself.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I sent the manuscript out to about six or seven agents and received some positive responses, but the prevailing message was that story collections are difficult to sell. At the same time, I entered the collection into contests and submitted directly to a few smaller presses. Burner was a semi-finalist in a 2023 Autumn House Press contest for fiction and longlisted for Dzanc’s 2023 contest for short story collections. A few months later, Cornerstone Press accepted it for publication. 

  

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

My favorite piece of advice is from Richard Bausch, and I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially to ground the reader in the story with details. And I also like the more general advice: write the things you’d want to read.

  

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

My surprises show up in revision. The way I revise is probably the least efficient, which is to rewrite the story from start to finish every time, but this method tends to yield the most surprises.

  

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Burner seemed to capture the disposable nature of communication that technology encourages or allows.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

The chef in Burner makes a delicious coq au vin, but unfortunately, he’s as tightlipped about how he makes it as he is about himself.

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://www.katrinadenza.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/burner-and-other-stories/c1fe6bc8563b1165?ean=9781968148126&next=t

  

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “In These Dark Woods”:  https://newworldwriting.net/katrina-denza-in-these-dark-woods/

 

 

TBR: Peacocks on the Streets by Michele Wolf

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

 

Peacocks on the Streets explores what is wild and unpredictable in our lives — both what slams us and what uplifts us — and how we find the resolve to triumph after trauma. The poems’ subjects range from pandemic bereavement, hate crimes, and terrorism, to falling in love at midlife, adopting a child, and caring for a parent stolen by dementia. With grit and compassion, Peacocks on the Streets offers an acute sense of the privilege of being alive.

 

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

I broke personal boundaries in that I began to write about some previously self-censored subjects, such as the emotional pain of my infertility and my often fraught relationship with my mother, a tension that peaked in my teens and 20s but always lingered under the surface. This loss got magnified once my mother plunged into dementia. The courage came from the grief I experienced even before my mother’s passing, as I watched her deteriorate cognitively and physically. My mother’s death released me to claim my truths and to see situations, whether real or conjured, with more clarity and a fuller appreciation of multiple points of view. This has led to an even deeper authenticity, strength, and warmth in my work, which I find people relate to.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I spent a bunch of years sending a version of Peacocks to competitions offering a book-publication prize, and I received several finalist or semifinalist notifications. I steadily continued to publish pieces in literary journals and anthologies, and I didn’t give up trying to place the manuscript. I had previously published two full-length books and a chapbook, and I had confidence in the work. My breakthrough came when I began investigating and submitting to independent presses that offered book publication and royalties but not a prize. First I was offered a yes from an independent press whose seven-page contract did not seem author-friendly. Like the vast majority of poets, I don’t work with an agent — there’s not enough of a financial return on most poetry books to be of interest to an agent. So, I joined the Authors Guild and had my contract reviewed by an attorney on the staff. After that consultation, I sent an email to the publisher, requesting several changes to the contract. Via email, they withdrew their publishing offer, saying we were too far apart. That was not my happiest day.

 

But soon Broadstone Books offered me another yes. That was a hallelujah day. I’ve had a great experience with Broadstone.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

My favorite writing advice comes from a one-day master class I had with the late U.S. poet laureate W.S. Merwin. “We don’t write poems,” he maintained. “We listen for them.” Wow. I found that approach to be powerful — that the writing process is not so much that we will a poem into being, but instead that we get ourselves to a quiet place and listen for the words.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

This is something that surprised me after I had written the book. It didn’t occur to me until two people mentioned it that Peacocks on the Streets is rife with animals — five kinds of birds, a coyote, mountain goats, pandas, a hamster, manatees, deer, tadpoles, zebras, a beagle, fish, corals, seals, dolphins, whales, a ladybug, and more — and that I was making a statement about the wisdom and supremacy of animals. Okay, I suppose that makes sense. But it was never my conscious intent to suggest this! 

