Mormon Artist Magazine Literature editor and fellow AMVer Katherine Morris suggested I post here at AMV questions and answers cut from the interview.   So, for your reading pleasure:

There also seems to be an underlying theme of agency in your writing: “[I]t enables those who read or hear it to create choices for themselves”. How does the concept of agency inform your writing?

The “It” here refers to “sustainable language.”  Sustainable language is creative, proactive, productive language that effectively sparks others to create their own risk-choice spectrums and generate possibilities for themselves.  It’s the language of life. Sustainable language goes out on its faith in others’ creativity, creative drive being a far more commonplace phenomenon in all levels of society than is popularly supposed. Good language—sustainable language—allows for that creativity and invigorates human agency.

Bad language runs the other way.  Through fear, guilt, shame, and other devices of control it prods people in the direction it wants them to go, dismissing agency as counterproductive and undependable.

I believe language and human agency to be intimately bound up together. I depend on readers’ native creativity and tendency to exercise choice to make something meaningful for themselves (within reason) of the words I put out there.  The question of language—what it is and what it does to and for us—lies at the heart of my novel The Pictograph Murders.  At a critical moment the protagonist catches wind of a key element of the villain’s philosophy—he “perceived himself as having the power, and so he could make things mean what he wanted them to”—a version of the might makes right stance, which shows as clearly in rhetorical acts as it does in physical ones.

What role does religious symbolism play in The Pictograph Murders?

I think what symbolism comes across depends on what symbolism readers bring to the story.  Since The Pictograph Murders seems to sell in a steady trickle in non-LDS bookstores on the tourist circuit here in southeastern Utah, like the local museum gift shop where people visit from all over the world, readers may well find a wider range of symbolic elements in the book than I can anticipate. To my thinking, that’s perfect.  My hope is that even readers who distrust religious symbolism will find archetypal appeal in the story’s spiritual elements.

When I read your essays/posts on language, I feel your gentle urging for awareness and watchfulness in the use of language.  In “The Downstream Principle” your concern is with the rhetoric of those with two different perspectives on the use of a canyon. “But given the weighty importance of what I don’t know about this place, I’m cleaning up my language”. Could people be substituted for place and what suggestions do you have for cleaning up language?

“Could ‘people’ be substituted for ‘place’?”  Yes.  Practices that result in exploitation and manipulation of or damage to the natural environment or that display carelessness or unawareness are only extensions of our behavior in the human environment. In other words, if I’m doing it to nature, I’m doing it to people, too, at one level or another.  I don’t think we can improve our behavior in the natural sector without improving behavior in the human one. I said earlier that spirituality is a quality of character, not of place, and so carries across in person from home to church to field to canyon.  Furthermore, human language now exerts tremendous influence upon the world. It creates experience for others and can affect them powerfully, for good or for ill, with some effects extending beyond sight. That suggests that how I behave in language is a deeply spiritual concern.

Characteristics of human language make it a wilderness in its own right, chock full of wild beauty and miraculous realms where fabulous adventures unfold and heroes and villains choose their parts.  It contains a wealth of cultural and natural resources. Whenever I act to clean up my language, I examine it for unfortunate or wrongful intent, looking for evidence that I’ve relied on anger, fear, guilt, etc. to assert myself.  I also look for shortsightedness.  To me, the question of bad language reaches beyond what’s commonly considered off-colored or offensive—it goes to usual words thought clean as a whistle that are spoken in common conversations but carry the interest to control, exploit, or harm.

But really, my hope for my language is not just to clean it up but to find ways to apply the common dictum many outdoor websites and camping brochures contain: Leave the environment better than it was when you found it.

For those AMV readers who haven’t followed your career as it has unfolded over the past several years (and documented on the AML-List), could you briefly explain your journey into creative non-fiction?

I had been working as a news reporter for a few years and having the time of my life, but my wife and I could tell that it was not going to pay the bills. So we made the decision to give our careers a much needed boost by earning MFAs.

I know. Not the smartest way to boost one’s career. But we were young.

So we moved to Alaska with our two young children to go to UAF’s creative writing program. I went in to learn fiction, but the thing that was taking up most of the space between my ears at the time was my relationship with Mormonism. I found myself writing to understand that relationship, going into my past and teasing out the experiences that had brought me to this point.

My first attempts weren’t very good, and my essays turned out to be undisciplined and wandering. Fortunately, my studies in fiction had started to teach me how a story works. Once I learned to use those mechanisms, the essays began to take on a constructive shape and people started to like them. I got rejection letters with handwritten notes attached. And one day, Dialogue decided to print something I had written. Dialogue has always had good taste.

I can’t entirely tell from the Zarahemla Books description — are the essays in What of the Night? focused mainly on Mormonism, and mainly personal rather than topical? What’s the scope of this collection?

The essays document my journey through Mormonism. For much of my life, I had this idea that, being born in the Church, I had been born at the Tree of Life. I felt sorry for the poor schmucks who had to follow the iron rod through the dark swamps of Lehi’s dream in order to find the truth. My life, as I saw it, was not a journey but an orbit. I just had to endure to the end at the tree, resisting the temptations of the Great and Spacious Building, waiting under the branches until I died and went to heaven.

