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Behind the Book by Paula Wall

by Paula Wall

The relationship between writer and editor is much like wild cats mating. There’s usually a lot of scratching and squalling before they finally reach a compromising position. Still, I’m willing to pull my claws in and allow the love of my life to proofread my new novel, The Wilde Women. I figure if you can’t trust the man you’re living with to be straight with you, you’re living with the wrong man.

Well, I say, what do you think? Love the story. Love the characters, Bill says, tossing the manuscript on the table. But it needs a little work. I stare down at the crumpled, red ink-soaked pages. If I were a doctor, I’d pull a sheet over it and call the next of kin.

For the past year I have lived in a fictional Tennessee hill town called Five Points. It is not an easy place to find. I sit in a dark closet, stare at my computer screen, and wait for the fog to clear. Some days the mist never lifts, and I get frustrated and mean. Some days this town and the people in it are more real to me than the life I am actually living. Needless to say, I am a little protective of this piece of property. A little work, I echo, as I mentally nail a board over the Welcome to Five Points sign that says TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT AND SKINNED. For more than a hundred years the Wilde family has been cursed. When Fidela Wilde left Cyril Rudolph, heartbroken and humiliated at the altar, he threw open his arms and prayed to God through gritted teeth to make her suffer as he did. From that day forward, every Wilde woman’s love has turned to hate like wine to vinegar. There’s just something missing, Bill says. Something’s missing, I grumble, a curse of my own brewing under my breath.

When Pearl Wilde finds her lover in the cool dark springhouse, his beautiful face blurred with whiskey and desire and her baby sister’s bare legs sticking out from under him her heart turns to ice. Grabbing an empty whiskey bottle, she hurls it at his head. I think we need to get to know Pearl’s sister, Kat, a little more intimately, my lover says, voice husky. You have the hots for one of my characters? It’s a compliment, he shrugs. If there were a bottle within reach, I’d christen the boy’s head like the Titanic. Wilde women are drawn to wild men, men who would sooner chew their arm off than slip a ring around their finger. Dangerous men with trouble in their eyes make a Wilde woman’s lips part. A man who answers to no law but his own makes her legs fall open like a nutcracker. My publisher describes The Wilde Women as a wickedly funny book about revenge, forgiveness and a family of sultry sirens. It’s a book about a whorehouse, Bill says. I need more sex. You’ve got the steam. Now give me the hot and sweaty. At every crossroad in life, there is always one right choice. Inevitably, Wilde women go left. You want hot and sweaty? I say, giving him a look that reheats his coffee. Honey, I’ll give you hot and sweaty. Three weeks later I emerge from my closet feeling rode hard and put up wet. Grabbing the remote, I click off the Super Bowl and drop my manuscript in his lap.

Three years later Pearl steps off the train in Five Points, a worldly wise femme fatale, fingernails sharpened like stainless steel and mind set on revenge. She had hardened during her absence, but she had not aged. The ice in her veins had preserved her. Well, I say, what do you think? Bill slowly looks up from The Wilde Women, his beautiful face blurred with two pots of coffee and eye strain. He’s grinning and speechless. I like that in an editor. Paula Wall is the best-selling author of the Book Sense pick The Rock Orchard. The Wilde Women is her second novel. Wall lives outside Nashville, where she writes in her closet.

The relationship between writer and editor is much like wild cats mating. There's usually a lot of scratching and squalling before they finally reach a compromising position. Still, I'm willing to pull my claws in and allow the love of my life to proofread my…

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Behind the Book: Back to her roots

Behind the Book by Mary Pat Kelly

by Mary Pat Kelly

Though it’s a novel, Galway Bay is based on the life of my great-great-grandmother, a story I only discovered after years of research. I didn’t even know her name on that October morning in 1979 when my dad and I walked into the office of the Galway City Clerk—two more Irish-Americans looking for their ancestors.â€©“My name is Michael Kelly,” my father said.

“We’ve a county full of Michael Kellys,” the man replied. Wasn’t Kelly the second most common name in Ireland, right there next to Murphy, and wasn’t Galway “Kelly Country”?

What details did we have about our Kellys? Townland? No. Parish? No. Dates? Only that our ancestors left Ireland in the 1840s or ’50s.

“Along with two million others,” the clerk said.

My dad raised his eyebrows at me. He’d been skeptical about “this whole roots thing” anyway. He was very proud of being Irish. We all were. But Ireland itself didn’t really come into it.

We were Chicago Irish with roots in Bridgeport. “The Cradle of Kings,” my dad only half-jokingly called the neighborhood that gave our city its mayors, beginning with his own cousin Ed Kelly, and continuing through Mayor Daley.

I’d been visiting Ireland off and on for 10 years and I was fascinated by the place. I longed to show him a country richer and more complex than the land he’d seen on a one-week tour with my mom and friends from Chicago. I planned to spend the fall studying in Ireland. Would he travel with me for the first two weeks? “Go on, Mike,” my mom said and surprising himself, he agreed.

We were having a great time. He enjoyed the landscape, the music, the people. My dad delighted in the conversation, enjoyed the turns of phrase and the humor that was so like his own. Though he did comment on the low voices, the guardedness. “A nation of conspirators,” he said.

But the tangible connection to “our Kellys” that I wanted seemed impossible. The town clerk shook his head, sad for us. The Diaspora. Cut off forever. But then he smiled. He held up a wonderful old-fashioned fountain pen.

“Pope John Paul II used this to sign our visitors book when he was here last week. Two hundred and eighty thousand went to the Mass he celebrated on the Galway Race Course.” Then the clerk raised the pen and used it to make a quick sign of the cross on my father’s forehead. A papal blessing once-removed.

Then he handed my dad the pen. “Here. Now you sign your name in the book.” So there on the page facing the pope’s signature, my father wrote: Michael J. Kelly, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

“There,” the clerk said. “You are entered on the official rolls of the county of your ancestors. Welcome home.”

The men shook hands. Perfect.

My dad had always been impatient with details. “Summarize,” he’d say to my sisters and brother and me when we’d start rambling through some story. Get to the point. And now he had. He had reconnected to the 2,000-year history of the Kellys in Ireland. Officially. Done.