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The book’s title, which is also the title of the poem “Peacocks on the Streets,” comes from that time during the pandemic when we were in quarantine and the streets were so empty that, worldwide, wildlife ventured out to residential and commercial areas. “Peacocks on the Streets” was always the title of the poem, and I knew, even before the poem was complete, that it would be the unifying, flagship piece and title that spoke for the entire book.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

 

In the poem “Peacocks on the Streets,” my persona buys a rotisserie chicken. Here is my completely subjective ranking — from “Bleh” to “Meh” to “Scrumptious” — of supermarket rotisserie chickens available in the D.C. area.

5. Costco

4. Whole Foods

3. A tie: Safeway and Harris Teeter

2. Giant

1. Wegman’s—the best!

 

*****

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://michelewolf.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK (THE 20% OFF DISCOUNT CODE IS POETS24): https://www.broadstonebooks.com/shop/p/peacocks-on-the-streets-poetry-by-michele-wolf

 

READ SEVERAL POEMS FROM THIS BOOK: https://michelewolf.com/poems.html

 

 

 

 

TBR: What Haunts Me by Bernadette Geyer

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

 

The poems in What Haunts Me examine what is passed down through families and societies – what is inherited, what we take with us as we age, and what we leave behind. How do we process and come to terms with the centuries that have preceded us? The collection interrogates how ancestries and beliefs serve as sparring partners within us as we forge and discover our individual roles in shaping our own lives.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

I broke the mental boundary of believing that my writing path would be linear: I would work on one book, then move on to the next book, then move on to the next book, and so on. Most of the poems in this collection were actually written before the poems that appeared in my first collection, The Scabbard of Her Throat, which was published in 2013. Some of the poems in What Haunts Me are more than 20 years old. I think this change in perspective helped me to allow myself to work on more than one project simultaneously.

 

I don’t know if I’d call it courage, but more of an acceptance of reality. I don’t put off working on a new project idea simply because I am in the middle of something else. In fact, I use this to my advantage – when I’m stalled in one project, I switch to a different project. That way, I am at least making progress with something.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

When I first started sending the manuscript out in its earliest form as The Inheritance back in 2003, it was a finalist and semi-finalist for several book contests. However, as the years went on and I tinkered with it – adding new poems, removing others, and changing the title multiple times – I think the manuscript lost its way.

 

Following the birth of my daughter in 2005, I had started writing poems linked by a more cohesive theme that really came together over the course of a few years, and I started sending out that manuscript (The Scabbard of Her Throat) in 2009. It was then that I gave up pitching the first manuscript and set it aside.

 

Following the publication of The Scabbard of Her Throat in 2013, I moved with my family to Germany. My writing expanded into travel articles, essays, and short fiction. I translated several business books, as well as poems by German poets. I didn’t really look back at my first poetry manuscript until about 2022, when I really reworked it and settled on a new title. I began submitting it in earnest in 2023 – and only to publishers who offered a free open reading period. April Gloaming Publishing was one of the indie presses I sent an excerpt to that year. They requested the full manuscript for What Haunts Me in February 2024 and made me an offer four months later.

 

The whole experience taught me that there was something the original manuscript had been lacking, and that I needed the long break to really find the order and structure – and title – that the book had been seeking all along.

 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

My favorite piece of writing advice is actually the last two stanzas of the poem “Berryman,” by W.S. Merwin.

 

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

 

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write

 

It’s a little bit depressing, but also freeing at the same time. And so I keep writing.

 

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I honestly did not realize how many ghosts and spirits would show up in it! As I was reading through the final editing rounds with my publisher, I was also struck by how many of the poems were inspired by photographs and how prominently those images imprinted themselves in my mind.

 

 

How do you approach revision?

 

I love the editing process and am always surprised by how many writers believe that if it doesn’t come out perfect the first time, they need to throw it out and start over. I love trying out different word combinations to see what kind of vibe or nuance they bring to the poem. I also love researching word origins and alternate meanings to see how a single word can serve to emphasize a theme or hint at a subversive undercurrent. I also love writing an ending over and over and over dozens of different ways – it seems to break down the inner censor and help me find a totally unexpected image or turn.

