TBR: Souvenirs from Paradise by Erin Langner

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?

 

My mother died unexpectedly of breast cancer when I was nine years old. But it was only after traveling to the Las Vegas Strip obsessively when I was in my late 20s that I began to understand my grief surrounding that loss and what it’s meant to turn away from it for so long. This is the experience that I unpack in Souvenirs from Paradise, a collection of essays that use the tropes of the Strip—the themed mega-casinos, the impersonator shows, the Mafia history—to unearth the buried emotions that were driving my attraction to this strange place all along.

 

 

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

 

An essay called “The Tourist Guide” was the most fun and also one that I struggled with writing. It plays with the language and style of travel guides, particularly the New York Times “36 Hours” column. People often ask me for travel advice when going to Vegas, so some of the inspiration came from that—but also from asking myself, what would a travel guide look like if I were to write it for this particular book?

 

Travel guides often write from a removed voice in the second person and purport to reveal some kind of insider knowledge, even though they often recommend well-treaded activities and places. My challenge was to find a way to use that language and voice to understand my own “sightseeing” path while avoiding cliched writing on Las Vegas, which I did by considering the details of particular casinos that held meaning for me. I also pushed myself to interrogate how my grief made its way into my experiences with those details. Ultimately, I asked myself, what can “sightseeing” itself can really mean—how can it help us understand not just a place, but ourselves.

 

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

I knew from the beginning that the path to publication would be long because I was working on a collection of essays—I had many people warn me that essay collections are difficult to sell. But this is the writing form I most connect with, and so I committed to it with that reality in mind. A long process is fortunate in that it led me to connect with many people in the writing community over the years—our local writing center in Seattle Hugo House, various summer writing workshops that I participated in around the country, a writing group that formed out of one of those workshops in 2015 and continues today. I began reaching out to some agents in 2018 and did some substantial revisions after a few read the full manuscript but declined representation.

 

I tried reaching out to agents again in 2019, but once the pandemic hit in 2020 and everything felt so chaotic, I struggled to communicate the urgency of a book in query letters. So, I started turning more towards small presses that didn’t require agents. I submitted to some contests, and was once the runner-up, which was a disappointment since only the winner received publication. But it did encourage me to keep submitting, and I was eventually fortunate to have the manuscript selected for Zone 3 Press’s 2021 Creative Nonfiction Book Award by judge Wendy S. Walters.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I once heard Zadie Smith speak about the way she avoids social media and instead uses those precious minutes when people often scroll through their phones to instead write. While I don’t succeed as often as I’d like, it’s something I strive towards when I find a few idle moments.

 

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

 

When I began writing this book, I thought it was about an obsession with Las Vegas. I didn’t think it was about grief, and vehemently denied that it was for about a year, until I realized that the threads about that aspect of myself were the ones my readers were connecting with most.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title was originally an essay title that changed during the revision process (now called “The Rat Pack Casino”).  The cohesion of the collection was important to me, so when I was organizing the book, I went back to an idea I had very early on, when I thought about anchoring each essay in an aspect of the Strip that people often associate with Las Vegas. Once time had allowed me to distance myself from the material, I recognized I had just turned those Vegas tropes on their heads in ways that had been unrecognizable while I was mining my experiences with grief. They had there been with me all along, and so I retitled all of the essays in order to surface the tropes more clearly for the reader—“The Mirage”, “The Bachelorette Party”, and so on. “Souvenirs from Paradise” was a title I hated to give up. But, I considered how the tropes became my own “souvenirs” of both my time in Vegas and the writing process. It felt like this idea could be applied to the whole collection.

 

“Paradise” also felt right for its meanings, as an abstract concept that can transform into different places at different points in our lives. But it also very concretely references the Strip’s location, which is technically in Paradise, Nevada.

 

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

 

The buffet is one of the most quintessential experiences on the Strip, in my opinion.  My favorite is the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars Palace.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.erinlangner.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://epay.apsu.edu/C20023_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=940

 

READ AN EXCERPT, “Souvenirs from Paradise”: https://www.zone3press.com/books/view/souvenirs-from-paradise

TBR: Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier

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?

