Monday, March 29, 2021

TBR: Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason by Gina Frangello

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 



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

 

Blow Your House Down centers on a time in my life when I was sandwiched in between parenting my three children and caretaking my elderly parents, all while my marriage was deteriorating, and I began having a passionate extramarital affair. After years of leading a double life, I finally left my marriage only to get diagnosed with breast cancer half a year into the new start I had imagined for myself—one that did not play out, in myriad ways, as I’d expected. Ultimately, the book explores, not only through my own experiences but through outside material about the medical, legal, psychological and economic treatment of women, the extent to which we still expect contemporary women to sacrifice our own needs and desires in order to be all things to others in our lives, and it’s about the consequences, both devastating and rapturous, that we face when we no longer go along with those expectations.

 

Which essay gave you the most trouble, and why? What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

My book is a bit of a hybrid between an essay collection and a memoir in that it’s told in distinct parts that are sometimes radically stylistically different from one another, but it has one cohesive story arc that drives all the pieces and unifies them into a whole ensemble piece larger than the disparate parts. To that end, the piece that gave me the most trouble was definitely the one in which my daughters discover my affair several months in by reading my texts, and my making the horrible decision—one that haunts me to this day—to allow them to hold that secret for years. It’s interesting…the boundaries I struggled with were all emotional, even though this is also my most formally innovative book. The story very much dictated to me the ways it wanted to be told, whether in the form of an invented dictionary or, in the opening piece “The Story of A,” a chronicle of how women’s infidelity has been treated historically. But emotionally, memoir is harrowing. I don’t know about where people find courage to write what they write, but for me, this was the book I had to write if I ever wanted to write anything else again, and it was also what I most urgently wanted to communicate to other women who might need a book like this, as I myself did when I was going through the experiences Blow Your House Down depicts. I think we all write the books we ourselves most wish we could have read, with the knowledge that if we desperately needed something, there are others out there who need that thing too.

 

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

 

I’m working with Dan Smetanka at Counterpoint, who was also the editor on my last book, and the general Counterpoint team--such as the amazing Megan Fishmann who is the director of publicity--is comprised mostly of people I’ve worked with in the past, so in that sense this was probably my least harrowing road to publication. My first four books each came out on a different publisher, so it’s been wonderful, with my fifth, to be in a place that has become like a home and family to me. That’s especially awesome since in every other way, publishing a memoir is full of highs and lows. I’ve had some amazing responses months before the book’s publication from women who have written me letters that are so intense and urgent that they have literally changed my life already. But there’s also the part of me who is a person just living my life, who is separate from my character-self in the book, and it can be hard knowing that no matter how hard you try, there is simply no way to fully capture the complexity of either yourself or anyone else in your life through language, and that to readers we all begin and end with what is on the page—whereas in reality any memoir is just the visible part of an iceberg with most buried under the sea. So I would say the whole thing has been an exercise in remembering the boundaries of art and in letting go.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

My least favorite piece of writing advice is that writers have to write every single day. It’s a thing I still see cited as an imperative in a surprising number of places. I think it’s great if someone can write every day, but I personally have always been a binge writer. Sometimes I don’t write for nine months or more. As someone with five books out, I wish I could shout from the rooftops that newer writers should give themselves permission to write in the rhythms that are right for them. On the other hand, the piece of writing advice that I give absolutely every student I have is to get involved in the literary community—to serve and support other writers and presses and indie bookstores and magazines in whatever capacity you can swing, rather than only looking to advance your own career, because the literary community has things to offer beyond just your personal publication credits. Almost every important relationship I’ve formed since my late twenties has come about through my work editing books and magazines and sites like The Rumpus and The Nervous Breakdown and now LARB. I tell my students to ask not what the literary community can do for them but what they can do for the literary community, because if we care about books that’s a thing that should matter to us. Economics and how busy we are definitely influence what kinds of contributions we may choose to make, but I think young writers who approach their careers as if their work and goals exist in a vacuum, rather than literature being an ongoing and intergenerational dialogue, are missing some of the most vital joys and fulfilments that the literary world offers.