 

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

This book is fortified with pierogies, turkey neck soup, and pickled beets. The only thing I remember the recipe for is the turkey neck soup, because it was so simple: put the turkey neck and giblets in a pot with about 2 liters of water, 1 large carrot (sliced), 1 onion (diced), 1 stalk of celery (diced), a couple of sprigs of parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook all morning (from about 8am until early afternoon) as you are preparing Thanksgiving dinner and have it at lunch to tide you over until the big meal.

 

***

 

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://bernadettegeyer.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://aprilgloaming.com/shop/what-haunts-me/

 

READ A POEM FROM THIS BOOK, “A Failed Romanticism”:   https://electricliterature.com/after-vacation-id-like-to-come-home-to-ruin/

SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@bernadettegeyer

 

 

 

TBR: Momma May Be Mad: a memoir by Kerry Neville

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Momma May Be Mad: A Memoir is an inventive and striking memoir about motherhood, madness, and the grace of second and third chances. Kerry Neville shares the story of how she was caught in the perfect storm of bipolar disorder, anorexia, and alcoholism when her children were young and her marriage failing and how she found her way back to joy and hope. Electric shock therapy, hospitalizations, and even an exorcism were desperate, if failed, lifelines. But even in that dark chaos, she held fast to an abiding belief in love and fought to regain her own life and her life with her children.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

The easiest way to answer this question is to quote the opening of the memoir:

 

“How do you write a memoir when you can’t remember? And how then do you honor and unravel that tangle of time?...Electric Shock Treatments erased years of my linear memory. What remains? Unreliable chaotic approximation. Incomplete jerry-rigged record. Splinters and fragments: a fat file of doctors’ shorthand notes and coded diagnoses, Social Security Disability Insurance legalities, journal entries composed in situ, email correspondence with therapist, and friends who fill in the blanks.

 

“External documentation functions with the specious authority of a third-person limited narrator. Even my journals, though read as if extemporaneous synchronous records, are always belated after-accounts. We don’t live in time’s flow but in time’s lag. Our brains create a coherent understanding of the world from stimuli that travel at different times and speeds. Auditory processing is faster than visual processing. Starter pistol rather than flash of light. The brain waits for the slowest information to arrive before “making sense” of “now.” An eighty-millisecond lag between what is happening and what we understand is happening.

 

“When I read my medical records and journals, scroll through photos, and listen to my friends recount who I was and what I was doing and saying and how I was lying and dying and trying and not trying to get myself into sensible order? That “I” stands in strange, estranged proximity. I cast forwards and backwards through lost and found time, never able to catch up. My unruly IIIIIIIIII’s arrive at different times and speeds to these pages.

 

“I’ve tried and tried to write this happened and then this happened and then this happened and now it’s done, but each attempt was a failed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of my corpse on the dissection table, so I ditched linear plot-forward-in-time.”

 

Additionally, the memoir is divided into three sections according to St. Augustine’s understanding of time as he outlines in Confessions: “present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight; present of things future, expectation.”

 

Courage: There was no other way to write this story—except to find a way to represent how I—we—construct ourselves as changing selves every day, how we revise and rerevise our stories of how we have arrived in this moment now. The memoir is an attempt at simultaneity: becoming and unbecoming at the same time. So, linear plot can’t do that on the page with its neat, progressive timeline. 

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

My agent sent the manuscript out to the big presses, and I received positive feedback but…ultimately, no, no, no, no. I knew the structure would be a difficult sell—but memoirs are, anyway. My agent persevered because she believed the book would find a home, the right editor, at the right time. I know how fortunate I am to have an agent willing to keep on keeping on with the manuscript. Eventually, Kim Davis and her editorial team at Madville Publishing responded with a quick (!) and enthusiastic yes. The right home, the right editor, the right time!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write from your me-ness”—you don’t have to be decorous, polite, modest, or measured. Write out of your fierceness, unruliness, and daring. Disturb the universe. (Fyi: it took me far too long to realize writing, at least early draft writing, is ferocious and feral. Late draft revision is meticulous and exacting.)