 

In 1960, Rick Hayworth sets out on a quest with his genius girlfriend Crystal Singer to display a giant mathematical equation in Arizona. It’s been thirty years since someone solved one of the proofs a Martian civilization carved into its surface, but Crystal believes she’s resolved its paradoxical contentions about distance. The book is part quest, part epic love story, and a meditation on the distances between planets and the distances between people.

 

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

 

Lucas Holladay is a minor character in the book, but was an absolute joy to write. I think of him as a low-rent Carl Sagan—Sagan’s talents as a communicator without his scientific bona fides. There was a real sense of play to writing his sections, and it was a joy working to inhabit that Sagan-esque sense of wonder. Rhea, a character from late in the book, was the most difficult to write. I’ll have to be a bit vague to avoid spoilers, but she could be neither too cynical or too optimistic, too open or too closed down, without throwing out the direction of the plot, so it was a challenge giving the right amount of personality to a character that needed to inhabit a middle ground.

 

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

 

Being on submission (when an agent shops the manuscript out to editors) was very psychologically difficult, as it is for many writers. You only need one more yes to know your book will be published, but you don’t know when that yes will happen. You don’t know if it will happen. The dream could die right there on the doorstep. SINGER DISTANCE was on sub for about four months, which is probably average in the scheme of things but felt endless and was full of wild swings from hope to despair.

 

One of the biggest highs has been the response from my blurbers. The whole blurbing process is known for being fraught, but my editor hustled very hard to get the book in the hands of the perfect early readers, and they connected with the book more strongly than I ever hoped. They got exactly what I was going for. It feels miraculous for any reader to receive your book exactly as you intended, and when they’re also writers you deeply admire—well, it's mind-blowing.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I love Blair Hurley’s advice about “touching the bear” from a Lit Hub essay, which is essentially about finding the wild, unexpected turns that drive a story into more intense terrain. She wrote about story draft she’d ended with a character sadly watching a bear meander by, and how much electricity and pressure was invoked when she asked the dangerous question, “what if he tried to touch the bear?”

 

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

 

For logistical reasons, I had my characters’ road trip ending near Flagstaff, Arizona. It was only when I got to those scenes that I discovered in my research that Flagstaff is the home of Lowell Observatory, which was founded by Percival Lowell. Lowell was one of the biggest advocates behind early the 20^th Century theories of an inhabited Mars that inspired the novel, so that set off all kinds of unexpected resonances and intersections. That’s more of a research surprise than a writing surprise, but it’s a good lesson in the ways research can both expand and deepen the world you’re writing.

 

Who is your ideal reader?

 

I’ve thought about this a lot, as the book is a speculative-literary hybrid. You hope that your book appeals to both literary and science fiction audiences, and at the same time worry it’s too literary for science fiction readers and too speculative for literary readers. But I think there are many people who are looking for work that deals in the intersection and feels a humanistic wonder about the sciences. That’s who I most want this book to find. Watchers of Cosmos. Lovers of Carl Sagan. People fascinated by astronomy and particle physics. But also anyone who loves a good story.

 

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

 

Most of the book is made up of two cross country road trips along Route 66, so there’s not a lot of cooking in the book. I think the best way to celebrate the food of the book would be to take off on a long, lonely highway and treat yourself to a burger or a big diner breakfast. Bonus points if it’s on the Mother Road.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://tinhouse.com/book/singer-distance-ebk/?tab=id_hardcover

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://bookshop.org/books/singer-distance/9781953534439

 

 

TBR: The Witch Bottle and Other Stories by Suzanne Feldman

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?

 

From Depression era Mississippi to the suburbs of modern America, to the trials and tribulations of smart young women struggling to make a name for themselves in the arts, Feldman delves deep into the dreams and emotions of regular people and makes them beautiful and accessible. This prize-winning collection of short stories and two novellas, offers entrancing tales of redemption, betrayal, tradition, and rebellion. These narratives range in mood from "The Lapedo Child," a tale of discovery and liberation, to "The Witch Bottle,” a comic examination of a pair of obsessed next-door neighbors. “Untitled Number 20” explores life among women artists at the end of the Flower Power era and the beginning of the Seventies. “The Stages” is a meditation on one woman’s struggle for dignity in the face of divorce and untreatable cancer.