We continued our trip, driving along Galway Bay and through Connemara. Somehow we felt less like tourists.

For me the search had only begun. I went back to the U.S. and did my homework, cranking through microfilm census rolls, calling relatives I didn’t know, hunting for death certificates, checking cemetery records. Anyone who does genealogy knows what it’s like—two steps forward, one step back. Right name, possible date—oops, not related. And then the joy when our ancestors emerge. I searched libraries in the U.S. and Ireland, and then the Irish computerized their church records, and the floodgates opened.

Genealogy is called a hobby, but that word can’t convey how soul-sustaining the information gathered can be. All of our ancestors endured so much—war, famine, pogroms, genocide, the middle passage, slavery. Yet they survived, because here we are. Our lives are their victory.

“Thank you,” I said to Honora Keeley Kelly when I stood where she’d been born in 1822, in the village of Bearna/Freeport, right on the shores of Galway Bay.â€©I wish my dad were still alive to read Galway Bay. He’d say that there are a lot of pages. But I’d assure him it moves fast. I didn’t cover all 2,000 years. I summarized.

Galway Bay, the story of one family’s Irish American experience, is the second novel by Mary Pat Kelly, a former television producer who has written several nonfiction books. She lives in New York.

World Fiction

World Fiction

Behind the Book: The story of Vietnam’s street children

Behind the Book by John Shors

by John Shors

I’ve been lucky enough to do a lot of traveling. A time existed, after I graduated from college, when I taught English in Japan and then backpacked around Asia. I had little money and tended to stay in rooms that cost a few dollars a night. With nothing more than a couple sets of t-shirts and shorts in my backpack, I visited places such as Vietnam, Thailand, Nepal, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Korea. Some of these countries I grew to know quite well. I’d find a cheap room, rent a scooter, and explore as much of an area as possible. Sometimes my future wife or my friends were with me, though I was often alone.

I saw so many beautiful things throughout these adventures, sights such as the Taj Mahal, the Himalayan peaks, and white-sand beaches unspoiled by humanity’s touch. But I think that I witnessed the most beauty within the street children I encountered. These children seemed so similar, country to country. They were out at all times of day and night, selling their postcards, their fans, their flowers. For many nights in Thailand, I played Connect Four with a boy who wasn’t older than seven or eight. We bet a dollar each game. Some travelers told me not to play with him, convinced that his parents were nearby and were sending him out at night to work. But I never saw his parents, and one night I spied him sleeping on a sidewalk, a piece of cardboard his bed. I don’t think I ever beat him in a game.

Throughout these travels I met hundreds, if not thousands, of children who lived on the street. Sometimes they were sick or had a physical deformity. But most of them were simply homeless—abandoned into extreme poverty. Bright, eager, and unafraid to laugh with a stranger, they taught me so much. I owe them so much.

My encounters with street children inspired my new novel, Dragon House. Set in modern-day Vietnam, Dragon House tells the tale of Iris and Noah—two Americans who, as a way of healing their own painful pasts, open a center to house and educate Vietnamese street children.

I’m quite excited about Dragon House. David Oliver Relin, who lived in Vietnam, and is the best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea, let me know that he thought it was “a sprawling, vibrant novel.” Robert Olen Butler, who fought in the Vietnam War, and won a Pulitzer Prize for his collection of short stories about Vietnamese Americans, told me that Dragon House is “a strong, important work from a gifted writer.” Such feedback from two wonderful writers, and two people who spent a significant amount of time in Vietnam, means a great deal to me.

It is my hope that Dragon House will be a success, and out of that success something good can happen. I plan on donating some of the funds generated from my book to an organization called Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. This group works with children in crisis throughout Vietnam. Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation offers disadvantaged children a wide range of services and support to help them break out of poverty, forever, by getting them back to school and helping them achieve their best. If you would like more information on Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, and what I am doing to help, please visit my website.

I appreciate the support of everyone who reads Dragon House, because the success of my novel will allow me to help street children in Vietnam, and to raise the level of awareness of the perils that street children face around the world.

My very best wishes to you.
John Shors

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

An author finds inspiration in familiar terrain

Behind the Book by Jacquelyn Mitchard

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

When is a series not a series? The easy answer is . . . when I write it. But the real answer is more complicated. Now, they say that a sequel for a writer is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But it’s not a sequel when the primary character is—well, when she has to share the stage.

Far more accomplished writers than I (Louise Erdrich and William Faulkner, to whom I’m not comparing myself) have written books that didn’t so much continue the history of one or two people but dipped into a familiar universe for the next story. That’s what I’ve done with my new novel, No Time to Wave Goodbye.

It does, in fact, take up where my first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, left off, 13 years ago. But it begins a series of new events, not a new take on old ones.

What I learned from No Time to Wave Goodbye, other than that I could do this with dignity, was that I had the time of my life. I didn’t realize how vital these ancient characters still were. I didn’t recognize the places they inhabit in my writer’s heart.

And so, perhaps not so surprisingly, I’m back in that universe for the novel I’m currently writing, to be published in 2010.

There’ll be new people with new stories and old faces turned toward new complexities. Turns out, I have a crush on my own Yokapanowtha County—Chicago’s Italian neighborhood at Taylor and Racine Streets and the exurbs beyond.

In fact, The Deep End of the Ocean started with a crush. I thought it was a crush on a boy. Back when I was a young widow with four young kids, pushing 40 and ever so alone, I began to dream at night of my high-school sweetheart, taking refuge in the endless summer nights we shared, lying on a quilt on the hood of his grandpa’s Bonneville, smoking and stroking skin that would never be so soft again.

My honey and I were plumbers’ children, but still privileged. While we had to work, it was only after school. Before our dates, we girls dropped by the cologne counter at Marshall Fields—as one of my pals put it, “renting to own” our cosmetics. Four guys once serenaded me under the window of our apartment, singing “Jackie” instead of “My Girl” in the refrain.

Yet, there were stains on that place and time, just as there were for Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. A mile from our apartment, a friend parked his car on the railroad tracks until an eastbound train dragged him and his 15-year-old girlfriend away. She was already dead, from an overdose. Mr. Curry beat his wife so badly he put out her eye and didn’t go to jail. Our great-uncle raped my first cousin. What I felt wasn’t really a crush on a boy, but on the past— particularly the sweet and profane world in which I grew up.

