FACES by Roger Hutchison
In July, I lost my husband, Shawn, to bacterial meningitis. He was a phenomenal husband, father, and child welfare attorney. He lived every day to the fullest. Shawn loved nature and believed in the essential value of every human. One of his favorite poems was “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. He loved it because it celebrated the uniqueness of every living being. As Shawn requested, our priest read the poem at his funeral.
Shawn would be honored to know that our family friend, Roger Hutchison, dedicated his upcoming book FACES to our children. In the spirit of “Pied Beauty,” FACES celebrates our uniqueness—our feelings, our bodies, our stories, and our hopes. Hutchinson beautifully personifies God as artist embracing not only the beauty of life, but the rage, suffering, and fear so many feel. This is the book we all need right now. FACES calls us to pause, breathe, and recognize our value as human beings.
If you haven’t had a chance to visit Roger’s website, please do. You can pre-order FACES now.
Remembering the Canonical Victims
Since writing the Ripper trilogy, I’ve kept an eye on the ongoing “discoveries,” commentary, and scholarship in Ripperology. One trend that I hope keeps going strong, is the increasing focus on the victims rather than on Jack the Ripper. While researching for Ripper, I found a plethora of materials about the suspects while information about the victims was spotty at best. In The Complete Jack the Ripper Donald Rumbelow provides some solid background to the “Canonical Five” victims—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddows, and Mary Kelly. Neal Shelden also has written about the victims. Yet the vast majority of available Ripper scholarship keeps the spotlight on the killer. Until now…
The Five
By Hallie Rubenhold
I read this book in less than a week, and I can’t say enough about it! Rubenhold’s writing style is engaging and her research exhaustive. She fleshes out the Canonical Five victims, humanizing them, adding dimension to these women who are typically categorized by Ripperologists as prostitutes. She questions how easily scholars have categorized them as such and instead fleshes them out as mothers, daughters, wives, workers, and business owners. She even writes a solidly researched chapter about the most elusive of the victims, Mary Kelly—suggesting that she might have wanted to remain elusive after escaping from a human trafficking group in Europe. The timing for this book is also perfect in the ongoing dialogue brought forth by the #MeToo movement, pointing to how our society victim-blames in an effort to make those who attack women less monstrous than they actually are.
Additionally, I love this two hour walking tour highlighting some of the locations mentioned in The Five. The tour was put together by history teacher, Simon Beal. I’m definitely planning on walking it during my next trip to London!
Staying Sane and Healthy as a Writer
Authors and artists have a long history of abusing their bodies. Virginia Woolf would essentially collapse after finishing a novel. Voltaire serial drank coffee. Ernest Hemingway and absinthe? ‘Nuf said.
For me, when I’m deep into writing or revising a book, the last thing I think about is my health. This is stupid. I always go through the same cycle—WAY too much coffee in the morning. I’m a running addict, so when the writer’s block hits, I go for a long run. Although I wake up on a writing morning telling myself I need to drink enough water before my run, not drink too much caffeine, and eat sensible meals at normal hours, I’ll admit that there have been some mornings when I’ve gone running after drinking nothing except three or four cups of coffee. Then I come back, and without drinking any more water, I dive right back into my book before my ideas evaporate. Then I tell myself to eat fresh carrots and almond butter, but my stressed self has a mind of its own. Inevitably, I find myself in the pantry, reaching for the corn chips, salsa, and Diet Coke.
“She gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it.)"
--Alice in Wonderland
I don’t just let my physical health go. Every writer knows it’s a struggle to “turn off” the creative switch. In the thick of a book, my mind keeps going when I’m cooking dinner, when I’m playing UNO with my kids, when I’m trying to relax outside with a glass of wine in the evening. I have to fight for the mental discipline to “put it aside” even after I hit “send” to my agent or editor. I still feel like I’m going round and round even though the carousel has long stopped.
Once I’m finished with a book, I think I’ll “get back on track.” I cut back on coffee. I return to my yoga class. I drink more water, eat less carbs. Unfortunately, in my thirties, it’s getting harder to “bounce back,” and I’m finding that the toll on my mental and physical health doesn’t go away as quickly as it used to. I fight headaches, digestive issues, and general anxiety. I feel like it takes me weeks, or even months, to get my system back.
I’m tired of this cycle. I’m working on doing things throughout the writing process to keep my body and mind sane. For my mind, I’ve been practicing mindfulness. Even if it’s just 15-20 minutes per day, I’ve found that it helps keep me “centered” so I can focus on my work. Also, when I’m doing it regularly, I have more mental discipline to stay focused on my WIP and not get distracted by social media. I also make sure to keep up with yoga. Even if my writer’s brain tells me I don’t have time for it and I can just do ten vinyasas in my den, I’ve found that by going to a class, where I’m watched by an instructor, that I’m more conscientious about my poses, and I challenge myself more. I still run 9-15 miles per week. It helps with anxiety. But I’m trying to drink more water before and after I run. Author, Gwen Hayes tries to schedule “time off” by not checking her computer after dinner and by doing things like taking weekends off.
For my physical health, I’ve been trying to drink more water. Recently, I also tried a “grainless month” which made me more mindful of how much processed food I was eating. It forced me to eat the carrots and almond butter instead of the corn chips. I’ve been making the occasional smoothie, full of spinach, bananas, coconut milk, and I add in acidophilus powder for digestive health. The smoothie keeps me hydrated and adds essential vitamins. I also drink bone broth and kombucha tea regularly because both are restorative. I know several authors who try hitting the “reset” button on their diet. There’s not a one-size-fits-all reset so you have to decide what’s best for you. For me it was giving up grains for a while. Sometimes I give up dairy. (My name is Amy and I'm a cheese-aholic.) I know several authors have tried the Whole Thirty. Hayes recommends it for kicking the sugar dragon.
Dr. Suess Veggie Smoothie
Bone Broth
I’d like to add for a final note, that although I’m trying harder, I’m by no means perfect. I have some days when I’m better and more disciplined than others. (And I do still love the occasional Diet Coke.) Also, I’ve learned that health means balance. For me that’s 80% healthy. I have to eat 100% gluten free. Otherwise, I keep a mostly dairy free, low grain, low sugar diet because I feel so much better. But I still eat dark chocolate and enjoy dark red wine or bourbon in moderation. They’re therapeutic and I’ve found that if I allow a few “treats” in my diet, it’s easier for me to stick to the 80% healthy.
Some of my favorite health blogs include:
Mark's Daily Apple--(includes some awesome paleo recipes)
Woo-Woo Mommy--(great health info and low carb, kid-friendly recipes)
Highlights of 2016
1.) This spring, I had the amazing opportunity to teach an Honors Vampire Lit seminar at the college where I worked. (Yeah, that means I got paid to teach Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) The course included a campus visit from Dacre Stoker—the great-grand nephew of Dracula author, Bram Stoker. Dacre Stoker is also an author in his own right, having co-authored the sequel to Dracula in 2009. Then in May, the students and I flew to London where we explored old cemeteries, visited the Operating Theatre Museum, and went on a Jack the Ripper tour.
