Take the story of Meredith, for example. When her husband of fifteen years decides he is gay and leaves her, it is almost unbelievable that she could ever find that “eternal perspective.” But in reading the details of her story you find out that, well, it actually possible for a woman to move forward with faith. Jana Reiss (of Flunking Sainthood fame) is startling–both in her bifurcated path to baptism and her tendency to pray with people at the drop of the hat–but also delightfully familiar in her struggles for devotional perfection. And then there’s the story of Bindu that makes you stop and say, “Wait. There are Mormons in India? I never even though to ask that question.” What is most astounding is how many, many Mormon women are changing the world at large through creative humanitarian forays.

Reading the MWP interviews is a little bit like climbing on a merry-go-round. The stories spin quickly enough and pull you in enough different directions that you think you will be pulled right off the ride. But what you are really experiencing is like centripetal force–something that pulls you in enough directions that you end up being held exactly in the center.

LHC: Do you have any favorite stories that have been shared on MWP?

NM: I think every interview we publish is the best one yet, so it’s hard to pick just a few! What I love about working now with a group of volunteers – I have about half a dozen saintly interview producers who work with me regularly – is that everyone finds different stories interesting. I’m constantly surprised by which interviews on the site go through the roof and which have a more tepid response. A volunteer will suggest a story or pick someone from off our list of nominated women and I’ll think, “Well, I guess that’s okay,” and then when then interview’s published it’ll be hugely popular. Objectively though, the interviews that have been read most are our anonymous interview with the author of Seriously, So Blessed, and our interview with Elaine Bradley, the drummer for the Neon Trees. I am most proud of our forays into the “unspeakable” subjects: our sexual abuse forum, our interviews that discuss eating disorders, infertility, divorce, pornography, homosexuality, adoption, etc. I feel that in these interviews we uncover not the proactive choices a woman makes about her job or how she’s going to spend her time, but the reactive choices about how she’s going to respond to a situation and who she’s really going to be, which are usually even more defining than her hobbies or jobs.

LHC: Are there themes or ideas that come up again and again in the interviews?

NM: The theme that arises in almost every interview is the idea that Heavenly Father knows who this woman is and He is directing her path. Regardless of whether that path leads her to be a drummer in a rock band or the mother of twelve foster children, God knows each woman and acts as a cheerleader, a prompter, a supporter and even an instigator of dreams, ambition and righteous goal setting. The common thread of His presence in these interviews never reveals Him to be an oppressor or a killjoy.

LHC: MWP is coming up on its second year anniversary in January. How has it grown in its second year? What hopes do you have for its future? In what ways can others who are passionate about the stories of Mormon women help out?

NM: Although I launched the MWP in January of 2010 without a distinct publication calendar, we’ve managed to average one new interview per week since that launch. We just published our 114th interview, and we’ve featured women in fifteen countries. There is power in that sheer volume of contemporary Mormon women’s stories. We also introduced this year Snapshot Portraits, which offer our readers the opportunity to submit their own short essays in response to specific prompts.

Our major achievement as an organization this year was to receive our 501©3 status, designating us as a non-profit. The MWP follows in the grand Mormon tradition of being a volunteer endeavor, but we chose to pursue this designation for a few reasons. First of all, it was an issue of establishing our brand as something that is of valuable even outside of the Church community. One of the pieces of feedback we receive time and time again is that members really like to share our interviews with non-member friends because they feel like it looks like and has the quality of a professional endeavor. Of course it takes money for the MWP to look that way, and for us to maintain the website. Even though we don’t need very much money, establishing ourselves as a 501©3 allows us to raise money from official sponsors as well as from private donors. Above and beyond website upkeep, we want to continue doing live events, like our annual Salon, so that the MWP has a physical presence in our community and provides us with a forum to come together as like minded women in person. I also have a dream of being able to subsidize transcription services for our volunteers so they don’t have to spend 5-15 hours transcribing (and sometimes translating) the interviews from the recorded conversation.

I think it’s quite obvious that the MWP approaches the subject of Mormon womanhood from positive, almost culturally apologetic, positioning. Some have called this naïve, that you can think the Lord loves you to bits but it doesn’t make up for the fact that the currency of power is not distributed equally within the institution. I believe there are many valid and important conversations going on online about the role of women in the Church, but I think the MWP plays important role in those conversations by reminding women that our spiritual lives are played out in our relationships, our actions and our prayers, and not in our institutional roles. I’ve had MWP readers tell me they appreciate the safe haven the project offers, the ability to step back and say, “God’s plan for me is real and it is beautiful,” rather than focus on the deficiencies of the modern church. For women who are seeking for a way to be actively involved in forwarding this emboldening vision of Mormon womanhood, I invite them to join us at the MWP. We’re always looking for more interview producers. Reading the interviews, discussing them, sharing them and letting them resonate really is the best way women can support the project.

For more of Neylan McBaine’s writing check out this podcast at The Round Table, this post at By Common Consent, or her articles at Patheos.com and Busted Halo. She has also authored a book, How To Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.

Now, besides the gross error that Mormon women aren’t allowed to speak in Church, it’s pretty distressing to me that what characterized this group of women as liberals was that they wanted change tables in the men’s room. Really? Getting the men to help care for the babies? Isn’t that a little quaint? The picture this anecdote paints is one done in broad strokes with inexact coloring where the women come out in an ill-educated, unsatisfied, barefoot-in-the-kitchen kind of way. There is little nuance or subtlety and it is ultimately dissatisfying to me in a very personal way.*

However, what makes this piece stand out from so many other misrepresentations is the fact that there was a group of Mormon women who saw a need and found a way to get it met. They were polite, they were strong, and they got the job done. That’s the kind of Mormon woman I identify with–and the kind of women Neylan McBaine is seeking out and presenting to the world with through her Mormon Women Project. The stories she chronicles are the kind so many, many Mormon women identify with as their own. Subjects covered include women of many nationalities, races, and backgrounds. There are stories about surviving sexual abuse and difficult marriages. There are women who come from long legacies of Mormon membership and new converts. The portraits drawn by MWP are detailed, with many tones and hues, and offer a great richness to the picture of Mormon women.

Neylan graciously agreed to answer some of my questions regarding the project and it’s significance in Mormon culture.

Laura Hilton Craner: You have a unique name. How is it pronounced? Does it have any significant history in your life?

Neylan McBaine: I’m so happy you asked about my name! It’s pronounced “NY – lin,” (The first, stressed syllable rhymes with “high”.) It was my great-grandfather’s surname – John Francis Neylan – and thus my grandmother’s maiden name and my father’s middle name. John Francis Neylan was a powerful and brilliant man who was William Randolf Hearst’s lawyer and best friend and was known for his red-headed Irish temper. In fact, the Joseph Cotten character in “Citizen Kane” is based on my great-grandfather, and he was on the cover of Time magazine in 1935. But even more interesting to me is that he is a genealogical mystery: We can’t find where he came from, who his parents are, where he was born…

How much programming in our genes comes from our ancestors has always been a fascinating subject for me because, quite honestly, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the choices and personality traits I have made and cultivated in my life are not entirely my own but come from predetermined traits. However, either because of admiration or intrigue or some unknowable connection, I do feel a special kinship with John Francis and am honored to carry his name.

LHC:What inspired you to start the Mormon Women Project? How does it coincide with other work that you’ve done?

NM: Usually when I explain the motivation to start the MWP, I don’t have time or context to explain how my family and my upbringing played a critical role. But since I’ve already introduced you to my great-grandfather and my father’s side of the family, allow me to introduce you now to my mother: the middle of five children born to a humble school teacher of extensive Mormon pioneer heritage. How, you might now ask, did a Mormon girl who grew up in a trailer in Southern California end up marrying a lapsed Catholic of San Francisco high society? The answer was opera. What my parents didn’t share in socioeconomic or religious background was made up for in their love of opera, but the tension between the identities of my two extended families produced in me – the only child of this union – a paradox of interests and influences that has allowed me to have a foot in different worlds: it was my father who pushed me to attend the best schools possible, travel and enjoy the best and most beautiful the world has to offer, and it was my mother who kept me rooted to faith and family.

