AUTHOR Q&A: The Never List by Koethi Zan

A conversation with Koethi Zan, author of...

THE NEVER LIST

Q. Where did the inspiration for THE NEVER LIST come from?

A. THE NEVER LIST was inspired in part by the amazing stories of captivity survivors: Elizabeth Fritzl, Natascha Kampusch, Sabine Dardenne, Jaycee Lee Dugard. These women have suffered through the absolute worst thing I can imagine and every one of them has demonstrated incredible strength in the wake of such trauma. My own difficult life struggles paled in comparison. I was—and am—in awe of them. I wanted to create a character like that: a woman who was strong in the face of unfathomable horror, but who needed to confront her past to figure that out.


Q. THE NEVER LIST echoes recent events in the news even though you wrote it long before those events came to light in May 2013.  How did you feel when you heard about the women in Cleveland and have you heard any early feedback about the eerie similarities between life and art here?  If the news about Cleveland had broken while you were writing your novel, would those events have changed the storyline in any way?

A. I was stunned when the news broke about the Cleveland kidnappings, and it only became more surreal as the story unfolded. I’d written a book based on my worst nightmare, and there it was on the screen—real.  And even worse than the story I’d invented. 

Dozens of friends contacted me in those first few days, recognizing the obvious similarities and thinking I would have some special insight into the situation.  But I didn’t have any answers for them.  I don’t know how or why these terrible things happen.  Writing my book was just my way of trying to understand the hardships and strength of the women whose stories inspired me.  All I know is that I am so happy that Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are finally free, and I hope they are able to recover from such an unfathomable tragedy. 

It’s hard to say what I would have done had the story come to light while I was writing the book. However, even if I had changed some of the plot details, the essential narrative would still have been the one I felt driven to tell: the story of a woman who survived an awful, traumatic experience and her struggle to recover by facing her past.  My book was written from the heart, with great empathy and respect for abduction survivors.  The timing of this revelation doesn’t change that; it only makes my feelings for all these amazing women that much stronger.


Q. What made you want to be a writer? Did you always want to be a writer when you were growing up?

A. I was raised in a family of scientists in a house that had only one small bookcase. And unfortunately that bookcase was filled with chemistry and engineering textbooks. When I was nine, however, I found at the bottom of a drawer my mother’s Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volumes I and II, from her one required freshman English class. After that I pretty much survived childhood by reading.

If you’d asked me at twelve, I would have said all I ever wanted to be was a writer, but I lost my nerve somewhere along the way and opted for a steadier career path. I was estranged from my parents after high school and ran out of money fast, so it seemed important at the time to find a secure way to support myself. So I ended up at Yale Law School, which was a pretty great safety net.

I was drawn to the world of writers, though, so perhaps it was inevitable. I married a writer and as a lawyer I represented writers. My favorite New Yorker cartoon sums it up: a little boy in a cowboy costume says to his father, “Well, if I can’t be a cowboy, I’ll be a lawyer for cowboys.” So now I’m finally a cowboy.


Q. How would you describe your book to someone you’d just met?

A. I like to say it’s a psychological thriller about girls held captive in a basement crossed with a trauma recovery memoir—sort of as if the girl in that basement from Silence of the Lambs ended up hunting down Hannibal Lecter.


Q. Do you have a “Never List” of your own?

A. I don’t have an actual written list, but I do have a jumble of informal rules that my best friend and I developed in high school. We didn’t need to write anything down because we lived by them everyday as we navigated our way through our odd adventures: staying out all night, going to unsavory clubs, hanging out with strange characters. I have written Sarah and Jennifer’s Never List, however, and expect to add to it, perhaps even with suggestions from readers.


Q. The relationships between the female characters are crucial to THE NEVER LIST—who are your favorite female characters in fiction?

A. As I thought about this question, it struck me that the first names to come to mind were all young girls: Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, Matilda, Pippi Longstocking, Jo from Little Women, Cassandra from I Capture the Castle, Catherine of the early chapters of Wuthering Heights. These characters are all smart, tough and insightful individuals who follow their own way.

It’s telling that so many of the strongest, surest female characters haven’t yet reached maturity, while some of the adult characters I love are ruined or deeply flawed: Anna Karenina, Isabel Archer, Lily Bart. Yes, they are more complex and challenging, but in a way, my true heroes are the girls who haven’t been taught to doubt their strength yet. My life goal is to get back to that place, and to keep my daughters there.