When I wrote Deep End, I keened my own grief through the grief of another mother, Beth Cappadora. My children’s blunt suffering became the blunt suffering of Vincent Cappadora about his little brother’s kidnapping.

The book was a hit and a triumph.

I put away my west-side Chicago youth.

Or so I thought.

Last year, I had another book ready to go—one day to be published. But I found myself writing (around the edges) about the Cappadoras. Finally, it was clear I had the answer to the question that so many readers had asked me since the publication of my first novel: what ever happened to Vincent and the rest of the Cappadoras?

Back to the beginning I went with a purpose. I rewrote and followed the strands. The book bloomed into No Time to Wave Goodbye. Not everyone who read it will have read The Deep End of the Ocean. That’s not necessary. This new story didn’t come from the previous story.

It came from that great interlaced weave of lace and chain link that is my place, my locative past. And as soon as I finished it, I wanted to go there again, because the further we get from the life we once lived, the clearer the details. Why keep that universe under lock and key?

Of course I hope readers like revisiting people whom they once considered beloved, as I did. But more than that, I turn to those streets and those nights to find myself. I walk down a block of two flats, and a dog barks. A passing car trails the ribbon of a Frankie Valli song under the viaduct. Under the light in a kitchen window, a girl opens her books. Her hair is mayonnaised with Dippity-Do and wound on rollers the size of a car’s tail pipes.

I know her. I am her.

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

Behind the Book: How I learned tango

Behind the Book by Patrizia Chen

by Patrizia Chen

My entry into tango was as convoluted as the steps I would eventually learn.

Having grown up in Italy, I was obsessed with America, cowboys and Indians, tepees and corrals, and dreamt to be able to two-step. Several years after my move to New York, I finally enrolled in evening classes at the aptly called Shall-We-Dance studio and began my formal instruction. Since Seven Brides for Seven Brothers had been one of my favorite childhood movies (yes, it dates me terribly), wearing boots and stomping around a fake barn to the sound of a banjo and a steel-guitar, seemed like a fabulous option.

Nothing came easily to me: not the steps, the pirouettes, or the arm movements. I felt like an orangutan let loose in a room full of mirrors. I bumped into everything and everyone, terrified by turns, afraid to drag my partner into such inelegant, senseless dancing. Beet-red after each of my mistakes, I’d burst into tears at the thought of my evident inadequacy. Doggedly, I continued to suffer through all those intricate patterns: Pretzel, Basket, Weave, Whip, Flip Flop, Lasso, Turning Crossbow, Barrel Roll, Wagon Wheel, Double-overhead Loop, Starburst and then Wrap, Cuddle, Hammerlock, Sweetheart, Skater’s lock, Killer Duck. The names alone were horrifyingly incomprehensible; imagine trying to remember the 180 degrees spin my feet were supposed to make in order to propel my legs (and the rest of my body) into a passable turn!

Two-step was followed by salsa and cha-cha, swing and rumba, waltz and the obscure Peabody and Balboa. As the months went by, I finally got it and began to feel omnivorous and hungry about dancing, any kind of dancing. I tried everything.

Then one day John, my teacher, played a song. He took me into his arms and suddenly that was it. Somehow the music of my youth, the notes so often played on Italian radio and never before registered, had seeped into my bones and asserted their power over my heart and brain. It was my first tango. And it would last.

I traveled to Buenos Aires, I took classes with the best teachers. I bought a ballet-bar and put it in my dining room to practice my moves. I studied videos of the greatest. I listened to everyone’s advice. “Tango is natural, just walk . . .” In total disbelief I would watch those fabulous performers imparting their simple teachings while their legs, seemingly completely detached from their torsos, whipped the air with incredible arabesques. “Where is your weight?” My weight? Panicking I would try to concentrate on this esoteric question. I had no idea.

The very first tango class I ever took in Argentina was at the beautiful Confiteria Ideal. The teacher showed a simple pattern and called me up to demonstrate. Horrified I slowly moved toward him, a sacrificial sheep about to be immolated. And then something happened, I still don’t know what came to my mind, but the moment he took me into his arms I swiftly unloaded a kick. Right at his balls . . .

Yes, I’m afraid I did. I had seen too many videos and thought that this was what was expected of me so I went for the first opening. I saw a knee bend, a thigh raise and BAM! My foot, size 10, was there. At full force.

I immediately hoped the earth would open under my feet, or a pyre would engulf me in flames, incinerating me quickly before Daniel’s fury unleashed on me. Let go like the pariah I was, I slowly, painfully (never as painfully as poor Daniel, naturally) walked back to the group and metamorphosed into a statue of salt.

Thankfully hours, days, months and years went by.

I learned to tango—but I will never forget the day I started.

A former model, Patrizia Chen used her passion for tango to inspire It Takes Two, a charming debut novel that chronicles a woman’s midlife escape from a dead-end marriage. Chen and her husband divide their time between New York City and Todi, Italy.

Author photo by Elisabetta Catalano

My entry into tango was as convoluted as the steps I would eventually learn.

Having grown up in Italy, I was obsessed with America, cowboys and Indians, tepees and corrals, and dreamt to be able to two-step. Several years after my move…

Fiction, Inspirational Fiction

Fiction Inspirational Fiction

Behind the Book: Author finds Christmas in July

Behind the Book by Donna VanLiere

by Donna VanLiere

Christmas found me on a hot, sweaty day in July. My husband and I drove four hours in July of 2000 to see a friend sing in concert in Knoxville, Tennessee. We parked at the back of the arena and ran inside the loading dock where we were greeted by our friend Eddie. The opening act was finishing on stage and he was moments from going on, but we asked what he’d been up to and he told us he was writing songs for a new album. He looked at me and said, “I’m actually thinking of putting a Christmas number on it as a bonus cut.” He rattled off a two-sentence premise (the opening act was closing) and asked if I thought that would make a good Christmas song. I said, “I actually think that’d make a good book.” The crowd liked the opener and cheered as they left the stage so Eddie leaned close to my ear. “Then get to writing it,” he said, yelling above the noise. “You’re the one with the computer!”

