Dawn Tripp talks about Game of Secrets and how writing is like being in love

I can't remember when and how I met Dawn (it seems like we've always known each other)--but we had one of those instant connections. We've been emailing back and forth since, having long conversations about writing, soothing, inspiring and cheering each other on, and she's become one of my most important and crucial friends on the planet. I'm honored to have blurbed her incredible novel Game of Secrets, thrilled to have written a guest review for it on Amazon, and even happier to be able to promote her and her novel here. (The Minnesota Star Tribune already compared her to Elizabeth Strout!)

Game of Secrets is genius, and I'm not just saying that because we're friends. Intricately structured and exquisitely written, it pulls you in like an undertow and it truly is startlingly original. Thanks so much for being here, Dawn. 

I'm always interested in process. Game of Secrets has such an intricate structure, where information is slowly revealed. Did you plan all this out, or did it happen more organically?

This novel felt different from my first two—a literary thriller with a small-town murder at the heart of it—a mystery played out through a Scrabble game. But it didn’t start that way.

Late spring, several years ago, I was working on something else—a historical novel—and out of the blue, over the course of a month I wrote a series of forty poems. I haven’t written poetry since my twenties, although as a writing form, it is my primary impulse. And what I noticed is that those forty poems were all digging into things I couldn’t quite bear to write straight out in narrative, and so they surfaced, in bits and pieces, in those poems. I wrote about a mother and her son, a friend who died abruptly, a girl crossing over a bridge, a car accident, an illicit love and its consequence, a dream stubbed out, I wrote about an unconscionable act of cruelty, and a young man staring at a woman across a moving street while the rest of the world fell away. I wrote about the loss of a child.

It didn’t take much for me to see that those poems had a life, an emotional complexity that the novel I was working on did not. So I ditched that other book, almost 400 pages of it, because these were the stories I wanted to walk into, these were the lives I was on fire to tell.

Out of those fragments, there were three that I couldn’t stop thinking about: the image of a 14 year old boy driving fast down an unfinished highway in a borrowed car; the image of two women playing Scrabble; the image of two lovers, a man and a woman, meeting in an old cranberry barn. I did not know their names, but I could feel the charge of a threat and the desire between them—I knew that this would be the last time they would meet. I had already filled a notebook when an older man from town told me a story of a skull that surfaced back in the 60s out of a truckload of gravel fill, a neat bullet hole in the temple. The moment the story was out of his mouth, I knew that skull had everything to do with the two friends playing Scrabble, the lovers in the cranberry barn, and with that boy driving fast down an unfinished highway in a stolen car.

My best work starts in this place: with fragments that are burning, sharp, acute. They might feel linked, and I might glimpse the larger story they belong to but, curiously, the longer I can resist the impulse to pin everything down into place, the longer I can keep things open, the more necessary the writing becomes. That doesn’t mean the order isn’t there. It doesn’t mean some dark underside of my mind hasn’t already figured it out. I put my faith in the fact that there is such a cogent order. And I write to discover it.

All three of my books are highly structured, but not in a traditional linear form. In the novels I admire most, structure—no matter what form it takes—serves the voice of the narrative. As a result, there is a certain dreamlike immediacy, a certain life of the work that takes precedence, a nuanced undercurrent of thought and feeling that runs through the story and is absorbed by the reader in a more visceral, intuitive way.

I loved the haunting metaphor of the board game. Can you talk about why you chose it, and how it came about?

I love Scrabble. I grew up playing with my grandmother. She and my father always played games—they taught me pitch and gin. When my aunt was visiting, they needed a fourth, and so they taught me bridge. But the game I loved was Scrabble. I remember the thrill I felt when I was old enough to keep my own letters, to have my own rack. We would all play after lunch, then after a game or two, my aunt and father would drift off to something else. “You want to play again, Nana?” I’d ask. And my grandmother would nod, light another cigarette, and start flipping over the tiles. We’d play game after game, until it was time for her to fix supper. We’d eat, clear the table, wash the dishes. I would dry them for her, and as the light fell, I’d ask to play again.

The idea for this novel came to me years after she was gone. But as I wrote the scenes of the two women Jane and Ada playing Scrabble, I remembered the long sweet hours of those childhood games, the stillness of the house, the light tick-tack as she lay down her tiles, the smell of her cigarette, resting on the ashtray, untended. And I remembered, too, things I did not know I had forgotten, things she had taught me over the years as we played. She played Scrabble for the words, as many women in her generation did. I always played for the numbers. How we play that particular game can reveal so much about how we tick, how we live, who we are. Some play to keep the board open, some play to shut it down. Some play with an eye to the sum of the total scores of all players; some play, simply, to maximize their own. Most players will look at the board and see the words that fill it. But a really good player, a canny player—and she was one of those—will also see opportunity in the skinny spaces still left open in between.

As I wrote the scenes for this novel, the structure of the story came to mirror the playing of a Scrabble game. It is a mosaic narrative, fractured in point of view and time, which feels to me more intrinsically true to the way we apprehend our lives. The game became the perfect lens for a story about two women, two families bound together and divided by unspeakable secrets—a brutal past, a murder, a love story. As Jane and Ada lay down their words, they begin to move into what is unsayable between them and within themselves, to own what they have hid and loved and lost and grieved, what they have feared, ached for, dreamed. They turn fluid around what appear impervious and, though the game, they begin to reconcile what feels stunningly disparate, even unresolvable. Because what are words if not a bridge? Between one person and another. Thought and reality. Past and present. Present and future. Words bridge silence. Words, and the stories they comprise, bridge time.

The book has a kind of syncopation to the writing, an inescapable rhythm. Paragraphs stop short and then are connected again. There are character asides and all these different voices come together in a real and poetical way. Was this a deliberate choice or did it evolve?