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

What surprised me was how much I learned about what is beyond me—that is, research that brought the world and all its complicated wonders inside my understanding of self-as-world-on-the-page. Biology, neuroscience, anatomy, philosophy, botany, history, geology, religion, mythology!

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title is the title of a long-retired blog I kept when I was in my dark, desperate times. Writing that blog about my mental health complications helped me to understand that I wasn’t the only momma, the only human being going through the really effing hard stuff—I heard from many readers who connected to my story (if not to exact facts, then to the ebb and flow of despair and joy). I had a running list of possible titles for the memoir but I kept coming back to Momma May Be Mad—there’s the sound of the M’s, but, too, there’s the uncertainty. Not “maybe” but “may be”—or may not be. And maybe it’s all of is: motherhood, madness, hysteria, wandering wombs, one body creating another body, body-at-hand and body-of-work. We are shapeshifters, phoenixes rising again and again from the ash. What are the forces at work on the inside and on the outside that contribute to despair, give rise to joy, and allow us to redeem ourselves?

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

My story includes recovering from an eating disorder, anorexia, so for the first third of the book, my relationship with food and eating was dark, complicated—I was doing everything I could not to eat. But then, the rest of the book is about finding joy and pleasure again in eating well and good: yes, healthy, balanced eating, but also the lascivious pleasure in what tastes good!

 

No recipe, but I’ll note two moments from the memoir that blaze white hot:

 

Evening, and I am on the roof of my riad in Marrakech eating the last tawny, rosy cheeked apricot that I’d bought from the fruit vendor. The call to prayer rises around me. My teeth split the fuzzy skin and my mouth is lit up by the warm, sweet flesh.

 

Evening, and I am in a small cottage on the top of a mountain in Ireland sitting beside a lovely man who has just brought us tea and KitKat bars. The world is growing dark outside and we are in happy, desiring companionship. We sit quietly by the fire, dunking the chocolate bars into the tea. We know what comes next! And we are happy to wait for it.

 

***

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.kerry-neville.com

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://madvillepublishing.com/product/momma-may-be-mad/

 

 ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

https://www.amazon.com/Momma-May-Mad-Kerry-Neville/dp/1963695410/ref=sr_1_3?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JYeasQyAVWKYts7hBTRMHMT1gys6klANEL9X6WjTv7HEfW-YsNsX1wg22Y2JAUvd4kT9rJtROJdQkXhR6i4kTm8Tt-h7bgtZp_kDyu6Lx5yLyUfTR3LvBh2joyFWNnq9w3jsHswl4rHnjQH-nh_jK0wHyB3oE-Tta530Xnx8AtYpr-Z4FezTGXOsNC-aKCJTYeWWL_1vxwUUpbKsdeDBYw.2icBBVomFuUKZvdzBlLh-Jw1OM4sC8ZfijYMrFQJZVQ&dib_tag=se&qid=1754768006&refinements=p_27%3AKerry+Neville&s=books&sr=1-3

 

 READ AN EXCERPT FROM THIS BOOK, “Inis: Water Meadow”:  https://panoramajournal.org/issues/issue-6-war-and-peace/war-peace-inis-water-meadow/?srsltid=AfmBOopAxBZozmVidQzo99xOR9mmFmFcZw1IoV2oacsBsEUL1kT0Gswi

 

TBR: Go Out Like Sunday and Other Stories by Barbara P. Greenbaum

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Go Out Like Sunday and Other Stories is a collection of sixteen short stories, featuring a cast of characters facing moments of decisive change. From a bullied boy in high school, to a couple shopping for coffins, the folks in this book face betrayal, loss, violence, grief, and yearning while dancing with the joy of new directions.