Plenty of people over the years have told me they have a great idea for a book (a complete stranger talked at length about an idea this week. It didn’t matter that my 3-year-old had to “go potty really, really bad” and was bouncing up and down with each plot point), but for whatever reason, those ideas have never struck me as a good idea. Maybe it was because Eddie didn’t present it as a good idea for a book that something clicked in me. Maybe it was because the set-up for the idea was so short and we didn’t have time to whittle it down to nothing that the plot came alive in my head. Eddie finished the lyrics and by that time I was already deep into the writing of my untitled book. “I’m wondering,” he said, after playing the song for me. “Should we call this Christmas Shoes or The Christmas Shoes?”

“The Christmas Shoes,” I said.

I sent my outline of The Christmas Shoes and several chapters off to a literary agent in NYC. I was painting the walls in my husband’s new office when she called a few days later. “When can you have this finished?” she asked.

I put down the roller. She sounded, dare I say, interested! “When do you need it?”

“Yesterday would be good,” she said. I finished painting the office and stayed up late each night to write the remaining chapters.

Christmas found me again sometime around Easter. I had begun work on a novel I’d been writing off and on since college when my editor called. “Have you thought about writing another Christmas book?” I hadn’t. She called again a few weeks later. “Have you thought any more about writing another book to follow The Christmas Shoes?” I hadn’t. When she called a third time I knew something was up.

“Do you want me to write another Christmas book . . . because you keep calling.” She did—and so I did! It was a good call on her part. I had thought I was done with the Christmas stories, but now realize I would have missed several great journeys along the way. I have managed to write non-seasonal books in between the Christmas novels (I’m currently working on another non-seasonal novel set in Morgan Hill, Tennessee, where The Angels of Morgan Hilltakes place) and I enjoy the process for both.

A reporter recently asked me if I liked writing books set at Christmas—five books in, with the release of The Christmas Secret, I’d say the answer is obvious. Even if you don’t believe in miracles, somehow the most hardened cynic suspends his disbelief in that season of goodwill toward men. Christmas is difficult for so many, but it brings out the best in so many others. I started work on The Christmas Secret with that in mind. . . life can be hard, but people can be infinitely good. In The Christmas Secret, Christine Eisley is a single mom with a jerk of an ex-husband. I have an ex-brother-in-law who makes Christine’s ex look like Santa himself. Somehow, single mothers juggle kids, work, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, paying bills and even going to night school without spousal support. It has to be the most difficult job on earth, yet no reality series is dedicated to following them around. Christine encounters one roadblock after another but comes across people who won’t sit on their hands while she struggles to get around them.

A friend told me last week that if I kept this up I would start to be known as “The Christmas Lady.” I suppose there are far worse things to be known as; for instance, “The Gastric Bypass Lady” doesn’t conjure up images of coffee and scones on a wintry day and the “Scary Cat Lady” culls up visions of long, waxy fingernails, harsh make-up and incessant meowing. Who wants Scary Cat Lady to speak at their book club or annual convention?

CBS picked up both The Christmas Shoes and The Christmas Blessing and turned them into “movies of the week.” When CBS ditched their movie department, Lifetime picked up the third novel, The ChristmasHope, which will air this year. I never imagined any of that on that sweaty day in July 2000, by the way.

I’m grateful that Christmas found me. I just hope I’m leaving a body of work that will leave readers grateful as well!

Donna VanLiere is the New York Times best-selling author of the Christmas Hope Series. The Christmas Secret is her 10th book. Lifetime will air movie adaptations of her books on Sunday, December 13. The Christmas Shoes and The Christmas Blessing will be followed by the world premier of The Christmas Hope (starring Madeline Stowe).

Photo courtesy of Sheri O’Neal Photography.

Fiction

Fiction

Debut author finds inspiration close to home

Behind the Book by Amy Greene

by Amy Greene

On the way to my sister’s, there is an abandoned house. It sits on a rocky hill with trees crowded close, overlooking a creek that parts a briar thicket. The windows are broken and the front door is gone, the tin roof rusted and the chimney stones tumbled down in a heap. I’m not sure when I first noticed the house, but now I look up there each time I pass. Sometimes cows are grazing in the shade of the yard. Sometimes there are cords of firewood stacked against its sooty clapboard. Once I saw a man riding a tractor on the hillside. I can understand why he lets the house stand empty. There’s a sadness about it.

One evening three summers ago, I happened to be passing with my camera in the car and stopped to take pictures. I stood in the weeds beside the road as the sun was going down, the woods quiet and still beside the rustling creek water. The abandoned house had never looked more haunted. I remember the lonesomeness that came over me, and the sense of a story attached to the place. Whatever happened under that roof had cast a pall. Then a car rounded the curve and the moment was gone. But the feeling stayed with me.

A week or so later, I was folding clothes when it came to me who belonged in that house. I saw a black-haired woman with wild blue eyes and her two hungry-looking children. The children were twins, a boy and a girl. There was something mysterious about the three of them, especially the woman, and I needed to figure out what it was. I pictured her and the twins living in isolation on that hill in the mountain woods, maybe hiding from some kind of danger. I don’t know where the image came from, but I was captured by it.

When I sat down with my notebook, I didn’t start with the woman, even though I knew she was the heart of the story. I saved her for last, discovering her through the eyes of the characters whose lives she turned upside down. I wrote about her son, Johnny Odom, first. Somehow I identified with him the most, in spite of his violent streak. Almost from the beginning, I saw Johnny as a poet. His evolution into a writer felt beyond my control. It was the part of me that seeped into the narrative, my understanding of the power of words and of books. Perhaps because I felt a kinship with Johnny, he’s the character I imagined standing as I did in the roadside weeds looking up at the abandoned house. That lonesome moment I had one summer dusk became the first scene I wrote for Bloodroot, of teenage Johnny returning to his empty childhood home after six years in foster care.