2.) In March, I was on a YA Author Panel with Amy Christine Parker and James McTeer at the SCASL Conference at Myrtle Beach.
3.) This year I finished writing a contemporary YA Gothic novel. The novel deals with dark family secrets, murder, and mental illness and has required interesting research and footwork. Specifically, I interviewed a criminal defense attorney and a psychiatrist to get some background info on the legal and mental health issues. Then, through a flurry of e-mails and phone calls, I talked my way into getting a tour of a local abandoned asylum campus.
4.) While writing the novel, I received feedback from my amazing peer critique partners and fellow authors, Kristina Perez, Kami Kinard, and Jamieson Ridenhour. In London, I finally met Kristina in the Shad Thames area. We had a lovely and long talk about the writer’s life over dinner.
5. My essay about images of sex and death in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed book, Romancing the Zombie: Falling in Love with the Undead in the 21st Century.
6. In June my husband and I took our kids to South Africa. We had just enough of a long layover in London to get out and grab some greasy hamburgers and visit Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Our game drives through Kruger Park were breathtaking. I loved having the opportunity to share these experiences with my kids. Our bungalow was right next to the Sabie River, and I’ll never forget seeing Bull elephants meandering in the water just beyond the fence of our backyard.
7. In July, I spoke about my research on Jack the Ripper at the Palmetto Chapter Sisters in Crime meeting.
8. This fall, I taught my dream Young Adult novels course. We read several dystopian, contemporary, horror, and historical fiction novels including Ashfall, Fracture, Anna Dressed in Blood, and A Madness So Discrete.
9. My three kids all turned a year older. *weep* *weep* For my youngest child’s second birthday, we celebrated Eric Carle style.
10. I finished my first attempt at crocheting a blanket. It took me just three years and more episodes of Vampire Diaries than I would like to admit.
11. Here in the South, it’s traditional on New Years Day to eat collards and Hoppin’ Johns. As I sat down to eat, I noticed that my sweet potato was shaped like a perfect heart. I’d like to think that this means my heart is full as I start 2017.
London Trip Highlights
The London trip turned out to be just as thrilling as expected. Although we embarked upon many tourist hotspots, we explored some of London’s hidden gems including Highgate Cemetery, the Old Operating Theatre Museum, and a Jack the Ripper Tour led by Donald Rumbelow.
Highgate Cemetery
We had a scheduled tour of Highgate Cemetery. Against everything on the itinerary, my students said that our day at Highgate was their favorite day. Although I’ve been to Highgate Cemetery a few times before, I forgot that it’s a good twenty minute walk from the nearest Tube station to the cemetery—much of which is an uphill trek. After getting off at the station with only five minutes to spare, we took shortcut directions from a stranger and then ran through pouring rain towards the cemetery. As always during the tour, our guide told us dark and quirky stories about the 170,000 people buried throughout the graveyard. We learned about Victorian body-snatching, the sad reality of common graves for the poor, as well as a rare and very large spider found within the vaults of Egyptian Avenue. Needless to say, I was careful not to brush my shoulder against any dark, damp walls. Yikes!
Old Operating Theatre Museum
One of the strangest museums in London is the Old Operating Theatre Museum. Accessible through a narrow twisting staircase of an Old Bell Tower, the museum showcases one of the longest surviving operating theatres in Europe, cases of nineteenth-century medical devices, as well as an herb garret showing traditional herbs prescribed for various illnesses. We also heard a lecture about the brutal reality of operating theatres, about how amputations would have been performed without anesthesia for broken bones or infections, and how medical students often bet each other on whether or not the hapless patient would survive amputation.
Jack the Ripper Tour
If you go to London, you will find many, many Jack the Ripper tours. Many are overpriced and gimmicky. However, in my opinion, London Walks provides the best tours. If you are able, go on Donald Rumbelow’s tour. He is a former policeman, the world-leading Jack the Ripper expert, and author of The Complete Jack the Ripper. His tour is both informative and exciting.
London Excursion
This week I’m super-excited to take my vampire literature class to London. The trip has evolved beyond a vampire lit themed excursion to a dark history tour. During my last trip to London, I was researching for my Ripper trilogy, and I spent a lot of time not only in old graveyards and churches, but hanging out with Daleks. This time, I’m revisiting some of my favorite hotspots in London while still keeping a lookout for Daleks.
Here are Some Places We’ll See:
St. Pancras Old Church
This is one of my favorite little out-of-the-way places in London. The church has a quirky and dark history. The early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft was initially buried in the churchyard. Her daughter, Mary Godwin (future author of Frankenstein) met up with Percy Bysshe Shelley for romantic trysts near her mother’s grave before she eloped with him. Lord Byron’s physician and author of the novel, The Vampyre, John Polidori, was buried there before his body was later lost by the construction of the railway. The railway construction, during the Victorian period, cut straight through the graveyard. Railway workers pushed aside the graves without reverence, and architect (and future novelist) Thomas Hardy was put in charge of relocating graves. He clustered them around what is now known as The Hardy Tree.
Highgate Cemetery
My class and I are touring my one of my favorite cemeteries in the world. Hauntingly beautiful and overgrown, the Victorian cemetery is not only home to thousands of graves. One of my favorite Halloweenie-stories is about how poet and artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, buried a book of poems with his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, but then later had her body exhumed when he needed money. Although it’s not exactly clear in Dracula where the doomed vampire Lucy Westerna is buried, many film versions of Dracula—including my favorite 2006 BBC version—locate the dramatic scene of her “second death” in Highgate Cemetery.
Operating Theatre Museum
One day, we’re attending a talk at the Operating Theatre Museum. As an operating theatre in the nineteenth, century, surgeries were performed before the invention of anesthesia. (Yikes!) Many of the patients were poor, and medical students and apothecaries could observe the surgeries for learning purposes from the surrounding seats.
Jack the Ripper Tour
What trip to London would be complete without a Jack the Ripper tour? One issue we talked about in my vampire lit seminar was the many connections between Dracula and the Jack the Ripper murders ten years earlier. Specifically, we’re hoping to catch Donald Rubelow’s tour. Rumbelow is both a world-leading Jack the Ripper expert and author of The Complete Jack the Ripper.
Dacre Stoker Visit
The vampire literature course I’m teaching is continuing to be pure awesomeness! This past Monday, we were honored to have as our guest speaker, Dacre Stoker, the great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker and co-author of: Dracula: The Un-Dead. Stoker gave a fascinating presentation to my students entitled: “Stoker on Stoker: The Mysteries Behind the Writing of Dracula.” Through the presentation he separated fact from fiction regarding Bram Stoker’s life and the writing of Dracula, and shared interesting stories surrounding the many Dracula films. After the presentation, Stoker led a discussion with my students about symbolism surrounding the vampire in the media and novels. Above is a photo of me completely stoked (*heh heh*) to have my picture taken with Dacre Stoker and his book.
A Taste of My Vampire Lit Seminar
I’m very excited to teach my dream course in the spring—an honors seminar about the vampire in literature. Biting Back: The Subversive Vampire in Literature and Film will use the vampire as a springboard to discuss political, gender, and cultural tensions in a variety of books from the nineteenth-century onwards. Although I’m a British lit professor, the class is interdisciplinary, so I’m leaving several of the projects wide open. This means that if a student is interested in early forensic investigations, she might do a presentation on the influence of the Jack the Ripper investigations on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And, the best part—at the end of the class I’m taking students to London! Woot!