My mother was a professional opera singer the whole time I was growing up in New York City and, as you might have already guessed, a single mother for much of that time. As a single, working mother with only one child, you wouldn’t imagine her to be the poster child of the Mormon faith. But she was. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, my mother was asked by local church leaders and general authorities to present firesides, perform for church and political leaders, and to appear in official church videos and messages. Her skill as a singer and her willingness to share that talent for the glory of God catapulted her into a position of spokesperson for the Church. As a child witnessing the tremendous affection of church leaders for my mother and, in turn, my mother’s affection for the Church, it never occurred to me that there wasn’t a place in the Church for women whose lives don’t fit a mold.

My mother also did a beautiful job of teaching me that getting the best education I could, working as hard as I could, and enjoying the beauty of the world as much as I could – all those good qualities my dad had brought to the table – were actually a way of magnifying God’s presence in my life and honoring Him. Our doctrine encourages us to aim high, and she fiercely taught that performing at the “worldly” standard that my earthly dad expected was actually the way I could magnify my Heavenly Father’s expectations for me. “The world” was never a scary, evil place in my home; on the contrary, it was a glorious gift to be enjoyed and learned from. It was simply my job to bring God into it through my active participation.

But when I left my home in New York and started functioning in a broader community of LDS women, I realized that I was unusual in feeling that my doctrine was the very thing that gave me permission to explore my potential. Even at Yale, where I went to college, I encountered Mormon women who were pursuing education sheepishly, fighting a constant internal struggle between the seeming paradox of their innate gifts and the kinds of pursuits they believed were “right.” I saw these internal struggles continue among some of the women in my San Francisco ward after college, culminating in one very dear friend leaving the Church over these issues and several more since then, and I was forced finally to ask myself the question, “What does it mean to be a Mormon woman? Is it a limiting proposition, or an emboldening one?”

Both because I think it is a much happier way to live and also because I fiercely defend that it is true, I see being a Mormon woman as an emboldening way to live. In contemplating an effective and positive way to assert that belief so that it might take root in our broader culture, I turned to the age-old tradition of story-telling. My mom had been held up throughout my childhood as a woman for Mormons to look to; why couldn’t I take some of the other women I admired and share their stories in a similar way? In Mormon culture, we don’t have a systematic way to tell the stories of our women, the way many of our men do in formal speaking and writing assignments. My goal was to create an environment of “deliberate disorientation” for the reader: by sorting through hundreds of stories about women who prioritize the gospel and yet still make unique and intriguing choices about how to maximize their potential, it is impossible for a reader to pick any one story and say, “This is who my church wants me to be or that is what my church wants me to be.” The breadth of examples forces the reader to turn within herself and ask, “What does the Lord want me to be?”

LC: You are not only an accomplished writer, but you are also the mother of three young girls. How has being a woman in the Church and then having daughters to raise in the Church influenced MWP?

NM: Like many other Mormon mothers, the foremost goal I have for my daughters is that they have a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. (And that they love music comes in a close second.) But I recognize that, at some point, they will have to define for themselves what it means to be a Mormon woman and decide if they are emboldened or limited by that definition. For many Mormon women, that internal struggle surfaces in young adulthood or even older as they come to terms with the Church’s gendered institutional structure and so I don’t expect my little girls to self-define for quite some time yet. However, I believe the MWP can play a role in their lives now by establishing a paradigm for that self-definition in which doubt of God’s intentions regarding His daughters is not a factor in their construction of themselves. In other words, as they grow up with the MWP as a presence in their spiritual lives, they will launch their self-defining journey from a solid foundation of trust in the Lord’s support for them as women.

Growing up with Mormon women I admired allowed me to sidestep the question “What does God think of me as a girl?” and focus instead on developing a very personal relationship with Him as my Heavenly Father. I am trying the best I can to provide a cleared path of spiritual development for my own girls as well.

Tune in tomorrow for Part II: Emboldening Women (Through Story)

For more of Neylan McBaine’s writing check out this podcast at The Round Table, this post at By Common Consent, or her articles at Patheos.com and Busted Halo. She has also authored a book, How To Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.

*Now, now, I know this interview was about Romney and the anecdote was meant to show how he was able to deal with politics within a charged religious setting. But still. Gross factual error and dirty diapers? Come on.

Not living in Utah anymore has its advantages and its drawbacks… for me one of the things I REALLY miss is the Utah Theatre scene. Seeing original Mormon plays from New Play Project, or the the really interesting theatrical projects that happening these days at UVU and BYU, or seeing familiar names on the program at the myriad of quality plays performed in both Salt Lake and Utah County… it’s something I really miss. Fortunately, I keep my ear close to the ground (and glued to the events posted on Facebook and the Utah Theatre Bloggers Association website) to keep updated on what’s happening with Mormon Drama in the good ol’ State of Deseret. For, with all its quirks and foibles, Utah is still the center of the Mormon Arts, although it would be great to see a truly global Mormonism represented through Mormon Drama and other Mormon Arts (and for proof of such progress, one only has to look at the relatively recent international issue of Mormon Artist ). But, as it is, those of us out of the hive miss on some great artistic projects about our faith.

Fortunately, I have been asked by certain omnipotent powers that be here at AMV (okay, Jonathan Langford) to stay even more in touch with this side of my natural interests and start a monthly column about Mormon Drama. I will not always be the column’s writer, as I will often ask other guest Mormon dramatists and thespians to take over for a month and give us their two cents on the State of Mormon Drama. But I hope to consistently oversee the spot, to keep it running smoothly so that it can give some consistent information about my most beloved branch of the Mormon Arts. As far as I’m aware, others at AMV will be running similar columns about their own individual disciplines. In working with own angle on Mormon Drama, I’ll focus on several approaches:

- Mormon Drama’s Past: From Brigham Young starring in Pizarro, to the Salt Lake Theatre, to Orestes Utah Bean’s Corianton, to the flowering of Mormon Drama from BYU playwrights like Thomas Rogers and Robert Elliott,  to the hey day of the Mormon Musical in the 1970s and 1980s, to the more modern representations (and misrepresentations) of Mormonism on the national stage, there’s a lot that’s happened in Mormon Drama’s history which is interesting, dynamic and ripe for writing about. I’ll write reviews and analysis of past dramatic writing, discuss important historical points where Mormon Drama flowered or withered, and in general celebrate, criticize, and analyze our dramatic past.

- Mormon Drama’s Present: What’s happening NOW? In the Jell-O Belt, in New York, in the outreaches of Africa or Samoa, where are the modern Mormon plays and how are they being received?

- Mormon Drama’s Future: James Arrington has called Theatre “the fabulous invalid.” Theatre survived (sometimes by the skin of its teeth) the onslaught of alternative art and media, whether it was film, VHS, DVD, video games, or the internet. Will it continue to limp along in its current state of performances of intimacy and immediacy, or will it have to change dramatically to survive the ongoing media revolution in the world? And how will the Church’s ever changing image, ever present history, and ever pervasive culture effect the growth of a home grown Mormon Drama, and how we are represented in the Drama of those who don’t understand us?

-Mormon Drama’s Personalities: Who have been the movers and shakers of Mormon Drama in its past and present? Who are the up and comers? How will the power of the individual interact, effect, and be effected by the larger Mormon culture?

- Why Mormon Drama?: Why do we do this at all? Why not integrate our talents with a wider, more universal subject matter? What is there about the medium and the religion where there should be any interaction at all? What are our philosophical and spiritual underpinnings that keep many chugging away at what many see as an odd marriage in the first place? Why place Mormon characters and subject matters on the stage?

So, for those lovers and followers of Mormon Drama (”we few, we happy few, we band of brothers…”), hold onto your hats, for it’s going to be a fun ride!