It took a year to write the first draft of Bloodroot. In the process, I found the woman with wild blue eyes and named her Myra Lamb. I wrote about how she was raised by her grandmother in that house on Bloodroot Mountain, a free spirit born with “the touch,” an inherited gift for communing with nature. I learned what made her a destructive force in the lives of the other characters, her tortured relationship with a man named John Odom that affected all of them. I wanted to explore whether a love like theirs was destined for a tragic end or if they could have resisted their dark passion, and whether or not a person’s blood dictates how they turn out. Getting to know Myra in that very first draft, but also in the subsequent drafts I wrote over the next 18 months, I realized that while my characters might be products of their upbringing, they have a choice: they don’t have to let their fates be determined by where they come from or who their parents are. This was something I didn’t know before I started writing, something the characters had to tell me.

The last time I passed the house on the way to my sister’s, one side of it was stripped to the studs and there was rubble piled in the yard. The man on the tractor must have decided to demolish it. He doesn’t know that his place has meant something to a stranger. I might glance up there from time to time and be sad to see it gone. But I won’t ever forget how it looked from the road that day three years ago. Whatever the true story is of that house on the hill, in my eyes it will always be where Myra lives with her twins, where she was raised by her grandmother and where she ran home after escaping her cruel husband. Myra Lamb may be the heart of the story, but she didn’t give birth to it. For me, that abandoned house will always be where Bloodroot was born.

Bloodroot is Amy Greene’s first novel. She was born and raised in the foothills of East Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, where she lives with her husband and two children.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Real-life resort for slaveowners and mistresses inspires fictional debut

Behind the Book by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

I have never been very good at coming up with ideas for stories and novels. When I was in graduate school, they encouraged us to scan the obituaries for stories. I could never do this! Aside from the fact that I'm a Southerner and have a deep respect for the deceased, I often take ideas to my desk and find they don't work. I don't know your experience, but I've found that most ideas aren't viable ideas.

So when I came upon this historical footnote about a summer resort that existed near Xenia, Ohio in the 1850s, notorious for its popularity among slaveholders and their enslaved mistresses, I did not know where this fact would lead me. I began by just digging in the historical archive. I learned that the resort had been established by a lawyer and state legislator named Elias Drake. At the time, it was very popular among the country's elite to travel to areas with natural springs. Hoping to create a successful business, Drake acquired the property in 1851 and opened it in 1852. Eventually, Northern visitors displayed their disdain at the sight of Southern slaveholders and their slave entourages. Ohio was a free state, and many of the Northerners were abolitionists. They did not enjoy vacationing with the Southerners, so they stopped coming and business declined. The place closed in 1855.

This was my first time writing something set in another era. As a result, I had a lot of research to do: what kinds of clothes did slaves wear? what did the men hunt in Ohio? what kinds of flowers and vegetation grew there? Then, when the novel takes the reader back to a plantation in Tennessee, I had to research the daily culture of life on a Southern plantation. After I felt more comfortable with this era, I had to figure out how Southerners would have made it to Ohio in the first place. I learned that advances in transportation, such as the ever-improving steamships that traveled up and down the Mississippi River, or the recently constructed Little Miami Railroad that stretched from Cincinnati to Xenia, made a significant impact on who was able to vacation in this Ohio town known for its mineral baths.

Even with all this fascinating history, I knew that I wanted to complete more than a scholarly essay on this period in history. What I really wanted to find was a record of the women who were alleged to have been the mistresses of their owners. Of course, I found no such records because most slaves left behind very little other than oral remnants. That's when I knew there was a rich fictional landscape waiting to be mined. I understood that I would have to imagine myself into the minds and bodies of these women. It was a task that I undertook with great care. What would it have been like to be a slave woman at this resort at this particular time? Would she have considered escaping to freedom? Or would the bond with her master be so strong that it would have a hold over her that even the promise of freedom could not overcome? Ultimately, I discovered there are different kinds of freedoms. I was in the face of something very complex, so complex that it took four years to work through it.

Throughout my drafting period, the novel was titled The Women of Tawawa House. Once I entered the contract with Amistad, I shared with my editor Dawn Davis another idea for a title. "Wench" I said. She asked why. I told her that I was interested in this word because it originally meant, in the Middle English, a young girl. As it evolved, it came to mean a "wanton woman." Yet it was only when it entered American usage that it began to be specifically applied to black women. Many reward posters seeking runaway slave women referred to them as "wenches." It was a derogatory term of the period that I wished to highlight, complicate, recast. I wanted to humanize the women to whom this term referred. Give them a chance to tell their own story. To my delight, my editor agreed.

And so my debut novel Wench was born.

—

Dolen Perkins-Valdez was born and raised in Memphis and graduated from Harvard University. She teaches creative writing at the University of Puget Sound and has had stories published in The Kenyon Review and Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2009. Wench is her first novel. Visit her website for more information.

Debut Fiction, Fiction

Fiction Debut Fiction

Behind the Book: A child’s second chance

Behind the Book by Heidi W. Durrow

by Heidi W. Durrow

I started writing The Girl Who Fell from the Sky after reading a haunting news story about a young mother—recently depressed and despondent—who led her kids to her building’s rooftop, and apparently pushed the children off and then jumped.

Reporters interviewed neighbors and friends who spoke of the young mother’s fierce devotion to her children. She’d had a recent setback, but no one could have guessed that the loving mother could do such a thing. No one could put the pieces of her story together to make sense of the reason why.

I became obsessed with the miracle of that horrible tragedy: One of the children, the girl, had survived!

I searched the news for more information about her, but all I found were the barest facts of her biography: her name, her age and a photo that must have been a couple of years old. It was sad to think that the whole story of her life was now this tragedy.

In follow-up articles, I learned that the girl would make a complete recovery. After a few more weeks in the hospital, she would be healed. But then what?

I had so many questions: How would the girl grow up? How would she deal with the legacy of her past? What would her survival look like?

I hoped that she would be able to create a normal life for herself. I hoped that she would still know how to love and be loved. So I decided to imagine a future for her. I wanted to give her a voice.

I wrote the rooftop scene first. That’s when I understood the reason the girl’s story resonated with me. It had something to do with my own. No, I’m not the survivor of a fall, and I haven’t lived through a deadly family tragedy. (I always mention that up front at readings so people don’t feel like they have to treat me gently.) But what I learned writing that scene was that I wanted to write a mother-daughter story. I wanted to write a story about how a girl learns to be a woman without the help of her mother to guide her. I think it’s a reality so many women can relate to—whether a mother has passed away, or just isn’t available emotionally. And sometimes a mother just doesn’t know how to help a child navigate an unfamiliar world.