Q. Did you do any research before you began writing your book?

A. I spent the past ten or so years researching it indirectly. My unofficial hobby—one I would never put on my resume—was obsessively studying psychopaths, captives, and the criminal mind.  Also, I took a brief detour from law in the early 2000s to go to graduate school in Cinema Studies. There I studied Surrealism with the incredible Annette Michelson, who, let’s just say, has a penchant for the dark side. So in many ways it was as if I was preparing for the book for years without knowing it.While writing the book, I did formal research into BDSM, abnormal psychology, victimological studies, statistical analysis, you know – the usual. My computer got a lot of viruses, and I saw a lot of disturbing text and images that are etched in my brain forever.


Q. Do you feel your own life experience has contributed to the book in any specific ways?

A. Definitely. Although I have thankfully never experienced what my characters went through, the broadest themes were drawn from my own emotional life. Sarah, Tracy, Christine and Adele each have a different response to the traumatic events of their collective past, and I’ve experienced them all for better or worse: anxiety, anger, repression, ambition. I’ve worked with a wonderful therapist on and off for a decade—our relationship is definitely not the model for Sarah and Dr. Simmons—but my own process helped me understand what it’s like to go back and face a dark past.

Specifics from my own life influenced many of the details of the book as well.  My relationship with my best friend was the model for the friendship between Sarah and Jennifer. While the story is obviously fiction, the powerful, intense nature of their friendship is rooted in ours, and their paranoia and obsession with precautions are magnified versions of our own.

Also, I went to college in Birmingham, Alabama, and my friends and I spent many weekends in New Orleans, wreaking all manner of havoc. We lived a pretty wild life—hitting the club scene, dressing up in costume, crashing with strangers. We woke up one morning to find we were staying with a guy who honestly believed he was a vampire. That was a bit of a wakeup call.

While I was in college, I also had a brush with a spiritual cult. My roommate and I went to regular meetings for a couple of months, where we were instructed in a bizarre cosmology and taught to be “present to the moment.” It was an interesting life experience that we didn’t take very seriously. Then we reached the level where we were invited to attend a weekend retreat in honor of a visiting guru from New York City. We had to scrape the floors of a house we were renovating for the group, do special “sacred” movements to music, and were expected to meditate for hours. I’m not ashamed to say I feigned illness, got out of there fast, and never went back.


Q. Which writers do you enjoy reading?

A. Mostly I read at either one of two extremes: nineteenth century/early twentieth century marriage plot novels and dark psychological crime. My favorites aren’t especially original: Tolstoy, Dickens, Austen, Wharton, Zola, Eliot, and Nabokov. And I always recommend a couple of books I think are underappreciated: Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh and Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time.  Some of my favorite crime writers (construed broadly) are Patricia Highsmith, Graham Greene, Shirley Jackson, Henning Mankell, Ruth Rendell and Dorothy L. Hughes. I can’t understand why everyone in the world hasn’t read We Have Always Lived in the Castle because it is a perfect, perfect book.


Q. Where do you like to write—and how?

A. I wrote THE NEVER LIST down in a stonewalled basement, which was fitting. I got up at five a.m. five days a week and wrote for exactly one hour before my kids got up. I gave myself a minimum of five hundred words to do in that hour (which I later increased to six hundred), so there was no time for writer’s block or self-doubt. I only knew the broad strokes of the story, so each day was a new revelation, as I would find out what was going to happen as I went.

Now I’ve moved to another house, so I don’t have that wonderful basement anymore. In fact, I have a large, bright sunny office with a beautiful view of the Berkshires, where I absolutely never, ever work. I end up at the banquette in my kitchen, mostly so I can sit cross-legged.

I’m writing two books now, and I do a thousand words on each a day. On the first draft, I focus on getting the story down, knowing I will re-write each line a thousand times. For one of these books I have a relatively detailed outline that I more or less stick to, but for the other I’m letting it unfold as I go. I like to get my word count done first thing in the morning; otherwise it hangs over my head. After every five hundred words, I get a ten-minute internet break, then—provided I’m not traumatized by what I’ve found there—it’s back to work.


I'd like to thank Koethi for stopping by for a little Q&A, and want to remind my readers that The Never List goes on sale today. And come back tomorrow for my review, and for a giveaway of an e-book copy of The Never List!

Hardcover, 320 pages
Expected publication: July 16th 2013 by Pamela Dorman Books
ISBN 0670026514 (ISBN13: 9780670026517)

AUTHOR Q&A: Bailey J. Thompson, author of Yellow Socks and Blood Spots

Author Bailey J. Thompson has stopped by today to promote her new book Yellow Socks and Blood Spots, just released May 15th. See the bottom of this post for more information on the book, but first a few words from Bailey:





Why was Yellow Socks and Blood Spots written?