 

Whether it’s the end of a marriage, or a struggle for fame, the works probe issues that give us that “shock of recognition” that is the hallmark of great art—wonderful, absorbing fiction that will be read and reread for decades to come. 

  

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

 

The most fun story, I think, is the title story, "The Witch Bottle." I think I wrote it in three drafts, which is unusually fast for me, but it hit all the spots. It’s funny, short, and has a Twist at the end.

 

The story that went through the most revisions, and took literally years to write was "Goat Island," the final piece. It was about so much—family, art, and the struggle to deal with your family while you TRY to make art. It’s a very personal story, and it took a long time to make it right.

   

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

 

Well! The stories in this collection span approximately 15 years of me writing stories and sending them out to contests and publications. Some were published in amazing places, like Narrative Magazine. Some remained…unnoticed? But like they say, “You gotta play to win!” So I kept sending them out, one by one until I had enough for a collection. Then I sent out the collection until at last, the wonderful Washington Writers’ Publishing House chose me as the winner of their annual fiction competition, and here we are! One of the absolute highs of this book was getting to work with the artists, both friends of mine, on the cover, which we are all very proud of!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Alice McDermott once said to me, “You don’t have to write that novel in order.”

 

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

 

Without a doubt, after spending two years in pandemic circumstances—lockdown, isolation and so on—winning the WWPH competition and seeing this collection out in the light of day was incredibly affirming. I don’t know if that qualifies as a surprise, but it’s a fantastic feeling.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title of the book is the title of the funniest story, which I thought would be appropriate. My ideal reader likes to laugh, likes to cry, and likes a good profound story to think about for years to come.

 

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

 

Sorry! The only food group in this book is Cheetos.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: http://suzannefeldman.net/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.washingtonwriters.org/wwph-bookstore/

 

 

 

TBR: Bookish People by Susan Coll

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 vacuum cleaner, events in Charlottesville, a solar eclipse, a couple of Yiddish jokes I stole from my husband, and an independent bookstore came together to inspire Bookish People. A screwball comedy set in Washington DC during one soggy August week, the novel captures the spiritual depletion of a recently widowed bookstore owner and her overeducated, underpaid crew of booksellers. They are caught in the middle of a controversy: A reviled British poet who is scheduled to appear at the store has just been cancelled because of his misogynist behavior. What is a progressive bookstore owner to do?

 

 

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

 

I have begun answering this question about six times now, and I’m still not satisfied with the answer. I feel I ought to say that I most enjoyed writing Sophie, the bookstore owner, or Clemi, the events manager, both of whom I can relate to, and who I understand intuitively because they are each, in a way, a little bit of me. But in the end, I confess that I had the most fun writing Raymond Chaucer, the misogynistic poet who, in the pages of this book, is on one long bender. He’s on tour for his new poetry collection, and he’s been cancelled before being cancelled was even a thing. The reading public believes that he is responsible for his wife’s suicide, and he’s being compared to Ted Hughes. Fun fact: Raymond appeared in my previous novel, The Stager, in the context of his other, other family. He has a complicated life.

 

Raymond was also the most difficult character to write. I worried that he was too dark, and that he might alienate readers. My editor suggested cutting his point of view, which I did, but then I found I missed him, so I wound up sticking bits of him back in.

 

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

 

It’s never easy, this publishing thing, and each book is its own challenge. I had the same agent for nearly 20 years and had also worked with the same editor for more than a decade.  My editor’s namesake imprint folded, and I switched agents, all of which was somewhat traumatic. Also my timing wasn’t the best—shortly after the book went out on submission, the pandemic began, and for months I didn’t hear anything. But in the end serendipity prevailed: My new agent learned about a new imprint at Harper, and he sent the manuscript off.  I am incredibly fortunate to have found an amazing editor who made this a much stronger book and am grateful for this fresh start.

