TBR: All These Hungers by Rick Mulkey

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?

 

I’ve often thought of a passage by George Eliot: “It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened?” In many ways, All These Hungers explores this same paradox of desire as a hunger for its own continuation, and how the role of hunger and consumption in its many forms shapes our personal stories and our relationships with family, friends, the natural world, and even our approach to politics and religion.

 

Which poem/s did you most enjoy writing? Why?

 

The poem I most enjoyed writing was “Cured.” First, I don’t know that I’d ever written a poem addressed to a specific person. I’ve written poems about individuals, and poems in which the “you” existed and was addressed, but that “you” was often a mixture of several people or an imagined individual or audience more than a single person directly addressed. Plus, “Cured” was the poem that brought together several of my interests in this collection: the region of the country, Southwest Virginia, where I was born and raised, the role of religion and the spiritual in our lives, the ways in which we are all connected by our hunger for food and drink, for acceptance and friendship, for love. It is a political poem, but, I hope, not too overtly political. Plus, it is a poem about bacon.

 

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

 

I write very slowly. I’m not someone who can complete a poem in a couple of hours. It can take me days, even weeks. In some cases, I may come back and work on a poem over months or even years before I’m done with it. So, the lows for me almost always have something to do with whether or not I’ll finish a collection. It is always a multi-year process for me. As for the book’s road to publication, I find the submission process the most stressful. Each of my previous books was published by a different press, so once I finish a manuscript, I have this sense of dread about the submission process and having to start that all over again. When I first began sending this manuscript out, I sent it mostly to contests, and almost immediately it was selected as a finalist at a couple of those contests, so I thought acceptance and publication might happen quickly. But it didn’t. Before I knew it, I was nearing the date that would start the second year of submission, and I was feeling pretty low about the situation. Then, fortunately, three different publishers showed interest, and now the book is out in the world. Of course, now that this book is published, I can start worrying about whether or not I’ll write another one.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Since I’ve made a living as a writing teacher, I’ve given lots of writing advice over the years. But the one piece I always come back to is to read as much and as widely as you can. I can’t stress how important this is. I read poetry, fiction, especially short fiction, nonfiction, science, history, and biography. All of it informs me, and I hope it makes me a better writer. No one can be a successful writer without reading actively and obsessively. In this age of technology and social media, it is too easy to overlook the importance of informed, careful reading. I think it is valuable to know the best contemporary writers, but also know that body of literature that precedes us. The best writers I’ve known have always been some of the best and most avid readers, too. Beyond that, however, the greatest obstacle is lack of perseverance. Desire and energy make up for many shortcomings in terms of natural ability. It helps to have talent, but willpower and drive can carry us through lots of inevitable disappointments and rejections.

 

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

 

What surprised me most in the writing of this book is how often I went to closed forms to find my way into a poem. While the end product isn’t always a sonnet, villanelle, or pantoum, several of these poems are in those forms, and other poems are influenced in some way by various forms. “Velveeta” uses a variation on rhyming quatrains, for instance. I was reading lots of Metaphysical and Romantic poets during the years I worked on this collection, and perhaps that had some impact on the way I thought of form, too.

 

How do you approach revision?

 

For me the most enjoyable aspect of writing is revision. I’m generally horrified by having to start a new poem. I envy novelists who have a general idea of where they are going with their writing each day they go to work on the book. With each poem, I’m starting all over again with all the fear and self-doubt that a new start brings with it. Plus, I rarely have a clear vision of the poem when I begin a new one. I mostly start by obsessing over a sound or image, or there is a sentence or phrase I have stuck in my head, but I don’t know where this might lead me. This is why I love the revision process. Once the first draft is completed, I can go back and work on a poem without that fear of the blank page, and with the solace of knowing I have a place to start the day’s work and a direction to explore.

 

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

 

As you might guess, a book titled All These Hungers has lots of food references and associations. While the book deals with plenty of subjects that aren’t food related (dung beetles, for instance), you’ll find poems about bacon, whisky, peaches, pickles, and one of my favorite dishes, haggis, in a poem titled “In Defense of Haggis.”  People who’ve never tried it are horrified by the idea of haggis, but I’ve been eating it since my trip to Scotland many years ago for a writing residency at Hawthornden Castle. Because of certain U.S. regulations, it isn’t possible to have real Scottish haggis shipped to the U.S., so I’ve discovered a couple of recipes that I can make at home. I’ll share one for a very simplified version of haggis that is quite different from real haggis but is remarkably close to the texture and taste of the real thing. I hope you’ll give it a try with some mashed potatoes and mashed rutabaga, and a glass of your favorite single malt scotch.

