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OK, so I recently came across a notice for Android Karenina, apparently the latest pastiche in the wave that began with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and includes titles like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and my favorite title, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim.

So, of course I began to wonder if Mormon titles could be used to create the same kind of work. Will Mormon eventually join this trend?

I haven’t read any of these books yet, so I’m not sure how well these derivatives work. They are often called “mash-ups,” but I don’t think they technically meet the definition, since mash-ups generally include pieces from multiple works and very little that isn’t derived from elsewhere; what used to be called a collage. These works, in contrast, are a single original work combined with new writing from a single author; more like a simplified, open version of the French surrealist game, Exquisite corpse (well, maybe not). But, I must admit, I’m not sure that a true mash-up could even work in literature. Could an author/editor really pull individual paragraphs from any different works and make them work together?

What is unusual with the ‘zombie’ derivatives is not, of course, the fact that they are derivative. Even among the finest literature, producing derivative works has been very successful (Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead comes to mind very readily). And the language of criticism has developed a host of terms to refer to different kinds of derivative works—sequels, prequels, fan fiction, etc. Popular and noteworthy works are regularly condensed, augmented, segmented, use the same setting, mimic the plot, employ the same characters, and expanded ad nauseum. There is even a significant portion of copyright law that is devoted to when these kind of works require the author’s permission.

I think what makes these works so popular is simply the shocking contrast between the original work and the genre it is being transformed into. Could any two genre’s be more different than 19th century drawing-room romances (and other classic genres) and zombie fiction? That may well be why these seem to work, and have attracted so much attention — the novelty of this combination drives the attention these works are getting.

Of course, genre might be best thought of as an indication of a work’s target audience, rather than any indication of how seriously a work can be considered. Which may mean that this combination could attract new readers to each genre. That might make writing this kind of work very interesting — even to Mormon authors.

What gives me pause about using this form of writing in a Mormon context is how the LDS audience might respond. If someone writes Nephites and Zombies, a “mash-up” of the Book of Mormon, would LDS audiences want to read it? Or would it attract fans of Zombie fiction to reading the Book of Mormon?

Derivative works from the Book of Mormon do exist, of course. The first performed Mormon play, Corianton, is based on the Book of Mormon, as are many other works written during the past roughly 110 years since then. In fact, the principle sources for creating derivative works in Mormon literature are the Book of Mormon and stories from LDS Church history (remember that whole Work and the Glory series?), chiefly because they are so familiar with the Mormon audience. Even the once wildly successful Added Upon and its Saturday’s Warrior derivative aren’t nearly as familiar with LDS audiences.

But the status of the Book of Mormon, and the mythology we connect with  LDS history might make using them as the source for a “mash-up” problematic. On the other hand, even the New Testament has been used for derivative work (Ben Hur is, of course, derivative), its only when the derivative seems disrespectful of the source that objections arise, such as with Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Even putting derivatives of Mormon works in wildly different genres has worked when the sources have been respected, such as Orson Scott Card managed with his Homecoming Saga and Red Prophet series. But then again, these series weren’t as well known among the LDS audience (they’ve never really been sold in LDS bookstores as far as I’ve ever seen) and on the surface didn’t seem as radical a reworking as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

So, it would be interesting to see someone pull off a radical pastiche like this current literary fad using a Mormon source. I’m still on the fence about whether or not it would be successful.

Perhaps more interesting would be a “mash-up” that creates a Mormon work out of a classic — something that would draw non-Mormon audiences into the Mormon worldview. A Mormon author might feel much more comfortable in that attempt.

So, I’m looking forward to reading Sense and Sensibility and Sister Missionaries.

_I Am Jane_ at the Covey Center for the Arts, July 22-23.

The Grand Theatre in Salt Lake recently finished their run of Margaret Blair Young’s I Am Jane, but I am very glad that the show is also going to the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo, UT, on July 22-23.  I am glad because I want to shout from the rooftops to everyone who will listen to me, “Hallelujah! Go see this show!” Really, this may be your last chance.  If you’re in driving distance of Provo on those nights, please, do yourself a favor and go see it.  You’ll be a better human being for it.

Now the production isn’t perfect, nor is the script, and I’ll detail why that is later.  But, in the end, my criticisms of the show don’t matter, because there are some productions that are simply important.  Despite any flaws such shows have, the marred parts are overshadowed and outshone by the glory.  And glory, as hyperbolic as that word can be, is the right word to use for this show.  Glorious.

I Am Jane tells the story of a group of African-American Latter-day Saints, most notably the title character Jane Manning James and, to some degree, Elijah Abel.  For those who haven’t brushed up on their Church History, Jane and Elijah, and those associated with them, were important because they were part of the very small group of early Mormon black pioneers.  Jane and her folk joined the Church in Nauvoo, and Elijah joined in 1832.  One of the peculiar things about Elijah Abel, and one of the things I have found that most Mormons simply don’t know, is that he was ordained to the priesthood by Joseph Smith, and became a seventy.  That’s interesting (as most of the readers of A Motley Vision should know, unless they’re completely new to Mormonism) because people of African descent could not receive the LDS priesthood through most of the Church’s history, until President Spencer W. Kimball received the revelation in 1978 that all worthy male members, no matter their racial descent, could receive the priesthood.

This is one of the most fascinating, if not uncomfortably tragic, issues the play brings up. In Nauvoo, under Joseph Smith,  African-Americans seemed not only to have had a better time in the Church, but seemed to have been welcomed with open arms, especially by Joseph Smith.  Jane was asked to be sealed to the Smith family by Emma and Joseph (a temple/priesthood ordinance which would later be denied to African Americans), and Elijah, as previously mentioned, would receive the priesthood office of a Seventy and was considered a good friend of the Prophet. The play also shows Joseph Smith’s views against slavery that can be read in his political platform for president.

But things change drastically after Joseph Smith’s martyrdom… under Brigham Young, temple and priesthood ordinances are denied to African-Americans, and racism runs rampant in Utah, including mob violence, excommunication and blatant racism against African-Americans who don’t accept their “place” and are not “satisfied” with the “blessings already given them.”

So the set up is quite a poignant, painful juxtaposition of what could have been. Under Joseph Smith, we see a tolerant, joyful acceptance of people of all races.  In Utah, things become dark regarding racial progress and we find policies changing and injustices served and we see the prejudices inherited from the American culture of the time seeping in among the Saints and even effecting the leadership of the Church.  I have heard some argue, including Church leaders, that Joseph Smith instituted the racial policy.  I have not found convincing evidence of that. Even Brigham Young had more tolerant views of racial integration within the Church at the beginning.  It doesn’t seem to be until Winters Quarters that the winds shift (for a good, general overview of these issues, I found this Wikipedia article surprisingly helpful, offering pieces of information I had not read or heard before).