What we’re reading:
Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla
(Edited by my brilliant friend and fellow writer, Jamieson Ridenhour)
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Lauren Owens,The Quick
John Marks, Fangland
Anne Rice, Interview with a Vampire
Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
Charlaine Harris, Dead Until Dark
Nine Auerbach’s Our Vampires, Ourselves
I feel like this current list highlights the touchstone Victorian vampire texts as well as current trends in popular vampire literature. Also, Auerbach provides a solid scholarly framework for class discussions.
What we’re watching?
Episodes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Flannery O’Connor meets Bram Stoker—SO MUCH to talk about in this series.
Fright Night
The vampire hits suburbia? This film is worth watching just to see a realty sign used as a stake.
On Gun Control...
In the wake of several campus shootings in the past week and the continuing LACK of any legislation for reasonable gun control, today, I e-mailed the following letter to Congressman Joe Wilson, Senator Tim Scott, and Senator Lindsey Graham:
As a mother of three young children and as a professor, I’m increasingly concerned about the rising problem of gun violence. I’m concerned specifically about how my children and I are forced to “accommodate” the new normal of gun violence while nothing is being done at the legislative level to keep guns out of the hands of mass shooters. My children come home from their public school telling me about their “bad guy drills,” where they hide in a dark closet with their classmates to prepare for the possibility of a “bad man with a gun” coming into their school. Faculty at universities and colleges across the country are being trained about how to deal with mass shooters, while, unbelievably, gun rights have been extended so that students can now carry concealed weapons on universities and colleges in eight states.
The mass shootings and gun related homicides continue to rise—clearly the status quo is not working. As your constituent, I am asking for you to support reasonable gun control such as a ban on specific types of assault weapons, banning the sale of high-capacity magazines, and closing loopholes on background checks including the one that recently allowed Dylan Roof to purchase a gun and proceed to kill nine people. I am asking that you not cave to the NRA or to the small, but loud fraction of “gun culture” Americans who will decry any reasonable measure to regulate guns.
Sincerely,
Amy Carol Reeves
“Why the Faithful Need Feminism” #FaithFeminisms
This summer my family vacationed in the New England area, and we spent a few days in Salem. I’ve always wanted to go there as I’m interested in crazy historical cases (yeah, I write books about Jack the Ripper). Also, my husband, Shawn, has ancestors who lived in Salem Village at the time of the witch trials.
Visiting the Salem Witch Museum with our eight-year-old son, Atticus, and six-year-old daughter, Amelia, we discovered that a large part of the tour involved standing in a huge round room surrounded by mannequin stage displays of the historic figures—one of a looming winged, horned Lucifer hovering ominously above our heads. A voice narrated the chronology of events in each of the stage display cases. The presentation was both cheesy (lots of thunderstorm sound effects, a glowing pentacle on the floor) and informative, but my kids loved it. As we left the room to see the rest of the museum, Atticus, slurping Sprite loudly through his straw, looked up at Shawn and exclaimed about the Puritans: “Wow! They would have killed Mama and Amelia.” Shawn replied, “Well…they would have killed your Mama for sure.”
I chuckled because it’s true. I’m pretty certain I would have been hung as a “witch.” Shawn knows that when he gives me advice there’s a 90% chance that I’ll weigh it, obsess a bit, and then do what I want. I drink bourbon on the rocks, and I’ve been known to speak up in religious settings when I hear thorny teachings about wives submitting to their husbands or how birth control contributes to immorality.
Although men were also hung during the Salem Witch Trials, the overwhelming majority of “witches” killed in New England and in Europe during the Middle Ages and subsequent years were women. Specifically, women who were different—widows, midwives, the mentally ill, women who just couldn’t keep their mouths shut. In fact, the first of the accused to be executed was Bridget Bishop—a mother known for her outspoken views and her proclivities for *gasp* playing shuffleboard and sassing her husband. Bottom line: there were certain “right” and “wrong” ways to act, behave, and dress in these early religious communities. If you pissed off the wrong person or seemed like a misfit in the community, particularly if you were a woman—well, you’d better watch your back.
Human rights have advanced since the seventeenth-century, so fortunately (at least in the United States) it’s illegal to burn women as witches. But within earlier religious patriarchal communities, there was very little legal protection for women and, as in the Salem trials, your very life could depend on “spectral evidence”—like someone says they saw you riding around on a broomstick just before their dog bit the dust. I’m a Christian (specifically, liberal Episcopalian), but I was raised as a conservative evangelical. My background has made me fascinated by both religious extremism and the continuing push by many (but by no means all) evangelical and fundamentalist leaders to keep women in their “proper” roles.
I’ve learned, through my experiences in conservative religious settings that those prescribing “biblical” (aka Victorian) gender roles have a greater sense of fear than others. Christianity has always been split by the fearless, the ones willing to break away from nonsensical or immoral traditions to advance justice and human rights and the fearful—those claiming that certain rigid rules or traditions are very backbone of faith. One of my priests recently said that the root of most sin lies in fear. Along these lines, an essential Gospel message, I believe, is fearlessness—where Jesus heedlessly broke apart traditional rules; specifically, he included women, even mentally ill women, adulteresses, Samaritan women, where others would exclude or execute them based on fear of breaking from tradition.
One reason I’m a Christian feminist is because I believe religious communities should live beyond fear. Fear is powerful and dangerous. While walking around in the cool air-conditioned Salem Witch Museum, I kept staring at the horned Lucifer figure dangling from the ceiling—a symbolic representation of fear. Elaine Pagels in her book, The Origin of Satan, claims that the Satan figure isn’t a looming outsider, but rather someone close, even a friend or neighbor, someone within the community who becomes a threat to it. Anyone who doesn’t conform to “biblical” gender roles, to specific religious beliefs, anyone who is set apart by race or by sexual preference transforms from fellow human being to monster. Lines are drawn in the sand. Within such communities, fear gives birth to discrimination, to abuse, and sometimes to violence. Regarding gender roles, I believe that feminism, because it asserts that women are equal to men, is an essential moral component to faith communities because it rights gender discriminations; feminism must be a part of any church as it bucks against fearful men who manipulate religion and play the God card to their own benefit—those craving “submission” of their wives, demanding purity of their daughters, who would want women uneducated or uninformed. Such a system not only discriminates, but also opens the door to the sexual abuse that has been plaguing so many patriarchal denominations.
The Salem Witch Trials are just one of many, many historical examples—a mere tip of the iceberg—showing that we need feminism not just in society, but in faith communities as well. Fear and discrimination break apart communities that should instead demonstrate Jesus’s radical inclusion.
Interview with Jamieson Ridenhour: Author, Scholar, and Musician
Super pumped today to publish my interview with my good friend and fellow author, Jamieson Ridenhour! Read on to find out about some of his current projects involving Victorian zombies, werewolves, and aging punk rock musicians.