Look for part two sometime Thursday.

* * * *

Beyond Prescription? Problematizing Mormon Identity and the Future of Mormon Literary Studies

[T]he multiplicity of religious and irreligious practices engaged in [...] by those who lay claim to the nominations “Mormon” and “post-Mormon,” much less “Jack Mormon,” [...] boggles the mind.

-Bryan Waterman

Confluences

These past several months I’ve been wrestling with myself, with the Heavens, trying to gain some hold for my intellectual desires and work in a broader conceptual universe. This struggle has really just been an extension and intensification (due to the academic path I’ve been negotiating recently) of my continuing quest to find what Wayne Booth might call “a plausible harmony” between “my many selves.” Among others, the believing Mormon, who seeks greater communion with God by trying to live by His laws as voiced by His prophets and to serve with faith in what he considers God’s church (no matter the institution’s flaws); the husband, who has obligated himself through what he considers unbreakable promises to honor his bride, her potential as a human being, their combined potential as wife and husband, and the fruits of their eternal marriage; and the poet, teacher, and literary scholar who is compelled by the incessant prodding of vocation to share his rhetorical gifts with the world—you know, the whole don’t-hide-your-light-under-a-bushel deal.

My continued challenge is learning to balance these passions, to engage with each in an honest, quality, pleasing, even—ideally—transformative experience for the parties involved. In short, I yearn to make a positive difference in the world (though I admit the intangibility and the potential “O, that I were an angel” discontent of that desire), to create a space in which I can identify with and influence others, in which I can allow their voices, their stories, their selves, to gather, to mingle, to develop, to expand into and revise the stories I came from.

I stole that last phrase—the stories I came from—from James Goldberg’s recent Mormon Artist interview with Nicole Wilkes. When asked how he came up with a name for the protagonist who wanders through the amalgam of mythologies he’s gathered in “Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg,” Goldberg cites his unique ethnic heritage—his many selves—as inspiration. Says he,

When I decided to write a story in which I was free to use the stories I came from, I came up with the name “Teancum Singh Rosenberg.” It was almost a joke at first: I’m going to create this guy with a first name so Book of Mormon I’ve never actually met anyone with it, the middle name all Sikh men take, and a sort of stereotypical Eastern European Jewish last name.

So Teancum Singh Rosenberg, as his creator, stands at the confluence of at least four overlapping cultural traditions: Mormon, Indian, European, and Jewish. He thus represents a multi-faceted identity constructed from the rhetorical material of Goldberg’s multi-faceted self.

My appropriation of Goldberg’s language seeks to borrow something of this pluralism, even as I subtly—perhaps somewhat radically—recontextualize his phrase, revising its intended meaning in order to suit my own rhetorical need, which at present is twofold: 1) to initiate a critical narrative knit around my many selves and our experience with the varieties of Mormon narrative art; and 2) to problematize the notion of a coherent and prescribed Mormon cultural identity, an assumption around which many Mormon critics have constructed their theoretical paradigms and critiques and upon which much of Mormonism’s critical energy continues to be spent (see the litany of links in my note as a small sample).

Reading through the Stories I Came From: A Critical Autobiography

A number of years ago when I happened upon the Mormon literaturstreit of the 1990’s and began considering the possibilities of and for a Mormon literature and criticism, I started to frame my own theoretical paradigm around what I thought were the essential matters at stake in the world of Mormon letters: the teachings, rites, and ordinances of the Restored Gospel. I think I titled or sub-titled my attempt “The Rites of Mormon Criticism” because it was centered (if I remember correctly) around the sequence of rituals required for entrance into the Heavenly City. The effort was born of my imagined position as the next great Mormon literary critic and, looking back, I see it was meant to suggest that for a critic to rightly judge Mormon literature and for a writer to truthfully create Mormon literature, s/he needs to have been initiated into the literary ministry through the proper gospel rites. Only when dressed in the billowing robes of this priesthood should they be qualified to write by, for, and about the Mormon experience.

I abandoned that effort soon thereafter 1) because I didn’t know where I was going with it, probably because I was still wet behind the ears when it comes to having engaged much—if any—Mormon lit beyond the scriptures and Mormon devotional texts; and 2) because it never quite sat right with me. I see now that one reason for my uneasiness was the exclusivity of the framework: not only does it deny the varieties of Mormon cultural experience that exist outside of Church Headquarters (even those, admittedly, that exist within church headquarters), it also betrays a bias toward a masculine worldview, especially because those invested with priesthood authority and the stewardship to judge in institutionalized Mormonism are men and the framework parallels that investment. Another reason I think I never got on board with myself was because I couldn’t be satisfied critically with such a culturally exclusive, boys’ club mentality. And though I probably couldn’t have articulated this reasoning then, I can trace the roots of my present theoretical narrative to that (inter)textual experience with Richard Cracroft, Bruce Jorgenson, and Gideon Burton.

At around this same time, I met Dialogue, Irreantum, and AMV, each of whom introduced me to writers and critics whose ideas have had a significant impact on the development of my own theories of language and literature. Among others:

Eugene England, father of my intellectual engagement with Mormon culture, whose short poem, “The Firegiver” (which I’ve explored elsewhere), and short essay, “The Possibility of Dialogue,” invited me into the rhetorical space and potential of intra- and inter-cultural discourse—of the possibility that I could profitably “speak with sensitivity to [another’s personal] framework or ability to hear and speak in order to communicate for each other’s welfare, not to justify or exalt [myself] at [their] expense” and that I could “truly listen to other[s], respecting our essential” kinship as part of God’s family “and the courage of those who try to speak, however they may differ from [me] in professional standing or religious belief or moral vision.”

Patricia Karamesines, whose award-winning essay, “The Rhetoric of Stealing God,” persuaded me, not just into AMV’s fold of regular readers, but into the power and authority of responsible and sustainable language use—into rhetoric that “questions itself as thoroughly as it questions Other, and when it finds itself lacking, it takes upon itself the responsibility to find the next best thing, the revelatory metaphor, the liberating paradox, the ever-expanding symbol, thereby crossing boundaries established by less productive, less creative, less pro-active, and less kind words.”

William Morris, whose “In Memoriam: Laraine Wilkins” justified my decision to study literature over sociology:

Wilkins [...] articulated an inclusive, diverse, unabashedly literary view of Mormon letters. To quote from a recent e-mail: “I’m interested in seeing more dialogue happen—*dialogue* in order to have some groundwork for Mormon culture to enjoy more respect, or at least better understanding, from the outside community. Such dialogue requires both insiders and outsiders. I’d like to see AML do more of this. I think literature has great—perhaps even better—potential than history (though history is where most work is being done) or sociology to achieve this. Literature, although an expression of cultural identity in many respects, ultimately addresses individual experience…”

And whose continued insistence that Mormon literary criticism should focus on specific examples from Mormon narrative art has kept me from circling (too far) into theoretical abstraction as I engage the growing body of Mormon letters and try to find my niche in the field of contemporary literature.

And Laura Craner, whose titillatingly short post “If You Can ‘Queer’ a Book Can You ‘Mormon’ a Book?” poses a question (about what it might mean to read as a Mormon) and a correlation (between gender/sexuality studies and Mormon studies—my main research interests) that, eventually, led me to Bryan Waterman and new ways of considering Mormon literature as an expression of diverse cultural and personal identities and experiences.

And what might those new ways be? Tune in Thursday as I lean heavily on Waterman (specifically this article he published in Dialogue 30.1 (1997)) and some others to take up the problem(atizing) of Mormon identity and what that might mean for Mormon literary criticism.