Most people will find the information presented uncomfortable, even deeply disturbing, especially if they have not heard it before.   Especially if one takes the view of a Prophet’s infallibility (which I don’t, and neither did Joseph Smith), it will create dissonance.  However, if one believes that even good, powerful men such as Brigham Young and John Taylor can make mistakes and be influenced by the culture of their time, even in regards to Church policy (note that I use the word policy, not “doctrine.” I agree with David O. Mckay who said the priesthood ban was a policy, not a doctrine), then this play should be no obstacle to anyone’s faith (quite the opposite!), despite its tragic nature.  Especially as, throughout the play, we see the powerful faith, endurance, sacrifice and soulful beauty of the title character, Jane Manning James, and those associated with her.

So these have been some of the issues surrounding the story. Let’s dwell a moment on the actual production:

I have mixed feelings about much of the cast and their performances. I found most of the African-American cast very capably portrayed, while much of the Caucasian cast to have had some strange casting choices attached to them. This is the deep irony in Utah where, due to demographics, it should be much easier to cast a white role than a black one. More on the portrayals later.

It took me a moment to warm up to Tamu Smith, who played Jane.  Her performance seemed muted compared to the lively performances of fellow actress La Shanda Hill who plays the smaller role of Jane’s sister Angeline.  However, as the play progressed and I started understanding Jane’s character better, and picking up on the subtleties and nuances of Smith’s portrayal, I became more and more impressed and simply accepted her as Jane.  It would seem to me that Smith would be very well suited to film, where these nuances would be more accentuated.  As the play progressed, her portrayal rolled a deep seated pain, a shyness, an emotional depth.  These could have been projected even more, considering the needs of a large theater as opposed to a small black box or a film screen.  However, that’s a small concern considering what Smith was able to deliver in terms of soulfulness and tragic beauty.

Abe Willis was very capable as Elijah (which will be played by Danor Gerald at the Provo performances), portraying the role with verve, energy, pathos and humor. Keith Hamilton, who also acted as executive producer for the show, also had a strong performance as Jane’s husband Isaac.  However, I would have liked a little more variance in the levels of his character.  What he did, though, he did very well.  Other major supporting roles played by Jenny Rock, Brandon Day, Peggy Matheson and Emmet C. Gill  were all strong.  I was also surprised that many of the actors who impressed the most had some of the smallest roles… Rita Martin, Danor Gerald, La Shanda Hill and Lauren Livingston could have all powerfully carried much larger roles than they were given.

This, however, had as much to do with the script as anything.  Too many roles were brought on, only to be discarded without further development.  I do not mind large casts, despite the problems it causes to a production in filling so many roles with competent actors, especially if you’re paying your actors and what that does to a budget.  Heck, I’ve written a number of large casts myself, with varying degrees of success.  What I was concerned about was how many of those roles were subsequently thrown away in the script.  If you’re going to write a role, find out the reason you’re writing it, and if it’s not an important reason, then find a way to do without that character.

What would constantly happen in the play is that we’d see a character in one scene, and they would be set up with some importance, and then we would never see them again. Three examples I can immediately think of are the characters of Eliza Partridge Lyman, Samuel Smith and the mysteriously named “Orson” (which “Orson”? Orson Hyde? Orson Pratt? A fictional Orson?). This “Orson” appears in one scene, and could have been easily replaced by a character who we have already met. Her serves no real purpose in the play, except to tell Isaac that there are some finally black women in Nauvoo who he can court. And the inclusion of Samuel Smith mystifies me!  He’s there for one very short scene, to declare (somewhat anti-climatically) Joseph Smith’s martyrdom.  If it wasn’t for the program, a person wouldn’t even know it was Samuel Smith, because he isn’t even named in the dialogue. And the scene, which carries very important information, wasn’t developed. It’s sole existence seems to be to tell you that the Prophet is dead, without any of the needed emotion or gravitas that needs to accompany that information.

Eliza Partridge Lyman, on the other hand,  is initially set up as an important character when we meet her, as she is declared as one of Jane’s best friends and Jane gives her some food which prevents Eliza’s family from starving.  First, Eliza Lyman was miscast.  Being one of Joseph’s younger plural wives (not that the point is brought up in the play), she would have been much more youthful than portrayed in the play. However, more important than a small detail like that, Eliza is declared as Jane’s good friend, one of her best. Yet their dialogue together is stilted and uncomfortable, filled with exposition-laden details that the two supposed friends should have already known about each other.  And since she was set up as such an important friend, the audience is left to wonder, where was Eliza before this point in the play?  Where is Eliza when Jane is enduring her hardships later on? If she’s such a good friend where is she? If I had read the script before hand, I would have promptly told Young to either excise the character completely, or to build her up to be a more important character.  As it is, she serves as a minor plot point rather than a developed character, a vehicle to show Jane’s kindness rather than a vital part of the story’s overarching narrative.

These examples point to a deeper problem in the script… Young doesn’t necessarily know how to adapt this story into a theatrical format.  Young, chiefly a novelist (and a talented one at that), doesn’t seem to understand the needs of the stage. In a novel, or even a film, throwing in one scene characters who don’t serve a pointed use to the plot or major characterization can be all right, because you have much more room to play with.  But on stage, you only have a couple of hours to tell the story, and to go on wild goose chases, whether to fulfill minor historical details (and I sense was often the case here), or to provide convenient exposition, is problematic.  You at least have to double cast such characters (which no effort was made to do here), otherwise the amount of actors, costumes and investment placed into the play exponentially increases.  I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way in some of my plays, a lesson I’ve had to learn especially hard when I’ve also been a producer or a director.

But, for the most part, these roles were ably filled, especially the African-American roles. However, as I said before, some of the casting of the Caucasian roles on a whole gave me pause, especially the roles of Joseph and Emma Smith, small but vital roles in this story. Now with the casting of Joseph and Emma, I couldn’t tell if my issues had to do with the acting, the directing, the writing or the combination thereof.

Benjamin King, who played Joseph Smith, is a very strong actor.  I’ve known him for many years and his performances rarely fail to impress me.  Ironically, I have even cast him as Joseph Smith myself, in my play Friends of God, and thought that he did a fantastic job with the Prophet in that show. But something about this version of King’s “Brother Joseph” seemed off to me. King had a good friendliness, energy and mode of expression.  But this portrayal of the Prophet, in the end, seemed very one dimensional.