I grew up writing poetry. Still now, when I take time away from a book I am working on, to let my mind go fallow and do its underground work—I read poetry. Most of the novelists I adore have a certain cadence to their work. I have faith in what you call that ‘inescapable rhythm’ of a narrative. I feel that along with ‘voice,’ it’s a key element of creating fiction that is often overlooked. Rhythm draws a reader through a story. The meanings of words touch the mind—the twists in plot engage the intellect—but that rhythm calls forth a deeper, more intuitive connection to the lives of the characters, their struggles and their fates.  A shift in rhythm allows a reader to feel a shift in thought, a change of heart, that breath-caught-sharp moment of a revelation. I strive to keep my language spare, but I always have that attention to the rhythm pace of a sentence, a paragraph, a passage—and its emotional effect. One consequence of this is that when my editor takes a pen to my draft for a line-edit, I don’t mind at all if she draws a big X through a paragraph, or even suggests I cut a page. I’ll make that cut easily. But if she cuts a word or two in a sentence and the rhythm is thrown off, I have to go back and rework that line until the flow and cadence feels right.

In this novel, I wanted to write a complex, but fast-paced story. This was something that felt critical to me, not simply because Game of Secrets is a literary thriller, but because pace is something I want to master. I took an extra year to go back through and rework this book. To cut out the chaff—to pare out even moments I may have loved but that felt extraneous to the story and its arc. It’s essential, I believe, to learn that kind of ruthlessness—where you can let go of what you long to keep—it gives what remains a kind of luminous intensity. Things rise up, breathe, in a different way. I have a file for those cast-offs. I go back through them sometimes and strip-mine what still has life for me—shift the details, and transform it, into my new work. 

What is your writing life like?

When I am in a story, it’s like a shadow that is always with me. And that is true whether I am at my desk, out for a run with the dog, driving, sitting on the dock, or folding the laundry. That story is always falling through me—words, half-thoughts, some knot of a scene I have been wrestling with that finally begins to unravel. In the early stages of a book, I turn my back completely on that adage ‘write what you know.’ I write what moves me, what I am impelled by. I rarely start at the beginning. More often somewhere in the middle—it’s like an ocean—this early stage, all tumult and wind-shift. Everything is distance. Everything is possible. I love that. I write my early work longhand. Every draft starts with a pen against a page. For me, there is a certain kinesthetic joy in the act of writing, which engages the intellect, but ultimately serves a more primitive, intuitive mind, what Mary Oliver has called ‘the dreams of the body.’ Sometimes I write on little slips of paper—receipts, grocery lists, throw-away things that I then transcribe into notebooks—and from there to my laptop. I am oddly superstitious about the pens I use, the notebooks I use. I am particular about who I show my work to, and when. Not out of fear of judgment, but because when I am really living in a story, I am open. I don’t my polish my drafts up too soon. I leave notes in the margins, I leave some passages entirely without punctuation. I leave things raw, untidy, open to change. That openness, I feel, is critical. I find that when I can let myself stay open to possibilities in a story that I may not yet have uncovered, when I can let myself be driven by what I do not yet know, the story often turns, deepens, in unexpected, revelatory ways. 

Every six months or so, I need to leave my work for a week or two—oddly enough, this is never easy for me—but it clarifies my seeing, it clarifies my vision of the story. My mind sorts things through while I am looking away. During that time, I walk the beach and the woods with the dog. And I read. Sometimes contemporary novelists. Sometimes I re-read short novels that I love, that kick open windows in my brain and somehow never fail to change me, in some slight but vital way, with each re-reading. Most often though, it’s poetry I am drawn to. W.S. Merwin. Rilke. Eliot. Seamus Heaney. Mary Oliver. I don’t know what it is about poetry that does its work on me. But it’s like entering another element. It’s like breathing different air. Poetry is not what I write. But it’s deeply intrinsic to why.

You and I have had –and continue to have—long conversations about writing, one of which I put up on this blog. Yet many writing books out there don’t dig into the angst and the obsession, but instead focus on the how-to of craft. Why do you think this is, and don’t you feel it’s more productive to get at the heart of what happens to a writer when he or she struggles to write? (I realize this is a loaded question, but I can’t resist asking it.)

I think it’s easier, safer, to focus on the how-to of craft. Writing is a discipline. Writing takes drive. No doubt about that. You need to stick with it, passage after passage.  You need to work and rework a sentence, a chapter, a draft, until it breathes. And yet, there is that other ineffable, essential and immutable aspect of the process—what is mystical, obsession, inspiration, doubt—all of that, which to my mind are only different turns of the same coin. And so much more challenging to pin down or render into words.

I often feel that in my fiction, I work toward what I cannot say. I write for what lies just past words. Every novel I have written has started with some dark secret I can’t quite bring myself to tell, and so I tell it on the slant, through the story.

For me, those early months are breathtaking, feverish—it’s like being in love; it’s like having the flu—and even though I can’t always see how the disparate pieces will fall into place, I have come to have faith in that particular state, which is often beyond the reach of intellect, and coming from an altogether different mind. There is doubt, sometimes piercing doubt (will this all work out? can I pull it off?), yet that uncertainty—when you write into it—can be as galvanizing and as necessary as the dizzying rush of inspiration that is so much easier to adore.

Game of Secrets was an unusual book for me in the sense that I felt like I was continually being overturned. I knew in my gut that I had to stay open to that. I had to keep my balance with that. Again and again, I would discover some new element that was not in my original vision for the novel, and often in consequence, the arc of the story would change, and I would have to let it change.

I wrote what I thought was the ending of the story early on. I fell in love with it. It became that kind of horizon a strong ending can be that drives you, day in, day out, to create the 300 pages leading up to that moment. What I did not expect, and could not have foreseen, was that in fact that ending was not the climax. The most powerful revelation was something I was writing toward without even realizing it, until all at once, I did. A story can do that. A game can do that. It can all turn at the end.