Zoe Murdock owns, with her husband, H.O.T. Press, which for years published tech manuals. When she decided to write fiction–the semi-autobiographical novel Torn by God: A Family’s Struggle with Polygamy–she just went ahead and published it herself. (personal website, twitter)

Moriah Jovan started B10 Mediaworx to publish her novel The Proviso. The novel is the first in a six-part series. The second volume, Stay, will be released around Thanksgiving. (blog, novels website, twitter)

Riley Noehren is the author of Gravity vs. the Girl. And, yes, she published it herself under the name Forty-Ninth Street Publishers. (blog, twitter)

Table of contents

On the seemingly larger number of LDS women than LDS men in indie publishing
The future roles of traditional/indie publishers and traditional/e distribution
How to get folks to your site
On editing for publication
On paying the bills
On selling out
What we can expect from them in the future
Back to work

Now let’s start by letting them introduce themselves:

Riley Noehren: I’m Riley Noehren. I entered the indie publishing arena because I wrote a novel and was either too lazy or too underconfident to find an agent and go the traditional publishing route. I did [try that route]. I believe I sent it to all of six agents and then gave up on it for a few months before I considered publishing myself. I was promptly rejected by four of the agents. Over a year later, I still haven’t heard from the other two. Perhaps it’s a long read?

Zoe Murdock: Back in the early 80’s when the personal computer arrived on the scene my husband and I started a technical documentation company to write tech manuals. We wrote books for some of the largest computer companies in the country and some in Asia. We created H.O.T. Press to publish some of our own technical books, books which we are still selling today as e-books. When I finished my novel, Torn by God: A Family’s Struggle with Polygamy, the timing was perfect. Warren Jeffs was on the FBI’s most Wanted List. Polygamist wives were appearing on Oprah and the other talk shows. I started sending queries to the top New York agents and, surprisingly, got a very positive response. Lot’s of requests for the whole manuscript. And no, I never thought I would publish it myself. I went through the agent process for more than 2 1/2 years, just because I was getting so many requests and positive feedback . . . but in the end no takers. Very frustrating. My book kept demanding my attention and it was driving me crazy. I had to get it out in the world so I could get on with my life. That’s when I decided to publish it through H.O.T. Press. I have a lot I can say about that whole process of looking for an agent/publisher.

Riley Noehren: Thank goodness the Polygamists kept your topic newsworthy while the agents were sitting on your manuscript.

Zoe Murdock: Yeah. I think my “keyword” helped a lot in that way, Riley. But it also kept me from getting my book out when the timing was best.

Moriah Jovan: I spent most of the 90s writing and submitting. I got a contract with one publisher, who very soon went out of business (weird situation), so that wasn’t published. A second manuscript got me an agent (who was not all that great). A third manuscript got me a second agent (who was young). A fourth manuscript got me a call on a Saturday morning from an editor who asked me to overnight it. By Tuesday, she called me back and said she didn’t like the ending. Number two manuscript got me a call from an editor who said that she had wanted to buy mine, but she had purchased one vaguely similar to mine two months before and, while mine was superior, she couldn’t justify another to her editorial board. At the same time, I had been in a critique group for 6 years (under the auspices of an RWA chapter), and the group was struggling internally. So under all those very close calls and critique group problems, I not only stopped submitting, I stopped writing. Anyway, in 1994 I wrote a short story for one of my senior creative writing classes, and at the same time, I was taking a 400-level course in Hamlet, and a whole bunch of ideas converged to give me this little scrap of an idea, but I didn’t know how to make it work. It kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. After I quit writing and submitting, I just put it on hold. For lots of reasons, in Aug 2007, I woke up one day and my whole plot problem was solved. I had to scrap most of what I’d written and most of the idea itself, but the kernel was there. I wrote 1200 manuscript pages in 2 months.

Zoe Murdock:  I heard the “I’m already working on a similar one” excuse, Moriah. From an editor. By the way, Riley, you’ve got to send out a lot more than 6 queries. Perserverance is the name of the game.

Riley Noehren: I know, Zoe! I just didn’t have it in me as I was so busy with work and other issues. I think everyone’s comments regarding agents are relevant to the indie publishing discussion, though. It’s important to note we all attempted to go the traditional publishing route first. That’s the state of indie publishing today–it’s everyone’s second choice. In the music and film industries, the term “indie” carries a certain credibility, a pride in not having “sold out” to the suits. I hope that someday indie publishers will be considered the same, but I believe we are at the bottom of a very large hill in that regard.

Zoe Murdock: Now that I’ve done it, I think there are definitely advantages to being in charge of the publication of your own book. I like the fact that the book will be available forever and that you can change things if you want to.

Moriah Jovan: I got about 100 rejections for that book and I knew I didn’t want to go through all that again. Years and years and years of pain and suffering. The landscape had changed so much, and then I saw the e-publishers in romance doing land-office business and that’s kind of when my snobbery about self-publishing start to change.

Zoe Murdock: Wow! 1200 pages in 2 months. I can type 100 wpm, but I think that must break my record.

Moriah Jovan: Zoe, it was there in my head, all laid out. I had to wiggle a few things around and track some of the business threads of the story, but otherwise, it was all there. I just transcribed it.

Riley Noehren: Transcribing it is one thing, but I can imagine editing 1200 pages was no walk in the park.

Moriah Jovan: And then I went back and fixed as many holes as I could.

Zoe Murdock: Riley, I think the publishing industry is changing dramatically, but we are still in the middle of things. The national publishers still have all the clout when it comes to getting reviews/ interviews withthe big media outlets. And as we all know, that is important at this point.

Moriah Jovan: Anyway, I had to get over my self-publishing vanity if I ever wanted anybody to read this and that was what I wanted. Because to me, submitting constantly in the hope that you will find validation with an agent or an editor is actually the vanity.

Riley Noehren: Moriah, I think getting over one’s “self-publishing vanity” is a step every self-published author takes at some point. And as Zoe said earlier, it’s usually fueled by a desire to put one’s project to rest, to just get it out there and move on. At least that was the case for me. Of course, the reality is that, as a self-publisher, you can never fully move on from a book. You have to constantly promote it, etc.

Moriah Jovan: I also had the booming example of the electronic presses in genre romance to look at and go, “Look, they did it. They made it work. People buy those books.”

Zoe Murdock: And Moriah, I do think a book can keep on you and on you until, finally, you just have to put it out in the world. You know you’ve written something and, afterall, writing is an act of communication. There’s no communication going on when the book is in a “drawer.”

Moriah Jovan: Yes, I totally agree to that. The act of writing isn’t complete until the writing is read. It’s a communion between writer and reader.

Zoe Murdock: Boy, ain’t that the truth, Riley. The book never lets you go. And the book is never finished. Every time you rework it you learn something new, which makes you want to rework it again.

Moriah Jovan: In my case, I knew my book was hopeless for Getting Published. There was no way anybody would read it if it was just on my hard drive. My husband pushed me to it, though.

_______________________________________________________________________

On the seemingly larger number of LDS women than LDS men in indie publishing

From Gravity vs. the Girl: “Men tolerate silence far better than women.”

Riley Noehren: I wrote that?!

Moriah Jovan: I’m not sure you want my real answer to that.

Riley Noehren:  Well, it’s true, I’m just surprised I said it out loud.   Or put it in a book for that matter.   I agree with Moriah, these are murky waters.

Zoe Murdock: I don’t know why men don’t do it? I’m not sure they don’t.

Moriah Jovan: First of all, there’s just the general vanity of the validation of GETTING published. That happens to every writer everywhere.  Second of all, I find LDS men to be completely cultured to need things to be done by committee. I believe that LDS male writers who want to try to find this balance are not enough of outliers that they can let go of the committee mentality. I made an executive decision. That never happens at church.

_______________________________________________________________________

The future roles of traditional publishers vs indie publishers and traditional distribution vs e-distribution

Zoe Murdock: I think even mainstream publishers are going to go to POD. Why not? It will save printing and throwing away books they can’t sell. You can spend your money on publishing more books. Indie publishing fits right in with that. Everyone can publish their own book, but the proof will be in the pudding. Will anyone buy it? Will anyone even hear about it? It’s all about marketing. And that takes us away from writing.

Moriah Jovan: Traditional publishing popped Thanksgiving week last year. There is no going back.

