TBR: Mom in Space by Lisa Ampleman

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 poems and a few lyric essays, Mom in Space addresses infertility, parenting, and chronic illness through the perspective of a woman interested in the history and biology of spaceflight. With an eye on both the intergalactic and the terrestrial, these poems take place on an Earth affected by climate change, nuclear waste, and racism: “We don’t have enough rare-earth / metals to build a fleet of starships. // We just have the rare Earth” (“Calamity Days”).

 

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

 

I enjoyed writing a lot of the book—when I tell people about the writing that happened in 2020 and 2021 in particular, I often just say in amazement, “It was so fun!” Of course, some of the poems tapped into emotionally challenging experiences (see below), but “Alpha,” for example, felt like wordplay and spending time with concepts that fascinate me, like the Van Allen belts of radiation and the radio waves that come from pulsar stars.

 

“Lava Tubes on the Moon” gave me the most trouble, in a way. I’d been wanting to write a poem with that title for quite a while, but that’s not usually how my creative process works, so I had a lot of false starts. Then I started writing a poem about my experience of miscarriage with my husband, thinking about what he might have felt, since so much of the book is me processing that and other things. I struggled to have those two concepts live in the same space together for a while, I struggled to revisit that moment in the hospital, and I struggled to figure out the poem’s form until I thought about really long lines (that would still fit on a 6 x 9 page of poetry) alternating with emptiness, gaps—tubes, if you will. Until the speaker brought out sweatpants and spinach dip, the poem felt very inert as well. I’m happy with how it turned out in the end, though I don’t know if it’ll be one I choose for readings because of how it brings me back there to that hospital bed.

 

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

 

Because I published my second book at LSU Press and they had first right of refusal for my next project, I knew there was a strong chance to work with them again—but that I had to do the work as if I was pitching to them for the first time. I loved working with them and was interested in doing so again. Once I felt like the book was ready, I sent it to James Long, curator of the poetry series. They sent it to a peer reviewer (university press!), who recommended to publish it with a few small suggestions for revision.

 

So, in my case, publication wasn’t as difficult as getting to the book itself—that’s more like the low point. After my son was born in 2015, I didn’t do much new writing. I kept submitting what became Romances, but individual poem drafts often failed. Then in 2019, I got notified by the Hermitage Artist Retreat that I’d been awarded a residency there—the kick is that I had never applied; they choose their residents differently. I was floored and flummoxed. I wasn’t sure at first I could take time away from my family. But I did, in February 2020, and I brought along a book about the Apollo program I’d been wanting to read since we’d visited an Apollo 11 capsule exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center. I got hooked and started writing space poems and reading more about spaceflight. Two weeks after I got home from Florida, the pandemic lockdown began, and the combination of time, fear (about the pandemic as well as a spinal arthritis I’d just developed), and space obsession put the book into motion at last. As I say in “Neil and Me and Work and the Body,” an essay in the book, “A pandemic raged, my body hurt, but I could escape to space.”

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

That a fallow period—which somehow is even listed in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary!—is okay. I’m loosely in such a place now, dabbling with a few things but between focused work. As I mentioned above, I was in a fallow period for years before things kicked into gear in 2020. Just till the soil and fill the well with reading, beauty, contentment, and perhaps other kinds of creative work until it’s time to enter an active time again.

 

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

 

At times while I worked on this book, I found myself writing down things I wouldn’t say out loud or bring up in conversation. I loved the rhythm of “My mother never taught me / to hover over the / public bathroom toilet” (the opening of “Public Intimacies”), but I was surprised that I’d put it into words, then in a poem, then submitted that poem to magazines, then included the poem in a book I knew might get published. I’m vulnerable in this book in ways that surprise me still. I wonder if part of that vulnerability stems from how much of the writing happened in the first year of the pandemic, when I had more time to be alone and introspective and feel like I wasn’t in the public sphere.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

During the early days of the pandemic, my husband, son, and I spent a lot of time relaxing on couches together. I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point in that era, my son (then four or five), was talking as he is wont to do while he plays games on his tablet. He knows I like space—I was probably reading a book about SkyLab or the shuttle program—and among the other slightly singsong-y things he said was “a mom in space.” I typed it into the notes app on my phone right away. So, I knew fairly early in the process what the title could be, and it probably shaped some of the work that happened after that.