 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

It sounds cliché, and it is cliché, but write because you love to write, and because you have to write, and because you love the bookish life, and not because you think the outcome will be life-changing. Even if the stars align for you and your book, the challenges will keep coming, and it’s important to stay centered and remember why one writes.

 

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

 

I love that advice! In my previous novel, The Stager, I was taken by surprise when the pet rabbit in the book began to talk. I used to roll my eyes when I heard authors say that their characters took on lives of their own, but in this case the rabbit quite assertively inserted himself into the narrative and had a lot of things to say. I had a similar experience in Bookish People, when the vacuum cleaner developed a distinctive personality. Ditto for the Russian Tortoise, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I suppose the common thread here is that animals and inanimate objects ought not be underestimated in their supporting roles.

 

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

 

I hope readers come to the book understanding that it’s intentionally screwball, with a lot of manic action and zaniness.

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

There is, alas, a lot of unhealthy food: Buffalo Ranch Pringles and French fries are consumed, as is craft beer and a couple of skim cappuccinos.

Two party scenes feature distinctive alcoholic beverages: Malort, a famously foul-tasting spirit from Chicago, is chugged in the opening scene. The penultimate chapter features a solar eclipse cocktail called Penumbra Punch, which includes three different kinds of rum from a private Bermuda reserve, pineapple juice, and grenadine. There might be more ingredients, but my character is interrupted mid-sentence, so we’ll never know what else is in there.

 

****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.Susancoll.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781400234097

TBR: Say This: Two Novellas by Elise Levine

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?

 

It’s a cold spring in Baltimore, 2018, when the email arrives: the celebrity journalist hopes Eva will tell him everything about the sexual entanglement she had as a young teen with her older cousin, a man now in federal prison for murder. Thirteen years earlier, Lenore-May answers the phone to the nightmare news that her stepson’s body has been found near Mount Hood, and homicide is suspected.

 

The two linked novellas in Say This follow Eva’s unsettling ambivalence toward her confusing sexual relations with her cousin, and construct a portrait of her cousin’s victim via collaged perspectives of the slain man’s family, in a multi-faceted exploration of the devastating effects of the aftermath of violent crime.

 

 

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

 

The character Jim in the second novella, “Son One”—the father of the murder victim—is tetchy, in thrall to memories good and bad, self-blaming, accusatory, and bad-joke-telling even in his grief and in the face of a debilitating stroke. Exploring his emotional and tonal range—and allowing myself that latitude in developing his character—was a fascinating, rewarding process.

 

I did, however, really struggle over the course of about a million drafts with Eva, the central character of the first novella, “Eva Hurries Home”. As with Jim, she’s also very complex, with so many layers to peel away. But one of the most challenging aspects of writing her lay in showing that her chosen, recent uncoupled situation—she’s broken up with a series of romantic partners—is not pathological, that it’s not a negative response to the sexual exploitation she experienced as a young teen. As an adult at this moment in time, she’s reveling in her sense of independence from partners, finding herself in a freeing, unencumbered, undistracted state that allows her to finally reckon with her past and her cousin’s transgressions. Steering this aspect of her character felt tricky: I could feel the opposing pressures of traditional and still-pervasive depictions of women alone as blighted, unnatural, unhappy, inherently wrong, and had to keep checking that I wasn’t unconsciously resorting to these same old tropes, and that instead I was pushing back against them.  

 

 

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

 

The lows arose from the usual questions I have when writing, and which lead me through seemingly endless revisions. Can I get the pieces to hold together and achieve a narrative momentum? Which was especially the case with this book, since I used a fragmented form, with very short, elliptical sections—plus the two novellas needed to link up. Other, equally important questions I grapple with: am I doing justice to the characters’ complexities? Can I locate clarity even in the heart of their very human irresolutions?

 

The highs also came through the usual channels: my good fortune at having some insightful readers willing to suffer through my drafts, including my long-time editor John Metcalf—who somehow convinced me, as he always does, to overcome my rampant self-doubts and heed my drive to see the characters’ inner lives and actions through.   