Part of the problem had to do with the script, which surprised me, since I enjoyed Young’s presentation of the Prophet in her novel One More River to Cross.  In the novel (which pretty much covers the same ground the play does) Joseph Smith seemed more three dimensional, more rugged, more human and thus, ironically, more likable.  This Joseph seemed simplified, stiff, overly concerned about about fitting someone’s pre-conception, and thus not fitting anyone’s pre-conception.  The Prophet became a talking point, quoting historical passages rather than having real conversations, preaching sermons rather than interacting as a human being would.  Again, I can’t put my finger on where the root of this problem is in the production, but it was a indeed a problem, and became a disappointing distraction from some very important parts of the narrative.

However, Joseph in the end, was at least set up as a symbolic beacon showing the approach the Church should have taken with race. We end up siding with him, and loving what true semblance  there is of him. The portrayal of Emma Smith, on the other hand, seemed to accidentally undermine the good that this approach was trying to do.  Again, I couldn’t tell if this problem came from the script, the director’s instructions, or Valaura Arnold’s portrayal of Emma, but Emma came off as stiff and unlikable.

For example, there is a scene where Emma tells Jane that her and Joseph want to spiritually “adopt” Jane into their family, by sealing her to them.  This could have been a powerful moment, showing Joseph and Emma’s intense love for this beautiful saint.  However, with how it played out in the production, Emma seemed somewhat awkward and even condescending with the scenario, which created a different sort of racism, albeit a more benign one.  I felt no true spark in the relationship, rather Emma set herself up as a superior over Jane, who needed the Smiths’ guiding hand, instead of being perfectly suited to being sealed to her own family.  To understand the views of sealing people to the Prophet in those days is complex, and one has to understand that it happened to many people in early Church History, but no such context is given and instead it comes off as slightly offensive, if not well meaning.  It tasted too much like the Native American placement program in the Church several decades ago, for my comfort, or the similar program of Australian Aboriginal children being adopted into white families, as chronicled in stories like Rabbit Proof Fence. Now, knowing Margaret Young’s impeccable reputation for race relations in the Church, I know this was not her intent.  However, in future drafts and productions of the script, I would recommend something on some level be fixed to avoid that sense in that scene, because it does not support the message of the beautiful story being told.

I think the flaws that mar this otherwise beautiful script are a shame because of how easily they could have been avoided. It is evident that Young is a very good writer, and this script could have benefited from the tightening a trained playwright, dramaturg or a director accustomed to working with new scripts could have given.  These issues could have been addressed and easily fixed.

However, as I mentioned before, these are small concerns when compared to the mighty things done in I Am Jane. Despite the somewhat flat nature of the white folks’ dialogue, the more important African-American characters’ dialects and dialogue is authentic, natural, specific to type and culture and filled with genuine pathos and humor. It was more like hearing the wonderful dialogue of an August Wilson play, rather than the white, culturally Mormon woman that I know that Margaret Blair Young is.  The African-American characters are fully developed, powerful and dynamic, especially Jane. Young seems to “get” this culture, even perhaps more than her own, which I think is very interesting.  She has been working for a long time within the African-American, Mormon community and it really shows by her passionate advocacy for the community’s causes.  Supported by a talented design team (the costumes and set were awesome), a great, dedicated group of actors and a production staff that obviously love the story and have a mission, they’ve helped Margaret Blair Young bring off a story that, though flawed, simply burns away those flaws with the fire of the spiritual Pentecost that the play ignites.

As I said before, this play is important. Too many Mormons do not understand, nor even seem to want to understand, the issues addressed in this play.  As faith promoting and inspirational as this story is, it in the end it comes off to me as a tragedy.  Jane Manning James, Elijah Abel, Sylvester James, the beautiful African-American-Mormon minority that surrounded them… these were real people.  And many injustices were heaped upon them.  And people like them still live today, facing the same issues that their forefathers did.

As a people who have historically suffered many injustices ourselves, Mormons should be more sensitive and knowledgeable about these issues.  We should know these stories.  We should not be afraid of analyzing our own souls, and trying to root out the remaining vestiges of racism and discrimination that remain there.  We’ve gone a long way as a Church and as a people.  But subtle intolerance and a lack of true charity are still shadows we need to address.  I’m surprised about the racist attitudes I still encounter among some otherwise good people in the Church.  Many Mormons still have not put away the cultural mythology concerning African-Americans, whether it is the “curse of Cain” or the “less valiant in the pre-existence” excuses.  I think at one point we need to come to grips that we are just as guilty, and just as influenced by the racist inheritance that many others in the world received.  We’re better than we were, but we’re not done yet.  Yet productions like I Am Jane go a long ways in helping us bring that mirror to our souls and force us to have a long, honest look at what we see there.

Tickets for I Am Jane can be purchased through The Covey Center for the Arts.

Sensitivity Rating: I Am Jane frankly addresses many offensive attitudes and actions concerning race, including the use of the “n” word.  Although culturally important to the story, parents should be prepared to have long, honest discussions with their children about what their children see and hear in the story. There is also brief references to rape, polygamy and violence in the play, although in tasteful ways not shown on stage.

If art is, in part at least, the imitation of reality, it’s an imitation that’s largely bounded by and grounded in artistic convention. That’s something I’ve long been aware of from a literary/critical perspective, but writing a novel myself — and then seeing the reaction of different readers to the specific choices I made about where and how to be “realistic” — has borne that truth in on me in a particularly vivid fashion.

No one actually writes scenes, dialogue, storylines, and internal thoughts to match the way things happen in real life. Stream-of-consciousness, that most famous of experiments in literary style, tends to strike readers (in my experience) as self-consciously attention-drawing rather than realistic: yet another way for the writer to get between the reader and the experience. Attempts at realism can, ironically, make readers all the more conscious of the writer’s craft.

And then there’s the fact that what strikes one reader as realistic isn’t the same thing that strikes other readers as realistic. Case in point: the dialogue of my teenage character in No Going Back. I’ve had reviewers comment on the awkwardness of their dialogue as a negative thing. Other readers described the realism of my teenagers as a particular strength. It’s occurred to me that both may be true, since one of the things I was trying to imitate was the awkwardness of teenagers in grappling with serious subjects. They start and stop sentences, they interrupt themselves, they dance around what they’re saying. I’ve wondered if that attempt at realism is part of what irritates some of my readers, and whether a smoother and (to my mind) less “natural” style might have kept them more engaged. It’s hard to know.

