TBR: A Suffragist’s Guide to the Antarctic by Yi Shun Lai

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?

 

Clara Ketterling-Dunbar is an American suffragist who decamps for the English suffrage movement, just in time to have it roll over to support the WWI effort. In utter frustration, she signs onto a cockamamie Antarctic expedition (her words, not mine!), thinking that, in a place with no civilization, she can gain equity. But when the crew’s ship sinks, she’s dismayed to see that the men have thought of her as “just a woman” all along. Clara has to prove she can handle just as much as the men can handle, all while trying to survive in the Antarctic. This book is Clara’s diary whilst on expedition, and pegged to Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition.

 

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

 

The answer is the same for both of these questions: there’s a clear villain on-board the ship, and he emerged as I was determined to stick to the timeline and historical facts of the original Endurance expedition. But the minute it became obvious that Clara was going to have suffer some serious indignities, including a sexual assault, at the hands of this crew member, I began to realize that I couldn’t stick to the historical events as much as I thought I had to: I couldn’t prescribe the things Clara goes through to any of the men I’d gotten to know through reading crew diaries and their later recollections of life on this expedition.

 

So I was really happy to get to craft this terrible creature from wholecloth, and remind myself that I was writing fiction. This realization gave me so much more freedom. And, at the same time, I struggled to find inspiration for this accursed human. Finally, it occurred to me that this guy was already lurking in my past. So I wrote him. Gleefully, and with no small sense of vengeance.

 

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

 

No lows, unless you count the waiting. The waiting was damn hard. But I have a great agent, Kate Testerman, and she knew just the right editors to send it to. We had our first offer in two weeks and a competing offer not long after. Then we had to make hard decisions. Then, we had to wait for the contracts. All that was like a three-month process. Then it was another year and a quarter before pub date. So yeah. Waiting was the absolute worst bit.

 

I know. I’m an irrational PollyAnna about this, but I truly loved every bit of it, especially noodling through my editor’s notes and really thinking about them, and puzzling through how to make the revisions that would satisfy my editor’s rightful suggestions. I actually outright loved the revision process. When you’ve been toiling by yourself, crafting a storyline, having someone say, “Do you mean this?” is a godsend.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write what you’re curious about. I wish to hell I could remember where I read this. I pride myself on taking pretty good notes, but um, apparently not.

 

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

 

The lateness with which things that should be obvious came together. I was obviously writing a book about inequality all along. About strong women having to prove themselves. The Antarctic was a convenient backdrop, because I love the place and wanted to set a book there. I knew all of this. I sent the query and completed manuscript off to my dream agent February of 2022. It wasn’t until August of 2021 that I stumbled upon the fact that the women’s suffrage movement was happening at the exact same time as the Golden Age of Exploration, when all those men went off and did manly things. I’d been working on the book in some form (it used to be a time-travel book!) since early 2015. People. That is a lot of years to fail at putting some big puzzle pieces together.

 

But, as you can tell from the timeline, when it came together, it came together fast.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Oh, I am so glad you asked how I got the title of my book, because I can give proper credit to my friend and writerly BFF Roz. She nudged me toward flexing the diary format of the manuscript to do double duty as a guidebook that outlined my hero’s hopes for the future. Then, after dropping that gem, she said, “You could call it ‘A Suffragist’s Guide to Antarctica,’ or something,” That conversation unlocked everything, and I will forever be in Roz’s debt.

 

As I mentioned above, when you’ve been living in your head for so long, outside voices are the best thing that can happen.

 

Well, that’s what works for my brain, anyway. YMMV.  

 

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

 

Aiya, yes. All through the Endurance expedition and a great many other cold-weather expeditions of the time, they ate hoosh, a porridge of melted snow, pemmican, which is a kind of dried-meat cake made with tallow or fat, and sledging biscuits. There’s a pretty good recipe here, but I’ve gone vegetarian since I started writing this book, so I can only tell you that the one time I made it, on my would-not-find-in-Antarctica-in-1914-induction stove, it was…disgustingly satisfying. 

 

Here's something I still love, though: Kendal mint cake. Sugar and mint syrup. There’s no record of this having been eaten on-board the Endurance expedition, but I put it in my book anyway, because it is delicious and well known as a food explorers and walkers of a great many hills took with them places.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://thegooddirt.org

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Suffragists-Guide-to-the-Antarctic/Yi-Shun-Lai/9781665937764

 

 

 

TBR: The Blueprint: A Novel by Rae Giana Rashad

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?