Bio: Jamieson Ridenhour is the author of the werewolf murder-mystery Barking Mad (Typecast, 2011), the short horror films Cornerboys (Best Animated Fantasy, 2010 Fargo Fantastic Film Fest) and House of the Yaga (Best American Short Film, 2012 Nevermore Film Festival), and the ghost play Grave Lullaby. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, Mirror Dance, Architrave, and TheNewerYork, among others, and his fiction has been podcast at Pseudopod, Cast of Wonders, and Radio Unbound. He lives and writes in North Dakota.
1. Like me, you’re both an academic and a creative writer. How do you switch gears from scholarly writing to creative writing? Do you find that your academic mind enriches or stilts your creative work?
I love crossing the line between teaching and writing. I don’t do as much academic writing nowadays (though I did publish a book and two articles in 2013), but I do teach British literature, creative writing, and some basic introduction courses. Reading Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Austen, Forster, Heaney--all these powerful and influential writers—certainly inspires and pushes me forward. And the act of responding to students’ writing is a good way to stay engaged with craft. I have smart writers who keep me connected to the practical act of writing.
2. I know you were influenced by authors like P.D. Wodehouse for your Barking Mad mystery series. What other authors influenced you?
Lots of writers in ways that I’m probably not even aware of. Dickens, surely. Peter Straub’s novels taught me a lot about how to develop plot and suspense without sacrificing elegant prose. I think fiction writers can learn a lot about economy of language—Heaney, Keats, and Yeats are favorites. Lots of fantasy writers from the 70s and 80s, people like John Crowley. More recently, my favorite writers are people like David Mitchell, Michael Chabon, Zadie Smith, Sarah Waters, Joe Hill, and Neil Gaiman. Kelly Link and Karen Russell write short fiction that I’d kill small animals to be able to pull off. I’ve been reading a fair amount of YA fiction lately as well, and particularly love Courtney Summers, Kendare Blake, and Holly Black. I don’t consciously think about these writers as influences, but they can’t not be.
3. Also, you’re working on some young adult books. Do you want to tell us about your projects?
I’ve just finished revisions and beta response for a YA novel set in Victorian London, which features reanimated corpses, mad scientists, secret agents for the Queen, and a 15-year-old maidservant as protagonist. The manuscript is with an agent right now, so I’ve got my fingers crossed.
I’m working on a new play right now about an aging punk rock musician and a young woman who tries to interview him. It’s non-supernatural, a first for me, and deals with fame, aging, suicide, and punk rock. I’m hoping to get that drafted by the end of July.
4. Do you feel like there are any unique challenges in writing for a young adult audience?
Not really. The sort of things I write—fantasy and horror, mainly—don’t change tremendously across those categories. My London Dead book has a fifteen-year-old protagonist, and obviously her age shapes her worldview and reactions, but other than that, it’s not radically different than the same book written for adults. I think one of the reasons so many adults read and write YA is that it’s not really that far removed from any book in a given genre.
5. You’ve recently written and directed a play, Grave Lullaby. Can you talk a bit about that experience?
Yeah, I not only wrote Grave Lullaby, I got to direct a wonderful cast in its debut as well. I learned quite a bit—writing for the stage is shaped by dialogue in ways that other writing isn’t, and I feel like I sharpened my understanding of character speech. Having been primarily a fiction writer, it was a grand and surreal experience to see my characters walking around on a stage, and to have actors insert their own interpretations and suggestions on motivation and delivery. It was probably the best, or fullest, artistic project I’ve been involved in. Grave Lullaby is being considered for production by a theater company in SC right now; like most writing projects, it’s reached the hurry up and wait stage. And in addition to the play I’m working on at the moment, I’ve got two others planned.
6. And now, for the most important question: what do you think of the Twelfth Doctor—Peter Capaldi?
I think he looks fabulous! I would have preferred a woman or POC, because it’s just time, for crying out loud, but I am quite happy to see an older actor playing the part. I’ve been really disappointed in the writing during the last season—Clara’s plot effectively erased any development or agency for her character, and the Doctor merely retread old ground. I was losing faith in Stephen Moffat. I think Moffat is great for one-off ideas (“Blink” or “Girl in the Fireplace”), and with focus can sustain a long narrative, but I don’t believe the show is going to recapture the sorts of things Russell Davies was able to do during the 2nd or 4th season. But the 50th was pretty brilliant, and the Christmas special, though not as good as the 50th or parts of Amy and Rory’s arc, was solid and well-done. I do have high hopes for the future.
That may be more than you wanted. I’m fascinated by serial storytelling, and tend to watch shows in those terms. We’re big Doctor Who fans at my house. Can’t wait to see Capaldi in action.
Jamie's short film, Cornerboys, rocks! It's haunting, creepy, and beautiful. I always show it to my British lit classes when I teach Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOd_Fzck7CM
Why I'm a Christian Feminist...
I’ve been reflecting upon and reading the #YESALLWOMEN and the #YESALLBIBLICALWOMEN tweets. The conversation highlights not only the historical and current violence and misogyny women experience, but it also reasserts and reclaims feminism as a positive movement. I’ve read and witnessed too many rants against feminists, and as a Christian feminist, I’m doubly judged—not only by misogynists in popular culture but also by the conservative religious community. My evangelical background has shown me that while misogyny and rape culture reigns in popular culture, these issues thrive within religious communities where “biblical gender roles” and “complementarianism” pit gender equality against God’s will. So if you’re a Christian feminist you’re not just “wrong,” you’re “hellfire and brimstone wrong.”
Most horrendously is the way the religious patriarchy has caused and covered up rape and sexual harassment crimes against women. We’ve seen this in the case of Doug Phillips, where his position as the “biblical leader” within his home established a household where his decisions and authority remained unquestioned—allowing him to sexually abuse his children’s nanny. Numerous Bible colleges such as Bob Jones University and Patrick Henry College have lately gained national attention for not taking rape and sexual abuse cases seriously, for blaming the victim, or for demanding the victim “forgive” her abuser.
Then there is the concept of “biblical gender roles” espoused by many conservative evangelical churches. Referred to also as “complementarianism,” the belief upholds that men and women are equal in terms of moral responsibility and in terms of their need for God’s grace and salvation, but they must have different roles within the household where the woman is the nurturing wife and mother and the man is the breadwinner. Although upheld as “biblical,” complementarianism is really nothing less than the Victorian system of separate spheres—where the woman is idealized as the “Angel of the House” while the man maintains his “manly” duties working outside the home.
Complementarianism thrives among many of my conservative religious friends’ families and I have seen intelligent women attend churches where they are forbidden to teach men. I’ve seen women brainwashed by the concept into following their “spiritual leader” even if their leader’s decisions and beliefs harm their family unit—to protest or question their leader would not be practicing “submission.” I respect a woman’s decision to be a full-time mother, but I’ve seen women frustrated and depressed when they desire to work or pursue a degree outside of their home, but they feel too guilty because doing so would be “selfish” or against God’s will. Most disturbingly, I’ve had women fiercely defend their role as the submissive, nurturing partner to me because even though they might not like it, “it’s God’s law” and should not be questioned. They line out an avalanche of carefully chosen verses in the Bible while ignoring other verses upholding women as leaders, as the first witnesses to the Resurrection, as savvy business negotiators. They also ignore the stories in the Bible where “biblical leaders” rape or try to sell their daughters as prostitutes, where a father burns his daughter alive because he believes it’s God’s will. They ignore the fact that the “spiritual leader” in a home can be morally corrupt or brutal, because well…this would disrupt the essential foundation of their “biblically prescribed” ideology.