Riley Noehren: I also think that, after years and years of existence, e-books are finally starting to take off.

Zoe Murdock: Yes, e-books are taking off because of all the new e-book readers. But we’ve been selling e-books for years. Probably 20-25 years. To be read on the computer. Technical books mostly, because techies are willing to do that.

Riley Noehren: Sure, Zoe. But I think the influence of mp3s for music and people watching movies on their computer has made the general public more receptive to not holding an actual book in their hands.

Moriah Jovan: I hate to rehash a whole bunch of things going on in genre romance right now, but it comes down to the fact that the ROI of writing a book and selling it is less than it is for self-publishing. I don’t have room to expound on that much here. The higher cost of POD is a lower cost of storage and shipping and waste.

Zoe Murdock: I don’t think POD books are higher cost, because of all the waste that comes when you publish in a traditional way.

Zoe Murdock: Yes, and I think the younger generations are growing up on computers and they will actually want their books on an e-book reader. But there are still a lot of older folks out there who want a book in their hands.

Moriah Jovan: Also, it’s a function of the bookstore discount, 55%. I can sell my book for $10 less on my site than it will sell to a bookstore.

Riley Noehren: POD and e-books are also a far greener method of publishing. That is going to have some clout in the future.

Zoe Murdock: Right, Riley. Green is good. And saves some on junkyard space.

Moriah Jovan: My philosophy is to give it to the customer any way s/he wants it.

Zoe Murdock: Yes, Moriah. But you’ve got to get folks to your site. How do you do that? That’s what I want to know. It’s a ton of work.

_______________________________________________________________________

How to get folks to your site

Moriah Jovan: Zoe, it is a ton of work. I blog. Not every day. I’m trying to now be consistent at every other day.

Moriah Jovan: I tweet. I love Twitter. Drives traffic like crazy.

Zoe Murdock: You are very good at that, Moriah. I like that you work in so many formats. I think Twitter is one of the most powerful ways to make contact. But it can get perseverative. Still, it’s great.

Riley Noehren: Zoe, I saw on your Amazon Author’s site that you have done quite a few book signings and interviews. (1) How have you arranged those, and (2) do you believe they have had a marked effect on your sales?

Zoe Murdock: Riley, I think the key to book signings are the interviews and articles that go with them. You can’t have one without the other and you’ve got to sign them up simultaneously. An event gets the bookstore interested and the bookstore gets the newspapers, etc., interested. The newspapers reach a larger audience and I think that’s the key to all the effort. [But] I think the real key to indie publishing or “direct publishing” is marketing. What else do you two do?

Moriah Jovan: We got an ad in BookPage. That didn’t do much. Other than blogging and tweeting, I don’t do much, really. I dont’ know what else to do.

Zoe Murdock: That’s an interesting thing about being in control of the publishing. You have immediate access to sales information. You know immediately what’s working and what’s not. But then there is also momentum. Things build over time.

Moriah Jovan: Yes! That’s another great thing about direct publishing. No shelf life. You don’t have a set amount of time (~90 days) to be on the shelf before it’s pulled.

Riley Noehren: I’m pretty new to the marketing game. Again, I originally published as a culmination of a project or hobby and have only recently decided to see how far I can push it. So far, almost all of my sales have been based on word-of-mouth. That is where being LDS comes in handy.

Zoe Murdock: How about other bloggers? I think that is the future, as bloggers, bookclub sites, review sites take over the role of the newspaper book pages that are rapidly falling. It’s up to you guys.

Moriah Jovan: You have time to establish your name, establish a backlist, and establish a reputation for quality.

Zoe Murdock: Or should I say, gals?

Moriah Jovan: From my background in genre romance, our marketing task is no harder than any traditionally published author’s. Actually, it’s easier. We don’t have to make sales numbers. We don’t have a shelf life (as I said). We don’t have to live in fear our contract will be canceled or our next book won’t be picked up.

Zoe Murdock: Yes, I’m having a lot of “word-of-mouth” sales too. Problem is they keep passing on the damn book. No sales there. But it’s okay, really. I love the fact that people are reading it and getting excited and passing it on.

Zoe Murdock: That’s right, Moriah. That is the great thing about indie publishing. Your book is out there forever

Riley Noehren: I agree with Zoe that established book review websites or blogs seem to be the new reference point for book-lovers.

_______________________________________________________________________

On editing for publication

Moriah Jovan: I think the hardest part about self-publishing was finding an editor. I had to hold my nose and jump a long way. I think she did a good job. I think it could have been better if I’d had the money to go through a second edit, but I didn’t.

Riley Noehren: I am a true self-publisher in that I edited myself. This was a mistake–in that it resulted in mistakes in the final product. And while, as you said, Moriah, you can always correct an e-book version, the print version cannot be corrected without purchasing a new ISBN and labeling it a second edition.

Zoe Murdock: I edited my own book – but it didn’t work too well because everytime I’d approach Torn by God, I’d start reading and rewriting. Couldn’t make my writing brain stop and let my editing brain take over. Well, I’m doing it now and will put up the fixes tomorrow.

Moriah Jovan: Riley, not true exactly. You can change up to 20% before you have to do that. And I refuse to edit myself. It never works and I don’t have enough faith in myself to ever be secure about it.

Zoe Murdock: I can fix my print version without a new ISBN. What I heard was as long as you don’t change more than 10%, you can keep the same ISBN. Is it 20%? I always edited our technical books and I think I have a pretty good eye for it – as long as that right brain/writer brain leaves me alone. Got to focus on one sentence at a time.

Riley Noehren: I agree. I have editing experience and am confident in my ability to edit others, but, as Zoe says, it is impossible to remove yourself from the content and focus on the technical stuff when you are both author and editor.

Moriah Jovan: However, Riley, a true self-publisher does farm out those chores he can’t or shouldn’t do himself. I have a company name and my own ISBNs and all that, plus I’ve published someone else now, so technically I’m a publisher.

Riley Noehren: I also thought it was 10%.

Moriah Jovan: Hmm….I’ll look that up. I just meant typos and stuff.

Zoe Murdock: I’ve got help. My husband and I do that for each other, but I got too impatient to get Torn by God out. I pushed it out without checking to see if it had all it’s arms and legs. And we also have the ISBNs and have been a publisher for 20+ years. I guess that makes me a real publisher, too.

Moriah Jovan: I think the problem with my book was that I am too close to it emotionally. I find that work I am THAT emotionally attached to is not my best work. The second book thus far is proving to be better than the first (so people tell me) and it’s because I’m not as emotionally invested. So I think that affects editing.

Zoe Murdock: Ahh. I am always very attached emotionally on the first draft. Then I switch and look at it more objectively on the 2-10 drafts.

Zoe Murdock: I think that affects editing, too.

_______________________________________________________________________

On paying the bills

Riley Noehren: Well, I am a more-than-full-time lawyer. It makes finding time for writing hard, and I don’t see writing being able to pay off my student loans anytime soon. However, it provides a lot of material.

Zoe Murdock: I think being in the world does provide a lot of material, Riley. I acutally liked moving in and out of it. Stimulating.

Moriah Jovan: Riley, really? What kind of law do you practice?

Riley Noehren: I’m a litigator. Again, the biggest problem is finding the time and energy after my day job to either write or promote.

Zoe Murdock: I’ve more than paid back my expenses with sales. So that’s not a problem for Torn by God. And I guess it’s an investment like anything else. The big question is how many review copies can you afford to send out. If I sell two books for every review copy, it’s worth it.

Moriah Jovan: I’m self-employed with a day gig. Not going to tell you what because it depresses me, but it pays the bills and gives me the freedom and time I need to do this.

Zoe Murdock: I have the luxury of being able to write full-time. But I wrote fiction while I was running the tech-writing company too. Biggest problem is my butt gets sore.

Moriah Jovan: I’m paid really well for the time it takes me to do what I do and my job’s pretty secure. I *want* to be able to replace that with writing income, but I don’t hope for it, otherwise, my job would be unbearable.