I named my character Rachel. And then I started to fill in the details of her biography. I couldn’t draw on the real girl’s story. I didn’t know it. So I wrote what I knew, as the old saying goes. I am half Danish and half African-American, and Rachel became a biracial/bicultural girl newly transplanted to a mostly black community after the accident. Her story let me write a story exploring race and identity. I didn’t know when I started to write the book that the nation would soon be talking about the same things with the election of our first biracial African-American president.

The final thread that made the book come together was the character Brick. He’s not anyone I know or have known, but I absolutely adore him. A tragedy needs a witness, and Brick became Rachel’s.

Many years have passed since I read that news story. And I still think of the real girl. What happened to her? My character Rachel is about the same age at the end of the book as the real girl might be now. I imagined Rachel growing up to be a heroic and loving young woman—I would like to believe that the real young woman is too.

Heidi W. Durrow received writer Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change for The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, her first novel. She is a graduate of Stanford University, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Once denounced, now honored—discovering Pearl S. Buck

Behind the Book by Anchee Min

by Anchee Min

Pearl Buck and I have a long history together, and in some sense that story is at the heart of my novel, Pearl of China. I was ordered to denounce Pearl Buck in China, where I lived for 27 years. The year was 1971. I was a teenager attending middle school in Shanghai.

I was raised on the teachings of Mao and the operas of Madam Mao. I became a leader of the Little Red Guards in elementary school. My mother had been a teacher—she taught whatever the Party asked, one semester in Chinese and the next in Russian. My father was an instructor of industrial technique drawing at Shanghai Textile Institute, although his true love was astronomy. My parents both believed in Mao and the Communist Party, just like everybody else in the neighborhood. I became a Mao activist and won contests because I was able to recite the Little Red Book. In school Mao’s books were our texts.

I finished reading The Good Earth on the airplane from Chicago to Los Angeles. I broke down and sobbed. I couldn’t stop myself because I remembered how I had denounced the author.

Trying to gain international support to deny Pearl Buck an entry visa (to accompany President Nixon to China), Madam Mao organized a national campaign to criticize Buck as an “American cultural imperialist.”

I followed the order to denounce Pearl Buck and never doubted whether or not Madam Mao was being truthful. I was brainwashed at that time and had learned never to question anything. And yet I do remember having difficulty composing the criticisms. I wished that I had been given a chance to read The Good Earth. We were told that the book was so “toxic” that it was dangerous to even translate. I was told to copy lines from the newspapers: “Pearl Buck insulted Chinese peasants therefore China.” “She hates us therefore is our enemy.” I was proud to be able to defend my country and people.

Pearl Buck’s name didn’t cross my path again until I immigrated to America. It was 1996 and I was giving a reading at a Chicago bookstore for my memoir, Red Azalea. Afterward, a lady came to me and asked if I knew Pearl Buck. Before I could reply, she said—very emotionally and to my surprise—that Pearl Buck had taught her to love the Chinese people. She placed a paperback in my hands and said that it was a gift. It was The Good Earth.

I finished reading The Good Earth on the airplane from Chicago to Los Angeles. I broke down and sobbed. I couldn’t stop myself because I remembered how I had denounced the author. I remembered how Madam Mao had convinced the entire nation to hate Pearl Buck. How wrong we were! I had never encountered any author, including the most respected Chinese authors, who wrote about our peasants with such admiration, affection and humanity.

It was at that very moment that Pearl of China was conceived.

I continued reading Pearl’s own writing and continued to be amazed at her perspective, how well she knew the Chinese. Pearl not only grew up in China, but grew up with the people, whom she loved and didn’t feel separate from. One of the most important things I did to prepare for writing my novel was to spend time in the town where Pearl Buck grew up. It was the town Pearl called “Chin-kiang,” which we call “Zheng Jiang” today.

I wanted to know who her childhood friends and neighbors were and how those folks thought of her. She stayed in contact with some of her friends for over 40 years—some of the same people that refused to denounce Pearl during the Cultural Revolution. But people were afraid to talk to me at first. The memories of the brutal persecution during the Cultural Revolution were still fresh. I kept returning until one day I was referred to a dying pastor. The local man who introduced me said that “the pastor is ready to open up because he was told by the doctor that he has only few days left to live,” which meant that he, the pastor, could afford to tell the truth and escape punishment. I felt terrible stealing the dying man’s last moments, but the pastor insisted that he see me.

When I went looking for confirmation about who had denied Pearl Buck a visa to China in 1972, I also got lucky. I suspected Madame Mao was behind the rejection but had no proof. So I was thrilled when I met Pearl Buck’s daughter Janice at the Pearl Buck House in Pennsylvania in 2007. Janice told me that her mother believed that it was Madame Mao, and she listed the reasons, all of which made sense to me. Janice also shared with me some wonderful details about her mother, for example, about the Chinese pond Pearl created in her backyard and Pearl’s passion for Chinese camellias.

I could have written this story only now and only in America. Here, I can write without worry of being persecuted for what I write. And I wrote about Pearl at the right time in my own life—I was born and lived in China for 27 years, and I have lived in America for 26 years. I truly can comprehend Pearl Buck as a “person of two worlds.” I have begun to understand how an author’s background decides, if not dictates, what she writes. In some sense, I could not have written this book until now, because it has taken me this long to truly understand the American side of Pearl Buck’s character.

Pearl of China is the seventh book by Anchee Min, who has been published in 32 languages and many countries. Her 1992 memoir, Red Azalea, contains more details of her coming-of-age in Communist China. Pearl of China imagines the 40 years author Pearl S. Buck spent in China during the Communist regime.

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A trailer for Pearl of China.

Fiction, Horror

Fiction Horror

Behind the Book: Sequels and prequels, or, dreams do come true

Behind the Book by Steve Hockensmith

by Steve Hockensmith

John Harrington wanted to be a fireman, as I recall. Jodi Amlingmeyer wanted to be a teacher. I think Jason Ault wanted to be President of the United States.