Biblical patriarchy and complementarianism assert the worst traits of human nature. We all want to be the boss, to have our way—this is part of human nature and why relationships are so difficult. As a Christian feminist, I believe in fundamental gender equality, that as creations of God men and women have equal value when it comes to giving a hundred percent to the economic and domestic well-being of a household. It would be just as wrong for me to try to rule over my husband as it would be for him to try to rule over me, and thisegalitarianism, this complete mutuality, is what makes our relationship and our household work.
My Easter Reflections on an Off-Kilter World
As always on Easter, this past Sunday our family arrived early to church. Unsteady on my super-duper high-heels, I ushered my two grumpy sleep-deprived children (diving into Easter baskets at 5:30 AM is so darn fun!) into a pew near the front of the church. Because we were so early, my husband and I let them bring books to read before the service.
Sitting between my eight-year-old son, Atticus, and six-year-old daughter, Amelia, so they wouldn’t fight, my husband, Shawn, and I talked quietly to people around us and admired the beautiful flower arrangements around the altar and balconies of our Episcopal cathedral. The drizzling cool morning was supposed to give way to a brighter warmer afternoon. I had a spiral cut ham seasoned and ready to pop in the oven when we got home. I had a coconut cake ready to slice. And miraculously, I had cleaned my house. (Well…at least the living and dining rooms.)
By the time the organ music started and we stood to sing the first hymn, Amelia was already whining that she was hungry. I looked down to see Atticus hunched over, fast asleep over his Where’s Waldo book in the pew beside me. He was particularly cute in his brown tweed jacket, red bow tie, and his untamable blonde curly hair. Chuckling, Shawn and I just let him sleep. Then, just as the choir processional began down the Cathedral aisle, Atticus, slumped further into the pew, I turned to pull him back up but he went rigid and fell hard onto the wooden floor—hitting his head on the pew wall and drooling excessively, he began convulsing in a grand mal seizure.
“He’s having a seizure,” I hissed as Shawn and I struggled to get him off the floor in the narrow pew aisle. Quickly, Shawn whisked him outside through a side door. Telling Amelia to stay where she was, I slipped outside the church to make certain that the seizure had stopped. I found Shawn outside holding him—Atticus was still, his pupils dilated. We’d been through this before and we knew what would happen. Soon he would fall asleep, so Shawn took him to the church library, where he waited with Atticus as he slept through the rest of the service.
Returning to my seat, I wiped Atticus's drool off my open hymnal and whispered to the concerned and kind parishioners around us that our son has epilepsy and he is alright. But I was distracted—throughout the hymns, throughout the Eucharist, throughout getting sprinkled with Holy Water, I kept seeing Atticus falling hard into the pew aisle.
At this point, we’re used to dealing with these seizures. He has a childhood form of epilepsy where sometimes he has seizures when he falls asleep. Usually he’s in bed when he has one. This was the first time he had one during a nap and in public.
For me, the Easter service suddenly became difficult. My mind was on Atticus and how managing this epilepsy has become part of our lives. I thought of how we’ve been told that Atticus will likely outgrow these seizures, but they’ll likely peak when he’s eight and nine years old. So we’re at the beginning of about a two year span where they’ll be more frequent.
I think the season of Lent has helped me to accept things that I don’t want to accept—like Atticus’s epilepsy. Since leaving evangelicalism and becoming Episcopalian, practicing Lent before Easter forces me to face truths that I don’t want to about suffering. A Buddhist friend of mine said once that the only thing we can know for certain about everyone around us, strangers or friends, is that they suffer. It’s universal. Inescapable. We cannot live unscathed.
A few years ago, I posted a wonderful NPR interview with Anne Lamott about Easter on my Facebook wall. She describes Easter and the season of Lent. She talks about how we’re living in a Good Friday world and Lent is that time where we face this reality and instead of soothing ourselves with divergences such as IKEA runs, we use it as a time for reflection and spiritual growth. I posted the interview on my Facebook wall, hoping to inspire and comfort friends, but within a few minutes, some evangelical friends and family members started criticizing the post, claiming that she never mentioned the “resurrection”—that she never affirmed the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Too weary for a Facebook fight, I sighed, pushed myself away from my laptop, thinking that’s what you get from the interview? Really?
Growing up evangelical, we didn’t celebrate Lent. Easter was the day when my siblings and I got baskets loaded with candy. It was the one day of the year when we wore hats to church and at the service there was a bit more extra fanfare—a few more songs, lots of lilies around the altar. My sisters and I, high on chocolate bunnies, squabbled and pinched each other in the pew. Our preacher described the resurrection and, depending on what denomination of church we were in at the time, sometimes there was an altar call. Not always, but often the sermon was defensive, in the same way that our Christmas sermons sought to prove that the virgin birth was authentic—a real deal event—on Easters, I heard countless arguments about why Jesus was really, literally resurrected. Maybe this is comforting to some and I respect that. But by the time I was fifteen, I wearied of such sermons. In my own spiritual experience, these sermons never motivated me.
I recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday. Truth be told, I often struggle to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, an afterlife, or that people will one day be resurrected Lazarus-like in the Gospel stories. It isn’t that I don’t believe these things, but like I said, it’s a bit of a fight for this natural-born skeptic. Truth be told, I’ve become OK with my doubt. I’ve begun to feel less guilty about it. For me, this uncertainty, this not knowing, has become an essential part of my faith. In my view, it’s the most marvelous truths about the world that would defy our comprehensive understanding.
What I do know, what I do see clearly with my own eyes, is that something is fundamentally off-kilter with the world around me. It’s why we miscarry babies, why so many of the mentally ill are homeless. It’s why we have drones, famines, drunk drivers, school shootings, and yes—why little boys get epilepsy. Lent forces me to reflect upon these afflictions. I can never ever make sense of them, but I can step back and face them—acknowledge this world often does indeed seem more Good Friday than Easter.
After the Easter service, shaken, and honestly—feeling sorry for myself as a parent that I have to deal with this—I found Shawn and Atticus in the church courtyard. Atticus, his bowtie crooked, sat on a stone bench, slumped and pale as he tried to eat an iced cinnamon roll. The sun had broken through the clouds and several of our friends stood nearby comforting us and sharing some stories of friends or relatives who also had epilepsy—many of them worse forms than the type we’re dealing with.