Riley Noehren: But, not yet having read Moriah’s blog post, I would agree that self-publishing is NOT a viable career choice in and of itself. I kept my expenses on Gravity vs. the Girl really low (i.e., by not hiring an editor, etc., with some regret) and was therefore in the black with just a few sales.

Moriah Jovan: At this point in time, I look at writing and publishing as an investment for future residual income.

Zoe Murdock: You have to love writing, I think. To make it all worth it until the big bestseller hits.

Moriah Jovan: I have an unusual plan. I have six books in my series. I’m going to write those and then stop. Maybe.

Riley Noehren: I don’t have children. I am more than aware of the benefits this gives me in finding time/focus to write.

Moriah Jovan: But again, the awesome thing about direct publishing is…I can plan out my publishing life. I don’t have to depend on anybody else to do it for me.

Riley Noehren: I agree, Moriah. Self-publishing means your writing/publishing schedule can be designed to accommodate the demands of the rest of your life, rather than the other way around.

_______________________________________________________________________

On selling out

Moriah Jovan: Honestly, the best thing about DIY is the total independence you have.

Zoe Murdock: Yes, but I’d still like my next novel to be picked by a national publisher. Want to learn all about that. I’ve had non-fiction books published, but not fiction.

Moriah Jovan: I go back and forth on that. Would I or wouldn’t I? I don’t know. Right now I’m happy where I’m at, as long as I keep my eye on the bigger picture.

Zoe Murdock: I’d like to compare the two processes directly. My husband and I teach an advanced writing workshop–have done for the past 10 years–and I’d like to be able to tell them about that side of things.

_______________________________________________________________________

What we can expect from them in the future

Zoe Murdock: I think my next novel will be more mainstream. Not so much of a hybrid. Torn by God is a Mormon/mainstream hybrid, a fiction/memoir hybrid, and a adult/YA hybrid. Now what book shelf are you gonna put a book like that on?

Moriah Jovan: Mine is two-pronged. I have the 6-year plan for my own series. Then I have my plan to find other work I like and publish it.

Riley Noehren: Oh, I’m so behind these two (as usual). Right now I have two simple goals: (1) continue to promote Gravity vs. the Girl, and (2) get to work on that second novel. I’m not going to worry until it’s finished whether I want to self-publish again or attempt traditional publishing. As everyone has said, the love of writing has to be the most important thing or there’s no point in doing it.

Zoe Murdock: I’m working on a novel about Alzheimer’s as a state of enlightment. Lot’s of humor. Love this book. I’m about a third of the way through the first draft (althought the first 17 chapters have been reworked about 10 times. I keep having to go back through the whole thing to get back to it after promoting Torn by God.

Moriah Jovan: In book #2, I stepped away from the Mormonism a whole lot, but kept it and made it significant to the characters. Book #3 is going to be an allegory of the Atonement, with the myth of Mary Magdalene and Jesus being married.

Zoe Murdock: Interesting, Moriah. My next novel also have a bit of Mormonism in it, but it is only part of back story. Not central.

Moriah Jovan: Book #4 is just a swashbuckler pirate historical romance, Revolutionary War era, so obviously no church references. Book #5 is a post-apocalyptic story and turns the church’s history of polygamy on its head with law-mandated polyandry. And Book #6 is an epistolary novel set in the Vietnam era, and Mormonism is central.

Zoe Murdock: Ahh . . . You’re going to work with the polygamy “keyword.” Got some interesting stuff coming down the pipeline, Moriah. What’s your next one going to be about, Riley?

Riley Noehren: I’ve got ideas for a couple of novels and am not sure which one I’m going to run with for the next one. But with me, you can rest assured it will be about a quirky woman with some sanity issues. I don’t write LDS-themed stuff and have yet to write about an LDS character, but I’m not opposed to the idea in the future.

Zoe Murdock: Well, I do think, non-LDS makes it more marketable to the mainstream.

_______________________________________________________________________

Back to work

Zoe Murdock: Is that it, then?

Riley Noehren: I’ve got nothing else, I’m afraid.

Moriah Jovan: Awesome. See ya!

Zoe Murdock: See you all on Twitter.

[Theric's note: I used brackets where I added words, but I did not mark where I left words out or rearranged.]

.

I imagine the first thing that comes to the average mind when one mentions Mike or Laura Allred, together or separately, is Madman, Mike’s mid-Nineties comics creation that has lived long and is one of the most brilliant comics on shelves even today.

In Mormon circles, they are probably better known for The Golden Plates, their Book of Mormon adaptation.

For both these works, the writing and drawing is done by Mike, with colors by Laura. But their careers stretch far beyond these two titles, deep into the world of popular comics. Mike’s retro-pop stylings are in high demand (look for a collaboration with Neil Gaiman, coming soon) and Laura’s zowie colors for numerous popular titles have won her fan awards time and again. Check out these resumes: (Mike), (Laura).

Speaking as a devout student of Mormon comics, few artists’ work provides as much opportunity for in-depth consideration as that of the Allreds. As time goes on, their Mormonness becomes more and more obvious. In their most recent Madman collection, for instance, they take a look at everything from premortality to polygamy to Johnny Lingo.

They’re a busy couple of people between their art and their music and the maybe-Robert-Rodriguez-will-finally-make-it-this-year Madman movie, but they graciously agreed to be part of the Couple-Creators series.

*

Q: Were you both creators before meeting each other? Did creation play a role in bringing you together? How does creating together impact your marriage?

We met at BYU-Idaho and were both in the art department. So, we’ve always had that connection.

We were originally worried about getting sick of each other working together full-time, but it’s only brought us closer together.

*

Q: Since Michael seems to get hit up for more interviews than Laura, the general impression online is that projects you work on together are purely his ideas. How accurate is this?

Very.

I’ll give him input, but he really does do pretty much everything except selecting the colors.

*

Q: The Golden Plates. Doing that project seems like a financial risk and, sadly, it wasn’t a big hit. How did you discuss this project ahead of time, and was that discussion different than previous deciding-to-do-a-project discussions? What sort of strain did its lackluster sales cause? How likely are you to return to either that project or the Joseph Smith bio?

First off, it actually was a huge hit. But not big enough to sustain us financially given the time needed to do it right. So, we simply have to find time to do it when we can. We’re confident once we manage an efficient schedule that it will pick up steam.

*

Q: Speaking of, what is the relationship between faith, art and spouse?

It just is. We don’t have the words to express that answer correctly.

*

Q: Of course, you both work on projects apart from each other as well as working together — why is it important to take those jobs?

It’s always good to stretch on outside projects. That’s where we’ll find new inspiration to progress with different techniques and approaches.

*

Q: Speaking of, artistically, what are the advantages of working on properties owned by other people?

New perspectives.

*

Q: How is it different, working together as opposed to working with other people?

Together we have a rhythm and a comfort zone that can’t be matched.

*

Q: I know you’ve worked with Mike’s brother Lee. Have you involved other family members in projects as well? How does that turn out?

Our children have created characters or done small coloring jobs and stuff. It’s just extra fun.

*

Q: How do you balance family and art? Do you think it is easier or harder to be parents, you both being professional creatives? How do your careers affect your children?

We would just say it allows us to involve our children more in what we do, and they’re all creative too in music and art. And working at home just brings us closer together.

*

Q: At the beginning of your careers, before you were The Famous Allreds, how did you balance art with more mundane needs like rent?

We just plugged away. It’s not much different now except…

*

Q: How has success changed your approaches to art?

…we have more confidence and it’s a little easier to get things done.

*

Q: How has success changed your relationship with each other?

Simply more comfort, less stress.

*

Q: I hear Laura is, first and foremost, a painter. Which begs the question: in addition to comics, what else are you two up to in terms of Fab Art?

Not much lately. I have my hands full with our regular work and spend as much time with the kids as we can.