 

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

 

A lot of things surprised me, but probably nothing more so than how brutally honest I needed to be about the difficulties my former lover—who is now my husband—and I faced for almost two years after we “came out” as a couple. We are ecstatically happy now, and have been for a long time, but the people who told us, at first, that we had been in an “affair bubble” and that there was a big difference between the intoxication of a new and clandestine love versus being able to build an on the ground life together…well, those people were not wrong entirely. I mean, think that the happy ending of our still being together didn’t at first reveal to me how deep I would need to delve into the harder times that led here, which ultimately felt acutely necessary for writing an honest book. Because Blow Your House Down is not a primer on why you should have an affair and blow up your marriage …it’s no more advocating for that than it is advocating that women should stay in marriages that no longer fit them or that are actively painful to them. Rather, it’s an exploration of the enormous complexity in these choices, and the utter lack of guarantees in terms of what your life will look like when the dust of such a decision settles—what you will have lost and gained and learned along the way, and the fact that Life won’t stop and wait for you (nor, for that matter, will Death) while you figure it all out.

 

Who is your ideal reader?

 

My ideal reader is a woman of any age—and I’ll add here that I never before considered my ideal readers to be a specific gender, but while I hope men will also read and get something from Blow Your House Down, it was written first and foremost for women—who feels trapped inside the lines of who she thinks she is supposed to be versus who she actually is. Sometimes women get those messages very explicitly, from parents or husbands or from living in a particular kind of neighborhood or town or being a certain religion, but sometimes we just get these messages without even knowing we’ve internalized them, in which women are judged for virtually everything…certainly as a white heterosexual woman I’ve actually gotten off far easier than many women, who also have to deal with racism, ableism, homophobia or transphobia, with poverty far exceeding that I grew up in. The writer Kristi Coulter has written that there is “no right way to be a woman,” and that can become exponentially more true the more overlapping identities a woman may inhabit. I led a life for many years that often could not have been described as “unhappy” and that had many privileges and comforts, but in which I—increasingly over the years—felt like I was playing a part, and that I had to continue playing that part relentlessly in order to keep my whole family system functioning through a particular kind of nonstop emotional labor and walking on eggshells that I think is all too common in many women’s lives. Blow Your House Down is for every woman who has wondered what would happen if she stopped playing the part she believes herself consigned to. My hope is that it’s a complex exploration of what it means to begin living more authentically—acknowledging that I hurt people I truly cared about and owed better to along the way—and that it can help some women begin to reclaim themselves more mindfully than I did, but reclaim themselves nonetheless, for their own sake and their children’s and for a world that desperately needs us to stop towing old lines and to disrupt.

 

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

 

My parents are major characters in the book and my father was an amazing cook. He was the youngest of seven brothers in an Italian family, and he did most of the cooking when I was growing up, and he made the best eggplant parmesan I’ve ever had—my mother learned to make it from him, and now I make it too. It’s all about pressing and salting the eggplant first, and slicing it thin, and what we fry it in before the baking…everyone who ever tastes it is converted even if they think they don’t like eggplant. But I’ve never actually followed a recipe, per se. I never saw my father even look at one. My daughters are much better at following recipes than I am, so their cooking repertoires are seemingly endless.

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  www.ginafrangello.org & www.circeconsulting.net)

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: I actually am partnering with Women & Children First in Chicago to donate my royalties for the book and a portion of sales through that store to the organization Deborah’s Place, which works with women facing homelessness:

https://www.womenandchildrenfirst.com/book/9781640093164

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, March 22, 2021

TBR: Body of Stars by Laura Maylene Walter

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 

 


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

 

Body of Stars explores fate and female agency in a world where the markings on women’s bodies reveal the future. When Celeste Morton discovers a prediction that will forever change her family, she conceals the secret at all costs and sets out to create a future that is truly her own. Body of Stars is an inventive and urgent read about what happens when women are objectified and stripped of choice—and what happens when they fight back.

 

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

 

It’s probably a given that I’d say Celeste, the narrator, was my favorite character to develop, but I’ll also put in a plug for Julia, a markings interpreter who serves as a mentor and teacher. She might not be the most prominent character in the book, but she plays an important role, and I’ve spent a lot of time off the page considering her backstory and motivations. Julia is tough, independent, self-assured, confident, and kind—and her commitment to justice inspires Celeste.

 

Miles, Celeste’s brother, proved the most challenging to write. In earlier drafts, Miles was harsher than he is now, perhaps because I thought the novel’s conflict would arise from a fraught brother-sister relationship. Over time, however, I came to see that there are many other sources of tension in the world of this novel, and by making Miles a bit more sympathetic, he could actually become more complex, not less.