In that courtyard and throughout the afternoon, I kept reminding myself that after Lent comes Easter. Even though on Maundy Thursday, our Cathedral altar is stripped, the communion wafers and wine taken away, the crosses all covered in black material, there is always Easter. And in spite of my doubts, my skepticism, my sarcasm, and my general limitations as a human being, I do believe that the Gospel story of sacrifice and resurrection is true in a much greater sense than a literal one. The Gospel story of Jesus is the story of how we’ve been offered undeserved grace in spite of ourselves and our world. Because of this, I choose to embrace hope amid the shitty cards dealt to us by our genes or the world. It’s not a rose-colored glasses view, but a fundamental belief that compassion, honesty, and our sloppy attempts to be unselfish have genuine and radical implications in an off-kilter world.
R2-D2 Wants to Take Communion—So Why Can’t I?: Some Thoughts on Gluten-Free Religious Living
One of the “perks” of easing into my thirties was developing a terrible gluten sensitivity. Like supersensitive. Like if you hate me, just sprinkle some breadcrumbs into my coffee, and I’ll be sick for a couple of days.
Unfortunately, my devotion to a gluten free diet has caused some other devotional drama. (And no, I didn’t cheat on my husband with a bread baker. Though Peeta would be pretty tempting.) This drama involves not eating the wafer during Eucharist at my Episcopal church. The last time I tried taking a bit of bread at Communion was during Lent two years ago, and I was felt awful. I somehow thought that “blessed” wheat—unlike other wheat—wouldn’t poison me.
I felt strange just outright refusing the wafer at the altar rail so my husband, Shawn, and I decided that after taking the wafer in my hand, I would sip the wine from the celebrant’s cup and then slip Shawn my wafer. So now Shawn takes not only his wafer, but my own. (One of my priests describes our solution as very “one-flesh.”)
At first I obsessed about this. By only taking one-half of the communion offerings would I then only benefit from one-half of this Christian ritual? Would one-half of myself become a little bit more corrupt each day so that (and yes, I’m an British lit professor) in one-half of my days, I would be like Thomas Hardy’s Alec d’Urberville—harboring bad thoughts about seducing dairy maids—and for the other one-half of my days, I’d be morally strong like Jane Eyre. (And yes, I know that there is an avalanche of poor theology in this line of thinking, but I’m a neurotic—not a priest.)
The thoughts about seducing dairy maids stayed at bay. (Mostly.) But I started worrying about the behavior of my children at the communion rail. Was my unorthodoxy spilling out upon them? First case: Easter service, I kneel at the communion rail next to my seven-year-old at the front of the Cathedral. Amid the swelling organ music, he looks up at me, grinning as he holds two of his Star Wars Lego men on the rail. “R2-D2 wants to take communion,” he whispers. “Put those away!” I yelp, keeping my hands folded piously. The next week, he comes out of his bedroom dressed as Darth Vader, insisting that he was going to take communion as the evil character. After a long argument, Shawn and I told him that our priests don’t give communion to Darth Vader. (Although a friend made a good point that if anyone needs Jesus, it’s Darth Vader.)
Soon my adorable strong-willed daughter got some ideas. One week, she decided that she didn’t “like the taste of the wafer” so she started sticking her nose up at it and refusing to put it in her mouth. Our male priests thought her behavior endearing, patting her head and smiling as Shawn took her wafer from her and ate it himself, before she tossed in on the floor. (For those of you good at math, he was now averaging three wafers per week.) No matter what we did, her behavior continued until one of our female priests, who doesn’t put up with such nonsense, stopped the communion line and leaned across the rail with authority: “Sweetie, you put that in your mouth.” My daughter ignored her. “Put that in your mouth!” the priest insisted. Trembling as I hid my own wafer in my palm, I prodded my five-year-old. “Eat the wafer!” I whispered as she looked from me to the priest glaring. She held her ground and a holy crisis averted as Shawn picked her up and whisked her away from the rail eating her wafer himself. Yet again.
I obsessed about this bad behavior, wondering if my gluten-free communion practice was a corrupting influence. A bit of research showed me that when it comes to communion, some think that the devil is in the details. (Heh. Heh.) Apparently, Catholic communion only “counts” if the wafer has wheat in it. Ugh. The line of thinking being that since Jesus ate gluten-infused bread, our wafers must, by all that is holy, contain gluten also. My acupuncturist, a Catholic, smugly tells me that for him it’s not actually an issue because of transubstantiation—the wafer becomes the literal body of Christ so it’s always gluten free after the blessing. Double ugh. So this is a lingering curse of the Reformation. Thank you Martin Luther.
And then my line of thinking plummeted and I started asking my husband questions like: “Perhaps I should become Catholic. I mean if I didn’t love my contraceptives so much I could be Catholic, right?” “Am I a corrupting influence on our children?” “Why can’t my digestion take one tiny bit of gluten?” “Is gluten intolerance a result of original sin?” “Do you think my thoughts have been less pure since I’ve stopped taking the wafer?” “I’m not fit to be a mother.” (Usually this is the point where he rolls his eyes and tells me to get a drink.)
Because yoga is healthier than drinking, I try it first. (Although when I come home, still aching from my lizard pose, I’m not opposed to pouring a glass of wine.)
In my yoga class, when I’m twisted like a pretzel and (let’s be honest) cursing quietly under my breath because I can’t stop shaking and bobbling, my instructor reminds us that yoga is not about being perfect, but it is a lovely mix of striving and self-acceptance. During my more enlightening yoga practices, I have thought about how I demand perfection from every area of my life whether it’s my digestion or my faith—and because of this, I miss out on the whole point of grace—that possibility of embracing undeserved clemency for myself, my stomach, and my semi-feral children.
Lent starts today on Ash Wednesday. I’ll confess, that recently when I started ticking off to Shawn all of the things I could give up: chocolate, alcohol, Facebook, The Vampire Diaries—he quipped, “Hey, I have a better idea: why don’t you stop trying to be perfect and give up anxiety?” At first I froze, chuckled. “You know me—I can’t possibly do that...oh wait…”
So here it goes: this Lent I’m officially going to (try) to take on my husband’s challenge. Wish me luck, pray for me, chant, or just laugh your ass off, because I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of bobbling.
Just for Fun:
The Reeves Family’s Annual Gluten-Free Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner
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My favorite recipe is for these gluten-free vegan pancakes. I love these because they’re easy to make, hearty, and slightly sweetened with honey and apple sauce so you don’t need much syrup. I make them according to the recipe except I use almond milk for the milk and I substitute almond flavoring for vanilla.
My Bakers (and Batter Tasters!)
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The batter:
Time to Eat!