Listening to my children talk, I’m struck by how repetitious and bizarre a transcript of their speech would look, lifted verbatim into a story. And then there’s the matter of capturing intonation, tone of voice, gestures and other signals that accompany speech. Which details do you include? Frequently, I wound up cutting pieces of information just because they made a scene or paragraph or sentence go on too long. Less is more.

Thinking about this now, I’m reminded of BYU professor Steve Walker’s insight into the invitational nature of J. R. R. Tolkien’s prose: that by including only a few key details, he invites readers to co-create his characters inside their own minds. It is, as he points out, a rather different approach from the values of the realistic tradition in fiction, where the goal is seen as creating a picture of life that is so detailed and real readers can imaginatively step directly into it.

Extending this thought, the value of an approach like Tolkien’s may lie in its implicit acknowledgment that stories are not independent realities created by the writer and passively experienced by readers, but rather negotiated interactions that take place within the space of the reader’s mind. Of course, there’s a certain irony in applying such an insight to Tolkien, the great proponent of story as sub-created experience and one of the most detailed world-creators in all of fantasy…

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Writing my novel, I was struck by just how little real time is depicted in a typical narrative. Looking at the timeline I created of scenes from the year and a half covered by No Going Back, it’s quite common to see gaps of a week or more during which there’s simply nothing written.

Decisions about which life-details to include serve several masters. One is realism, which I think is essential to feeling sympathy for the characters in a story. We have to believe they are humans like ourselves before we can care about what happens to them.

The other is strategic importance to the story. Events and details that don’t play a part in advancing the story inevitably take time and attention away from that story. Stories (and readers) can take only so much of that before distraction sets in. Just how much varies, depending on the story, the genre, and (most especially) the tastes and mental/information processing habits of the individual reader.

Personally, I’m the sort of reader that rather likes a meandering storyline. I like the time that the hobbits spend in the Old Forest and the house of Tom Bombadil. One of the attractions of story reading, for me, is spending time in worlds and with characters I enjoy.

An author’s judgment in such areas is inevitably suspect. How much detail is needed to bring one’s characters and settings to life? The author can’t possibly know, because for him/her they already exist. On the other hand, as their creator, the writer is probably the last person who will tire of spending time with them.

There’s a fair amount of detail I wrote that didn’t make it into No Going Back. For example, given the age of my characters, it occurred to me at one point that they almost certainly would be getting driving lessons during the course of the novel. I decided this could provide fodder for some entertaining parent-child interaction, and drafted a couple of scenes based on that. And then I went back and took them out, because no matter how I tried to fit them in, they felt like a distraction to me.

It’s likely that I should have done the same thing on a few other occasions. Details about video games and teenage music and the like were (for me) a way of giving a more concrete sense of how my characters filled their lives when they weren’t working on homework. (I actually had included a reference to watching YouTube videos until my editor pointed out that YouTube hadn’t been founded yet at the time of my story. Hurray for Chris!) It’s my impression that some readers like those details, but I’ve had more than one comment on how distracting they can get.

And then there are the details I had originally left out that Chris forced me to put in. Most often, these were stage details, as I think of them: information about where people are physically situated, how they move and where they go while conversations and other interactions are taking place. Thinking about the way I read, it makes sense that I might miss these small details, since I tend to process scenes auditorily rather than visually. With more practice, I hope to gain a clearer sense of just how much of this kind of stuff to include. In the meantime, I’m glad I had a good editor.

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Stories — even nonfiction stories — are different from reality. We all know this, I believe, no matter how much we may allow our vision of reality to affected by the stories we hear and read. As Patsy says in Monty Python and the Holy Grail after they’ve been oohing and ahhing at their first glimpse of Camelot: “It’s only a model.”

The thing I hadn’t truly appreciated until I tried to do it myself was just how arbitrary and unintuitive the choice of details can seem, in trying to tease readers/viewers/listeners into supplying what’s missing to create the internal illusion of reality. Over and over, I found myself deliberating quite basic questions, from whether to accent a bit of conversation with an accompanying eyebrow lift to how much detail to include about a boy’s physical reaction to a hormonal moment. Something that had appeared quite seamless to me from a reader’s perspective was revealed to be the result of considerable craft, at a nuts-and-bolts level. Maybe that’s one of the things they talked about in all those creative writing classes I never took…

The next time I undertake to write a story, hopefully I won’t be quite so clueless about these things going in. In the meantime, I feel that I’ve gained a greater understanding of one of the things that makes narrative writing such a complex and judgment-driven endeavor. I hope it’s made me not only a more wary and alert writer, but a more appreciative reader as well.

What is great about this essay (which is titled simply “Rereading Barthes and Nabokov”) is that Smith is very insistent on wanting to be a reader and an author. Moreover she doesn’t dismiss the appeal of Barthes’ postmodern theories on authorial intention while at the same time she keenly illustrates why she can’t read Nabokov in the way that Barthes seems to want her to. But I’m not here to summarize the entire essay — you should read it for yourself (and the other essays as well, particularly the ones on Middlemarch and Kafka and Their Eyes Were Watching God). What I want to highlight is her summary of Nabokov’s theory of the two stages of “Inspiration”:

Nabokov split this old-fashioned word into two Russian parts. The first half of inspiration, for him, is vorstog (initial rapture). Vorstog describe that moment in which the book as a whole is conceived:

A combined sensation of having the whole universe entering you and of yourself wholly dissolving in the universe surrounding you. It is the prison wall of the ego suddenly crumbling away and the non-ego rushing in from the outside to save the prisoner — who is already dancing in the open.

Here the author dies, momentarily; here meaning is indeterminate and free flowing. Vorstog “has no conscious purpose in view”; in vorstog “the entire circle of time is conceived, which is another way of saying time ceases to exist.” But after this comes the second stage: vdoknovenie (recapture). And it’s here that the actual writing gets done. In Nabokov’s experience, the two had quite different natures. Vorstog was “hot and brief.” Vdoknovenie “cool and sustained.” In the first you lose yourself. In the second, you are doing the conscious work of construction. And while making the choices good writing requires, the Author exists, he circumscribes, he controls, he puts walls on either side of the playground. The reader, to read him properly, would do well to recognize the existence of these walls. The Author limits the possibility of the reader’s play. (49, italics original)

What I like about this description is this idea of a two-stage inspiration. That’s a word that gets tossed around quite a bit in Mormon culture. Nabokov suggests that for the author, there needs to be the hot and brief rapture, the striking of lightning, the crumbling of barriers, but that is not all there is to it. Then is the “cool and sustained” work of recapturing that feeling and moment. But both need to be their. Art can neither be some hot mess nor some cool construct. The two elements of inspiration should work together. And when crafted, the resulting work should be something that the reader respects. Not that there is no play, no reader response, no multiple interpretations — but that there are set boundaries within which one plays.