Gwendolen Gross talks about sisters, writing, obsessions and The Orphan Sister

 I've  known Wendy for quite a few years now. I don't remember how we met, exactly. I think we both had novels out at the same time, but we became instant friends. The Orphan Sister really struck home with me because it's about belonging and family ties and all the murky things I'm obsessed with. Yep,  I blurbed it, and I called it "breathtakingly original." And I meant it.  Thank you so much Wendy, for being here on my blog today and answering my pesty questions.

What is it about sisters that is so compelling?

Sisters! Well, first of all, I have three, one of whom has a different mother and who is 20 years younger than I. She was the first baby for whom I fell, completely; people asked if she was my first (thinking she was my baby), and I said, "No, I have two other sisters!"

Anyone who has sisters knows you share many things: frame of reference, in-jokes, adolescent contempt for parents, deep and sometimes jealous love of those same parents. Sisters give you a model, a mold, for many of life's relationships. Shared experience and competition, both. I think of my sisters daily, but viscerally, rather than intellectually. My son smells like my older sister, Claudia, when he wakes up (a wonderful smell, not morning breath). If I make an absurd nonsequiteur no one gets, I think: Becca would understand, or: I have to tell my friend Cindy (with whom I don't share parents or childhood, but somewhere, historically, we must share genes). Since so much of sisterhood is collective circumstance, adoptive sisters might have their own shared frame--but different matting or something. That could be another book!

What I loved about this novel was how different it seemed from your previous ones (not that I didn't love them, as well.) Did you feel that you were treading new ground and how terrifying was that to contemplate?

First, thank you so very much! As you know, someone who has read your book is someone you have loved, even if only a little, even if you'll never meet (though I've been lucky enough to meet you).

I think writers tend to have both infinite stories and finite truths--the truths emerge in the exploration of character, place, plot. With this book I hoped to make something as active and immediate and suspenseful as I might, while telling the slower truths of familial and romantic love that emerged from the story. I had the kernels: polyzygotic triplets, father with a secret life, one sister who feels separate, and I tried to balance the elements of a novel: dialogue, internal monologue, exposition, etc. I wanted to write a good read! I wanted to write a friend! A sister!

The book really probles the whole issue of who we are--and who we want to be.  Do you ever think the two can be one and the same?

Yes.

Of course, it may take all the living and it may be that the getting there is the best--and only lasting--part. Nothing stops until we die (does it stop then?); we keep building our own stories of conversations, petted foreheads, mistakes, bike rides, tweets, births, meals, love.

(Caroline--you're inspiring philosophy!)

What's your writing life like?

My writing life is spackled between the bricks of parenthood, teaching, home, exercise, friendship, sleep. I write while my daughter's at gymnastics, while my son learns photoshop. I sneak away while they're in school and write at a cafe or bookstore with my laptop. I find scrappy notes of great importance (on the back of receipts) stuffed in the pocket of my riding breeches. The truth is, I don't know if I will be any more productive when my family needs me less immediately. I suppose I always need space and time to thing, but also chaos to control by making fiction.

What's obsessing you now?

Writing-wise: another family secret that isn't my own--and the fallout of secrets and lies.

Also: the way a piano owns fingers.

Also: horses.

Also, in reading: how authors make their narrators fallible but strong. I'm reading piles of YA and MG fiction because my kids want me to read what they love, and I'm staggered by some of the writing (The Underneath!) and trying to figure out whether storytelling for different ages really is any different.

What question didn't I ask that I should have? (I just read the answer and I'm blushing furiously.)

What have you recently learned from following the success story of the eloquent, dazzling, benevolent Caroline Leavitt? You have to put all those adjectives in!

Answer: Always, always, always be kind of fellow writers, who are also your best and most important readers. We mustn't ever think of writing as a competition; there's room for every story, and we do this not because it makes us famous or rich (though I wish that upon my favorites, at least the rich part), but because books, stories, have saved and enriched our lives. You are not only an extraordinary writer, Caroline, but a teacher and woman of patience, kindness, and generosity. Let us all aspire to the same!

Ellen Sussman talks about letting your writing marinate

Ellen Sussman's French Lessons, about how a single day in Paris changes the lives of three women, is already racking up some raves, including Ann Packer,  who says, "This is a novel to savor."  I asked Ellen if she'd write something for my blog, and I'm honored that she did.  Thank you, Ellen!

Let it Marinate

Ellen Sussman

I tried to write a novel about a young woman’s relationship with her dying mother about six months after my mother died. The novel failed. I didn’t put my creative energy into the work – I was reporting from the front lines. That’s not the way good fiction gets written – at least for me.

I need distance. I need separation. I need to forget what really happened and let my imagination soar.

I lived in Paris from 1988 until 1993. I loved my time there, even though I was raising babies and struggling with loneliness in my marriage. I was writing while I lived in Paris – but never about Paris. I’ll wait until I get home for that, I told myself.

Years passed and I never found my Paris story. I knew I had to write about Paris – no experience in my life had been richer, lived in such big bold colors. And it was a complicated time – I experienced life as a foreigner, with a new language and culture. I stepped outside of my comfort zone. I learned more about myself in that year than at any other point in my life. So why couldn’t I write about it?

I wasn’t ready. I needed to let those memories build flavor and intensity. I wanted to forget in order to remember those stories in a brand new way.

A few years ago, I was invited to teach at the Paris Writers Conference. My husband joined me for the trip and I bought him a gift – a week with a French tutor, walking the streets of Paris while I taught. After the first day, I figured out that not only was the tutor good at her job, but she was also young and beautiful. What a gift! And soon I had an idea for a novel: a happily married man feels the first stirring of lust for another woman – what does it do to him and to his marriage?