 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

It’s not exactly advice, but I keep these words of Joy Williams close to my heart: “Whenever the writer writes, it’s always three or four or five o’clock in the morning in his [sic] head.” Her words remind me to feel less afraid of exploring the dark places of character.

 

 

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

 

Surprise #1. I was more than half way through writing the first novella, “Eva Hurries Home”, when the idea to use an abecedarian form—beginning each section with a successive letter of the alphabet, a – z and then z – a—for “Son One” occurred to me. It made so much sense: Eva is a compulsive list maker as she strives to quell her confusions and the chaos of her emotions, and the slain man’s family in the second novella, also roiled by powerful feelings, might also employ lists, even more highly ordered ones, as a method of emotional containment. Another compelling reason to write an abecedary: earliest examples of this formal approach to writing are found in the ancient Hebrew liturgy, and this sacred lineage spoke to this contemporary, secular family’s deep yearning to locate meaning in the face of the unspeakable.

 

Surprise #2. I thought, uh-uh, no way can I pull off using this form. It sounded excruciatingly difficult. At least try, I told myself. Deep breath, laptop out to the front porch, give it an hour, see if anything happens. And it did happen: the constraint helped break open the characters, providing an emotional through-line by which I could chart their experiences. In fact, developing and revising this novella came much more quickly for me than for “Eva Hurries Home”.

 

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I had the titles for the separate novellas from their inception, but not one that would tie the two together. They’d each undergone numerous revisions before I added a brief section to “Son One” in which Lauryn, the sister of the slain man, is trying to think of ways to name her thoughts and feelings toward her brother and his death. In the new material, she at one point lands on the phrase “Say this”—and, since “Eva Hurries Home” also centers a character in the process of attempting to name her experience, I realized I’d found a title that worked for both novellas. 

 

 

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

 

Sorry, no recipes! Just lots of food mentions and related sensory memories in the novellas, especially in “Eva Hurries Home”—like Eva, I love to eat, hate to cook. But now that I think about it, the various food items do make for an intriguing ingredient list: jicama from an aspirational DC salad bar, the boiled hot dogs Eva’s cousin used to cook, the greasy noodles she orders in on the night she’s at home considering the celebrity journalist’s request to interview her. Plus the fresh sea beans—those crisp, iodine-rich vegetables that grows in marshy, coastal areas, a few stalks of which she snaps off and chews when as an adult she returns to the narrow peninsula in southern Washington State where she and her cousin once roamed. Place together in large bowl, stir well? Okay—maybe not!

 

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: http://biblioasis.com/

 

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

https://bookshop.org/

https://biblioasisbookshop.com/

 

 READ AN EXCERPT FROM THIS BOOK HERE.

 

 

TBR: Share the Wealth by Maureen Thorson

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?

 

Share the Wealth is a funny-dark exploration of the interplay of luck and abundance. Life is constantly throwing us curveballs – sometimes delightful ones, and sometimes totally crappy ones. These poems try to find the beauty in the world’s both uncertainty and its too-muchness.

 

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

 

Before writing this book, most of my work was in series. My first two books were of poems all drafted around a single idea or theme, and with specific formal restraints. When I started writing the poems that became Share the Wealth, I focused on trying to recover my ability to write poems that would stand up on their own. Ironically, I think that writing a book-length poem or series is for many people far more unusual or intimidating a project than trying to organize singly-written poems into a coherent manuscript. For me, it was the opposite. And of course, when I actually did start organizing all of my “one-and-done” poems into a book, I found that many of them did touch on similar ideas or themes even if I wasn’t consciously aware of the connections when each poem was written.     

 

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

 

Share the Wealth went through what I think is probably a very familiar road to publication, at least for books of poems: seemingly endless submissions to contests and open readings! And all the while, revisions. I took poems out, I put others in, I rejiggered the ordering, I line-edited the individual poems.