 

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

 

Well, since I mentioned spinach dip above, here’s a pretty simple version.

 

*****

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

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK~~

PUBLISHER SITE: https://lsupress.org/9780807181256/mom-in-space/

SIGNED COPIES: Downbound Books

 

READ 2 POEMS FROM THIS BOOK: https://therumpus.net/2021/12/21/rumpus-original-poetry-two-poems-by-lisa-ampleman/

 

 

 

TBR: Mama Said: Stories by Kristen Gentry

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?

 

Mama Said is set in Louisville, Kentucky at the tail end of the crack epidemic and the rise of the opioid crisis. It follows three daughters–cousins in the same family–who come of age struggling against their mothers’ drug addictions. 

 

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

 

I had a lot of fun writing “Animal Kingdom.” It’s set on Derby, back when you could still cruise through West Louisville. The Kentucky Derby on TV is big hats, mint juleps, and rich white people. Derby to me, and a lot of black Louisvillians, is cruising on Broadway, barbecues, and music. It’s basically a miles-long block party. Capturing that on the page required a lot of reminiscing on Derby days of my past and made me feel like I was back in Louisville in all of the energy and excitement though I was bundled up in my house or cupping a a mug of tea in a coffee shop in cold, gray Rochester, New York. 

 

Although it was also fun creating Bryce’s character, that man gave me truh-ble! Actually, my boyfriend and I got into a fight about Bryce’s character. I generally have a hard time writing male characters, so I always run them by him. I read him some bits and he said Bryce’s interaction with Angel wasn’t believable given his age (thirty), her age (seventeen), and the setting (half-naked girls shaking ass for men pointing camcorders). But I knew Bryce’s heart, as the old folks say, and I fought, quite literally, off the page with my boyfriend and on the page to bring that to life and make it real.

 

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

 

It took me a looong time to write Mama Said. Fourteen years. Part of the reason why it took so long and what had happened was… (😂) that I didn’t really begin writing the collection until I left grad school. The book’s overarching mother-daughter conflict rooted in the mother’s addiction is pulled from personal conflict that played out between me and my mother. I’d avoided addressing that in my writing until my thesis deadline was approaching and I needed more pages to meet the minimum. I wrote what was at the top of my mind and ended up with the first draft of “A Satisfying Meal,” in which the protagonist, JayLynn, takes her boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner and is mortified as her family’s dysfunction, that she could easily hide two hours away at school in Bloomington, Indiana, unfolds before both of them. 

 

Another reason why it took so long to write the book is because I wasn’t writing for months at a time. You know how people say you have to carve out your writing time and be ruthless about maintaining it? I was doing none of that. I let the responsibilities of my job as a professor completely take over my life–for years! There was no work-life balance. I often graded in the time I had scheduled to write because I was always behind on grading. 

 

Yet another reason why it took so long to write the book is because I’m a slow writer, largely because I’m a perfectionist. I don’t know why I put so much pressure on myself, especially in first drafts, when I know I’m going to revise the sugar honey iced tea out of it, but I do. I’m working on it. 

 

So it took a while to write but once the manuscript was ready, it only took three months before it was accepted at West Virginia University Press. 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Remember what I said above about people saying you have to carve out your writing time and be ruthless about it? What those people said, that’s my favorite piece of writing advice. 

 

Unfortunately, it has taken me years to understand that I have to schedule my writing time–whether it’s ten minutes or two hours–and guard it fiercely because no one but me is going to do it because no one but me cares about it (well, maybe they do. I’m a moody heifer when I’m not writing), and the work–whatever the work may be–will never stop and grant me the reprieve to write. 

 

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

 

Many of the climactic moments in each of the stories surprised me because I don’t outline stories (maybe that’s another reason why it took me so long to finish the collection) and also follow this advice. I like to realize a character’s worst fear and see how they react. 