*

Q: Any advice for Mormon artist couples like yourselves?

Just don’t be afraid to spend more time together. We love it!

I love the form; I’ve always have a, always had a love/hate relationship with comics: I love the form, but some of the content are not to my liking.

Yeah, I’ve read you’re not a big superhero fan.

No, I’m not. I’ve done a lot of superheroes, but basically I’d rather have more uh, less fantastic stories.I  read — I read also that you, um, prefer war stories over other types because of the Cuban Revolution? Would you agree with that?

Well, not really, what I said is I prefer war stories because having been raised in the 1930s in Cuba and having seen a lot of fighting, a lot of terrorism around me. The first memory of my life was my house being surrounded by a mob —

Oh dear.

— and shot to pieces by a mob.

Mmhmm.

When I think of war stories, of the children, I think of the grownups going through all that horror and it is very real to me; and superheroes flying in the air are not very real to me, frankly.

I can understand that.

Yes. So, you know, and, uh, also, during my teens, that was the time of World War Two, and the movies and the newsreels and the air just sizzled with the idea of winning the war against the Nazis.

Mmhmm.

And so so that’s very much in my consciousness. And the two kinds of stories that I like are either war stories where you see an ordinary person become a hero —

Mmhmm.

— or stories of uh human relations.

Last time, Ric Estrada told us that his work, though not strictly “Mormon” in content, contained “a certain amount of compassion and a certain amount of . . . spirituality.” And he found that, generally, such were easier to do within the confines of real life, than, say, when inventing Power Girl.

Unfortunately for Brother Estrada, this past century has been a century dominated by superheros. If the (admittedly incomplete) list of comic credits at the Comic Book Database is correct, his output was roughly two superhero stories to every more realistic outing. Of course, that ignores comics work like the New Testament Stories he did for the Church and his editorial cartoons and book illustrations (which a quick Google Book Search reveal to be quite literally voluminous), to say nothing of his journalism and prose fiction. His heart was always grounded in the real.

But real in content. His style has never approached the photorealistic, nor did he wish it too. In a 1996 essay I’ve not been able to track down (but which is quoted extensively here), Estrada said, “My so-called ‘lyricism’ stems from my approach to drawing as flat design rather than as three-dimensional bulk.”

Don Mangus, the author of the essay I lifted that quotation from, says that “perhaps because of [his] extensive fine arts training . . . Estrada continued experimenting and questing for personal and artistic growth” — all the while maintaining his distinctive cartoony style.

As Estrada told me, “Of course I have several styles: the comic-book style, the goofy style for books, the advertising style for advertising . . . .”

Below appear three examples of his work courtesy of blogger Daniel Best who owns this original art. All three are superhero-free, stories that take place in the real world, but all three are quite different as well. Behold:

This is the closest of the three to superheros. No questions that these helmeted musclemen will be superheroesque in their capacity for violence. But no flying, no running near the speed of light. This is violence that reflects reality. To lift another Estrada quotation from Mangus (this one originates from the essay “War, You Said?”), “I grew up in Havana in the 1930s, amid terrorist bombs, shells shrieking overhead and rifle fire cracking in the streets. My first memories are of bullets biting into the walls of my home and houses burning in the night. Memories of fear and imminent death, of men’s hatred and children’s dread.” Which does not sound that far removed from hordes of maurauding Mongols sweeping down from the steppe to leave death and destruction in their path.

I’m a little nervous to psychoanlyze myself, but this is, no question, my favorite Estrada drawing yet. Their hair hasn’t aged well, but two beautiful people in pain surrounded by some of the cutest pigeons ever put on paper — what’s not to like?

Yes. That is Weclome Back, Kotter. If you’re about ten years older than me, this was your favorite show and you may even have this comic in a box in your mother’s garage.

Ric Estrada’s oeuvre represents, more than anything, two things:

1. His need and love for the act of creation.
2. His willingness to take any job to support his family, even Batman.

This intersection between art and family will be the subject of the next portion of this series. But while I’m finishing it, that might provide a good point for discussion: For the professional artist, working to feed the family, which sort of jobs should be accepted? Which lines that the artist draws are reasonable? Which are moral? Which are artistically unacceptable? Which are merely petty snobbery? When your passion is also your day job, how do you know when you’re doing which?

Well?

Angela Hallstrom just won a Whitney for the best novel by a new writer. The novel that received the award, Bound on Earth, has been the focus of much praise from many sources (here and one and two that popped up quickly on Google, here are 165-and-counting on Goodreads, here is the review from the person who lent me the book, here is my own brief review). So enough with the praise. Let’s dig a little deeper and see what this book is built from.

Bound on Earth is a novel-in-stories featuring over half a dozen points of view, ranging from pioneer times to the very present. Several of these stories were published as standalones, and, Hallstrom tells me, several more will be.

The novel then is representative of other work its author is engaged in. Angela Hallstrom edits every other issue of Irreantum and is currently wrapping up work on a long-overdo collection of Mormon short fiction that I expect to hold in my hands sometime this fall. So arranging short stories is very much the Art of Hallstrom in 2008/2009.

With this in mind, I approached her about the Art of Short-Story Arrangement. We’re breaking our discussion into three parts. Part one, today’s portion, she discusses Bound on Earth while it is still part of the zeitgeist. Later this year we’ll bring discussions on Irreantum and the book collection as they get closer to release.

(Please note that some of our discussions presumes that our audience has read her book. So, be aware of spoiler warnings and suchlike here, now, before we begin. Or, you know, go read the book.)

So I sent her a slew of questions and she answered the first bunch in one fell swoop (which expression actually has nothing to do with falconeering as I had always assumed).

* * * * *

Th: A slew of questions.

AH: I decided to write a book about the Palmers after “Thanksgiving” was written as a stand-alone short story, but that’s not why I decided to place it first.  I placed it first for a number of reasons.  One, it’s a multiple point-of-view short story (which is pretty rare), and having it first was a way to introduce to readers to the type of experience they’d be having with a book full of shifting perspectives.  It also allows glimpses, however small, into most of the main characters we’ll meet as the book progresses.  I also felt that the conflict presented in “Thanksgiving” was compelling and would hook readers right away, and the question about whether or not Beth and Kyle should remain married was central to the controlling idea of the novel as a whole: what does it mean to remain in committed family relationships, especially in the face of difficult challenges?  What does it cost you?  What do you gain?

So the ordering basically followed this structure: “Thanksgiving” as a set up, then back in time to the earliest main character’s story (Tess’s story), and proceeding chronologically until we arrived at “Faithful,” which takes place a few months after “Thanksgiving” and answers some of the questions that story raised.  Of course, there’s the one exception of “Christina,” the pioneer ancestor story that took place in the 19th century.  This particular story gave some historical context to the Palmer family, and the reason I placed it where I did was because Tina mentions where her name came from in the story that precedes it, so it seemed a logical place to include a story that doesn’t fit the rest of the contemporary timeline.

In my initial draft of the novel, “Faithful” was the last real story.  I had written a short, two page, very distant 3rd person objective recounting of the next year’s Thanksgiving dinner to end the novel  (The objective pov is much like a “camera lens” approach, with no access to characters’ thoughts, etc.).  But after much consideration, I decided that ending was unsatisfactory because first, I knew readers would want more resolution, and second, the objective point of view gave the end of the novel an emotionally disconnected feel that I didn’t like.  It was almost a little TOO cinematic, also: like a camera shot at the end of a movie that pans wide then retreats up into the sky.

