Character and world-building: two essential skills for writers. I’d submit that our invented characters and worlds are inevitably reflections of our real worlds and our understanding of ourselves and others. Some of that understanding comes hard-won and first-hand. I learn through falling down. I also learn through shifting perspectives. I need a sense of the wider context in which my own life sits, and I need it to believably write people who aren’t me. I also have trouble reading fiction when I’m working a lot on my own writing. Something about the process, especially in the last couple of years, has made it very hard for me to get swept up in a novel the way I used to. I get hung up on the craft of it, like having x-ray vision, seeing the skeleton too prominently beneath the skin. Non-fiction also has its tropes and conventions, but since it isn’t what I am writing, it’s easier for me to read it wholeheartedly. And I’ve read a lot more of it in the past couple of years. So: this is going to be the first of a series of posts about amazing non-fiction that has expanded my understanding of people […]
Setting Myself Up for the Win
2016 is going to be a huge year for me, with the release of Spells of Blood and Kin in June. And 2014 was a huge year, too: the year I signed with my wonderful agent Connor, the year he made the sale. A year of leveling up. 2015, then, was a bridge year in some ways: a year to consolidate my gains, to do all the work I could to make sure this next phase in my writing life will be a successful one. Timelines in writing are very long compared to some kinds of work: even more than a year, in my case, between deal and launch. I came to learn that it’s very useful time! Edits, proofing, and a lot of other associated tasks took a lot of it. And of course, other projects need to be in the pipeline–my next book, plus some short stories, although the time I’ve spent on those has dropped a lot since the novel has to take priority. Like most working writers, I also have a day job–which is understating it a bit; I have a career which I love, and which is sometimes demanding. Between this, family events, and cons, […]
Release day for Long Hidden!
Long Hidden is one of the most amazing projects I’ve had the pleasure to participate in. I’m honoured to be in the company of such great writers–and so excited that the book is finally available to purchase. I can’t be at the launch party in New York tonight, but maybe you can–it’s at Alice’s Arbor, from 4-6 pm, and a number of the other writers will be there! Check out this gorgeous Julie Dillon cover: My story is called “The Witch of Tarup”. It’s set in Denmark in 1886. I was lucky to have a fantastic primary source: a memoir written by my great-great-grandmother, and translated by one of her sons. (Disclaimer: none of my family are witches, as far as I know!) Here’s how it begins:Every town has its witch, or so the Midsummer Ballad says, but I had only lived in Tarup a fortnight and I did not know who the witch might be. […]
Recurring subjects in the works of John Irving
Working in the head office of a bookstore chain, I have a lot of literary conversations with my colleagues. We talk about books in many ways, from the clinical business viewpoint (copies sold and margin earned), to the completely personal viewpoint (romantic heroes, childhood dreams), to the sociopolitical viewpoint (ideas that have changed society). Yesterday we were trying to talk about John Irving, except none of us had read his backlist very recently. Was Cider House Rules the one about abortion? Wasn’t there some horrible accident in The World According to Garp? Wikipedia to the rescue. The helpful chart of John Irving’s recurring subjects made my day. Deadly accident, sex workers, New England, wrestling, Vienna, bears! Someday, my friends, someone who loves me will make such a chart about my work, and I’ll finally get to see what the hell I’ve been doing all this time. There are a few I can check already: magicians and their mentors, queer protagonists, bees/wasps, upstate New York, boxing, characters with drinking problems. But I’ll bet there’s something I’ve missed entirely that will be hilariously obvious once it is pointed out. And all this ignores the question of why. Some of it is fairly […]
Book birthday!
This anthology is now available for order! Featuring stories by me and a whole bunch of people even better than me. […]
In which I get sentimental over Heathrow
I began this morning reading an excerpt in Harper’s from Alain de Botton’s new book, A Week at the Airport, written about his stint as Heathrow’s poet laureate. I remember the concept making news at the time, and thinking how delighted I would be if I landed in a country and discovered that even its airport had its own poet. The book, if this section is anything to go by, will delight me just as much, and move me, too. I travel frequently and I find it such a strange intersection of pampering and deprivation. I can provide myself with a stack of magazines and an iPod playlist, my powder compact and Kiehl’s lip balm and a glass of wine, but I am powerless to reach my husband and my cats. I once sat in the departure lounge at LAX talking to my father on my cell phone and hearing the news that he’d had a hospital bed moved into the living room. I knew he wanted to die at home; I hadn’t known, until then, that it would be before the end of the month. Since I am a very privileged person, I could at least get myself a […]