 

The Blueprint follows Solenne, who is coming of age in an alternate, oppressive Texas. She becomes entangled with a white government official, and she navigates those experiences using the stories of her ancestor who was an enslaved concubine in 19th century Louisiana. The Blueprint is rooted in history, but it’s literary speculative fiction, in the vein of Atwood.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

 

I truly loved writing Solenne. Inspired by the lives of enslaved girls in the Antebellum South, she emerged fully formed after initial research. Fine tuning her into a living, breathing person took work. In early drafts, I worried that it would be too difficult for readers to root for or identify with a flawed Black girl, which led to a passive, dishonest, shell of a character. Once I honored my vision, Solenne’s voice developed into something I loved.

 

And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

Writing Bastien, my antagonist, posed unique challenges. He’s a recombination of historical figures, men from slave narratives, and real-life narcissists. Striking a balance in creating negative space—embracing the unsaid and untold to leave room for readers to question him—without veering into a redemptive arc was a delicate task.

 

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

 

I have a bit of a unicorn story in that after writing for five years, I found my agent, revised with her, and sold the manuscript within five months. I made the mistake of thinking things would continue to be smooth sailing. However, a month post-Harper acquisition, the HarperCollins strike hit. After the strike ended, my editor, my champion I hoped to work with for many more books, moved to a different publisher. I was an orphan. Losing the editor who loved and fought for your manuscript is devastating and terrifying.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write honestly, even when it reveals ugliness.

 

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

 

I was fully prepared to write this as historical fiction after my initial research. But when Solenne’s character came to me, I was surprised to see her, not in the Antebellum South, but standing on a train platform in a world that looked like our own, desperate for emotional and physical freedom. I went with it. Emotional resonance was my primary goal. Setting the story in a world that looks like our own removes distance between the characters and contemporary readers.  

 

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

 

A blueprint is a set of ideas or a set of beliefs. In The Blueprint, two very different characters interact. Like their ancestors, both want things that can’t coexist. Both look to history to inform their actions.  The Blueprint is an acknowledgment that history designs the present.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.raegianarashad.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-blueprint-rae-giana-rashad/20297568?ean=9780063330092

 

 

TBR: Sex Romp Gone Wrong by Julia Ridley Smith

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?

 

Sex Romp Gone Wrong is a collection of 12 stories about women and girls trying to navigate relationships, desire, love, responsibility—and making a mess of things.

 

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

 

I most enjoyed writing “The Woman Who Did Things Wrong.” It’s kind of a twisted fairy tale, and it was cathartic and fun to write.

 

“Et tu, Miss Jones?” went through countless drafts, over many years. It was the first time I was consciously using autobiographical material in my fiction in a way that might be recognizable to people who knew me. Now I’ve published a memoir, so when I recall my worry about showing up too transparently in that story, it seems a bit absurd. But then, I’m highly proficient at worrying about absurd things.

 

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

 

The road was paved with rejection—a pretty common experience for writers. Many of the dozen stories were rejected multiple times before they appeared in literary journals. Once I had enough stories to make a collection, I started sending the book manuscript to contests. It would lose, I’d write a new story, put that into the collection, take out an old story, and send the collection to another contest. That went on for a few years. Then I got connected with my agent, and after my memoir The Sum of Trifles was published, she agreed to send out Sex Romp Gone Wrong. When Blair wanted to publish it, I was over the moon.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Anne Lamott’s “shitty first drafts” and “short assignments” from Bird by Bird.

 

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

 

The shorter, weirder stories like “Tooth” and “Hot Lesbian Vampire Magic School.” I felt so free writing them—they were such larks—and then the final surprise was that they actually turned out to be viable stories.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title is also the title of one of the stories in the book. Google that phrase at your own peril.

 

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

 

I LOVE to eat, but I don’t cook much. Left to my own devices, I’ll graze on leftovers and snack food, like the mother does in my story “Mrs. DeVry, Hanging out the Wash.” My recipes are pretty much: Put cheese on cracker. Put butter on toast. Put one found food on top of another and hope it tastes good.

 

*****

 

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.juliaridleysmith.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://blairpub.com/shop/p/sex-romp-gone-wrong

 

READ A SHORT STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “The Woman Who Did Things Wrong”:

https://copper-nickel.org/the-woman-who-did-things-wrong/