But I have so much more to say about Paris, I thought. And so I created two more Americans and two more French tutors, all of them walking the streets of Paris, talking about love and loss. The novel, FRENCH LESSONS, wrote itself in a mad rush. I had all that material, all those memories and impressions, ready to pour into my story.

Give me a good ten years to let an experience marinate. Over those years, I forget the details and the memories become fuzzy, vague. So when it’s time to sit down and write, I have to create the story on the page. I have to invent character and plot twists – I can’t rely on who was there and what happened, because I just don’t remember! That’s when my fiction comes alive – that’s when I’m making it happen on the page.

Michael Kimball talks about Us

One of my favorite books of the year is Us by Michael Kimball. I carried it around with me on the subway, and when I finished, I couldn't let it go. I kept it by my desk and kept rereading parts of it. Michael's also the author of four other fantastic novels including Dear Everybody and he's responsible for the innovative Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (On a Postcard), which I have inexplicably been too chicken and shy to do. He's one of my heroes, and I'm just dazzled to have him here. 

What sparked this particular book?

Us started out as a kind of an accident. I had approached the novel a few different ways, a few different times, none of which worked. Then I was sitting at my desk one night writing longhand and I wasn’t really thinking about anything in particular, but I just started writing this voice—the one that opens the first chapter—and it seemed to capture a feeling that I had in mind. I wrote a few chapters before I realized that I was writing about one pair of my grandparents who were around a lot when I was growing up, that I was writing about their last days together. I used my feelings about them and other people in my life that I have lost to write the novel, a kind of method writing, so to speak. The novel was written out of those feelings of loss and grief, but also very much out of love. I wanted the reader to feel what I felt or at least to understand it and to honor it. And there was a desire to fill in a void. I was trying to make something to replace two people who could not be replaced. I was imagining more life for my grandparents and it was a small comfort.

I deeply admire the structure, which is a moment-to-moment account of a particular time in an old marriage. What made you decide on this structure? Also, what strikes me is that this particular time is very much indicative of the whole and long marriage.

I found the structure after I found the voice. There was a really specific syntax, a particular way of describing things, and an especially particular thought-structure—the little leaps between his wife and almost everything else that he encounters. After that, I imposed some unspoken rules on the narrator—what he could describe and how. Limiting the scope of his narrative enacted a kind of close attention in what he tells us. There is great care and great love in that close attention, which makes it a culmination of sorts for their long and loving marriage.

The writing in this book seems so clear and clean and almost simple, yet every word is like an iceberg, with levels of meaning that radiate outwards. I've told you that I'm asking all my UCLA students to read this, as an example of what writing can and should do. How conscious were you of paring things down as you were writing, or does this simply come naturally to you?

I’m very conscious of paring things down. I’m trying to tell as much story and convey as much feeling as possible with as few words as possible. I’m making some assumptions about what a reader brings to reading a book when I do this. There is a lot that fiction writers don’t need to describe anymore. I get to that pared down state by drafting material and then distilling it, getting rid of everything that doesn’t seem absolutely necessary. This takes a different form in Us (where feeling is the thing that is compressed) than Dear Everybody (where it is story that is compressed). Also, I’m trying to write the kind of thing that I would most like to read. I want a kind of intensity, also a certain narrative speed, two things that compression can make happen.

You've said that the book is about "how love can accumulate between two people." It's such a deeply moving novel, and yet, despite the sorrow in it, it's also incredibly optimistic about love. Can you comment on this?

The behavior of the main narrator is driven by grief, both anticipatory grief and then actual grief, which becomes more extreme as the novel progress. The extreme grief is a sad and terrible thing, but only because the long love of their marriage is such a great and beautiful thing.

Can you talk about your writing process?

I used to have a terrible time getting anything down on the page. Once I did, once I had something to work with, then I would revise endlessly. But my writing process has evolved quite a bit over the years, I have found ways to open myself up on the page. I try to be brave on the page. I move into any space where I sense any kind of resistance—personal, emotion, aesthetic, etc. I try to be fearless. I try to let the voice tell the story and let the story tell me what it is. I try to find new ways to get from sentences to sentence. For instance, sometimes I find a word or phrase or turn by looking at the surrounding acoustics or graphics rather than by considering the semantic logic. It can lead to some surprising choices that I couldn’t possibly think of, but that I only have to recognize. It moves the narrative in different ways and helps the energy and the tension build. More and more, I’m trying to be open and receptive to anything happening on the page.

What's obsessing you now?

I just finished writing a new novel and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It takes me months to let go of the voices from my novels. So I’m at once obsessed with what I’ve just done and with trying to figure out what the next thing might be. Also, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make a short film using this abandoned swimming pool that’s been filled in with dirt and has grass growing where the surface of the water would be. I can see some of the action and hear the soundtrack, but I feel as if I’m missing an important element, and I have no idea what it is.]

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

It would have been nearly impossible to come up with this, but you could have asked me what position I play for the Poet’s Athletic Club, which is a co-ed softball team made up of Baltimore writers and artists. I would have told you that I haven’t played organized anything in a couple of decades and that playing first base for the Poet’s Athletic Club is so much fun that it makes me feel like a giant kid.

Bestselling author John Shors talks about Cross Currents, writing and more

When bestselling author John Shors sent me a copy of his terrific new novel Cross Currents, he sent a little shell in a box along with it--which I now have on my desk and treasure as much as his book. Both Amy Tan and Robert Olen Butler have called him a masterful storyteller, and I'm chiming in. Cross Currents is an unusual story of a family's drama set against Thailand's 2004 tsunami and I'm thrilled to have John here to talk about it. Thanks, John!

I had asked John a bunch of questions, but it struck me how his answers read even better without the intrusion of my queries, so here they are, and thank you, thank you, John.