Now, the utility of this next part is marginal at best, but: this notion puts me in mind of how revelation works, both personal and prophetic and especially that which can be found in scripture. I think this pattern — of the breaking down of ego (and the work that goes in to that), the flash of insight, and then the (re)construction of how that best applies and can best be conveyed, and then the turning loose of the result to the people for their consumption and reaction — is intentional on God’s part. He wants us to experience insights in to his will and then to turn them in to something useful, something beautiful, something that inspires and instructs others. That doesn’t mean that anything we create is necessarily sanctioned by him. Nor does it mean that everything a prophet says or writes is aesthetically amazing (so much can happen in the construction). Nor does it mean that this process can’t be described solely in secular terms (and validly so). I’m just saying that perhaps this process, if one does buy in to a Father in Heaven, esp. the Mormon one, and the human capacity for it is a big part of the point of this mortal life. The idea given form and shape — given walls — and then turned loose in the world and coming to know and play within those walls.

Initially, I was approaching the podcast the way it’s mainly intended — as tips and tricks for aspiring writers of genre fiction. While I do sometimes fit into that category, that’s not necessarily something I’m looking for on a regular basis. So I stopped listening. What brought me back?

I decided to give it another try and realized that what makes Writing Excuses so entertaining is not the practical tips, but the literary criticism that Brandon, Howard and Dan engage in. I mean, I already knew they were amusing and articulate, and like most podcasts, Writing Excuses is them tackling a topic in a fairly off-the-cuff manner (although Brandon keeps things on track). What I had forgotten, until I started listening to some of the latest episodes, is how much of the podcast is the three of them (plus guests) gnawing away at the given topic through the lens of their own work and the work of others, and their creative habits and editing/marketing experiences and the habits and experiences of other creative types that they know. It’s real-time, unscripted literary criticism, and it’s interesting for me to hear them assign value to and puzzle out how certain examples operate in relation to both the topic and their perception of the standards of the field and expectations of their readers. And it’s especially interesting when they use examples of their own work because I’m familiar with it, and they, of course, know it so well. Also: these guys aren’t dogmatic. Which is good.

So if you have dismissed Writing Excuses because you aren’t interesting in creative writing tips, but you have an interest in literary criticism and can handle its expression in a populist, genre-oriented form, I recommend giving it a try.

PURPOSE

As Terryl Givens documents in The Viper on the Hearth, from Zane Grey to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mormons served as stock villains in the early days of genre fiction (both pre-pulp and pulp heyday). We propose to recast, reclaim and simply mess with that tradition by making Mormon characters, settings and ideas the protagonists of genre-oriented stories to appear in an anthology simply titled Monsters & Mormons. This is, then, a project of cultural reappropriation. But even more than that, we just want us all to have fun with the concept.

SUBMISSIONS

Fiction from 5 words up to 17,500 (novelette length)

Poetry from 3 lines up to 120

Plays and Dramatic Monologues of One Act

Illustration and Photography suitable for display on a standard book page

Graphic Novel (grayscale) of 1 to 20 pages (submit 2-4 completed pages + full script)

Text should be submitted in .rtf or .doc format (No WordPerfect or .docx please — any word processor you use should be able to output in Rich Text Format [.rtf]). Images should be submitted as a .jpg or .png file (make sure you have a high-res file available should we accept the work).

Submit to: monsters@motleyvision.org.

Include in the body of the e-mail: your full name; the title of the work/works submitted; and, if available, a link to a blog, website, online resume/works published page — anything that will provide some context to your work. Pseudonyms are discouraged, but we’ll allow for special circumstances — please include that consideration in your e-mail if you would like it.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

Content: Should be broadly-appropriate. In the tradition of modern Mormon mores, greater graphic-ness will be allowed to violence than sexuality although, in general, the boundaries of the original pulp fictions should be the goal. We will make some allowances depending on the genre and the particular story (for example, a bit more grit in urban fantasy). The use of humor, irony, camp and satire is highly encouraged; however, all such uses should show a love for both Mormonism and genre fiction. Plain old mocking is boring.

Mormons: Conceptually, any story that invokes an aspect of Mormonism that can create some recognizable way in for a Mormon reader is cool with us. Yes, you can be clever about it, but we also want straight-up interpretations of the theme e.g. flesh-and-blood Mormons encountering flesh-and-blood/ichor/electronics/whatever monsters. Although preference will be given to Latter-day Saints, we are willing to consider works that feature “Mormons” or “Saints” of any dispensation of mankind, including those in a Book of Mormon setting. Stories that don’t feature Mormon characters or settings, but show a strong, interesting, fairly apparent connection to the Mormon world view will also be considered. In addition, we don’t want writers to worry too much about the metaphysical implications of mixing Mormons and monsters. You don’t need to have doctrinal reasons behind the existence of the monsters nor do you need to offer up stereotypically Mormon solutions to the problems the monsters pose (although such won’t be disallowed unless they’re too flaky or lame). Finally, we’re not automatically saying no don’t do it (because there’s always an exception if the story is right), but too many Cain or Satan-and-his-host-spirit-possession stories will make us very picky and possibly a bit cranky.

Monsters: We are happy for this to be rather broadly interpreted. Monsters need not be purely non-human life forms. Human monsters, supernatural monsters, technological monsters and psychological monsters are all allowed. That said, we highly encourage engagement with the classical monster tropes: werewolves, mummies, vampires (but see warning below), swamp monsters, multi-tentacled cosmic beings of supreme terror, Jack the Ripper, chupacabras, automatons, sentient simians, aliens, etc.

Vampire Warning: Yes, we will accept stories about Mormons and vampires. If you are going to write such a story, though, you should have read Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight trilogy and Eugene Woodbury’s Angel Falling Softly and be able to bring something new to the trope. Also note that we’ll likely give more leeway to illustrations/photography featuring vampires.

Genres: Horror, science fiction, mystery, suspense, action/adventure, thriller, romance and their sub-genres (especially: steam punk, cyberpunk, urban fantasy, post-apocalyptic sci-fi and alternate history). High fantasy is out — there has to be something that ties metaphysically or realistically in to the world of Mormonism. Hybridization of genres is very much encouraged. Elements borrowed from literary fiction are totally cool with us, but we aren’t going to dismiss standard interpretations of the classic styles and genres. In fact, we totally want to pulp it up.

