Monday, July 24, 2023

TBR: Liveability by Claire Orchard

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. 

 


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

 

An ode to the eccentricities and occasional sorrows of the everyday, Liveability is also a joyous and witty celebration of the otherworldly.

 

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

 

Given its subject matter, “When I bring up advance care planning” was surprisingly entertaining to write. I enjoyed capturing the voice of the older woman, having to deal with being badgered about what she wants or doesn’t want for her end-of-life experience. The increasing exasperation of the adult child was fun to write too. The poem was inspired by multiple conversations I’ve had with my mother. Who, I might add, despite my best efforts, has an advance care plan that remains too sketchy by far!

 

A number of the poems had their challenging moments, but the one I worried about most when publication rolled around was “Unravelling things.” It’s a bit of a rambler of a poem, with long lines I wasn’t sure were going to fit across the page. In the end, we managed to shoehorn it in!

 

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

 

With my first book, I spent a lot of time obsessing over organizing the poems so they worked together as a coherent whole.  Liveability, in contrast, came together much more organically. I think with the passage of time I’ve become more confident to just keep on with the writing and not concern myself so much with how poems will sit alongside each other. I can honestly say I haven’t had any lows with this collection, which has been refreshing!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I like Grace Paley’s characterisation of the writer as “nothing but a questioner”. It serves as a useful reminder that it’s not my job to neatly tie up every loose end.

 

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

 

The way a pile of poems written, in some cases, several years apart came together to function as a collection without extensive scheming on my part. I’m a planner from way back, and was startled when this book quietly managed to arrange itself.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

My original title was The Great Outdoors, a smug in-joke about my loathing of the enforced hiking and camping trips I endured as a child. No doubt it would have led potential readers to expect a book about the joys of hiking and/or mountaineering. They would have been sadly disappointed. Ashleigh Young, an extraordinary writer I was lucky enough to have on my editorial team, gently suggested Liveability, which is a far better choice.

 

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

 

I mention gingernuts in the first poem in the book, which I think may be similar to ginger snaps in the US? They are a small, super hard biscuit you need to dunk in a cup of hot tea to soften, or risk breaking teeth! I grew up not far from the local Griffins biscuit factory and the advertising tagline went “There’s no gingernuts taste quite the same, ask for Griffin’s Gingernuts by name!” I tried this recipe, and it comes pretty close:

 https://thisnzlife.co.nz/recipe-topp-secret-gingernut-recipe/

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS WRITER: www.claireorchardpoet.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

https://teherengawakapress.co.nz/liveability/

 

 READ A POEM FROM THIS BOOK, “Shooting Rats”:

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/readingroom/school-holidays-with-gun

 

 

Monday, July 17, 2023

TBR: Off to Join the Circus by Deborah Kalb

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?

 

OFF TO JOIN THE CIRCUS is about an overly enmeshed, neurotic Jewish family in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, and what happens when a legendary relative returns after 64 years. Adele Pinsky ran away at 16 from her home in West Orange, New Jersey, perhaps to join a circus, and she reappears when her younger brother, Howard, is turning 75. The book features Howard’s family—wife Marilyn, daughters Sarah, Diana, and Lucy, and grandsons Max and Will—as they prepare for a bar mitzvah and the birth of a baby, and deal with Adele’s (re)entry into their midst.

 

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

 

I’d like to say that I most enjoyed creating Adele. She’s a woman of mystery, and for that reason I never tell any of the story from her perspective. The seven other family members, who are all point-of-view characters, are absorbing her arrival and what it means for them—they’ve created an entire mythology given her lengthy absence--and finding that she’s shifted their perspectives about family and what really matters.

 

Howard and Marilyn’s oldest daughter, Sarah, perhaps gave me the most trouble because her worried state of mind reminded me too much of myself. It was harder to make the chapters from her point of view as funny as the others.

 

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

 

The highs: finding a publisher, Apprentice House, based at Loyola University in Maryland. I was absolutely delighted when they agreed to publish it, and have enjoyed working with them. The lows probably center around sending the novel to dozens of agents who all rejected it.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Keep on trying! I know it can be discouraging to get rejections from agents or publishers, but I believe persistence will pay off in the end. Something I’m still telling myself about a mystery novel I’ve been working on for literally decades now! 

 

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

 

Great question! My character Lucy, the youngest of the three daughters, is recovering from a divorce. I thought Lucy and ex-husband Jeff’s marriage ended for one reason, and then Lucy and I discovered together that actually it was another reason entirely! I won’t give anything away here, but it was one of those moments when you shake your head and wonder why that hadn’t occurred to either of you before!