It’s a constant battle; heated political abortion debates, religious questions, controversial opinions. The young people faced with the situation and decision every day are seen as victimizers, and are often unable to accurately express themselves for fear that they will be judged, or will cross a line.  Yellow Socks and Blood Spots was written to give such a taboo topic some perspective, and a reason for discussion. I don’t think that we will ever come to a concrete agreement when it comes to the abortion debate, but I do think that we owe it to ourselves to start a conversation.


What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced with this novel?

Telling people what it’s about. I find that when it comes to pro-life and pro-choice, most people already have their minds made up as to which side they’re on... So when you tell them you’ve written such a book, the reactions can be really varied; and sometimes quite extreme.


Originally, Yellow Socks and Blood Spots was to be published under a penname... What made you decide to publish it under your own name afterall?

There is something about publishing controversial novels under pennames first – just to see the reaction. Not only was I nervous about how people; friends and family especially would react to my writing such a novel, I’m also the owner of a children’s book publishing company, Gerbil Meets Mouse Publishing. I don’t have to tell you that this book and kids books don’t exactly go hand-in-hand! But at the end of the day (and a year’s worth of a publishing journey) I decided to just go with it. If I was writing a novel with the  hope that abortion would become less taboo and easier to talk about it, it would be hypocritical to hide behind someone else’s name... right?


If someone approaches you for support on a similar situation as Isabelle, what do you tell them?

Usually, I tell them to go with their heart. I’m not judgemental - in the end, the decision  up to them and I will support them with whichever route they take. I tell them to educate themselves with every option and do not make a decision blindly - this can only hurt you. In the end, you have to disregard what your friends, family, baby’s father says and do what feels right.


You’re a writer, what does that mean to you?

It took me a long time to accept that I was, indeed, a writer. There’s a lot of honour to that title... For the longest time, I would admit that I wrote... but not that I was a writer. So eventually, I had to decide what it meant to be a writer, and ask myself if I was enough of that to let that word define me. So what does it mean to be a writer? I think it’s someone who is obsessed with metaphors, discovers some element of plot or foreshadowing in just about every moment of life... Being a writer means you have to enjoy your own company and look forward to spending an entire day with just yourself and your keyboard. It’s not getting enough sleep because an idea came to you in the middle of the night, and starting to notice the little things; the way your footsteps sound, the way certain things smell, or taste and being able to pinpoint certain emotions and the elements that surround them. All that said, I think the defining moment for me, aside from seeing my first novel in print, was finally admitting just how essential coffee was. 


You’re a young author, what advice do you have for other young authors?

Run with it! Being a writer isn’t all rewards and there are a ton of roadblocks and letdowns. But DREAM BIG and don’t let anything stop you from reaching your goals. A lot of people quit just as they are about to succeed... so if you feel like giving up, sometimes putting in that extra mile will get you to where you’re dreaming of. For the most part, follow your heart, trust your instincts and be passionate about what you do. 


What are your next steps?

I’ve been working on another novel for the past five years. It’s taken a long time for me to understand the story myself, but I think once the excitement from Yellow Socks and Blood Spots has passed, that will be my next big project.

That, and my publishing company, Gerbil Meets Mouse Publishing. I currently have one kid’s book out and two on the way!  2013 promises to be an exciting year



Thanks to Bailey for stopping by today! Be sure to check out her new book, a wonderful accomplishment for anyone of any age, but especially so for someone so young!

Synopsis

Two lines means pregnant, and pregnant is the very last thing seventeen-year-old Isabelle wanted to be. She’s just beginning her senior year, she’s rekindling the respectable relationship she once had with her family and she has finally fallen in love.

Her boyfriend, Jason wants an abortion, while Isabelle wants to give her baby a chance at life, whether that means adoption or raising her baby herself. Her situation raises a question of values, beliefs, rights, societal expectations and personal opinions, and as Isabelle’s friends and family discover the news, they seem to think they know what’s best for her and her baby. Within two weeks of finding out about their beautiful disaster, Isabelle and Jason have to come to a mutual agreement and make a life and death decision.

Release Date: May 15, 2013
Author: Bailey J. Thompson
Publisher: Yellow Iris Press
Website: www.yellowsocksandbloodspots.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/YellowSocksAndBloodSpots


About Bailey

Bailey J Thompson is a teenage author that resides in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. She has been storytelling since the moment she could talk, and has since developed passions for creative writing, photography, nature and the environment. Yellow Socks and Blood Spots is her debut novel.

Website: www.baileyjthompson.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BaileyJThompson

Q&A with Aria Beth Sloss, author of Autiobiography of Us

A Conversation with Aria Beth Sloss about

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF US   

—from Autobiography of Us

1. In a recent interview about the novel with Publishers Weekly, you mention that the book is about a group of women “caught between two eras.” What interested you about this group of women? How did you come to write about them?