Models: H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Dunsany, Robert Howard, Raymond Chandler, Dashell Hammett, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, etc.

PUBLISHING DETAILS

Copyright: First right of print and electronic (including downloadable e-books) publication; reprinting of previously published stories that the author holds the rights to will be considered (please include the piece’s publication history). First-time rights to be held exclusively for six months after publication. Publications rights to be held in perpetuity but not exclusivity. Should the publisher desire to reprint the stories in a subsequent anthology, author has right of refusal.

Sales and Incentives: Philosophically, we want the proceeds from the sales to go to the contributors as a reward for their hard work. At minimum, all contributors will receive a free print and e-book version of the anthology. We have no idea what kind of sales we’re going to get so what we are planning is a system that rewards contributors if we hit certain profit levels with the anthology and sales of related merchandise. More details to follow.

Timeline:

Please note that all dates are approximate and subject to change, but we’re trying to be generous here both to authors and to give us enough time to get things done in order to hit our publication deadline.

April 15, 2010: Submissions open

July 31 at the earliest, Oct. 1 at the latest: Announce early admits (we’re going to accept some work on a rolling basis — if we have some very strong pieces that come in early, we’re going to accept them and publicly announce them).

October 1, 2010: Submissions close

October 31, 2010: Final answers on submissions; public announcement of admittances so far; requests for rewrites e-mailed out to potential contributors; and a public call for entries with specific attributes to fill gaps in the anthology.

January 31, 2011: Deadline for any rewrites and any gap-filler entries. Announcement of which of those make it into the anthology will be posted as soon as Theric and William can get through them.

February – September 2011: Editing and production

October 1, 2011: Publication!

It’s always interesting seeing what non-Mormon readers of No Going Back have to say about the book. For one thing, it includes an awful lot of Mormon detail. Since I never imagined that it might have a large non-Mormon audience, I didn’t go to any trouble to explain that detail. No real accommodations for any readers who don’t happen to be Mormon.

At a more basic level, I’ve wondered if non-Mormons would even be able to identify with the characters and their motivations. Sure, there’s a lot of universality to the basic conflicts in the book. Every teenager struggles with issues of identity and peer pressure. Every married couple struggles with issues of communication and priorities. But that doesn’t necessarily make the particulars of one person’s conflict easy to identify with on the part of readers whose lives are very different.

I particularly wonder if there’s much possibility for non-Mormon readers to identify with the main characters in No Going Back in their Mormonness. Granted, there are other conservative churches that reject homosexuality as a lifestyle, and even some that embrace the delicate balance of viewing the attraction itself as not a sign of sin but rather as a trial that must be resisted. It’s my perception, however, that being a Mormon is rather different on an experiential level from being a Baptist or a Catholic or what have you. Certainly on a theological level the reasons why Mormons reject homosexuality are quite different, so far as I know, from the reasons given by any other religion — because we’re the only ones who believe that (a) it is human destiny (if we accept it) to become like God, and (b) that the definition of God includes, and is indeed partly defined by, heterosexual marriage. That’s far more than just rhetoric for Mormon teenagers; it’s a fundamental part of how we view ourselves. One of the first songs we learn in childhood starts, “I am a child of God” — and for us, that’s literal.

So I’m always interested to read or hear what non-Mormon readers think about No Going Back, and whether it makes sense to them. All of which made me particularly interested in a review that showed up earlier this week on Amazon.com by Amos Lassen, a veteran Amazon reviewer (almost 3,000 reviews!) who apparently tries to read as many GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) titles as he can and who also has strong interests in religion, but not specifically LDS religion. Awarding No Going Back 5 stars (out of 5), he writes in part:

“Everyone tries to understand [Paul’s] feelings and provide him with love and support but he remains somewhat in pain…. He doesn’t try to cure himself but he feels he needs the support of others but he does not want to come out and he knows that gay sex is forbidden by his religion. He wants a life of virtue and to be accepted for the person that he is…. The struggle between desire and faith seems to always be with us and the author has us examine ourselves closely so that we can be more understanding and accepting of others. The book is not an attack on gay people and is just the story of a boy who understands that he has the right to make the choice about how he wants to live his life.”

After reading Lassen’s review, I emailed him to thank him for his thoughts and find out more about how he’d become aware of my book. (Answer: browsing Amazon.) He mentioned that he teaches a class in gay literature at the college level, and is thinking of adding No Going Back. I’d love to find out what his students think.

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It’s a perpetual question among many Mormon writers just how we as Mormons can effectively present Mormon experience to a national audience. Examples that are frequently held up for emulation from other traditions include the novel The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, depicting the coming-of-age of a Jewish boy during World War II, and the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

I freely admit that No Going Back isn’t a terribly good candidate for that. It’s got too many other things going on to really be a good depiction of Mormon experience for non-Mormons — including the gay issue, which kind of overshadows everything else. But the positive responses I’ve received from a few non-Mormon readers — including the one from Amos Lassen, and one from a non-LDS retired literature professor published in my Wisconsin hometown newspaper, and even the surprisingly positive response I got from a vehemently atheist gay British acquaintance — make me wonder if maybe the target isn’t a little closer than I’d thought.

Looking at what I’ve seen of Mormon attempts to portray our experience in literature intended for Mormons and non-Mormons both, I find that a lot of it suffers from one or more of the following problems:

- Eccentricity — showing characters that would be oddballs in any Mormon ward (or anywhere else, for that matter)

- Over-the-top slapstick

- Whitewashing

- Focus on superficial elements of Mormon experience

- Attempts to convert

All of these have their place, but they get in the way of helping non-Mormon readers come away from the reading with a better understanding of what it means to be Mormon.

Some characteristics of a Mormon literature that would speak meaningfully to non-Mormons are obvious inverses of the problems I listed above. Such a literature would present its Mormon characters as being fundamentally ordinary, in both good and bad ways. It would show them as flawed, but sincere in their beliefs. It would take the Mormon context seriously enough not to exaggerate or turn things into a joke. It would not shy away from showing some of the deeper aspects of what it means to be a believing Mormon — the spiritual experiences and such —but would do it in a way that invites readers to accept those elements as part of understanding the character, rather than demanding that readers make a decision as to whether they personally accept Mormonism as true. It may be that such a literature will be more successful if it doesn’t attempt to explain elements of Mormon culture, but simply puts the reader into the middle of it.