 

 

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

Of all the stories in the book, I enjoyed writing Park & Ride the most perhaps because that voice came to me so easily. I instantly could hear her. And yes - I too like pickup trucks - so I had a natural affinity. And she was just so much fun!

 

Several stories in the book took a while to develop. Midnight Swimmer was the most emotionally difficult because it was close to the bone. I left my home in New England after being in CT for almost fifty years. It took a bit to work to get to the psychic distance I needed to tell Cynthia's story. 

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

For me, the highs and lows collided. I found out the book had been accepted for publication by Main Street Rag the Tuesday after my husband died unexpectedly during an operation. While I was thrilled that I would be working with Scott on the book, my husband's death stopped me for a while. The last story in the book, The Midnight Swimmer, was the last story he ever read for me. I knew the story wasn't yet finished, yet it took me almost six months after he died before I could work on it again. I was lucky enough to attend the Writers in Paradise Workshop in St. Petersburg with Stewart O'Nan specifically to get help with it. It paid off. However, it would be another year before the book felt finished to me and we could go to press. Main Street Rag's publisher Scott, and his wife, Jill, were incredibly understanding about my situation and waited for me. I will be forever grateful for that.

 

When the book finally appeared, with the cover designed by my artist friend Randy Gillman, I felt just joy that it finally happened. There is no better feeling that seeing your work in print and so beautifully done.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

This one is simple for me though there are days when I don't get there. Write every day. When I was working full time, I somehow convinced myself that I had to find an hour or two to write successfully. Then, while moaning to a friend that I could never find the time, he looked at me and said - fifteen minutes. From then on, whether I had to set the clock a bit earlier, I would write every day for at least fifteen minutes. Most often I would write before work with my first cup of tea. But I was almost immediately amazed at how much I could do in such a short period of time. And even when I had to stop, the stories and voices would often spill over into the day and those thoughts would add to the story for the next day. This helps me stay in that creative stream.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I hadn't realized until the collection came together how much I enjoyed playing with voices and genres. Each story in the book is very different and yet I can't help but really like these folks. I'm so glad I got to spend time with them.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I am very bad at titles. The title story of the book had a different title originally. (It's honestly too embarrassing to name here.) The editor of the Louisville Review wrote to me to say she loved the story, hated the title. I confessed my title deficits, and she suggested Go Out Like Sunday. I loved it immediately. When I was searching for titles for the collection, I knew immediately that's what it would be. It just felt right.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Evie makes pot roast in Dishes and as it happens, I make Dutch Oven pot roast with root veggies that is so easy it's criminal.  Secret - deglaze with Port Wine. And it's amazing!

 

*** 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://www.barbaragreenbaum.com/

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/go-out-like-sunday-barbara-p-greenbaum/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/go-out-like-sunday-barbara-p-greenbaum/

 

READ AN EXCERPT FROM THIS BOOK, “Dumb Ass”:

https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/go-out-like-sunday-barbara-p-greenbaum/

(click on “sample”)

 

 

 

TBR: Outside the Lines: A Memoir by Helen Fremont

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Outside the Lines is a queer love story between a young public defender and a married mother of two, who meet in a writing workshop in Boston in the 1980s. Drawn together by surprisingly similar family secrets, hidden identities, and a deep connection to the Holocaust, they fall in love. Subsequently, a terminal illness changes and intensifies their relationship with each other and with their families.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

By the time I got around to writing this memoir (my third), I’d inadvertantly become something of an expert at family demolition. After my first memoir (which I thought was pretty tame) was published, my family disowned me and declared me dead.

 

It took twenty years for me to get up the ovarian fortitude to write a second memoir, in which I told the rest of the story, including many of the gory details I’d tactfully left out of the first book. (My parents had died in the meantime.)