 I have been fortunate enough to do quite a bit of traveling overseas. One of the most magical places I’ve been to is a small island in Thailand known as Kho Phi Phi. There are no motorized vehicles. The beaches are perfect. The locals are friendly. When I first traveled to Kho Phi Phi in 1992 I felt as if I had uncovered an unknown slice of paradise. I returned every few years thereafter, and felt even more connected to the setting.

On December 26, 2004, I watched in horror on my television as images of the Indian Ocean Tsunami came to vivid life. Thailand was hit hard, and I soon learned that Kho Phi Phi was devastated. I wanted to fly to Thailand and help, but my wife and I had two toddlers at home, and international travel wasn’t practical. And I so I waited, finally returning to the island in 2007. I had expected to see widespread devastation, but the Thais had rebuilt almost everything. During my trip I spoke with many locals who had survived the experience, and their stories of saving others and being saved by others were extremely inspiring. It suddenly occurred to me that no one had ever written a novel about the Indian Ocean Tsunami, despite the fact that it was a global event. The seeds of Cross Currents were planted on that trip. I felt like I had an opportunity to create a special story and immediately starting thinking about how it might unfold.

The research for Cross Currents was fairly straightforward. I had been to Ko Phi Phi many times, so I felt as if I had a good understanding for the island and its inhabitants. The challenge in terms of the research was recreating the tsunami in an accurate way. To ensure success with this, I interviewed many Thais who had survived the event. Their descriptions gave me a strong sense of what happened. I came to imagine how the island was consumed by the wave.

One of my goals with my writing is to bring beautiful places and cultures to life on the page. To make that happen, I visit the places I write about, and get to know them well. Once I have created a rapport with a setting and a people, I then go back to the States and sit down and really think about the story that I want to tell. I create a detailed outline, though I find that once I’m neck-deep in the first draft that the story seems to gain a life of its own, taking me in directions that I hadn’t expected.

Well, I’m quite pleased with Cross Currents and am eager to see how people react to it. I’m donating some of the funds generated through the book to the International Red Cross, and am grateful that the support of so many readers allows me to do such things.

As far as what I’m working on now, I’m almost finished with my first draft of a work of historical fiction that is set in ancient Cambodia and has to do with the temple of Angkor Wat. It will be an epic story, somewhat akin to my first novel, Beneath a Marble Sky, which brought the Taj Mahal to life. I haven’t written historical fiction for a few years, and it’s good to be back in the genre, though all of the research definitely adds a layer of work to the writing process.

And, of course, I’m thinking about future books. I know that I will write ten or maybe twelve novels in my career, so it’s important for me to take my time as I ponder what are the best stories for me to write, and for my readers to enjoy.

I also continue to talk with book clubs around the world (via speakerphone and Skype). To date, I’ve chatted with about 3,000 book clubs, which has been a great experience for everyone involved. It’s important for me to try and connect with my readers, and my book club program is one way of doing that.

Christine Sneed Talks about Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry

Christine Sneed is incredible.  Not only does she have this great, inventive website, that comes with literary brainteasers, puns, jokes, and more, she's also the author of a brilliant collection of stories: Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry (long listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize).  I'm thrilled Christine offered to write something for my blog. She's hilariously funny and truly, her collection is genius. 

A Casual Introduction: 

Several of the ten stories in Portraits examine the perils of love and what it means to live during an era when people will offer themselves, almost unthinkingly, to strangers. Risks and repercussions are never fully weighed.  Mysterious, dangerous benefactors, dead and living artists, movie stars and college professors, plagiarists, and distinguished foreign novelists are among the many different characters. No one is blameless, but villains are difficult to single out--everyone seemingly bears responsibility for his or her desires and for the outcome of difficult choices so often made hopefully and naively.

Getting Personal:

Q. I’ve been asked by a couple of readers why some of my characters seem to have easygoing attitudes about infidelity.  One reader recently said, “The people I know who have been cheated on don’t take it as well as your characters do.  Don’t you think they should be more upset when it happens to them?”

A.  My characters actually are upset about being cheated on, but I try not to write scenes that veer toward melodrama.  One of my goals with these stories is only to point toward the rage, jealousy and despair – all of the feelings that attend romantic disappointment – and to let readers imagine the rest for themselves.

Q.  Why are there so many May-December romances in this book?  Do you have an old-man fetish?  A sugar-daddy obsession?

A.  I don’t think I have an old man fetish, and I’ve never had a sugar daddy, but I am always curious about why two people decide to become a couple, and the different worldviews and experiences that two people with a big age gap frequently have to navigate have always interested me.  One of the stories, “By the Way,” was also a kind of assignment that I gave myself.  I wanted to write a convincing story with a twist on the usual May-December paradigm, that is, the woman is the older member of the couple – seventeen years older than her boyfriend.  She doesn’t believe in her boyfriend’s (truly earnest) feelings for her and is afraid that once he finds out how old she is, he will want to break up with her. 

Q. How many people have you made cry?

A.  Not too many, but yes, there have been a few.  The title story is about the granddaughter of a famous artist, and after his death, she finds a series of portraits in his study that he titled “People I’ve Made Cry,” all women, incidentally, because he was a lady’s man, something that kind of gives his rather prudish granddaughter the willies.

Q.  Why should I read these stories?

A.  I tried to be as honest as possible when writing them, especially about how I believe a lot of people, women in particular, feel about themselves when they’re falling in love, or feeling vulnerable to someone, or feeling the desire to be someone else.  There’s quite a bit of longing in these ten stories, and many insecurities on display.  I don’t know how interesting it would be to read a story about someone who doesn’t ever worry or feel afraid or jealous or angry.  I think much of what defines human character is how we handle our insecurities.  

In which I talk about parallel universes and persistence

I talk to Cindy Teruya at The Los Angeles Examiner about writing, never giving up and parallel universes!