 

Patricia, the protagonist in “A Sort of Winning,” was an especially surprising addition to the collection. She came out of nowhere. I hadn’t been reminiscing about P.E. class in high school or P.E. teachers at all. I was minding my own business and BOOP! the opening scene of her watching the kids while they take a test popped up while I was writing, and I wanted to see where it would go. Patricia’s story offers another perspective of JayLynn that further complicates her character, and Patricia’s frustration with the way her terminally ill mother still swoons over her estranged husband adds variety to the collection’s mother-daughter conflicts. 

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The book’s title comes from the title story. In “Mama Said,” JayLynn is haunted by her depressed mother’s confession that she wishes she could drive off of the JFK Bridge. This disclosure from mother to daughter sends JayLynn reeling, unsure whether her time and effort should be spent at home helping her mother or on campus raising her plummeting grades. This uncertainty of how to navigate the world with their mother’s words and actions playing in their minds also plagues JayLynn’s cousins, Zaria and Angel. The conflict that the title story highlights is relevant throughout the collection so it seemed fitting as the book’s title. I also like the colloquial sound of Mama Said.  

 

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

 

In “A Satisfying Meal,” there’s much ado about JayLynn’s mother’s greens, ”spiced with a soft heat and seasoned to the edge of too salty with enough jowl bacon that a bowl of them can be a satisfying meal.” Those greens described are my mama’s greens, and her recipe is simple. Throw some greens (what kind really doesn’t matter. Could be collards, kale, mustard, turnip or a mix of all of them), jowl bacon, water, and some salt in a pot and simmer until tender.

 

I learned how to make these greens myself, substituting cooked bacon and bacon grease for the jowl bacon and adding onion and yellow mustard. 

 

But I’m vegan now, so I use vegan chicken broth, onion, salt, and yellow mustard. I also don’t simmer them as long. You really don’t need to cook them more than thirty minutes.   

 

*****

 

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

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/mama-said-stories-kristen-gentry/19967868?ean=9781952271984

 

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “Introduction”: https://www.spectermagazine.com/three/gentry/

 

 

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

 

 

TBR: Swimming with Ghosts by Michelle Brafman

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?

 

SWIMMING WITH GHOSTS is set in June 2012. The magical and slightly cultish River Run swim club is alive with the spirit of fun competition when a perfect storm brews between team moms and best friends, Gillian Cloud and Kristy Weinstein. The ghost of family addiction has turned up, forcing them to face their unresolved childhood trauma. Real sparks fly on the night of the derecho—a freak land hurricane—which sweeps through Northern Virginia, knocking out power for days, igniting a tinder box of family secrets that threaten to destroy the lives Gillian and Kristy have worked so hard to create.

 

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

 

The same character I enjoyed creating was the one who gave me the most trouble! I loved writing Gillian Cloud, the uber swim mom who cannot relinquish control over every aspect of the River Run Manta Rays swim team, even after her youngest child is too old to compete. Her antics are ripe for satire. That said, her obsession with the pool is rooted in her family history. River Run is a sacred space for Gillian because it was the only place where her charismatic, alcoholic father did not drink to excess. So she is really clinging to this oasis.

Gillian was tricky because my beta readers kind of hated her controlling, Ms. Fix-it behavior. The more I dug into the source of her vulnerability, though, the more human she became to my early readers. That’s what I love about writing. Those moments of grace.

 

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

 

The book went out on submission in March of 2020, when we were all trying to figure out life in a global pandemic. The novel got no traction. That low lasted for a couple of  years. In February of 2022, a publicist from Turner Publishing asked me to blurb one of their novels, and throughout the course of our correspondence, I discovered that Turner had hired a fabulous new acquisitions editor. He totally understood what I was up to with this novel and bought the book quickly. That was a high!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Ask someone to read your work aloud to you. My husband read me late drafts of my first two books, and over my son’s winter break from college, he parked himself in my office and read me Swimming with Ghosts. They both uncovered plot, character, and continuity issues I couldn’t see as well as smaller things like word repetition and pet gestures and verbs that should probably only be used once in an entire novel! When I’m listening to someone read the book, I can also hear when my rhythm is off and which hinky sentences need fixing. I do love the intimacy of the exercise, and I often read for my writer friends.     