I started to realize in college that, just like the next schmuck, I had to take my own journey. I sometimes say that I had to leave the Tree of Life in order to seek the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—and that required forging into the dark swamps. The book’s cover very much captures that idea.

So you’ll see me getting my first glimpse of the difficulties of my spiritual journey as a Cub Scout, and then heading full force into the tensions of religion and spirituality as a missionary and then as a father. At the end, I try to bring the elements of all the essays together to create—not a stopping place, but the staging area for the next journey.

Anyone writing personal essays that come of the Mormon experience has to account, at least somewhat, for the looming presence of Eugene England — not only as a writer of the form, but also as a theorist. As a critic who claims a special place for the personal essay in Mormon letters. What’s your take on England, his work, his discussion of the personal essay, and your own work and theorizing?

I worked as Gene’s administrative assistant for the last year of his life—an experience I write about in the book—and yes, he influenced me deeply. By far the most important idea he gave me is the overarching importance of giving every side its due. His essays are often uncomfortable to read because he goes very deliberately to places in Mormonism and in his own life and prejudices that are tense and volatile. But he does so not to expose corruption or trumpet the cause of righteousness, but to gain the wisdom that comes from dwelling in the tension of spiritual and religious difficulties.

I’ve taken a different narrative path than he has, though. My essays are very story-based, almost never heading into argument or analysis, as Gene’s do. That’s just my style. Stories are good soil, adding to the richness of person’s moral imagination, enabling more complex thoughts to grow.

I think Gene had a point about the personal essay being a genre especially adapted to Mormon expression. There’s a pragmatic strain in us that makes us value “truth” over novelty. If it really happened, it’s more important because a real person is attached to it, and real people have real souls. We all see ourselves as being the main character in a long story, beginning in the pre-mortal life and—in fact—never ending. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Eternity hangs on our choices. I don’t think that personal essay has a corner on important Mormon literature, but I understand its power. After all, I found my voice as a writer when I went into my own life.

I like the cover. Who created it and what was the thinking that went in to it?

The cover art was painted by Anna Waschke, an artist I was friends with in Alaska. I’ve used her work in many of my projects, such as on the covers of issues 150 and 155 of Sunstone. Another of her paintings also serves as inside art for the book. This cover image comes from a series of “portraits” she made, none of which had anything to do with my essays. I think the image encapsulates the basic tension of the book: the head versus the heart in matters of religion. How those tensions inevitably bring us to dark, chaotic places, but how a strange beauty can arise from that chaos. Interestingly, Anna is an atheist and not into religion, but everything she paints resonates with me on a deeply spiritual level.

Okay I have to ask this, and to be honest this may just be me projecting my own fears, but: you’ve written a fair amount over the years about writing and craft and even championed some specific approaches to thinking about writing. Does putting yourself out there in such a, well, collected way, bring with it any anxiety at all? Like you are a poster boy for an approach and have to live up to it? If so, how do you deal with it?

Well, you have to understand where I’m coming from. Before I started my study of fiction, I was a terrible storyteller. Despite all my reading and my English degree, I could not write a story to save my life. I’m kind of like my son who has Asperger’s syndrome: he had to learn to read emotions by making a study of the human face. He doesn’t possess the mental tools most of us have that allow us to read emotion innately. That’s me with stories: I had to learn the mechanisms that run a story, because otherwise I’d never be able to write. You people who have a natural ability to tell stories, I honor you and would like to throw a maltov cocktail through your window.

My dad, who is a computer scientist and an inventor, tells me that once he understands a program or a system, he can picture it as a working schema in his mind and manipulate it to see how it works, and how to improve it. The same thing now happens to me with stories. I can read a novel or watch a movie and all the pieces of the story will come together in my head. I can see how each part affects the others. I can see what would happen if parts were manipulated. It’s like having a Terminator brain.

This was such an exciting discovery, and I worked so long to gain it, that I wanted to share it around just in case I could save some other people some trouble. But I did a terrible job. Perhaps one or two people will benefit from anything I’ve written. But for the most part, I think the little manifestos I sent into cyberspace were mostly me working out the system that serves me so well.

I do use a set of storytelling principles when I write. It’s impossible not to, they’re hardwired into my brain now. They take the anxiety out of writing and open up creative space. I know my work will stand up the way an architect knows that a building he designed won’t fall. Someone may not like my style or my content or whatever, but I can always demonstrate the soundness of my structures.

Related to the previous question: you are a reader, writer, editor, managing editor, blogger and critic. How do you balance all those roles and where do they help and hinder each other?

It’s true that I’ve done a lot less writing since I became an editor. I find that a great deal of my creative energy goes into bringing out the best in an article or essay. But I get a lot of satisfaction from editing, so I don’t feel cheated at all. I do wish that I had more time to read stuff I don’t have to edit. The New Yorker helps with that. I sometimes get a little teary at how good the writing in that magazine is and how I didn’t have to do one bit of work to get it that way.