At a certain age I became aware that my mother was older than my friends’ mothers (I’m the youngest of three by six and nine years). Because of a margin of no more than a few years, everything about her experience as a young woman differed from theirs. She didn’t protest Vietnam; she didn’t go to Woodstock: in short, she didn’t match the vision of American youth during the 1960’s I’d pieced together from my friends’ parents’ photographs and stories. As I got older, I became fascinated by the idea that there was an entire pocket of women history had passed over. My mother’s generation was born late enough to glimpse opportunities for women beyond marriage and motherhood, but they were also, cruelly, born too early to benefit from second- wave feminism and the changes that swept the country in the late 1960’s on into the 1970’s. By the time leaders like Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer appeared on the horizon (not to mention NOW and the Equal Rights Amendment), it was too late: my mother and her friends were married with children, settled into lives that turned out to look very much like their own mothers’ lives. So much changed over the course of that one little decade. All it took was graduating college a few years earlier, and the world into which you entered was a very
different one.

2. How did the story for your book originate? You’ve mentioned that you used your mother’s life as inspiration—how personal was the endeavor of writing this book? Did you learn anything about your mother in the process?

Autobiography originally grew out of that same curiosity about my mother, who was raised in Pasadena during roughly the same timeframe as the book’s main characters. Though I grew up in Boston, my family flew to California every year to spend time with my maternal grandparents, so from a very young age I knew Pasadena as the place where my mother had grown up. I think it must come as a shock to all children, that moment when you realize your parents were once young. Suddenly, they’re people. With that peoplehood comes a past. I could say something nobler drove me, but the truth is that I started this book – a book which explores women coming of age during the era in which my mother came of age – out of sheer frustration with what I perceived as the limitations facing the young women of my own era. In many ways, Autobiography is less about my mother than it is about me.

3. You capture amazingly vivid details of the time and essence of 1960s Pasadena, California including: how people dressed, what they ate, how they interacted socially, their worries and joys, the highlights in the news, and the social practices. What kind of research did you do for AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF US? Did anything surprise you?

I used two types of research while writing the book. One involved looking up news headlines and double-checking dates, making sure I had all the facts down right – what time did the sun set in May of 1962? Was I remembering the correct kind of palm tree for that area of Southern California? The other kind of research relied on sheer imagination. It’s always important to get the facts straight: as a fiction writer, you’re building a dream, and that dream needs to progress without any logistical snags, or you risk the reader getting nudged awake. But the crucial truths in story-telling are emotional. And to my way of thinking, a lot less changes from decade to decade in terms of what people want and regret than we’d like to think. It’s made me happy to hear women of that era say that the struggles the main characters face in the book ring true, but, sadly, it hasn’t surprised me.

4. This story is ultimately about a friendship between two women who have grown up together. Did you rely on any of your own experiences with girlfriends to articulate the ins and outs of their relationship?

I tend to deliberately avoid using specifics from my day-to-day in my writing: I find the hard facts of my own life distracting when I’m trying to create a world with its own truths, its own peculiar climate. That said, Rebecca and Alex’s relationship is undoubtedly a mish-mash of dozens of different friendships I’ve witnessed and experienced, particularly during adolescence. There’s a fluidity to teenage girls and their sense of identity that makes those intense friendships so many women have during those years possible. Over time, that intimacy is generally (and quite naturally) replaced by romantic relationships. It occurred to me as I worked on Autobiography that it would have to be both an extraordinary friendship as well as an extraordinary set of circumstances to break that natural progression. There was so much about these two women and their lives that seemed to me to create the perfect storm of disappointment and desire, exactly the kind that might allow a relationship like theirs to continue to carry so much weight. In the end, I wasn’t surprised to find myself writing
about a friendship that looked a lot more like love.

5. How did you first become interested in writing?

Like most writers, I spent my childhood buried in books. I think of those years now as the seed that would eventually appear above ground as this, my life as a writer. I never consciously considered writing books of my own; in fact, I spent the first twenty-odd years of my life training to be a musician. I suppose what I was searching for all those years was a way to communicate – I just had the medium wrong. When, in my mid-twenties, I realized I didn’t have the talent to achieve what I wanted to through music, I went back to my childhood love. I had the wild idea I might be able to speak through words the way I couldn’t through music. Luckily, it was the first of many endings that turned out to be a beginning.

Autobiography of Us releases tomorrow, 2/5/13. Come back then for a chance to win not one, but two copies for you and a friend!