 

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

 

The story’s hopefulness. At first, I was focused on rendering a world where parents were working out their stuff in their kids’ arenas, but as I got to know the nature of my characters’ troubles, I realized that they, we, I, have the capacity to transcend our most troubling family legacies. And I’m sure rooting for all of us to do so!

 

Who is your ideal reader?

 

I’m always surprised by who reads my books, which is part of the fun of putting a story out into the world. I suppose my ideal reader is someone who enjoys a little suburban satire, someone whose life has been impacted by any form of addiction, and maybe a parent who has experienced one of those “I think I went too far” moments that can materialize in any kid-related arena, be it the River Run pool, a hockey rink, or ballet studio.

 

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

 

Whoopie pies! This treat actually serves as a plot point in the book. When tension and competition rears its ugly head between Gillian and her best friend Kristy, Kristy swipes the dessert and the affection of one of the younger swim moms.

 

Link to recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/10016/whoopie-pies-i/

 

 

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.michellebrafman.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Ghosts-Novel-Michelle-Brafman/dp/1684429544/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1683118757&refinements=p_27%3AMichelle+Brafman&s=books&sr=1-1

 

 

READ AN EXCERPT OF THIS NOVEL: https://turnerbookstore.com/products/swimming-with-ghosts (below image of cover)

 

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 Marsh Queen by Virginia Hartman

 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?

 

Loni Murrow, a 36-year-old bird artist at the Smithsonian in DC, returns to her hometown in the wetlands of northern Florida to care for her ailing mother. There, she gets hints that her father's long-ago death is not what she’d always thought. The swamp and its creatures lead her toward a solution she’s not sure she wants, but can’t resist.  

 

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

 

The character I had the most fun with was Mr. Barber. He was an old friend of Loni’s father, and was present in early drafts, but in later drafts he started to pop up in interesting ways that I hadn’t anticipated. He is someone she thought she knew when she was a child and her father was alive, but in the present-day part of the story, his erratic comings and goings are alternately comical and scary.

 

The character who gave me the most trouble: Probably Delores, the botany librarian at the Smithsonian. I knew she had to be in the book, but early readers wanted to cut her scenes. They didn’t understand what she was doing there, thought she was extraneous. But my editor Jackie Cantor said, “I think you need more Delores.” And that gave me the permission I needed to work harder on Delores and to weave her subplot seamlessly into Loni’s story.

 

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

 

Well, the highs came at the end, when Jackie acquired the book. Not only that, she “got” the book. She understood who the characters were and what the movement of the story had to be. The back-and-forth I had with her was highly constructive, because she was so invested in the novel.

 

The lows, of course, were all the rejections before the book crossed Jackie’s desk. But every writer has to put up with that. I told someone recently—your story just hasn’t passed in front of the right eyes yet! So keep sending it until it does.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Well, there’s the Frank O’Connor idea that a story is the point past which nothing will ever be the same. And then John L'Heureux’s thought that in fiction, only trouble is interesting. But I think the one I quote the most is from my former teaching colleague Hache Carillo: “All you want to write (dramatic pause) is the moment!”

 

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

 

The one character everyone responds to is Adlai. What surprised me was the way Loni fights her attraction to him, even though they’re drawn together by a shared love for the natural world. What else surprised me? I guess Loni herself, because I didn’t know when I started writing that she would become such a badass. I mean, she draws birds. That’s kind of a quiet profession. But the girl shows incredible courage in this story.

 

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

 

I guess I want booklovers to know that while the plot summary might draw readers in, my goal is to feed them something delicious the whole way through, word by word, without ever letting on that there is a writer behind the words. My gauge of success is when a reader is completely immersed in the dream of the story, without every wanting to come up for air.

 

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

 

Yes. Loni’s mother Ruth has a capacious herb garden, and she has learned all of the folkloric uses of the plants she grows. Calendula, or marigold, is a showy yellow flower, but it’s also edible, and called by some “Herb of the Sun.” At one point, Ruth considers making a calendula cake to give the younger Loni a sunny outlook. I have tested the recipe, and while I can’t swear to any mood-enhancing properties, it did taste really good.

 

Elsewhere in the narrative, there’s also an egg salad that contains a supposed herbal love potion, but I’ll let readers imagine the proportions in that recipe, and venture there with caution.