Emily Gray Tedrowe, author of Commuters, talks about writing and dreams

Emily Gray Tedrowe wrote a really knockout novel: Commuters. A Target Breakout Pick, An Indie Next Pick and an Entertainment Weekly "Best New Paperback," this is an assured debut about marriage, money and home, and it is also very much a book about what we yearn for and dream about--and why. I asked Emily if she'd write something for the blog, and I'm so thrilled that she did.  Thank you so much, Emily. 

            One night earlier this year, as I was closing in on a full draft of my second novel, I dreamed that I showed the manuscript to the characters in the novel.  As in most dreams, this had the sense of perfect plausibility.  In the dream, I received praise and feedback from my characters with a polite but privately skeptical attitude I’m afraid I take on for real-world critiques. . . and was shocked when one character broke away to denounce the novel entirely.

            Awake, I turned the dream over and over, trying to find a key to help the actual writing of my book which was in full-steam, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel mode.  Friends and fellow writers were amused by my dream about the dissatisfied character: kill him off, they advised.  Rethink giving him a weight problem.  Eventually I decided that the medium was the message—I cared so deeply about these people (characters) and was so caught up in their story, that I couldn’t leave them even while unconscious.  A good sign.

            But I’ve often wondered before this about the relevance of dreams to my writing life.  Fortunately or not, depending on how you look at it, I usually remember my dreams each night.  I write them in my journal, tell them to my therapist, bore my husband with them.  But what can one’s dreams mean to a writer?  Aside from the fun of psychoanalyzing yourself, why pay attention?  A few thoughts:

·      Dreams reveal your imagination.  Freud famously compared the way dreams work to the structure of poetry, with condensing, metaphor, and substitution as key elements.  I like to extend this to fiction, and play with the notion of my dreams as mini-fictional engines.  I think about them in terms of mood, point of view, conflict, dialogue.  Writers in the flow of creating often experience their work as if it arrives without conscious effort; by eavesdropping on my dreams, I try to catch my imagination unawares and learn more about what it’s got going on.

·      Give a dream to a character?  So far I’ve only done it once, in a short-short story I built entirely around a favorite dream about a hungry ghost.  There’s a fiction-workshop truism that for every dream you lose a hundred readers.  You’re warned off at all costs, and sure, we can guess why—too-obvious reveals, banal stand-ins for character development, etc etc.  But I must admit that any time a conventional-wisdom “rule” comes my way I immediately want to break it.  If you’ve got the chops, it’s not your rule. 

·      Dreams remind you to honor what’s unexpected.  I once read Ann Beattie urging writers to open up their scenes to sudden swerves; the example she gave is a scene in which a couple is arguing—what if a bird flew inside through their open window?  Dreams also return us to the beauty of what startles.  So even if I don’t write about that dream where my yoga teacher suddenly produces a giant foam cheese slice for the class to practice savasana underneath—true dream—it might jar my work open to the power of the unexpected, the funny, the messy ways of life.   

   

Susan Schneider talks about The Wedding Writer and the wedding biz

When I first met Susan Schneider, I felt like we had been friends forever--that's how warm and funny she is. It fascinated me that she had worked for years in the bridal industry, and when I found out she had written a book based on her experiences, that intrigued me even more!  I can't thank Susan enough for being here on my blog and answering my questions.

What's so wonderful about your novel are the you-are-there behind the scenes episodes about how the bridal industry works. All of it true?

Tip of the iceberg! It’s a striving, gritty business filled with smart, talented women with agendas. The wedding magazines historically were huge, slumbering cash cows. With the Internet everything changed—print advertising took a great big hit. A couple of years ago Conde Nast folded Modern Bride and Elegant Bride, and many, many accomplished editors (old friends of mine) were thrown out of work. What does an out-of-work bridal editor do when she gets “divorced’ from her job? But even before the Internet and the recession, things could get really scary. When I was at Modern Bride, the editor in chief brutally fired the long-time fashion editor, a brilliant, iconic woman beloved in the industry who was also the sole support of two children. How could one woman, also a mother, do that to another? Issues of power and control, what else? Behind the veil lurk nasty power struggles as well as deep and meaningful friendships between women working together to create a beautiful product.

What was it like for you working in the bridal industry for so long? I see you have some great blurbs from the industry but do you think there are some things about it the industry would rather keep secret?

I saw weddings get more and more elaborate and expensive—I saw women with modest means trying to emulate celebrity weddings and the weddings of the wealthy. Yikes! I understand the desire to be beautiful and admired, but as a deep-down feminist I also wished that more women could be like those who call a time-out and say, “Hey, my having or not having this $10,000 dress will neither make me or break me as a human being.”  Many of us tried to reassure engaged women that they really don’t have to have a “perfect” day—in fact there is no such thing! But bridal editorial is always slanted toward the notion of “perfection.”  Achieving your day of bliss. It leaves in its wake lots of overwhelmed, confused, anxious women in white dresses who’ve spent too much money and still wonder if they failed.

I also loved the way you dissected office politics (which really can occur anywhere, not just in the bridal business). Would you say that in many ways working at an office is like a marriage of sorts? (Some happier than others?)

That is so true! The specific dynamic at bridal magazines and indeed all women’s magazines is that those “marriages” are played out between women. I’ve always been an executive editor to the editor in chief, so my role was “wife.”  With one editor the “marriage” totally failed; we got a divorce! In another I became an enabler—another eventual divorce. In a way an office is just a backdrop against which people act out their family or marital issues—that’s why office politics can be so murderous.

What is your writing life like?

For me it’s been quite a struggle. As a single working mother, I had to raise a child in NYC and also bring home the bacon. Then my daughter grew up and out of the house and other things in my life got a bit easier. But I can’t write if: I’m worried about my daughter or I’m worried about money. Or if I’m worried about a relationship with a man. Life interrupts writing all the time, and you can’t do much about that, but I do try to keep on an even keel. I don’t need the “perfect” environment—the little cottage in the woods—I just need relative peace and financial security. And oh boy, thank God for aging! Your life gets pared down and you can focus better.