 

The lows of the contest/open-reading process are well-known. With many presses and contests charging submission fees, it can feel like you are spending a lot of money without knowing if your manuscript is being taken at all seriously. Some contests don’t even notify submitters of the eventual results. When you’ve been submitting a manuscript for a long time without getting any traction, it’s easy to get discouraged.

 

But when a manuscript does get picked up by a press, oh, what a feeling! I actually had to sort of sit with Veliz Books’ acceptance of Share the Wealth for a few days before responding. I kept reopening my inbox, sure that the acceptance email would have disappeared in a puff of internet smoke. 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I’m a big fan of trying to write every day. Not that I take my own advice – not all the year-long anyway. But several times annually, I set myself month-long challenges where I draft a poem every day. I typically spend the first seven days or so writing a lot of very obvious poems, after which I run out of “normal” ideas and the very weird and interesting stuff starts coming out.  

 

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

 

The inspirational value of snow. I started writing the poems that became Share the Wealth after moving to Maine. Before that, I’d lived almost my whole life south of the Mason-Dixon line, in areas where any snow that does fall melts quickly. Here, not only does it snow a lot, it keeps piling up until spring. But the landscape doesn’t feel bare, somehow. Winter in Maine is at least as lush as summer, in a funhouse mirror kind of way.

 

How do you approach revision?

 

I approach revision . . . slowly. My first draft of a poem is often 90% of the way there, and then I spend 90% of the total time working on the other 10%. Often, the part that is trickiest for me is the ending, and especially trying to resist an ending that is too pat and tied-up. There are at least two poems in the book for which I only was able to find the final lines two or three years after drafting the rest of the poem – which remained unchanged.

 

I also revise in small doses at a time. I rarely sit down and try to do a wholesale re-write of a poem. It’s more like having a jigsaw puzzle where you try to slot in one of the loose pieces every time you walk by, rather than sitting down and doing the whole puzzle at once.

 

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

 

There’s a lot of food in the book, particularly fruit. While there’s a pear on the cover, I cook more often with apples. So, here’s a recipe for one of the easiest and best apple cakes I know: https://smittenkitchen.com/2012/01/apple-sharlotka/

 

*****  

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

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://veliz-books.square.site/product/share-the-wealth-by-maureen-thorson/58?cs=true&cst=custom

 

READ A POEM, “Beautiful Now”: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/753667/pdf

 

 

TBR: Until We Fall by Nicole Zelniker

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?

 

Isla Logan's history teacher Morgan Young is arrested for conspiring to take down the dictator that rules over the United States. The arrest sets off a chain of events that will lead to Isla, her fellow refugees from the U.S., and their allies partaking in the fight of – and for – their lives.

 

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

 

This is such a hard question. Different characters were fun to write at different points, and for different reasons. Zoe’s voice was awesome to develop, while I really enjoyed writing Isla’s story arc. As for the character that gave me the most trouble, that was probably Adam, for reasons you’ll have to read the book to find out!

 

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

 

The high was working with Jaded Ibis Press. They were so thorough in the editing process (I’m not ashamed to say the initial manuscript needed a lot of editing, as first drafts almost always do) and I love working with a press that has the same values as I do. The lowest low for this book was the same as the last few books I’ve worked on – imposter syndrome. I have a hard time seeing my own writing as worthy of publication, even if I think it’s a story worth telling. I think a lot of writers, especially young writers, feel this way.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

“Write what you know.” A lot of people I’ve spoken to dislike this advice because they interpret it as only being able to write characters exactly like them in situations they’ve experienced in real life. But I interpret it as, write stories based on what you care about. In this case, I’ve never been in a situation like the characters in Until We Fall experience, but I find American political history fascinating and pulled from my knowledge of that.

 

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

 

My characters sometimes get away from me, so it’s always surprising how the story changes as I write. I’ll be writing a character one way, and then it’s almost like they’ll tell me they need to be written another way, if that makes sense. They’re never stagnant in my head.