 

I think the need to write these stories as memoir stems from the need to claim one’s own voice and one’s own truth, when the writer’s reality has consistently been denied or disavowed. Family secrets manipulate and mess with one’s sense of self, which is why they are so potent.

 

In my new memoir, Outside the Lines, the two main characters died many years ago, so I feel a little less anxious about writing my story as it relates to them. Once again, I’ve changed names and details, and omitted scenes in order to protect the privacy of surviving family members. But of course, I worry a great deal about how family and friends will feel. I don’t think it’s particularly “courageous” to write memoir; I think it’s compelled by a need to speak your truth when it has been consistently denied.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I’ve wanted to write this book for a long time, but apparently I wasn’t ready to dive into the material until a few years ago. Writing the scenes set loose a flood of memories, both exhilarating and agonizing. So as with all writing, the highs and lows are always built right into the daily work. I write something one day and think it’s brilliant; I look at it in the morning, and it’s turned to garbage.

 

Perhaps my greatest high with this book came from my writer buddies, who never cease to amaze and inspire me with their own poetry and prose, and who never pretend something is working when it’s not. Every time we’d get together to talk about our work, I came away on fire to fix the things they’d suggested, and excited about the whole impossible project of bringing a bunch of words on the page into a completed book for publication.

 

It was also thrilling when my agent (whom I adore and revere) read the manuscript and liked it. Her belief in this little book was so powerful, it made the first slew of rejections from publishing houses less painful. Of course, when the next slew of rejections came in, and the ones after that, my mood descended  in direct proportion to the rise in rejections. Needless to say, it was wonderful to find a publisher I admired who liked this book enough to want to publish it. Working with her and her team has been a blast.  

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

“It’s all draft until you die.” The poet Ellen Bryant Voigt said that. Just conjuring her name makes me happy. She is the founder and mastermind of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, my alma mater. Ellen is all about process, all about doing the work, without letting yourself get distracted by anything else—the market or the critics, or your own inner judge. She reminds us that we can keep fiddling with a draft as long as we like, long after it’s been published, or long after we’ve given up on it. Writing is not just our work; it’s our play, it's what reminds us we’re alive.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I was surprised when I wrote a sentence I liked for more than twenty-four hours. And I was surprised—well, more like embarrassed—to discover how incredibly immature and clueless I was at the age of thirty. It’s sort of amazing to see the effect that thirty-plus years of perspective had on my memories and feelings—even sensory perceptions—that came back to me when I was writing. So as you see, self-absorption really does have its own rewards.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I am terrible at titles. Prolifically terrible. I must have scribbled down hundreds of titles, one worse than the other. For a while, I was convinced that if I just found the right Leonard Cohen lyric, I’d have my title.

 

Fortunately, my wife pretty quickly came up with the title, Outside the Lines. I liked it immediately, and then went on to brainstorm another couple hundred awful titles. But I kept coming back to this one, because it’s about coming out, and it’s about the complications of navigating a life outside the norm. The title lasted through all my mood changes, so it’s a keeper. (So is she.)

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

I am a low-brow baking fiend. I usually need to bake cookies and brownies and other easy-to-handle platforms for the delivery of chocolate, sugar and fat. I baked my way through a lot of this book. There are way too many recipes for me to list here, but they all basically boil down to butter + sugar + flour. Usually 72% bittersweet chocolate is involved.

 

Here's an easy one:

 

Chocolate Chip Rye Caraway Cookies

            (Credit: Sycamore Kitchen)

 

¾ c (1 ½ sticks) butter, room temp

½ c brown sugar

½ c sugar

1 c all-purpose flour

1 + c dark rye flour

½ tsp + baking soda

¾ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp kosher salt + for sprinkling

½ + tsp caraway seeds, some ground

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

8 oz. dark (70%) chocolate, chopped into chunks smaller than ¼ inch

 

Pre-heat oven 350 degrees.

Beat butter & sugars till light and fluffy – 3 – 5 min

In a separate bowl: whisk flours, soda, powder, salt & caraway seeds.