What's obsessing you now?

My rooftop garden on West 80^th Street. How I love it! It is so critical for city people to find some way to be with nature. Even if it’s just a houseplant you like, you need to commune with it everyday.

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

This covers it nicely for me.

Pictures of You is a Top, Smart Summer Read from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Self, O: the Oprah Magazine and more!

Ah, summer. Books get packed into your beach bag right along with the sunblock (or, if you aren't a beach baby, they get tucked in your bag to read on the subway!) Pictures of You came out last December and I'm honored and thrilled to report that it's a Top, Smart Summer Read from The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Self Magazine and O: the Oprah Magazine and GolocalProv.com ! Ya hoo!

Sharyn Wolf talks about Love Shrinks: A Memoir of a Marriage Counselor's Divorce

What happens when a marriage counselor's marriage hits the rocks? Author Sharyn Wolf, a marriage counselor and psychotherapist practicing in New York City, writes about it in Love Shrinks: A Memoir of a Marriage Counselor's Divorce." I asked Sharyn if she'd write something about that here, and I'm thrilled she said yes. Thank you, Sharyn!

Love Shrinks: a memoir of a marriage counselor’s divorce

                                                 By Sharyn Wolf

Writing “Love Shrinks” was a scary proposition for me.  I’ve been a marriage counselor and psychotherapist for twenty years, and it has been my job to listen.  It has never been my job to tell. And, this book is about my divorce. It’s all about telling—all about revisiting a painful past.

In the 90’s I had a career as a “relationship expert.”  I appeared on more than 400 television and radio shows including eight visits on Oprah. People looked to my perky, upbeat advice on how to stay lovers for life, and they seemed to like my funny delivery. I was one the one who said, “The problem is the place you start working; not the place you stop working.”  And, “When you have the energy to throw him out of the window, you can use that same energy to make love work.” The truth is that while I was delivering all these sassy sound bites, I was going home every night to a failed marriage of my own.

We couldn’t cooperate to buy furniture for our home.  We didn’t share meals.  We had sex three times in thirteen years. It was shocking.  The better I got on TV and as a psychotherapist, the worse my home life became. I was freaked out because I was living such a lie.

I came to realize that my evangelistic fervor to help others was really an attempt to help my own marriage.  I was desperate for it to improve.  But, no matter what I said or did at home (I tried all of my own advice on my husband), nothing helped. Still, I couldn’t leave this man for so many reasons.

He was the man who danced me across the living room floor in my pajamas while the stereo played the love theme from “Beauty and the Beast.” He was the man who climbed into bed with my dying aunt when she said she wanted to rest her head on his belly. He was the man who gave me his silly mosquito net hat when we were hiking, and I forgot to bring mine.

And yet, he was the man who never read a word of one of my books no matter how much I begged.  He was the man who would not listen to me talk about my work no matter how much that meant to me.  He was the man who got shoe polish all over our new white couch and refused to put a cover on it or take off his shoes.

After fifteen years, I stepped out of the grey landscape of my marriage, and I filed for divorce.  It was messy. It was long. It was a pity. I now receive another kind of media interest that isn’t as much fun; I am the marriage counselor who couldn’t keep her own marriage intact.

Janice Eidus Writes about My Sibling/Myself

I'm thrilled to have a guest post from Janice Eidus today. She's a novelist, short story writer, and essayist and not only that, she's twice won the O. Henry Prize, as well as a Pushcart Prize, a Redbook Prize, and many other awards. Thank you so much Janice for being here today!

MY SIBLING/MYSELF:

WRITING ABOUT MY SISTER

Almost 20 years ago, my older sister, Alice, died of chondrosarcoma, a rare, disfiguring cancer, before I had the emotional strength to begin to fix our unhappy relationship. She often appears in my writing, however, as I continue to struggle to understand and repair our relationship.

In my essay called, “Her True Face,” published in “Arts & Letters,” I wrote as objectively as I could about her illness and my relationship with her – as objectively as I could, that is, about a sister whose face was disfigured past recognition and who’d once said to me, in a rage, “You will owe me forever, because Daddy has always loved you more than he loves me!” Writing that essay, I lingered on the way she dressed and acted prior to her illness: “In her diaphanous nightgown, her cigarette emitting a lacy trail of smoke, she’s the epitome of some long-ago glamour queen.” I also wrote of all the times when we were children, and “… she pummeled me with her fists, pulling my hair … telling me how much she despised me.”

In my comic novel, Urban Bliss, I transformed her. Rather than aim for objectivity, I took the qualities I’d most enjoyed in her and affectionately exaggerated them, including her adoration of all things traditionally feminine, such as diaphanous nightgowns and slim cigarette holders. Maya Bliss, the older sister of the novel’s protagonist, Babette Bliss, exclusively wears pink ruffled clothes and lives in an all-pink New York City apartment. Maya Bliss is also the loving, somewhat daffy, mother of a little girl she dresses (naturally) all in pink. Alice never had the chance to be a mother in life, and it felt reparative for me to imagine this wackier version of her taking on that role.

In my most autobiographical novel, The War of the Rosens, which takes place in the ‘60s in the Bronx, I wrote about Alice again, portraying her as an angry, deeply-religious child named May with brain cancer, as well as an obsessive crush on a blond, blue eyed boy in the neighborhood. In reality, Alice wasn’t super-religious as a child, although she became so as a young adult, nor did she have any painful, unrequited, obsessive crushes during her childhood as far as I knew (those came later). But making her alter-ego in the novel younger and grappling with a different kind of cancer allowed me to delve as deeply into the truth of our relationship as my nonfiction had – but with a different slant. In fiction, I was able to offer her, and myself, a redemptive ending that we never had in life. In this scene, toward the end of the novel, the younger daughter, Emma, witnesses the dying May at last being kissed by the boy for whom she has yearned:  “Emma stands in the doorway, her heart stirred by the sight of May’s awkward body gathered in Marvin’s golden arms. They are kissing passionately, their bodies entwined, as if they will be together for eons and centuries to come, their love the stuff of poetry and dreams.”