So “Bound on Earth” was included last (and written last) because although I agree this book isn’t quite a novel, it’s not really a short story collection, either.  It’s a novel-in-stories, which means the stories/chapters are supposed to hang together in a narrative arc of their own, and some of the questions that I set up in the “Thanksgiving” chapter needed to be more adequately resolved.  Although some readers have complained that they wanted more resolution at the end of the book, I felt that the final chapter resolved many of the questions (e.g “do Beth and Kyle stay together”?) in the most honest way I knew how.  [Spoiler alert!] It would have been dishonest in my view if I’d written a final chapter where the reader comes to know with a surety that Beth and Kyle live happily ever after—because who can know that, truly, about any marriage, let alone one as complicated as Beth and Kyle’s? But I wanted to communicate a certain hope about their marriage, and about many of the other marriages and family relationships explored in the novel—that even with tremendous challenges, there is value in commitment.  I also felt that the matriarch of the family, Tess, was a good character to narrate that final story, since she’d lived through so much and had the benefit of a certain perspective and wisdom.

* * *

Th: I imagine you have stories in various states of completion that didn’t make the final cut. How did you decide what was to be included and what wasn’t?

AH: Yes, I had to do some story killing.  There’s the original ending of the book that I mentioned above.  I also had a terrible time writing the story that ended up being “Faithful,” the story that brings the Beth/Kyle conflict to some kind of resolution.  When I wrote “Thanksgiving,” I didn’t know if Beth and Kyle were going to stay together, but as I continued to write the book it became clear to me that they would.  The problem was dramatizing that decision in a way that offered the right combination of both hope and realism.  I tried writing two different stories from Beth’s point of view, and they were both terrible.  Too sentimental, too easy.  Hated them.  It wasn’t until it came to me that the story should be in Alicia (the mother’s) point of view that “Faithful” finally worked.  I finally figured out that it was more interesting to see Alicia’s changes, because even though she’s the mother-in-law, she’s the character who’d turned her back most completely on Kyle.  It was a relief to finally figure that out and see that story fall into place.

I also had some stories that I’d fiddled around with—one about a family vacation, one about Tina getting caught in a rip tide, one about Kyle going on a Scout campout as a kid—that I ended up not including simply because I didn’t like them.  Boring, or not as well-written as I’d like them to be, or missing that feel of the “necessary.”

* * *

Th: Of the stories that made the final cut, do you consider them all strong enough to stand alone? Are there any that can’t be understood, in your estimation, outside Bound on Earth?

AH: Not all of them are strong enough to stand alone, no.  That’s another reason I consider this a novel-in-stories, because not every “chapter” can or should stand alone.  Each of the three girls’ Sunday Stories have an arc, a conflict and a resolution of sorts, but I don’t think I would ever consider sending one out on its own because they need context in order to resonate.  I also don’t think Jimmy’s stream-of-consciousness “Tina’s Wedding: Part Two” would work without context, either.  But most of the other stories can stand alone, and many of them have been published, or are slated to be published, as short stories.

* * *

Th: How did characters earn p-o-v status?

AH: Each member of the immediate Palmer family has at least two stories from their own POV, and so does Tess.  Kyle needed a story, especially from a time before his bipolar disorder became symptomatic.  Jimmy, Tina’s second husband, also got a story.  One reason was because I wanted a sympathetic non-Mormon voice in the book (and I must admit, I loved writing in Jimmy’s voice). To be honest, looking back I wish I would have given Marnie’s husband, Mike, a story from his point of view.  I think it would have helped flesh him out more, give some of his seemingly bad qualities some context and made him rounder.  Is it bad to admit your mistakes in public? Ah, well.  But if I had the novel to do over again, that’s one change I would have made.

* * *

Th: So they say all first novels are autobiographical — true in your case? Did writing short stories help you dodge that?

AH: People always assume this novel is autobiographical.  I suppose because it’s contemporary, and about a Mormon family.  Although I did lift many details from my own life (e.g. my own husband opened his mission call at my house when I was a senior in high school, and we played the “guess the mission call” game and the winner got a giant Hershey bar), most of these details are lifted as discrete scenes or symbols and not representative of my “real life.”  Nobody in my family has bipolor disorder, for example.  That was all research.  All of my siblings were pretty straight arrows, too—no Tina in the lot.  Two of the stories, however, were based on my own family history: “Christina,” the 19th century Three Nephite story, is my own imaginative retelling of an actual event recorded by my pioneer ancestors, and “Things Unsaid” is based on the story of my great-grandfather, an attorney who had a stroke in the capitol building in Salt Lake.  Everything else is a mish-mash of imagination and detail-stealing.

* * * * *

As my friend Foxy J observed, Bound on Earth takes for granted that the Palmer family is “bound”; which assumption, I think, is what makes it not merely a novel about Mormons but a Mormon novel. This sealing assumption reflects in every facet of every relationship on every page.

The form of the novel supports this underlying theme. The stories, though separate and individual, are bound together. It’s a beautiful example of form following function, where function = theme.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit I had not noticed that, except for the two exceptions, the book was arranged chronologically. It’s an impressive bit of slight of hand, really. The opening story creates such a strong sense of dramatic irony throughout the book that I as reader felt so privileged — perhaps akin to a heavenly observer — that I did not even realize I was watching the world in order. Rather as if I, like those who reside in the presence of God, had all things manifest — past, present, and future — continually before me.

Which might be overstating things a bit, but I’ve always been a fan of poetic hyperbole.

Later this year Angela and I will return to the art of short-story arrangement in forms very different from the single-author novel-in-stories.

A guest post on you and your wife and your creative processes (and even how family impacts them). How do you find time to write? What helps you write? Where do your creative processes and ambitions collide/feed off of/interact with/entangle with your wife’s creative processes and ambitions? (and this even if your output her output of work isn’t huge — certainly family dampens things).

I think he asked because I had approached him about us, my wife and I, possibly doing a comics story for Popcorn Popping. We hadn’t started working on it yet, but I thought PP might be a venue for such a work, if the work tasted Mormon enough. William then had the grim responsibility to tell me PP had been shut down (two days later, the announcement appeared on the site).

Everyone has a list of someday-I-wills and one Lynsey and I share is creating a graphic novel together. But as William hinted in his suggested topic, things like family (to say nothing of desperate poverty) have prevented some of our more ambitious planned projects.

But you can’t take a born visualist and a born fictionist and not expect them to create something. You can’t stick them together and expect that. And so create we do. Lynsey has made the most amazing birth announcements. We do complex and beautiful postal art for our family newsletter, the LDotFMotNY. Lynsey is our ward’s bulletin specialist and, under her creative direction, those have ranged from gorgeous covers using photographs from the early days of the Berkeley Ward to the oh-so-witty speaker bios I’m writing for inclusion now. We have outlets, even if we’re not yet accomplishing the great things we intend to.

Because, let’s be frank, having kids makes it hard.

Yes, yes, yes. That’s an excuse and only an excuse and I admit it readily. Anthony Trollope wrote from 5am to 8am every morning before he went off and invented the modern mailbox. What makes my excuse any good?

Nothing, frankly.

Yes, it is true that I have a novel I’m trying to sell; I’ve edited an anthology that’s coming out June 1; I’m working on some other anthology projects and critical editions; I have two novel-length projects I hope to finish before the new school year starts; I’m doing some editing for other people’s projects that are coming out in the next year or two; I blog—- So I am working on thing, I am I am.

But these meager accomplishments come with a large dose of guilt. Because while I’m scraping minutes to get things done, I’m preventing my wife from similarly scraping. Her charity in letting me string words together has the direct result of minimizing her own time spent creating. It makes me feel unpleasantly patriarchal.

What I’m getting at is that we Jepsons still need to find a better balance.

As part of my pursuit of a fair balance, I am beginning a series of interviews with Mormon husband/wife artist pairs. I have an excellent one lined up for our first entry and am working on arranging more. (If you have suggestions or can help me contact artsy couples who have found success, please let me know so I can start tracking them down.)

My father-in-law says that being an engineer is godlike because it is creation and God is a Creator. This aligns with my thinking. Granted, after this life ends we will have a lot of physics to catch up on, but Lynsey and I, wife and husband, are creators. A husband and wife creating, together. What could be more Mormon than that?

So come, if you will, spend a few minutes chasing clouds with me. Who knows: we might even find an elephant or two stampeding across the sky.