 

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

 

The “lows” could be represented by the years I spent immersed in revision and self-doubt. This was the first time I’d worked on a speculative novel, and the learning curve was high. I had to learn not only how to create the world seamlessly without too much explanation, but to grasp the implications of a society that can predict the future. While I can see now that I needed that time to let the story evolve, I sent many a panicked email to my writing friends because I was afraid the novel wouldn’t ever rise to meet my vision. Thanks to the magic of revision, time, persistence, and a lot of hard work, Body of Stars is making its way into the world, and I couldn’t be happier.

 

The highs came into play every time I returned to the manuscript and discovered new ways to revise and make it better. Time and time again, I thought I was finished only to learn there were more layers to uncover—which I love, because it points to the depths and surprises inherent in the writing process. Finally, I won’t lie: It was the highest of highs to talk to editors and then hear good news from my agent. That’s when I knew this book would become a reality at long last.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Even though I just talked about how exciting it was to receive publishing offers, I most often reflect on the advice that the writing process itself is what makes up a writing life—not publication, reviews, accolades, or any other form of external validation. All of that is wonderful, but if authors aren’t in this for the writing itself, they’ll have a tough road ahead of them. The writing is truly all we have and all that ultimately matters. It comes down to embracing the process, as difficult and exhausting and uncertain as it can sometimes be—because that process is also deeply gratifying and fulfilling.

 

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

 

Everything! Really, this novel was a journey. I don’t outline before I write, so I’m exploring the world of the novel as I go. Body of Stars went through many revisions and rewrites, and I suppose what surprised me most was how the world grew more concrete in my mind over time. During the earliest drafts, for example, I couldn’t articulate how the markings on women’s bodies predict the future—it was all very mysterious and nebulous, even to me. Later in the process, however, I was mapping out predictions and creating an authoritative guidebook centered on markings interpretation. This novel revealed itself to me in layers; it wasn’t something I could learn all at once. Once I had a contract, I was able to continue this process with my amazing editor at Dutton, whose insight and suggestions helped me see the fictional world more clearly all the way through the final proofreading stage.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Body of Stars originally had a different title, one I won’t share here but that I clung to for years. At one point, my agent questioned whether the title was the best fit. She wasn’t telling me to change it; she just asked me to think about it. That gentle prompting was all I needed to know that I could do better.

 

It was difficult to consider a new title when I’d become so accustomed to the first one, but I went for it. I read books about space and fortune telling to get ideas, and I made list after list of potential titles, many of which were terrible. When I first came upon Body of Stars as an option, I didn’t immediately recognize it as the winner. It took some time for the title to sink in and to realize it fits my novel perfectly. This title speaks to not only how women’s physical bodies carry the weight of the future, but it also alludes to an overarching celestial metaphor. Now, Body of Stars seems like such an obvious choice that I can’t imagine the novel with any other title.

 

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

 

Gibson Oakley was kind enough to create a custom cocktail and mocktail just for Body of Stars:

 

CELESTIAL SHIMMER

Inspired by a starry sky, the Celestial Shimmer lives up to its name with the addition of luster dust, a powder that, when added to a drink, creates a unique cocktail worthy of any interpreter. 

 

8-10 Blackberries

3 Mint Leaves

2 oz Gin

1/8 tsp of Silver or Pearl Luster Dust* (Optional)

6 oz Sparkling Lemonade

Mint and Blackberries, for garnish

 

In a shaker, muddle the blackberries and mint. Add the gin, ice and shake. Strain the mixture into a glass, mix in the luster dust, more ice, and top with sparkling lemonade. Stir to combine, and garnish with additional berries and mint. 

 

*Food grade, edible luster dust is available online or at most cake decorating stores. 

 

 

HIGH LUCIDITY (Non-Alcoholic)

While it may not provide the same heightened senses as the period of “high lucidity,” this beverage will keep your senses sharp with its tart yet sweet flavors (and antioxidants and vitamin C for good measure).

 

4 oz Pomegranate Juice

2 oz Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice

2 oz Sparkling Water

Orange Twist, for garnish

 

In a glass filled with ice, add the pomegranate juice, orange juice, and sparkling water. Garnish with an orange twist. For a sweeter variation, add 0.5 oz simple syrup.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://lauramaylenewalter.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/books/body-of-stars-9780593183052/9780593183052

 

 

 

 

Monday, March 15, 2021

TBR: The Baddest Girl on the Planet by Heather Frese

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!