Patrick Darby Talks About his Fantastic New Indie Bookstore, Novel Places

It's always cause for celebration when a new indie bookstore opens and Novel Places is an especially brilliant one. Opened by the fabulously warm and well-read Patrick Darby, this is a store that is going to turn out to be a home away from home for many happy readers and writers. Come visit at 23341 Frederick road in Clarksburg, Maryland. I'm honored Patrick agreed to let me ask him all sorts of questions about his store. Thank you, Patrick!

I'm a huge fan of indie stories. What made you decide to open an indie store?

I've been in the bookselling business for 30 years, but always with chains and university stores. I was frustrated with the corporate attitude of selling, budget, and policy. After my father died, I came to the decision to do bookselling the way I always wanted to do it, which usually got me in trouble with headquarters. As a bonus, when I started Novel Places, my blood pressure dropped 20 points.

And how can I convince someone to open one in Hoboken, where I live? We're just a ten minute subway stop from Greenwich Village, but our bookstore closed a year ago.

They need to know that there's a lot of support in the community. Research will tell them about location and regional access. Find out exactly why the previous store closed. Like those of us opening new stores this year, we can see the hurdles and have plans to compete. Once they know the size and type of the store that can be sustained at the beginning, it's usually an easy choice. Type is very important. I started Novel Places almost 5 years ago. Lease deals fell through, and I ended up online and distributing to coffee shops. When I sublet in a coffee shop in Clarksburg, I quickly realized the mystery and children market needed to be tapped. The new store focuses heavily on children books and toys, but sells all categories, especially mystery.

I love that the book store was the first and the original building in Clarkesburg. So do you ever feel any sense of ghosts around?

The book store is in the original building of Clarksburg. It started out as a trading post, and eventually became a general store. There are no reports of hauntings, but the building has seen Clarksburg rise as the third largest town in Montgomery County, with one of the first academies. It was the stopping point between Georgetown and Frederick. It almost disappeared when the railroad bypassed Clarksburg for the town of Boyds. It came back somewhat with the advent of car travel, but fell back when I-270 was built. In that time, Clarksburg saw George Washington pass through, Andrew Jackson stop at Dowden's Ordinary (another name for a tavern) before his inauguration, Sons of Liberty meet to "discuss" taxes by Great Britain, and the growth of arts and literature. I'm reviving the Clarksburg Literary Society that formed back in 1879. But, back to your question, I do hear what sounds like footsteps on the porch, but there's nothing there when I look. A few strange noises come from upstairs I care not to investigate.

Seriously, though, tell us about some of the antique items you found in the store.

The general store closed a few decades ago, and the building went into disrepair. An antiques dealer used it to store antiques, so when the building was bought by the current owner, a lot of it was chairs, tables, and other furniture. They did find the original counters and curved glass displays from the general store. I picked up a glass voting box (the lid was smashed and poorly repaired), along with the wheel and other items I mentioned before. The counters and glass displays are part of the new store. One unusual item we found was a rack on wheels that has rows of pegs (about 8" long) that didn't have any purpose we could think of. Finally, an antique dealer told us it was a shoe rack for a shoe maker. As the stopping point, Clarksburg's industry became leather, blacksmithing, inns and hotels, that serviced travelers, their horses, and carriages. A tannery flourished for leather goods, including 2 shoemakers near the outside of town. Old maps I have show the locations. 

Your grand opening is July 2. What things are in store for lucky readers in your area?

We're already scheduling author signings. Since this is a young community, we're reaching out to daycare centers and families to promote playdates and storytelling. I've had some inquiries about parties, but I need to consider consequences of that. There are more community themed events scheduled, and I will be supporting those events with bands, activities and book related contests. I'm gearing up for ebooks by having education sessions on downloading ebooks and choosing e-readers. I already have a QR-code sign on my sign post by the street. It will have announcements and special ebook downloads available. I've been asked to create seminars for aspiring authors.

How do you see your store growing, and how can authors help?

I've already mentioned a few ideas, but I'm looking for the store to be the town meeting place. Each community here has a center, but this will be the place to catch up on all happenings in Clarksburg, and be a place to discuss books and gather socially. Authors can help by reading and signing books, but also be part of the activities we plan during the year. I believe people will support local independent bookstores more when they see the authors giving back to the store and the community. It's about the partnerships and energy generated through support.

Want to tell us what you're reading and promoting now that you love?

I'm reading so many good books, trying to stay on top of Friday Reads. I pledged to Bethanne I would read one book each week because of Friday Reads. It's a challenge, but I discovered it's possible. I usually took two weeks to read a book, claiming I was too busy. My favorite book to promote right now is The Taker, by Alma Katsu. It's a wonderful, but dark story. I don't want to take away from the excellent books of the authors signing at the store next week, but I'm promoting The Taker because I've met Alma twice and keep in touch with her. She stopped by the store last week, and that stays with me, which encourages me to handsell her book. I will give as much to The Bird Sisters and Silver Sparrow, not because they're signing next week, but because they are great books.

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

Sidelines. I've picked up quite a few sidelines, such as greeting cards, toys, bookmarks, special bookends, etc. It can be a dangerous path. You want to offer book related items to enhance your bookstore, but there are so many items to choose from, you can get things that don't fit a bookstore, but could sell. I'm thinking about back-to-school supplies, but that can rapidly grow into department store size merchandising. Fortunately, budgets help decide what you offer.