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RESURRECTION Book Trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaVy9k3ti2k
Evangelical Mommy Wars: Halloween
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I’m no longer an evangelical. I was raised in a conservative evangelical home, attended an evangelical college, and many of my Midwestern family members and friends are still in that world. Now, I’m still a Christian, and I attend my local Episcopal church with my family every Sunday. This fall, as in so many previous years, I’m witnessing evangelical “mommy wars” centered around Halloween. In the same way that some moms shame other moms for using (gasp!) an epidural during labor, not breastfeeding, not breastfeeding long enough, some—although not ALL—evangelical moms like to berate other moms, like me, for letting their children celebrate Halloween. And thus, the battle lines are drawn: their children attend fall festivals while mine attend Halloween parties. Their children wear cozy sweaters and bob for apples while mine dress up as ninjas and mosh elderly neighbors for candy corn. These moms sip apple cider at the end of a hard night of keeping their little ones safe in a world of miniature goblins while I chillax with an Appletini. (Cinnamon on the rim, thank you very much!) The basis for their argument against celebrating Halloween is that Christians represent God’s light in a very dark world. If we’re Christians we must eschew all things evil, wicked, or scary. Much of this is based on the New Testament verses about being light in the world. As a Christian, I get this whole “light bearer” idea. What I don’t understand is how being a light bearer means being anti-Halloween; the “evil” symbols of Halloween: ghosts, goblins, witches, zombies, are all parts of lore. I don’t get it because these monsters are not real. Most children aren’t dressing up as actual villains like Hitler or Charles Manson. Instead, on my street I see adorable children inserting themselves as scary, brave, or silly characters in their favorite stories—the vampire ruling a castle, Dorothy off to see the wizard, or Harry Potter, defeater of Voldemort. And if they are dressing up as actual people, they’re dressing up as their heroes—like my friend’s adorable little girl who rocked out as Amelia Earhart last Halloween. Or (shudder) the tween babysitter dressing up at Snooki. Bottom line: I don’t see a celebration of evil, but a celebration of stories and of people.
“But these stories are so dark,” one of my evangelical friends said to me recently. She argued that if we’re truly light bearers then we keep our children away from “darkness”—at all costs. Many of my Christian friends claim that the creepy stories and costumes will harm children or make them commit evil acts. One rather high-strung Religious Right friend from college went so far as to say that if I let my children trick or treat, it’s the same as when the Israelites in the Old Testament committed child sacrifice to pagan gods like Moloch.(I’m pretty certain this friend isn’t around anymore. He imploded when “Obamacare” went into effect because affordable healthcare was too dystopian for him.) This anti-Halloween blog post by an evangelical mother claims that if we let our children enjoy scary zombie stories we shouldn’t be surprised by school shootings. (Why yes, clearly watching zombies eat brains makes a person take advantage of the lax gun laws these same people support.) Yet another friend, both a mother and teacher, told me she won’t allow Harry Potter books in her classroom or her home because “witchcraft is evil and bad.” (Interestingly, she doesn’t ban C.S. Lewis’s marvelous Narnia series which, last time I checked, contains a pretty bad-ass witch. Semantics.)
As a writer, I’m here to defend the scary stories we celebrate at Halloween because stories, of any kind, are empowering. Reading and exploring stories makes us more moral, empathetic, and brave human beings. G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” In the young adult dystopian zombie apocalypse novel, the point isn’t that zombies are real, that they’re cool, or that brains are delicious and you should pick some up for dinner—it’s about the struggle to maintain your humanity in the worst of circumstances. The most haunting and best ghost stories don’t show us that ghosts exist. Rather they make us question how much we can truly know about our world—and about love or fury that’s powerful enough to buck against the known boundaries of death. Essentially, in navigating these fictional worlds, we walk around in the shoes of characters doing stupid, risky, silly, wonderful, and brave things. We’re motivated to be heroes in our own extraordinary real world.
And in this real world, let’s focus on real evils. Because my children are more likely to get mowed down at school by a bullet than a broomstick, any light bearer should be focused on real and tangible solutions—passing reasonable gun control and making healthcare available for the poor and mentally ill. This makes more sense than arming ourselves against bogeymen.
“I want my children to read books where characters are clearly good and evil and always do the right things,” an evangelical relative told me once. Although I respect her a lot, I was puzzled by her words, mainly because somehow no one ever sent me a handbook telling me exactly what is right and wrong, good and evil. (And don’t tell me the Bible is this handbook, with clear, easy-to-get messages—it isn’t!) Personally, I think there’s a lot of yin and yang in all of us, and life is often a struggle to try to do the right thing when the answer isn’t always clear. Life is just more complicated than that.
This is why I’m drawn to writing. Toni Morrison said in an interview that she likes to “put [her] characters on the edge of a cliff and see what they do.” I can relate well to this statement. Navigating life’s moral flyballs is tricky business, and I like to watch how my characters fight their way through while making mistakes and messing up and falling in love. This is more exciting than oversimplifying a world that just isn’t black and white.
And the light bearer business becomes a lot more inspiring and actually effective when instead of snatching scary stories and costumes from our children, we boil it down to trying (as clumsily as we can) to alleviate as much suffering as possible. Rather than being inspired by the women who strike all semblance of demon lore from their children’s lives, I still think the best light bearers to me are Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, Rosa Parks, Bartolomé las Casas, Mr. Rogers, Antoinette Tuff, and—yes— Jesus.
So this Halloween, I’ll be running through my neighborhood with pint-sized goblins, fairies, and ghosts. And afterwards (feel free to join me!) I’ll toast my Appletini to the power of story.
Interview with Kristina Perez: YA Author, Academic, Morgan la Fey Extraordinaire
Kristina Pérez holds a PhD in Medieval Literature from the University of Cambridge and a non-fiction title based on her research, The Myth of Morgan la Fey, is forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan. In 2012, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hong Kong University's Journalism and Media Studies Centre. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal Asia,Departures, L’Officiel India, Condé Nast Traveler, CNNGo and the South China Morning Post, among others. She is also the author of A Hedonist’s Guide to Beijing. She is represented by Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc.
1. Congratulations on your forthcoming book nonfiction book, The Myth of Morgan la Fey. I’ve always loved Arthurian legends! Can you tell me first interested you about Morgan?
Thank you, I’m pretty psyched! As for how I originally became interested in Morgan, I’m going to have to give you a fangirl answer. When I was thirteen years old, I discovered The Mists of Avalon and it was pivotal moment in my life. I became obsessed. I decided right then and there that I wanted to write the definitive book on Morgan one day. Hopefully, I have!
2. Your book examines the way that she has evolved over the centuries. How has she evolved?
Morgan’s trajectory over the past millennium has actually been more of a devolution from Celtic Sovereignty Goddess to Fairy Mistress to Witch. My study investigates the ways in which the changing portrayal of Morgan la Fey provides insights into fundamental gender dynamics that still inform the construction of self in the Internet age.
Morgan continues to play a key role in cultural zeitgeists ranging from Elizabethan England to Second Wave Feminism because of her inherent duality as both a Mother and a Lover. Western culture consistently seeks to control female sexuality by splitting a woman’s identity into either a Mother or a Lover, i.e. a Madonna or a Whore. Morgan’s endurance in the popular imagination is, in my opinion, a direct result of her refusal to have her roles divided or let her identity be fractured. And this denial creates a persistent tension that fuels her descent from goddess to wicked enchantress.
3. Apart from The Myth of Morgan la Fey, you are also in the process of writing a young adult book, Warwick Hall. (As someone who loves anything Victorian/Gothic/detective, it looks super-intriguing!) Can you talk a bit about it?
I, too, have a passion for all things gothic and macabre. Poe has long been one of my favorites. Without giving too much away, WARWICK HALL is a cross between a Victorian Gothic novel and a teen detective story: Veronica Mars meets The Woman in White. At Warwick Hall Academy, both the living and the dead have secrets. Two girls––one alive, one not––team up to solve the mystery of the menacing presence that haunts them both. The answers are hidden somewhere within the school grounds, where everyone is a potential suspect and trusting the wrong person could get you killed.
