Anyways, I have to admit that when reading the book I barely noticed the format of short stories. I do remember reading “Thanksgiving” in Dialogue and loving it, so I was pleasantly surprised when that was the first story in the book. I also love The Joy Luck Club and so I can see a connection between the two books; I thought the form fit really well with a book about a family, because each member of the family needs a voice.

I also realize now what struck me so much about the idea of being bound wasn’t even the Mormonness of sealings, but that it was a contrast to a number of contemporary fiction works that I’ve read recently that seem to have as their theme the idea of abandoning your family and starting a better life with a rag-tag bunch of eccentric friends. Not that those books don’t have their place, but it was nice to see a book that acknowledged that in real life it isn’t always easy to just walk away from people you love, even if you’d like to some times. I also liked the fact that while the family dealt with some difficult things, they weren’t crazy or outlandish. I guess I’m boring, but sometimes I get tired of the focus on eccentricity in so much contemporary fiction.

It does. Thanks for taking the time to respond at length to my musings. I’m very much intrigued by the story cycle/story suite/novel-in-stories form because I see it as a way, like you say, to capture multiple voices and to tie them together in innovative and thought-provoking ways, like you’ve done with Bound on Earth. I, for one (and I’m glad you saw this in my comment) definitely don’t see what you did as taking any easy way out of writing a book, because I think you’ve done a brilliant job. And the way you’ve done it shows a considerable amount of faith and trust in your audience, a quality I really appreciate when I find it in the books I read.

BTW: how did the casserole turn out?

Tyler, one difficulty with the genre I found myself operating within as I wrote the book is that it doesn’t have a commonly agreed-upon *name*, let alone a commonly agreed-upon set of expectations or rules. Along with “story suite,” another commonly used moniker is “story cycle” or “linked stories.”

Although I can’t cite any experts on this right this minute (have to make a casserole and bring it to my friend who just had a baby, so in a bit of a rush) in my loose education of the form I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a bit of progression in the terminology, beginning with a traditional story collection and ending at the novel. “Linked stories” are closest to the short story collection and might take place, say, in the same town, but the characters don’t necessarily overlap much and the narrative doesn’t really build in a novelistic way. A “story cycle” is more like the recent Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, _Olive Kitteridge_ (which is fabulous): the stories occur in the same town, and Olive shows up in most of the stories and is a unifying presence in the book, but each story isn’t necessarily dependent on the other in the same way as you might find in a novel-in-stories, imo.

Then you have a novel-in-stories. I feel like Amy Tan’s _The Joy Luck Club_ is a good example of the genre, as is Melissa Banks’ _The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing_. I feel that _Bound on Earth_ can be loosely defined as a novel-in-stories, too. It was my intention–and I hope I delivered on the intention–for readers to have a holistic experience with Bound on Earth. By that I mean each story/chapter is connected to the other, that each one supports or resonates with or clashes against the other, much like the dynamic one finds in a family (which is one of the reasons I chose the novel-in-stories genre in the first place). And I did purposely order the stories so there was the kind of initiation of conflict and build-up of suspense and resolution you’d find in a novel–albeit a different kind of resolution, one that’s more subtle, ambiguous and open-ended.

I feel like novels-in-stories offer a particular kind of reading experience, and one that was particularly well-suited for a multiple pov novel about family life. Although it’s not for everyone–you can check out some of my Goodreads reviews for proof!–if readers are willing to adjust their expectations from the traditional novel format, novels-in-stories (and story cycles, etc.) can be very satisfying.

So I hope that answers your question about why I chose the terminology I did. Oh, and whether I just slapped some stories together because I was too lazy to write a “real” novel :-). (Although I realize you weren’t the one leveling those judgments, Tyler–but trust me, I’ve heard it too.) Choosing this particular genre was a mindful decision, and the genre’s not a particularly easy one to tackle: all those conflicts, all those individual beginnings-middles-and-ends, and then working to fit them all together like a crazy puzzle and hoping the finished product hangs together. No, definitely not the easy way out of novel writing. Not that I’m saying novel writing is easy, either, of course.

Ah, but now I really need to go make that casserole. Do I get a pass for being rambly since I’m pressed for time?

But thanks again for the opportunity to ramble.

I will say that Bound on Earth works as a whole much better than I, Robot.

Also: I’ve just finished reading Ursula Le Guin’s Changing Planes, which is billed as a short story collection, but that Le Guin calls a “story suite”—her name for books made up of “stories linked by place, characters, theme, and movement, so as to form, not a novel, but a whole.” Le Guin continues: “There’s a sneering British term ‘fix-up’ [used in the world of science fiction] for books by authors who, told that story collections ‘don’t sell,’ patch unconnected stories together with verbal duct tape. But the real thing is not a random collection, any more than a Bach cello suite is. It does things a novel doesn’t do. It is a real form, and deserves a real name.” (ref)

I bring this up because I wonder if you’ve found a similar sentiment from your critics/readers—that Bound on Earth is something of a “fix up,” a patched together book of randomly connected stories; in other words, not a “real” novel, but something the author wrote because s/he couldn’t write a “real” novel. I personally see Bound on Earth as more of a story suite, not exactly a novel, but a whole, expansive text “with its own complex and intriguing aesthetic” (ref). I know you’ve called it a novel-in-stories, but I think it reaches beyond that in some way, that it does things a novel doesn’t or can’t do because, among other things, of the unique perspective shifting that occurs in and between the stories.

Do you think your book pokes at the limitations of its classification as a “novel” or even a “novel-in-stories”? And if so, in what ways?

Or do you think any distinction is just a matter of semantics?