Add egg & vanilla to butter and beat till fully combined.

Add dry ingredients, beat till almost incorporated. Add chopped chocolate.

Scoop dough onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Sprinkle with salt. Bake till crisp edges, soft in middle ~ 15 min.

 

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READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.helenfremont.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=outside+the+lines+helen+fremont

 

SUBSTACK: https://helenfremont.substack.com/

 

TBR: Angels at the Gate by Sheri Joseph

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

At a remote Southern university in the late 1980s, student Leah Gavin becomes obsessed with a classmate’s unexplained fall from the bell tower, then begins to realize the mystery might implicate people close to her. It’s a literary thriller and heartfelt coming-of-age story with a kick-ass mixtape soundtrack.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

My most enjoyable character, a frat boy named Quinn Cooper, was intended to have only a minor role in the story: a sort-of friend Leah doesn’t trust who has some information to deliver. But he showed up with this outsized personality and rapacious desires and a vestigial conscience, and he just kept demanding more space, until he became my Iago—which, in John Updike’s terminology, is less the villain than the character who pushes all the other characters around. He completely took over the book, in large part because he was so much fun to write. I had the most difficulty with Leah, who is not me but is very often standing in my place, within my emotional experience. So it was hard to keep her vividly and precisely herself.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

The less said about that, the better! My agent sent it out to editors for years, but what happens to most writers who have published a few books without selling any great numbers is that no one not already attached to the writer will read the book. Editors just let the manuscript sit on their desk until they have the pressure of another offer to compel them to pick it up. Even if they do read it and love it, “the numbers” don’t support taking the risk. So I took the book to a wonderful small press, Regal House, which has more freedom to avoid the really destructive business model of bigger publishers and can just publish good books.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

As a teacher of writing, I have a few hundred go-to favorites! Most of them require a whiteboard and a weird approximate drawing of what a story looks like inside my head, just as a starting point. Maybe that’s more instruction than advice. The best advice I’ve ever received about my own work was “Be more forthcoming.” That’s one I’m often repeating to students who overvalue mystery. And my evergreen, bedrock advice is read. Reading is the best teacher. Read widely at the level of quality you hope to achieve in your own work.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I’m with you on that advice! Almost everything I write surprises me because I start from a compelling situation I don’t fully understand, then I write to discover what’s going on. In this book, that included about 80% of the central mystery. Also, most of Leah’s love life and several key friendships got pulled in directions I did not expect. And some of my favorite scenes came from just asking myself a question mid-draft like “What’s Leah’s most intense relationship with a professor?” then writing toward that.

 

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

 

The campus setting, Rockhaven, is very closely based on my alma mater, as will be obvious to anyone who knows and loves Sewanee. I renamed everything only to give myself the smallest room for fiction. My goal was to write a memoir of emotion and place, a novel in which everything is true except all of the characters and all of the events. Rockhaven as a place is so very Sewanee in the 80s that I worry it’s going to be hard for some alums to avoid thinking it’s a code pointing to real people and events. So I’m here to declare that 1) none of this happened and 2) (almost) no one I know is in this book! The exceptions are my late, great professor Douglas Paschall, who is dropped into the book as I remember him with only a name change, and two of our presumably late horses, Jojo and Matchless, who are playing themselves.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Leah is a poor college student and thus fairly obsessed with food. There’s a scene in which she attends a dinner at a professor’s house and eats a whole menu of food that’s new to her (lettuce from a garden! cheese from a goat!). But her true love is the greasy pub food she generally has to watch others eat, like the local delicacy known as the Granger (I kept the Sewanee name for this as well as for our go-to cheap beer, which was literally and meaningfully Falstaff).

 

The Granger

Plain bagel, toasted

½ inch of cream cheese

Bacon, cooked

2 slices of Swiss cheese

Nuke it

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.sherijoseph.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://bookshop.org/p/books/angels-at-the-gate-sheri-joseph/22326772?ean=9781646036530&next=t