4. I often have Brontё or Austen novels dancing about in my head as I write. Are there any books that inspire you? What is it about these texts that enrich your own stories?
As a medievalist, I pretty much live and breathe the heroic culture, sagas and epic poetry. I couldn’t get away from it even if I wanted to. It informs the way I conceive my characters as well as my world-building. I also tend to think of plotting––and life––in terms of quests: certain goals that need to be achieved in order to move onto the next phase, all of the mini-climaxes culminating in the One Great Challenge. It will surprise absolutely no one that I was an avid Legend of Zelda player in the 1980s. (I saw myself as Link rather than the princess, by the way).
5. Apart from writing, you are also an academic. How does your academic background help or limit your creative writing?
There are a number of ways in which being an academic influences my writing process. I’m not sure if it hinders me in any way except that I am a very firm believer in outlines! My core concept for any WIP is essentially a thesis statement. While my fiction is certainly character driven, I try never to lose sight of my initial ideas about the overarching theme. Also, the first stage in any new idea is research, research, research! Since I actually really enjoy reading academic journal articles (the horror, the horror!), I will usually begin with a cursory search in a digital archive such as JSTOR regarding historical events, literary motifs, folklore or even period clothing.
6. You recently concluded a Visiting Assistant Professor position. What did you teach? Does your teaching experience in any way affect your writing?
Well, I’ve taught medieval literature in the past, of course, as well as lots of literary, gender and psychoanalytic theory. Most recently I’ve been helping to design cultural studies courses for journalists. Since I’ve also worked as an arts and culture reporter for a number of years, I feel strongly that a basic grounding in art and cultural theories is a prerequisite to insightful and analytical journalism in this arena.
7. Can you explain a bit about what the Madeleine Project is?
Yes, indeedy! Part of my misspent youth was enjoyed in Paris and so I’ve always had a penchant for Marcel Proust who is probably the most famous self-published author in history (before E.L. James, that is). He penned the 1.5 million-word tome, À la recherche du temps perdu (translated as either, In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past) between 1913 and 1927.
In one of the work’s most famous passages, Proust recounts dunking a madeleine––a shell-shaped French pastry––into his tea and being instantaneously transported back to his childhood. Proust’s madeleine is now interchangeable with the idea of involuntary memory: when cues in everyday life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort.
As a teenager, Proust poured his heart out in a Confession Album––the ancestor of the modern-day Slam Book––which was all the rage in the 1880s. Proust’s questionnaire became the template for interviews used by the US TV program, Inside the Actor’s Studio as well as the back page of Vanity Fair magazine.
The Madeleine Project therefore uses a modified version of the Proust Questionnaire to recapture the moments that influenced writers’ artistic and professional paths. The goal is to create a collage of experience that allows authors, agents, editors, and readers to interact in a new way.
8. How do you find time to write with your teaching load? Do you stay up late, get up early? Work like mad during office hours?
I received my first Filofax when I was twelve––clearly my dad didn’t know what to get a twelve-year-old girl ;-) I remember clearly that it had Minnie and Mickey Mouse designs on all the pages. I used to pretend that I was Penny from Inspector Gadget and longed for my own computerized version; now I have an iPad, so I guess that dream came true! Anyway, that’s a round about way of saying that I am obsessively organized and strict about keeping to the schedules I set myself. So when I allot time to write, I write.
9. What helps you write? (i.e. do you have a favorite movie, snack, song?) What do you do when writer’s block hits?
Music, definitely. I have an infinite number of playlists on my iPad. I have playlists to suit the general mood of certain WIPs, specific characters, and types of scenes––i.e. Love Scenes, Epic, Duels etc. I don’t believe in letting writer’s block dictate your creative process; when I have set a time to write, I write something, anything. Even if it’s unrelated to my WIP.
10. Ok, this is the fun question. If you had the chance, which literary character would you duel and why?
I’m going to have to say Morgan la Fey, even though I would lose. I would just love to see her in action: turning herself into stone, wielding Excalibur…regardless of the fact that I’d probably end up imprisoned in her Val Sanz Retour (Valley of No Return), frozen in a block of ice from the waist down while my head is engulfed in flames. But maybe, just maybe, I could get her to pity on me, bundle me into her barge, and transport me beyond the mists to Avalon. Now, wouldn’t that be something?!
Watch her very cool book trailer for WARWICK HALL. (Why yes, I have already watched it three times this morning!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwOoILFiOU8&feature=player_embedded
Bad Boyfriends in Literature
I’ve had several reviewers and fans say that in the Ripper series they do not like Abbie’s love interest, William Siddal. Apparently, there are A LOT of Simon fans--I’ve received several e-mails from Ripper and Renegade readers saying that they don’t understand why Abbie picks William over Simon. The answer is simple and is nothing new in literature: Abbie knows that Simon would be better for her, and yet, she cannot conquer her feelings for William. Ever. In Abbie’s defense, many heroines in literature don’t always pick sensible boyfriends. Here are a few examples. Case #1: Heathcliff
Heathcliff in Emily Brontё’s Wuthering Heights, is perhaps the worst boyfriend Cathy could pick. A “fierce, pitiless, and wolfish man” (to use Cathy’s own words) when he can’t have her, he ruins the lives of everyone around him, even abusing her own daughter. And although I love to get sucked into a wildly dysfunctional Brontё love story, by the time he tries to hang Cathy’s dog, well…I can’t summon up any sort of literary bad guy crush.
Case #2: Mr. Rochester
In Charlotte Brontё’s novel, Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester has a pretty strong argument for being bad boyfriend material. Falling in love with him as she cares for his illegitimate daughter, Adele, Jane has to endure all of Rochester’s snotty neighbors and his manipulative games. He feels the need to tell Jane about all of his romps with former mistresses. And he’s keeping a little (ok, a gargantuan) secret in his attic. St. John Rivers, the handsome but cold-fish theologian seems like a safer bet. But alas…when Jane stands at a crossroads as two men vie for her heart, she, without regrets, follows her heart.
Case #3 Mr. Darcy
In Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, arrogant beyond belief, Mr. Darcy is rude to heroine Elizabeth Bennet upon first meeting her; he convinces his friend Bingley to forget about the girl he loves—Elizabeth’s beautiful sister Jane, and he asks Elizabeth to marry him in perhaps the most condescending proposal in the world: “I have fought against my better judgment.” Finally, it’s very hard to get over the fact that his name is: Fitzwilliam. Fortunately, Lizzie Bennet is no wallflower. She angrily refuses him and dresses him down for ruining her sister’s happiness. But he earns back her love, paying off the rake Wickham to marry Lizzie’s ruined sister Lydia, easing Bingley back into the arms of Jane, and eventually winning back Lizzie’s heart.
GIVEAWAY: Go to my Facebook page wall and write the name of your favorite bad boyfriend in literature. It can be from any book: young adult, romance, or mystery, and I will enter your name in a drawing for a signed copy of RENEGADE. The contest ends at 5:oo next Friday (July 26).