Certainly we’ve seen some examples of this. Personally I think the first two Dutcher movies (God’s Army and Brigham City) did this quite well. (I haven’t watched States of Grace and so don’t have an opinion on it.) And Orson Scott Card’s Lost Boys is, bar none, the best depiction of modern suburban Mormonism that I’ve yet read, though I suspect the supernatural element in it functions kind of like homosexuality in No Going Back to distract non-Mormon readers from the Mormonness of it all.

But I think there’s a lot more that can be done. And reading the responses of non-Mormon readers to No Going Back gives me, I think, a clearer idea of what that might involve.

Both Austenland and A & H tackle romantic fantasies and the nature of romantic comedies, their “grotesque mimicry of actual love (A & H 304).”  And when Becky tries to decide whether or not she could actually love Felix romantically, she writes a screenplay with a movie ending.  But the novel’s conclusion isn’t a “Hollywood ending.”  Did you feel that writing it the way you did was risky?

Oh sure. I knew some readers would be angry, and I was sorry for that, because I knew absolutely that the ending was the right one for this story. I think it goes back to genre–those who expected a certain ending might not be willing to go with me where I wanted to take the story. And this story just might not be a good fit for their sensibilities. That’s okay. I knew (was told) that the book would sell better if I made the Hollywood ending work, but for me that would have made the story pointless and been sheer betrayal of the characters. I try to do right by the characters.

Speaking of that ending, it isn’t really an ending, especially as far as romantic comedies go.  How have readers reacted to it?

One of my sisters sobbed when a certain character died, and was elated by the ending. Another of my sisters was dry-eyed throughout the book then sobbed at the ending because it wasn’t what she wanted. I’ve had many letters from women who have experienced Becky’s personal tragedy who were so happy and relieved by the ending, and that was a huge validation for me. I crafted the book carefully to lead to that moment, and I wonder if those readers who were unhappy with it could read the book a second time, what they’d think then. We are often shackled by notions of genre! And the truth is, our lives don’t fit cozily into any particular one. I love genre fiction–I write genre fiction–but I think there’s a place for this kind of story too. I think exploring the great mystery of a genre-less life is exciting, and it gave me a chance to look at how stories affect how we conceive of our own lives and how we tell ourselves our own stories.

Do you think of A & H as subverting the romantic comedy, or does it do something more like open possibilities for other stories than what the conventions of romantic comedies allow for?

Someone said that all artists are by nature subversive, and I guess that’s true. And maybe true of me too, insofar as I’m a possibilities junkie. For me, that’s the most beautiful part of the religion I follow: agency. Choices. We can trap ourselves in life by expecting things to go like they do in a story, and being disappointed when they don’t. The romantic comedy is a fine and ancient genre, and one I respect tremendously. And I think it deserves exploration: why do we honor it? Why do we revisit this story again and again? And what does it mean in our own lives? What draws me as an author, what fascinates me, is both the clash and marriage of two very different things. Becky and Felix. Fantasy and reality. Comedy and tragedy. Ancient and new. Spiritual and mundane. My life is a series of clashing and coupling in strange and enticing ways. I want stories to provide that. A great story should be a place where we can see the messy wonderfulness of life from arm’s length, be entertained, and come away from it seeing our own world a little bit differently.

As I read this novel, I got the feeling that writing it might have changed you. Did it?  How?

I went to a place in A&H I never thought I’d go. Grief is so hard for me. When I write a book, I live in the world where I wrote it, and the death of one character especially was agonizing. But it was good too. I kept chanting that old Greek word to myself–cathartic, cathartic, it’s cathartic. It helped me own the pain and make it productive. I lost a sister a few years ago, as most people have lost someone, and it made me very wary of tragedy and death. Why seek it out in stories when it can accost us so suddenly and so horribly in life? And of course the kind of death in the book is a horror that I tried to never contemplate without shuddering away. But it was good for me to face it and see what it would be like, and to move through it to a different place again. I think that’s part of the wonder of stories. They can take hold of all those kinked emotions inside us and lay them out straight where we can view them, thoughtfully.

What do you hear about A & H?  Is it generating as much discussion as you’d hoped?

I don’t google myself or eavesdrop on others’ conversations in that way, so I only know what comes to me. What I hear both delights and discourages me. I am very sorry when people refer to Becky Jack as “evil.” The judgement in that word makes me worried for us as a people. Is no one allowed to make mistakes? To think differently than we do? I hear the book often dismissed because of the premise, which I’m sorry about as well. The premise was a place to start and a way to explore and ask questions that intrigued me, as well as a way to play with a kind of a story that I’d never read. I’d hoped it could be read and thought about. I think sometimes our lives are precarious, and we can be afraid if they’re nudged a bit, it’ll all come falling down. And some people very honestly have reasons to be worried by the premise, and I understand that. I am so grateful for those readers who are willing to set aside prejudgement and go on this journey with me.

Austenland and A & H seem to be establishing a trajectory of romantic comedy/social prodding for your writing.  Do you think you have more books like these two in your head?

I am writing another Austenland book, which has been tremendous fun. I never considered it until a few months ago when a new story occurred to me, ever so tauntingly. It’s a very different exercise than writing a period fantasy, and I really enjoy doing comedy. As a teenager, I was all about drama, but as I get older, I think making people laugh is one of the noblest things on this planet. Humor requires intelligence, and to laugh and cry together is divine. I haven’t yet explored all that I want to with these stories–why do we need romance? How do stories affect our self-concept and how we see others? Where do fantasy and realism meet? I write whichever story shouts at me the loudest, and I’m always listening, so we’ll see what comes.

Thank you, Shannon, for this wonderful interview!

What artistic works have inspired you?

That’s a big question. I was raised on fairy tales, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Joan Aiken, etc. High school and college was mostly the “classics,” then grad school was literary fiction (living authors do exist!). After selling The Goose Girl, I discovered YA lit, and that makes up 50% of my reading material now. And then there’s music, movies, plays, visual art…hard for me to dissect it, but it all gets into my brain.

You’re a mother with young children.  In your novel, The Actor and the Housewife, Becky wonders if it’s possible to support a spouse and a best friend of the opposite gender. But for aspiring writers with young children, the question of how to support a writing career while meeting the needs of family may be equally compelling.  How do you manage the challenges?

One of the things that fascinates me is the question of balance. I think women are asked to be professional balancers, and we learn on-the-job. I’m somewhat methodical about it: I make a list of priorities; I set aside time for writing then try to keep the writing hounds at bay during the other hours of the day; I make daily writing goals; I constantly reevaluate. As a woman, as a human being, I need a creative outlet. I need to play with words and tell stories. I believe making the time to pursue it makes me a better mom.