 


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

 Evie Austin, native of Hatteras Island, NC, and baddest girl on the planet, has not lived her life in a straight line. There have been several detours—career snafus, bad romantic choices, a loved but unplanned child—not to mention her ill-advised lifelong obsession with boxer Mike Tyson. This is the story of what the baddest girl on the planet must find in herself when a bag of pastries, a new lover, or quick trip to Vegas won’t fix anything, when she must learn from her relationships but also look within to navigate the decisions and turning points in redefining a new notion of herself.

 

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

 I loved creating Evie, my protagonist. Much of my writing previous to this project was descriptive to the point of being cinematic, the old “show, don’t tell” thing. But Evie was very voice driven. I found that, instead of stepping back to describe what Evie was seeing or feeling, she’d just say it, but the way she’d say it spoke volumes. She was so much fun to write. Evie’s ex-husband, Stephen, gave me the most trouble. I was so firmly on Evie’s side that initially he came out as a one-dimensional bad guy, so I worked really hard to round him out and give him his own backstory and reasons for behaving the way he did, including a shot at redemption toward the end of the book.

 

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

 In the middle of the project, way back when, I had a workshop with the author Janet Peery, who was incredibly supportive and said something like, “this is going to get published,” which gave me some much-needed confidence to actually pursue publication. I got an agent fairly quickly when the project was done, but that elicited a whole lot of “we really liked this, just not enough to publish it” responses. In the meantime, I was getting married and immediately pregnant and quickly found myself sucked into the undertow of parenting an infant/baby/toddler, then a toddler and an infant concurrently as child #2 arrived. I started looking at contests and small presses that seemed like good fits. Several rejections later, I was a semi-finalist at a small North Carolina press I admired. This was exhilarating and gave me a boost of hope, but the book ultimately didn’t move on to the finals. I was crushed, honestly. It had seemed like such a good fit. I found one more contest, for the Lee Smith Novel Prize at Blair which, strangely enough, had been my favorite press as a child because they published my beloved Taffy of Torpedo Junction, set on Hatteras Island, same as the book I was submitting. And Lee Smith was my favorite author. So, I scanned through the manuscript one more time and sent it in. It was the only place I had it submitted, and in my head, I figured if and when it got rejected, I’d tear the whole thing apart and put it back together in a more traditional, linear form, once all the kids were in school and I had more time to write.

 And then, I kind of forgot that it was out at a contest. I was in the throes of magnet school selection for the oldest and preschool for the youngest and then, in a surprise twist, pregnant again. Months later, when my phone rang with a North Carolina number, I was in a cold and dirty McDonald’s play area, the baby strapped to my chest as the older two shouted at me to watch them go down the slide, when I heard that Baddest Girl had won the Lee Smith Novel Prize. Everyone at Blair has been amazing. I felt like they really saw and understood what I was trying to do with the project, and they were incredibly supportive and understanding about working with small children hanging about.

 The final twists: I’d spent years establishing a community and support system and I’d planned to really reach out to all my friends for help with the kids when my edits came in so I could completely focus, but the pandemic hit at the same exact time. I edited in fits and starts around 24/7 kids. Then my release date got shuffled around a bunch as the pandemic’s effect on publishing became clear. But I think, barring any pandemic-mail disasters, the release is finally going to happen. So, yes, wow, highs and lows.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 My professor grad school would tell us, via a critic of Eudora Welty, “Always get your moon in the right part of the sky.” I take that one to heart and try really hard to keep my little details correct.

 

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

 The first surprise I had was that I didn’t want to stop writing this character. I initially just wanted to do a short, fun, voice-driven little piece, but Evie’s complexity unexpectedly captured me. Another sad surprise I had was when I casually typed out that Evie’s beloved Aunt Fay had died. This led me to do a whole chapter on her funeral. And then I found myself surprised by feeling some sympathy for Evie’s ex-husband.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 The title is a play on Mike Tyson’s nickname “The Baddest Man on the Planet.”

Evie meets Mike Tyson when she’s a little girl, back when he was a famous boxer before any other incidents came to light. His downfall corresponds with the onset of her bad reputation, or at least it does in Evie’s mind. I’d wanted to title a chapter “The Baddest Girl on the Planet” but none of them fit, then my best reader/friend/writing soulmate suggested it as a title for the whole book.