 

Calendula Cake Recipe

by Ruth Morrow, fictional character/kitchen tested by Virginia Hartman, author of The Marsh Queen

 

3 cups cake flour

¼ teaspoon baking powder

3 cups sugar

1 cup butter

6 eggs, separated

½ pint sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ cup calendula (marigold) petals, fresh or dried

          (Be sure these are grown without pesticides)

Fresh marigold flowers, for garnish

 

 

Grease and flour a large tube pan.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Dust the calendula petals with a bit of flour until lightly coated. Set aside.

Separate the eggs.

Cream butter and sugar until smooth.

Add egg yolks one at a time.

Sift flour with soda and add alternately with sour cream.

Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

Fold in egg whites in three stages, sprinkling a third of the calendula petals in each time.

Add vanilla.

Pour batter evenly into the tube pan and bake for 1½ hours.

Cool on a cooking rack in the pan for 30-40 minutes. Then turn pan over to extract the cake onto one plate, put another plate on the bottom, and turn the cake right side up.

Garnish with whole marigold flowers and serve warm or at room temperature.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Marsh-Queen/Virginia-Hartman/9781982171605

 

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

  

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: I hope folks will walk into their favorite independent bookstore and ask for the book. But if they’d like to order it online: https://bookshop.org/books/the-marsh-queen/9781982171605

 

 

LISTEN TO AN EXCERPT OF CHAPTER 1 HERE: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Marsh-Queen/Virginia-Hartman/9781982171605

 

 

 

 

TBR: Infinite Dimensions by Jessica Treadway

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 collection of 12 stories about people who try but often fail to live up to what they would say are their own moral standards, then have to face the consequences of those failures. The stories are loosely linked by character, setting, and the motif of a talking sugar bowl that appears in the work of a Russian fabulist author. My primary themes are fidelity, betrayal, self-delusion, and the power of hope.

 

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

 

I enjoyed writing the title story the most, because I wasn’t writing it with an eye toward publication. I wrote it for my husband after his father, who was a mathematician and mathematics professor, died. I wasn’t worried about whether I was being “too sentimental”; I didn’t care. And I think the not caring was what allowed me to write as freely as I did, and to come up with a story that meant something to me and my family personally, regardless of whatever might happen beyond that.

 

The story that gave me the most trouble was the longest one, “Sky Harbor,” which is almost a novella. It wasn’t the length I struggled with, but the final scene, because I wanted to render it in such a way that the reader might wonder even for an instant what’s real and what isn’t, just as my character does.

 

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

 

Not many if any lows—I’m always happy and grateful to have a book published! A high was having a manuscript that’s entirely new stories, because originally I’d set out to combine new stories with some favorites from my previous two collections.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

“Not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.” A Rollo May quote I came across when I was in college. Sometimes I even write the sentence at the top of my own pages to remind myself that feeling inspired isn’t a requirement for me to keep working. In the same vein, Mary Karr once reminded me that “Faith is not a feeling; it’s a set of actions.” Same thing. You can act, or write, without necessarily “feeling it.”

 

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

 

That I can write short short stories as well as long ones. And in some ways, it’s harder, as in that saying “I was going to write you a short note, but I didn’t have time, so I wrote you a long one.” Everything has to be distilled to that much sharper a degree. Now I’m writing short short stories almost exclusively, and though it’s difficult, it’s very rewarding when I feel that I’ve pulled it off.

 

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

 

A few of the stories in this collection came from an assignment to myself, which was to write stories without entering characters’ heads or hearts (because that is my default, inhabiting their internal landscapes). All the emotion in those stories have to be inferred from dialogue, gesture, or action. I hope I’ve succeeded; it was definitely an eye-opener for me, realizing how automatically I tend to say how someone’s thinking or feeling, when it can often be more powerful to let the reader discern those things from how the character behaves in the world.

 

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

 

The only food I can think of is a store-bought chocolate cake one of my characters steals from a car she walks by! I guess you’d have to ask the bakery at Stop & Shop for the recipe. 

 

*****

 

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

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:   https://bookshop.org/books/infinite-dimensions-stories/9781953002112

 

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “Kwashiorkor”:   https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/features/kwashiorkor/

 

 

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.