 

*Simple Haggis

Ingredients

·      1/2 tbsp butter 

·      1 large onion

·      1 tsp ground black pepper (I add a little more because I like mine very peppery)

·      3/4 tsp ground coriander

·      1 tsp nutmeg

·      1 tsp allspice

·      3/4 tsp dried thyme or fresh, slightly chopped if fresh

·      1/2 tsp cinnamon

·      1 lb ground lamb 

·      ½ lb chicken livers (ground or chopped)

·      1 cup stock (I use chicken, but I think vegetable would work, too)

·      4 oz pinhead oatmeal (I sometimes toast this but it is ok if you don’t)

Instructions

1.          Preheat the oven to 350F.

2.          Warm the butter in a pan. Finely dice the onion and cook over a medium heat in the butter until softened, about 5-7 minutes.

3.          Meanwhile chop the chicken livers. Sometimes I will mince them in a food processor.

4.          Add the spices and thyme to the onion and cook a minute then add the ground lamb and chicken livers.

5.          Brown the meat. Once it cooked through, add the stock and cover. Simmer for around 20-25 minutes.

6.          Next, add the oatmeal, mix well and transfer to an oven dish (I use a cast iron Dutch Oven so I don’t have to worry about this step, but any oven proof dish will work.)

7.          Cover the dish and put in the oven for 30 minutess.

8.          Remove the lid and cook another 10 minutes.

9.          Serve with mashed potatoes and mashed rutabaga.

10.        *This is adapted from a recipe from Caroline’s Cooking. There are also plenty of good vegetarian recipes available online, too.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:  www.rickmulkey.com

WATCH VIDEO OF THIS AUTHOR READING: https://fb.watch/4IeTE09Qvr/

BUY THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1950739031/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_208PM1QYFGEWSEFHB7VA

READ AN EXCERPT FROM THIS BOOK: https://www.brickroadpoetrypress.com/rick-mulkey

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: Worn by Adrienne Christian

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?

Worn is a collection of Black love stories that all feature clothing in some way. “Love” here encompasses all kinds of love – agape, filial, and eros.

 

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

The boundary I broke in writing this book is getting away from Black literature being largely rooted in trauma. For example, if you look on any bestseller list right now, you will see that every book written by a Black person is about the traumas of race. Even if you look, too, at Black authors who have won the major writing awards, the books they’ve won for are almost always about race. Worn explores the other side of the coin of the Black experience – the side that is not rooted in trauma. I found courage in Toni Morrison’s advice, “Write the book you want to read.” I wanted (actually, needed!) to read something about Black people that didn’t enrage me, or send me to my knees in tears.

 

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

There hasn’t been a single low on my book’s road to publication. In fact, I’m in awe in how professional, skillful, and supportive Santa Fe Writers Project is. Working with Monica Prince and Andrew Gifford has been great.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 Am I allowed to give more than one? ;) Toni Morrison said, “Write the book you want to read.” Carolyn Beard Whitlow said, “When people are clapping, stop.” In other words, don’t write the sequel if the original was a major success. Major Jackson said, “Ass in chair.” In other words, sit your ass in that chair and write. Steven Pressfield said, “A professional stays on the job all day.” Chigozie Obioma said, “Read.” A writer should never write more than she reads.

 

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

 I had no idea that what we wear (and don’t wear) is so political. The why of what we’re wearing runs way deeper than the what.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

Titles to me are important, just as names are important. I knew I wanted something that told the reader that the collection was about clothes. I was thinking I could call it either Worn or Woven, and two of my mentors – Kwame Dawes and Joy Castro – said emphatically “Worn!”

 

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

Hahaha. That’s a very good question. I drank a lot of tea while writing this book. Decaf tea is a great substitute for wine if you want something with ceremony, but don’t want your sleep affected. Also, I’m absolutely in love with High Tea. It’s a great way to have a high-end experience for not high-end money.

Homemade chai: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/homemade-chai-201226

***

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.adriennechristian.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://www.sfwp.com/project/worn/

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Who is your ideal reader?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

***

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

TBR: Body of Stars by Laura Maylene Walter

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

CELESTIAL SHIMMER

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

 

8-10 Blackberries

3 Mint Leaves

2 oz Gin

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

6 oz Sparkling Lemonade

Mint and Blackberries, for garnish

 

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

 

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

 

 

HIGH LUCIDITY (Non-Alcoholic)

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

 

4 oz Pomegranate Juice

2 oz Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice

2 oz Sparkling Water

Orange Twist, for garnish

 

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

 

*****

 

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

 

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