 

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

 Historically, Hatteras Island has been extremely isolated (it’s literally a sand bar in the middle of the ocean), so traditional recipes tend to feature what was readily available, usually seafood. Hatteras Style Clam Chowder is a notable Outer Banks staple. It features a clear broth plus fresh, local clams and vegetables. Figs also grow locally; I’ll include a fun recipe for Hatteras Fig and Whiskey cake that was featured in Our State magazine for dessert!

 

Hatteras Island-Style Clam Chowder

 

Ingredients:


Little neck clams are considered the best. They’re the smallest and are thought to be the most tender. Whether it’s a little neck, cherrystone, top neck or quahog, they’re all the quahog species of clam. It’s just a question of size.

If going for fresh, about 100 little neck will be needed. Chowder clams (top neck) are larger.

·       4 cups shucked clams and juice (about 24 chowder clams)

·       3 cups diced potatoes

·       2 cups diced onions

·       1 cups water

·       6 pieces bacon, fried and grease rendered

 

Preparation

1.    Chop clams, drain juice and save it.

2.    In a large pot, add water, clam juice, potatoes, onions and grease.

3.    Bring to a boil until potatoes are tender crisp.

4.    Add chopped clams and simmer for about 20 minutes.

5.    Add salt and pepper to taste.

   

Many recipes call for sautéing the onion in the bacon grease first. Classically only salt and pepper are used to season this.

 

For a little different flavor, fresh thyme adds a subtle herbaceous touch, and more bacon can also be added if preferred.


 

Hatteras Fig and Whisky Cake

1½ cups sugar
3 eggs
1 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon allspice
1 cup fig preserves
1 cup nuts, preferably pecans or walnuts, finely chopped
½ cup whiskey

Preheat oven to 325°. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan. In a large bowl, cream together sugar, eggs, and oil. Stir in vanilla. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, salt, soda, and spices. Alternately add dry ingredients with buttermilk to egg mixture, mixing well. Beat in fig preserves, nuts, and whiskey. Pour into the prepared pan, and bake for about one hour, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a rack, then remove from pan. Serve warm.

Sources:

https://blog.carolinadesigns.com/outer-banks-food/hatteras-island-style-clam-chowder/

 

 

https://www.ourstate.com/fig-whiskey-cake/

 

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.heatherfrese.com

 

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

https://www.blairpub.com/shop/the-baddest-girl-on-the-planet?rq=frese

 


 

 

Monday, March 8, 2021

TBR: In the Quick by Kate Hope Day

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!

 


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

 

A young, ambitious female astronaut’s life is upended by a fiery love affair that threatens the rescue of a lost crew in this brilliantly imagined novel in the tradition of Station Eleven and The Martian.

 

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

 

The main character June is closest to my heart. When I began developing the idea for the novel, I knew I wanted to write a first-person narrative, so I needed a main character with enough distinctness and agency to carry the whole novel. I thought about my favorite characters, the ones who are still present in my mind years after I first encountered them, who I go back to again and again. They all seemed to share a peculiar quality: they were the characters who got in their own way, who created hardships for themselves simply by being who they were. They couldn’t help it, and you loved them and you shook your head at them at the same time. For me Jane Eyre is quintessential example, but there are so many great ones! Lisbeth Salander, Becky Bloomwood, Arthur Less, Fleabag. I was taken with the idea of a character who is brilliant and difficult, sometimes hard for other characters to like, but impossible for the reader not to love.

 

The book spans June’s life from when she’s a twelve-year-old girl to when she’s grown up and become an astronaut. The most challenging part of the book were the early sections where I had to work hard to make her voice authentic for the age she was at that moment—and also right for where she was in her development over the course of the novel.   

  

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


This is my second novel and it was written under contract, so unlike my first novel If, Then, I had a deadline. I worked well within those confines and liked knowing who would be reading when I got to a final draft—my fantastic agent Brettne Bloom and my wonderful editor Andrea Walker at Random House. I had finished edits on the book when the pandemic hit, but I will say it was a challenge completing copyedits and first pass proofs while simultaneously supervising one kid doing remote school and homeschooling another. I hope I never have to do that again!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

  

The most important advice for writing a novel is to do something every day to keep the project “alive.” This is along the lines of “touch the work every day,” but I don’t think you have to open the document and write every day. You could also read draft pages, do free writes, work on an outline or character arcs, reread bits of your favorite craft books, read other novels that are doing something similar to yours in terms of place or character or structure, or just simply think about your characters and what they want when you’re doing other things.