 

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

 

It’s important to me that these characters be diverse, that they come from marginalized communities, and that they’re stronger for it. So often I see cis white people from privileged backgrounds star as the protagonists of a dystopia, like in Divergent or The Fifth Wave. If a totalitarian government were to take over, the first people targeted wouldn’t be the Tris Priors of the world, even if she was divergent.

 

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

 

N/A. Sorry, foodies!

 

*****

 

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

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/until-we-fall-nicole-zelniker/1139740533?ean=9781938841996

 

WATCH A TIKTOK VIDEO ABOUT THIS BOOK:  https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdTJA8X3/

 

 

TBR: An Inventory of Abandoned Things by Kelly Ann Jacobson

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 book is a collection of linked stories that both tell the story of a pregnant graduate student separated from her wife and form an inventory of the Florida panhandle. The biggest question in the book is what it means to fight the land for a home, and how that fighting with a place can actually make you fall in love with it.

 

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

 

My favorite story in the collection is probably “Insect Killer.” I love stories that challenge me, and “Insect Killer” contains three separate encounters with three separate kinds of ants, all serving as metaphors for different phases of the character’s time in Florida. So it’s my favorite story, and yet also the most challenging—kind of like the Florida landscape where I encountered all of those ants!

 

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

 

This book was purely a work of personal art. I wrote it for myself—to document all of the strange and wonderful (and very terrible!) things I had experienced during my time in Tallahassee. It’s an interesting book in that it’s part nonfiction—almost all of the natural details are drawn from my time there—and part fiction, because the characters and relationships are completely fabricated. (Writing a story where the partner is 100% supportive does not make for good fiction!) Then I sent it off to some chapbook contests, since chapbooks are hard to publish outside of dedicated venues, and never really thought much about it. I love Split/Lip and have been a fan of theirs for many years, but I certainly didn’t think they would select my book! There are so many wonderful authors who submit! What a reinforcement of the idea that writers must first and foremost write for themselves, and write the stories that they need to tell, even if they don’t necessarily have a publication plan, because you never know whether a book will sell or whether it will sit on your computer for all of eternity. 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Writing should be fun. I certainly have written books that have challenged me or gotten me stuck for a while, but overall, I think that writing should be an enjoyable process—whatever that means to you. It’s not financially rewarding enough to spend time doing it otherwise. In my classes, I have my students do a ton of creative exercises, from acting out their battle scenes to drawing weapons on pieces of paper and then exchanging them. I have to break them out of their high school mindset of the five-paragraph essay, and out of their fear of producing something a teacher might tell them isn’t right. I want them to start at the point of silly-fun, and only after that, when they’re sitting there smiling at their papers, do I move them to emotionally-challenging-but-still-fun.

 

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

 

The ending surprised me. I often don’t know the endings of my books—or I know only the beginning and ending but literally nothing between those two points. I don’t want to give anything away, but I wasn’t sure whether these characters would stay in Florida or not, and I was fascinated to find out what path they chose.

 

How do you approach revision?

 

So revision is basically my worst enemy. I hate it. I read about writers who describe how much they’ve come to love revision over time, and…I’m not one of them. I basically live in a book while I’m writing it, and then, when I finish it, it’s dead to me. This is not to say I think my books are perfect—far from it! I just am willing to write a book that doesn’t work, acknowledge that a few months later, and then put it in a computer folder, never to be read by anyone but me. If I really, really, really care about a book enough to revise it, I have to start the book over from the beginning. On the plus side, this makes me a very easy writer to work with during the editing process—an editor suggests a revision, and, having moved on and completely distanced myself from the work, I can apply that revision as suggested with very few exceptions. Some people use short stories to practice their craft—I just happen to use novels and collections as well.

 

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

 

I wish! There’s an apple pie in the book, but it’s store-bought, which is an important detail in that story. I ate so many wonderful foods in my time down south—my favorite was the shrimp & grits and hush puppies from Jonah’s in Thomasville, Georgia, which is pretty close to Tally—but as a part-time single parent when my partner was in Virginia and full time PhD student, I didn’t have much time to cook!

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:  www.kellyannjacobson.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.splitlippress.com/an-inventory-of-abandoned-things

 

 

 

 

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