And me? I got up in front of my fifth-grade class and said this: “When I grow up, I want to write a prequel to a best-selling book about English girls who kill zombies with kung-fu.” And now, thanks to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, my childhood dream has come true at last! Sorry, Jason—it doesn’t work out for all of us. Of course, I might be misremembering things a bit. Maybe I wasn’t quite so specific about the kinds of books I wanted to write. But I wanted to be a writer, I know that. And I wanted my books to be funny. You know, like Archie’s Pal Jughead. That thing is a scream! (Or so I thought at the time.)

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure now I didn’t mention the English girls. Or the zombies. Or the kung-fu. Because you know what? Not only could I not have predicted Dawn of the Dreadfuls when I was a kid, I couldn’t have predicted it 18 months ago. No one could have. It was about 18 months ago, coincidentally, that I first heard about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. A publisher, I read somewhere or other, was taking Jane Austen’s classic comedy of manners and inserting zombie hordes and chop-socky ultraviolence. I remember laughing when I read the title. (This memory is a lot more reliable than my one about fifth grade, by the way.) And I’m sure I said to myself what I always say when I run across a brilliant idea: “Why didn’t you think of that, Hockensmith?”

And it was indeed a brilliant idea—brilliant enough to turn Pride and Prejudice and Zombies into a worldwide smash. It hit the New York Times bestseller list. A film was in the works. Foreign rights were sold to every market but Atlantis and Middle-earth. And I said to myself again (albeit kicking myself now), “Why didn’t you think of that, you putz?”

What I had thought of was the “Holmes on the Range” series—mysteries starring cowboy brothers who solve crimes using the methods of their hero, Sherlock Holmes. I loved writing these books, but they had not hit the New York Times bestseller list, a film was not in the works, and the foreign rights remained available not only in Atlantis and Middle-earth but more or less everywhere else on the planet. So imagine my surprise and delight when someone called me up and said, “Remember that great idea with the zombies and the martial arts and Jane Austen? Wanna have it?”

Of course, the conversation was a little more complicated than that. That was the gist eventually, though. Quirk Books, the outfit behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, was looking for someone to write a sequel, something 100 percent original with no recycled Austen text, and they thought I was the guy to do it.

Did you catch that, sharp-eyed readers? I said “sequel” there, not “prequel.” Originally, the idea was to do a follow-up to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. What happens after Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy become the most dynamic ghoul-dispatching duo in Regency England?

But then we had another brilliant idea—and how fabulous that I didn’t have to kick myself for not being a part of it, this time! Pride and Prejudice and Zombies raised so many intriguing questions. How did Jane Austen’s demure Lizzy and Jane Bennet come to be warriors so fierce they make Xena seem about as deadly as Smurfette? Why is their once-bucolic Hertfordshire overrun with reanimated corpses hungering for the flesh of the living? Why was the grand Netherfield estate abandoned, thus paving the way for a new owner, Charles Bingley (Jane’s future husband), and his brooding friend Darcy?

The sequel could wait. We had to explore what happened before Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

And so it was that I grew up to write a prequel to a best-selling book about English girls who kill zombies with kung-fu. Maybe I didn’t know way back when that it would be my dream come true, but you know what? It has been.

Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range was a finalist for the 2007 Edgar, Shamus and Anthony Awards for Best First Novel. Three sequels have been published since then, and another is on the way. Dawn of the Dreadfuls is Steve’s first book about the living dead and the lovely young ladies who slaughter them. You can read more about Steve and his books on his website.

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Trailer for Dawn of the Dreadfuls

John Harrington wanted to be a fireman, as I recall. Jodi Amlingmeyer wanted to be a teacher. I think Jason Ault wanted to be President of the United States.

And me? I got up in front of my fifth-grade class and…

Fiction

Fiction

Behind the Book: This book is your life—or is it?

Behind the Book by Andrew Trees

by Andrew Trees

Write what you know! That’s what all the creative writing classes teach, and it’s the phrase I come across whenever I stumble on an essay about writing. In that spirit, I wrote a satirical novel about being a private high school teacher while I was—you guessed it—working as a private high school teacher. That book, Academy X, got me fired from my job, so I soured a bit on the idea of writing what you know. Besides, if I only wrote about what I knew, I was going to run out of material fairly quickly, having spent my 40 or so years in fairly uneventful activities.

But if I wasn’t going to write about what I knew, what should I write about? I decided that I needed to set my sights higher for Club Rules. With my first novel I had worried mainly about making it entertaining. I still wanted my second book to be entertaining, but I aspired to do more than that. I had what English teachers would call “literary aspirations.” I decided to turn to the great ones for inspiration—a random grab bag of books from Dickens to Fitzgerald to Tolstoy. One night, as I was reading Anna Karenina, I had my epiphany—transpose Anna Karenina to the Midwest! If you do it right, literary types call this sort of thing an homage (as opposed to a rip-off), and with a little luck, you thrust yourself among some rarefied literary company. I could see it all in a flash. A rich portrait of social life in the late 20th century centered on a dissolving marriage. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of characters. If I was lucky, people would say I was Tolstoy-esque.

I wasn’t crazy. I knew I wouldn’t actually write a novel anywhere near as good as Anna Karenina. But I figured that if I set the bar high enough, it would still be pretty good even if it was only a pale imitation of Tolstoy’s masterpiece.

There is probably a niggling question at the back of your mind. Why the Midwest? Cold like Russia? Yes, but other than that, I can certainly think of some other locations that would make more sense for the transplanted novel. Some place like New York, where I currently reside. There was only one problem. If you are going to write a rich, panoramic social novel, it helps if you know that society really well, and the one society I knew reasonably well (from the simple fact of having grown up there) was the Midwest. So, despite my best intentions, I had already taken the first step on a slippery slope that led to, “Write what you know!”