  

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

 

I was surprised that my initial idea for June (who had lived inside my head for almost a year before I started writing) stayed consistent from one draft to the next. Every other part of the book changed and evolved, but the most important parts of June’s character—her intelligence, her stubbornness, and her perseverance—stayed the same.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

When I’m writing and I get stuck, or just aren’t feeling inspired, one of the things I do is to write down a couple of key words for the scene or character I’m working on, and look them up in my two volume edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, read their definitions and etymology, and jot down anything interesting. A word I associated with my main character June was quick; she’s very sharp intellectually, but also quick tempered and impulsive. When I looked the word up I was reminded that as a noun it also means “characterized by the presence of life,” as in the phrase “the quick and the dead,” and the “tender flesh of the living body, esp. under the nails,” as in the phrase “nails bitten down to the quick.” The word seemed to strike at the heart of what I was trying to do with the book thematically—the ways I wanted to depict the human body as vulnerable in the punishing setting of space. I knew I wanted to have it in my title, but as I read further down in the OED definitions, I got the idea to create an additional fictional meaning.

This imaginary definition prefaces the book: “QUICK, n. Informally, as by astronauts: the final minutes of life before total oxygen deprivation: in the quick.”


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

 

When June is living in an orbiting space station (similar to the International Space Station), her crewmate Rachel makes a version of a breakfast burrito with powdered eggs, reconstituted mushrooms, and hot sauce. Fun fact: According to Mark Kelly in his memoir Endurance (which recounts his year on the International Space Station), the food that disappears the fastest on the ISS are the breakfast burritos.

 

****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:

www.katehopeday.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576477/in-the-quick-by-kate-hope-day/

 

OR: signed copies available through Grass Roots Books: https://www.grassrootsbookstore.com

 

Monday, March 1, 2021

TBR: Wife | Daughter | Self: a memoir in essays by Beth Kephart

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!

  


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

How are we shaped by the people we love? Who are we when we think no one else is watching? How do we trust the choices we make? The answers shift as the years go by. The stories remake themselves as we remember. In Wife | Daughter | Self I’m reflecting on the multiples of self with true and intimate stories.

 

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

After many failed attempts at telling this story I came to understand that it would only finally work—that the many pieces would only come together and hold—if I thought of the whole in terms of musical composition. More precisely, if I thought of myself as choreographing the book as I once choreographed the programs I performed as a young competitive ice skater. The risks were many, of course. They always are. But I’m only going to publish a book I feel deeply in the marrow of my bones. And I always feel deeply in the surround-sound of song.

 

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

This is my first memoir in many, many years. I’d published five early on in my career and then dedicated decades to researching the form, teaching it, re-learning it, debating it, interviewing masters, writing guidebooks and workbooks, offering advice both at the University of Pennsylvania and through Juncture Workshops. When you care about something as profoundly as I care about literature and truth, you want to work with someone who can care like you do. Laura Stanfill of Forest Avenue Press is that person. A writer herself, an advocate of the arts, a big-hearted soul, she said yes to this book, and we’ve been in conversation ever since. The conversation has mattered as much as the book itself. That whole thing—working with Laura—has been a remarkable high.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

The detail is the story. (But, really, I’ve written books and books filled with advice. And then there are the fabulous insights on writing one gains from reading, say, Lily King’s Writers & Lovers.) [Editor’s note: I’ve got to throw in a quick & personal plug for Beth’s writing book, Handling the Truth!]

 

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

How emotional I became in writing so many of these pieces. How emotional they make me, still. Because in writing them I discovered buried aspects of myself. In writing them I was broken wide open with yearning. If only, I kept thinking as I wrote. If only.

 

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

I want readers to know that this book asks universal questions and that, in the writing of the memoir, I was also very deliberately investigating the memoir form itself. It is, then, a book for writers and for readers.

 

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

So much of this book takes place in the company of others, over meals. Meals on a farm with writers. Meals with my father. Meals with my husband—in fact the book begins with a most extraordinary surprise meal by a lake. I love simple, pure foods—a ripe peach, a Jersey tomato, sweet apples, mushrooms swept from the earth and barely singed. There are no recipes here, in other words. But there are moments made more memorable by spice, texture, and scent.

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: http://bethkephartbooks.com/

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: http://www.forestavenuepress.com/wife-daughter-self-2/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781942436447

 

READ AN EXCERPT, “Three Car Crashes and the Long Afterward”: https://catapult.co/stories/three-car-crashes-and-the-long-afterward-beth-kephart