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I’m not usually great at coming up with titles (and when I was a journalist, I wasn’t great at coming up with headlines). But this title made sense to me immediately. When Adele first leaves, 11-year-old Howie asks his dad where she went, and the dad waves his hands in the air and says, “Off to join the circus, Howie.” Being 11, Howie takes it literally, and even when he’s older, he wonders if perhaps the missing Adele could have joined the circus. The circus, and the idea of being someone who even possibly could join a circus, becomes part of Pinsky family folklore.

 

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

 

One of my characters, Diana’s husband, Philippe, is a chef. He’s from Belgium, and runs a restaurant called Diana’s that serves various Belgian specialties. Knowing very little about chefs, Belgian food, and how to run a restaurant, I consulted a chef friend. All errors in this regard are my own. Philippe turned out to be one of my favorite characters. Marilyn, who is a retired English professor rather than a chef, also seems to spend a great deal of time cooking for huge groups of relatives who descend on her. She makes an impromptu vegan stir-fry that she finds quite delicious.

 

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: http://www.deborahkalb.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:

https://www.amazon.com/Off-Join-Circus-Deborah-Kalb/dp/1627204490/ref=sr_1_2?crid=20W5AOS8I2VHT&keywords=deborah+kalb&qid=1683736289&sprefix=deborah+kalb%2Caps%2C85&sr=8-2

 

 

 

Monday, July 10, 2023

TBR: Half-Life of a Stolen Sister by Rachel Cantor

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?

 

Half-Life of a Stolen Sister is an imaginative retelling of the life of the Brontë siblings in a time and place much like our own. Half-Life is about siblings—their bonds and how they collectively and individually understand their lives; it is also about the creative impulse and how we manage terrible loss.

 

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

 

I didn’t have to create my characters, really, because they’re based on real people. My task (self-imposed) was instead to imagine and understand them. It was probably easier to imagine Charlotte than it was Emily because Charlotte left so many personal writings and met so many more people (who then remembered her) while Emily left almost no writings and had no interest in meeting anyone ever!

 

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

 

The book took ten years for me to write—lots of time for highs and lows! At one point, my former agent told me she would only go out with the book if I cut it by more than one-third; she offered no roadmap, however, for how I might do so! That was definitely a low! Highs included writing every piece in the book, and also finding an editor who truly appreciated what I was trying to do.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Alice McDermott and Jim Crace both offered similar advice at different points which I now, with Half-Life, possibly follow to an extreme! Alice read a story about young people traversing Asia in a Magic Bus in 1960 and told me to keep those kids, and their drama, on the bus! Jim read an early version of the opening of my first novel, Good on Paper, and said that the love interest’s bookstore should not be many blocks away, but visible from the narrator’s window. Spatial unity! I like it! My Brontës are homebodies: in my imagining, virtually all their drama takes place in their much too small, rent-controlled apartment!

 

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

 

I had intended to write four realistic long stories, each from the point of view of a different Brontë sibling; collectively, these long stories would comprise a novel, telling us something more or less comprehensive about their lives. Imagine my surprise when before I’d written even five pages, the Brontë children were jumping on and off subways, and running from their doorman. This was not going to be a realistic version of their lives!

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title of the book came out of that first piece, which by some crazy miracle already contained so much that would be important in the book. The stolen sisters refer, at first, to the two oldest Brontë girls, Maria and Elizabeth, who die at age 11 and 10, respectively (when Charlotte, the oldest of the remaining children, is barely nine); later it could be said that Emily and Anne, who die at age 30 and 29, respectively, are also “stolen.” In my imagining, these deaths haunt Charlotte. What is the half-life of this kind of haunting? Does it diminish over time? What are its effects? These are (some of) the questions this book explores.

 

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

 

Emily, it seems, is constantly making stew. By all accounts her stew is excellent, though it is in no way exceptional. Definitely it wasn’t made with wine because Emily wouldn’t want alcohol of any kind in the house to tempt her brother; also, she can’t be using a crockpot or pressure cooker, because she seems to always be stirring … I haven’t tried this recipe, so can’t vouch for it, but this is very much like the stew Emily might have made: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/25678/beef-stew-vi/. Hearty, ordinary cut of beef, plenty of veg to make the beef go further!

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.rachelcantor.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:

https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781641294645

 

READ “Dead Dresses,” AN EXCERPT FROM THIS BOOK:

https://kenyonreview.org/wp-content/uploads/KenyonArchive/2015/37/1/i24240425/24242260/24242260.pdf