Of course, I was going to write in the style of Tolstoy, so I wasn’t too concerned about it. As I started to unfold my story page by page, though, I quickly realized that my novel wasn’t anything like Anna Karenina. Not in tone. Not in scope. Nothing. If you pick up my novel today and read it (which you should all go out and do immediately—no, seriously, stop reading this, and go buy the book), you would be hard pressed to see any resemblance whatsoever. I did name one of the main characters Anne (part of my “homage”), and she does watch an old movie version of Anna Karenina on television. But that’s it. It was not Tolstoy-esque. It was not even Tolstoy-lite.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. After all, I am not a 19th-century Russian aristocrat, even if I do pride myself on knowing what a samovar is. But what was really disappointing was how closely the story resembled my own life. My novel, Club Rules, is set in a wealthy suburban town where much of the social life revolves around the country club. I also happened to grow up in a wealthy suburban town where much of the social life revolves around the country club. A husband and wife separate during the course of one summer. And my parents separated during the course of one summer. A teenage boy—well, you get the picture. I had set out to imitate Tolstoy, and I ended up writing the story of my life. I might as well have dropped the pretense and simply written a memoir.

But a funny thing happened as I worked on the novel. You see, life is messy and complicated and rarely resolves itself into anything resembling a satisfying story. In my parents’ case, there was no dramatic reason why they separated. And they didn’t even stay separated. They got back together and tried to make things work only to separate again and eventually divorce. They were also a fairly normal couple within our social milieu. But I wanted my couple to have more grandeur. I wanted to raise them up so high that their inevitable fall would have more power. So I made the couple in the novel better looking and richer and more important than my parents actually were. I also have two sisters, but I wanted the boy in the novel to be isolated and confused. So my sisters got stripped from the picture, and the boy became an only child. On and on it went. After realizing that I was writing the story of my life, I couldn’t stop pushing and pulling at the material so that almost nothing resembled what happened that summer. In the end, Club Rules turned out not to be the story of my life any more than it was an homage to Anna Karenina.

So where does that leave us with that old sawhorse, “Write what you know”? It’s good advice, of course. I think my own novel is much better because it is set in a place I know well. But I also realized that writing what you know is not enough. If it was, there would be masterful, 500-page novels about being stuck in rush-hour traffic or about sitting in your cubicle and updating your Facebook page. Ultimately, much of what happens in our day-to-day life is not that interesting to anyone but our closest friends (and often not even to them). You have to shape what you know into something more compelling and powerful than your actual experience.

I guess I am saying that you should write what you know but not just write what you know. That answer is paradoxical, confusing, even somewhat obscure, which seems to describe the writing process perfectly.

Andrew Trees is also the author of Decoding Love, a nonfiction book about the mysteries of attraction. Club Rules is his second novel, and follows the travails of a “golden couple” in the country club set who seem to have it all—until they don’t. For more on Trees, check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

Photo credit: Heesun Lisa Choi

Fiction

Fiction

Behind the Book: Real estate, relationships make for a rollicking read

Behind the Book by Janelle Brown

by Janelle Brown

When I sold my first novel, in early 2007, my agent asked me if I had a second book in the works, just in case a publisher was interested in a two-book deal. "Not exactly," I said, "but I’ve always wanted to do something about real estate and relationships." Within a matter of days, this fragment of an idea—not even a complete sentence—would become my new marching orders: "Janelle Brown will deliver a novel about real estate and relationships by October 1, 2009," my contract instructed me. No pressure.

Fortunately, I had lots to say on the subject. The year 2007 was the apex of the real estate boom in Los Angeles, and I was watching my friends and acquaintances buy and sell houses in a frenzy, mortgaging their lives away for a tiny Spanish casita or a sprawling mid-century ranch or a modernist duplex. A real estate junkie myself—by the time I was 30 years old I’d already bought a home, sold it and bought another one—I was fascinated with the passion that people invest in the homes that they buy (or just lust after): The lure of home ownership somehow trumps all other rational thought, becoming in the process a sinkhole for dreams and expectations, self-identity and a whole lot of delusion.

The real estate insanity in Los Angeles was breathtaking: I watched as my own home increased in value almost 30% in three years. As the cost of a modest two-bedroom, 1200 square foot home in central Los Angeles approached a million dollars, I observed how much people were investing—both financially and emotionally—into even the most rudimentary home. And that, in turn, put incredible pressure on the couples who were buying them: With so much on the table, even a solid-seeming marriage could quickly show the strain.

I began my book thinking that I would write about a couple attempting—and failing—to buy a house in this environment. But by the time I’d written 50 pages, the real estate crash was visible on the horizon; 100 pages in, and the stock market went into freefall. Instead of obsessing over the homes they wanted to buy, the people I knew were starting to worry about how to save their homes (not to mention their jobs). It became clear to me that the more interesting story to write would be about a couple trying to hang on to their home—and everything that it represents to them, all that hope and identity and delusion. (After all, there’s a lot more plot to be wrung from dreams realized and lost than from dreams that are never realized at all). So I threw away almost everything I’d done up to that point, and started again.

I live in Los Feliz, a Los Angeles neighborhood packed with both successful and aspiring writers, directors, musicians and other creatives. For the newly refocused novel, I drew heavily on the stories I was hearing every day. This Is Where We Live ended up being the story of Claudia and Jeremy, an artsy married couple who purchase their first home at the apex of the boom, only to be threatened by foreclosure when their adjustable rate mortgage unexpectedly adjusts.

The recession hits them hard. Claudia, an aspiring director, watches her first film fail; Jeremy toils at a no-growth job at a t-shirt company in order to finance his stalling music career. Their threatened home—a bungalow in Mount Washington whose modest size belies the inflated price they paid for it—suddenly comes to represent everything they desire and fear. For Jeremy, who has been revisited by his wild (and wildly successful) artist ex-girlfriend, the house is an anchor, tethering him to a responsible adulthood he no longer finds particularly appealing. And for Claudia, the home embodies everything that she has struggled to achieve—namely, love and success and stability—and that now seems about to disappear at any minute. As the couple works to save their home, they realize that the foundation of their marriage is in no better shape than their bank account.

It’s a challenge to write about the moment that the world is currently living – you don’t yet have the context that an author writing 10 or 20 or 50 years down the line might have. But what you do have is the immediacy of experience, the ability to really document things as they happen. Verisimilitude. I like to think of This Is Where We Live as a record of a particular moment in time.

And, hopefully, a rollicking good read to boot.

Photo credit: C. Silver

When I sold my first novel, in early 2007, my agent asked me if I had a second book in the works, just in case a publisher was interested in a two-book deal. "Not exactly," I said, "but I've always wanted to do something about…