On your website, you tell how Actor and Housewife began with a dream.  The dream, which you describe as a glance at a relationship between two people, resembles in its snapshot nature the dream Stephenie Meyer says began her narrative journey. Is something rising in the dreams of Mormon women writers?

Ha! That’d be awesome. There should be an epidemic of Mormon women having novel-inspiring dreams that take over the book world! That’ll get the newspapers talking. I’ve been writing for 26 years (I started young! I swear!) and this is the first story I’ve written that began as a dream, though I knew many writers in college who often trolled their dreams for story fodder. Like Stephenie, I didn’t dream the whole book but used a moment between two characters from a dream as a place to begin. It was serendipitous and I’d love to be so fortunate again, but most of my dreams are just weird.

On your website, you describe A&H as a “labor of love.”  That’s a wonderfully ambiguous phrase.  How was the writing of this novel a labor of love for you?

Well, this is a wonderfully ambiguous novel! The only audience I had in mind for this book was myself. That may seem self-indulgent, but it’s absolutely necessary in order to shut out the other voices and be true to the story. I didn’t know what market would embrace this, if any–Utah? Out of Utah? LDS? Religious? Not religious? Chick lit readers or chick lit loathers? I didn’t even know if my publisher would be willing to get behind it. But I knew I loved this story and these characters, and I knew I wanted to share them. I spent two and a half years on this book. It does mean a lot to me.

Could you tell us a little about why you went the route of the romantic comedy screenplay for the storyline of A&H rather than writing the story in the more lyrical style of your YA novels?

Ooh, good question, and there are so many reasons for this, but I’ll try to narrow my response to just a couple. The 3rd person narrator of my YA novels is so set in stone in my head, she’s not flexible. She is a way to stay close to my main character and yet use language that character couldn’t employ, and so add meaning the character might not see. I love that narrator. But she is limited. For one thing, she has no sense of humor. In order to add humor, I needed a different narrator.

I also needed one who was a strong personality, almost a tangible character in herself. This was for several reasons, but partly because I played with genre in this novel. In my experience, this can make adult readers uncomfortable. By the time we’re adults, we are taught to depend on genre as a handle to hold a story (compare the children and teen sections of a bookstore to the rest–we poor adults only know how to shop by genre!). There’s a huge risk I’ll lose my reader by fiddling with and bending genre so much, so I needed a very strong narrative presence, a lifeline, a feeling that someone was in control, who could see it all and assure the reader in moments of darkness.

And of course it all ties into how Becky met Felix and how they re-met again, and what happened in the end. The romantic comedy movie–its archetypes, charms, and detriments–are the underpinnings of the whole story. We live in an age when this genre largely defines the female viewer in movie theaters. There is always at least one romantic comedy at any multiplex. If I’m tackling questions about femininity, that is something I need to explore. (And interesting side note: most romantic comedies are written and directed by men.)

And other reasons…blah blah blah.

On your website, you speak of the risks of writing this novel—“huge,” you called them.  The first risk you mention seems a personal one, standing on a cliff in a high wind.  The second is writing religion into the story.  Did those risks pay off?

Hm, I’m not sure. That’s tough. The risk paid off for me personally as a reader because I wrote the book I wanted to read. I know the risk paid off for those readers who have sent me personal notes of thanks for this novel, but not for many others. So how do we judge the success of anything overall? If it was a blessing to one single reader, is that enough? I knew it would be risky to write a “genre-less” story about a religious main character, and I would be very, very hesitant to do it again. The judgements against this book and against me personally have been loud at times. I’ve never had this experience before–I’d always felt that my home state and my home religion were very supportive of me as an artist and a person, so it can be a little bewildering when that support is weakened. I don’t regret a single word of the book and feel so privileged that I got to write this story, but the next time, would I be able to turn off the shouting voices? I don’t know. It’s been interesting from an intellectual standpoint. I used to have people ask me all the time to please write a book about an LDS character. But there was an unspoken caveat there, I realize. LDS readers largely want a certain kind of LDS character–one who represents them personally, or perhaps the ideal of themselves, so that the book can positively represent this religion to the rest of the world. I failed at that wish for many readers. Inevitably. Of course, that was not my intention. A book written with that goal in mind would have self-imploded. The wonderful thing I’ve learned is there is no LDS stereotype! No one can agree on what it means to be an “ideal” LDS person. That should be good news.

What have been some of the reactions to the religious material in the novel?

All over the place. I’d say in general, I’ve had the most positive responses from non-LDS Utahns and LDS non-Utahns. I wonder if it’s harder for LDS Utahns, because Becky is one, and if she doesn’t represent the reader personally, then they have a hard time with her. And for non-LDS non-Utahns, while I’ve had many wonderful responses, I think many are a little uncomfortable with the presence of religion. Usually religion in a non-religious book is the big “issue” of the story. The religious person is evil or else questioning and ultimately rejecting it. It’s rare to read about a character whose religion is just a fact of their personality, especially when that religion is Mormonism. The reaction has confirmed for me that I cannot possibly anticipate how each reader will read a story or try to make it work for everyone. I have to write to myself and hope the book finds kindred spirit readers, whoever and wherever they may be.

Clearly, writing a character’s death in the novel was difficult.  I found reading the first nightclub scene just as disturbing.  In that scene, Becky and Felix face the first hard test of what they have between them.  Working out the trouble their actions give rise to requires finer qualities, such as patience and restraint—rather like in a marriage.  At this point in the story, they pay the price for their bond.  The tensions of that scene open the way for a new kind of story.  Where did that scene come from? How did writing it affect you?

It’s interesting that you mention that scene. It was one of the most important scenes in the book for me, a lynch pin of the plot… Okay, I went on to explain why it was important, what the scene meant in terms of Becky’s character arc and where it allowed her, Mike, and Felix to go later on, how it set up the story for a moment of grace, etc., and then I deleted it. Whenever I find myself explaining these sorts of things, I feel wrong about it. I try not to be the Voice of Authority. Once the author says what things Mean, I fear it takes away a reader’s right and ability to decide for herself. The true magic of storytelling never happens in the book but in the mind of each reader. Ooh, that sounds hokey, but I believe it passionately! I can talk about the writing process and more general things, but I try not to pontificate about specific meaning in my own books. At least not in writing. Get me in private, serve me a couple of milkshakes, and I’ll tell you everything.

It’s a deal.  In milkshakes veritas, as the Romans liked to say.

Part Two will post 3/16.