What specific works of media/art — Mormon or otherwise — have you consumed recently that you totally dig and would recommend, especially to a radical middle reader/viewer/listener?

It’s either because I’m lame, or because I read soooo much on a day-to-day basis, but my main source of entertainment is movies and television. I’ve become a devotee of the Sopranos, which, in my universe, is far and away the best television show of all time and an epic work of art. I don’t know if I could recommend it to the radical Mormon middle, since every episode would be rated R. But if you want to see what happens when masters of storytelling are given a camera and a budget, watch this show. I always feel more solid after watching an episode.

What’s next for you as a writer? Any projects you can reveal to us at this time? What’s getting you charged up to get to work at this point in time?

I should probably feel silly about this, but I’m not going to. I’m writing comic books, and I’ve never had so much fun in my life. Toward the beginning of my tenure at Sunstone, I put together an issue on Mormonism and Asia and thought, “Hey, I should get some Mormon manga in there, just for kicks.” So I wrote up the arm-hacking story of Ammon, storyboarded it, and sent it to my illustrator, Jett Atwood (who, I must say, did a bang-up job). The response was so positive that I decided to make the Book of Mormon comic a regular staple at Sunstone. (The stories recently won the coveted “Book of Mormon Retranslation Prize” from Salt Lake City Weekly. The competition was fierce!)

The thing that has satisfied me the most about this project is that Book of Mormon characters are finally starting to be interesting to me. My whole life, I’ve been pretty bored by the Book of Mormon. It’s just so danged didactic—every character is a walking sermon. Writing these stories has forced me to dig deep and find out what would motivate these characters to act in the ways they do, and I’ve found some very compelling characters that have really grown on me. When I scripted the martyrdom of Abinadi, I just about broke down and cried.

Sunstone subscribers can follow these stories from issue to issue (we’ve worked our way through Zeniff and Noah, and now we’re heading into Alma). But next year, we’ll likely release a collection of the comics to bookstores, or maybe on an iPhone app. I’m also working with Jett on a graphic novel about Abish, which should be out next year. I’m also working on editing The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer vol. 2, using material from the Sugar Beet, and the special comics issue of Sunstone, which will rock. Hard.

Thanks Stephen!

The Poons leaped to the top of my long list of Couple-Creators whom I eventually intend to interview for this series the second I found out Annie was married and to an important photographer. Somehow, the idea that she might be married had never occurred to me (sometimes it seems like all of my favorite artsy Mormon women are single). Then, shortly thereafter, Randy Astle invited me to interview them as part of the special New York edition of Mormon Artist. I said yes.

That article is now up (link) and I hope you will read it. Although it does not appear on AMV, it is still an official part of my Couple-Creators series and besides—they’re just a great coupla artists to know. I’ve been in email contact with Annie for a year or so now and she’s one of the sweetest people I know. Plus she’s a killer animator (the cartoon below is in the MoMA’s permanent collection). And Kah Leong’s photography is always striking. You must visit both their websites (Annie, Kah Leong) and check out the ad campaign they’re working on together (1, 2, 3). But maybe the interview first?

So tell us about the first weekend.

The first weekend went well. We’ve had a little technical craziness but we have overcome it, at least for the most part. I think the show is in a really good place. I feel confident in the cast and in the director, and I’ve been in the booth acting as stage manager so I feel good about that as well. We have a really solid production team and things came together really well in a really short period of time.

The difficulty, as per always, is getting people to come. Getting butts in the seats. I can ply my students with extra credit and bonus points till the cows come home, but even if they all come, it won’t fill our houses. It’s always a gamble; you can feel so good about the show you’re doing, the product you’re putting out there — but if no one shows up, then it’s almost — almost — pointless. Naturally I’ve grown in the process, and I like these characters so it’s a thrill to see them on stage. But I know them so well — I want others to have the chance to get to know them as well.

How has the production’s execution matched your original imagining?

One of my initial goals was to have the play feel filmy so that we wouldn’t have to see any actual film played on stage. The play does have a lot of brief scenes that are connected by title cards — just like silent pictures. One of the nice things about the literal theatre space itself is that it frames things; the proscenium allows for the audience to be separate, and the stage is raised so that you feel like you’re looking up at a screen. There are a couple of scenes in the play that “intercut” with each other — we go back and forth between two locations and two conversations so that questions in one place are answered in the other and vice versa, almost making the two separate scenes into one longer, deeper conversation.

Workshopping the play a couple of years back in grad school, I came to realize how important the live piano was to the show. It lends an air of the period and compliments that idea of framing what is happening on stage — the piano is visible to the audience, but is outside of the main frame. With this production we made the choice to have all of the sound effects in the show come from the piano, and I feel that is a strong and effective choice. I’ve already written into the notes for the play that live music is definitely preferred.

I think we have a great cast. I’m particularly pleased with the two leading ladies in the show. I think they carry it very well between them. I think their characterizations align with my initial imaginings, and that they successfully portray real people. It’s a relief as a writer to see that happen, to make that connection between what is possible on the page and what actually is enacted. So I count myself lucky in that regard.

What sort of feedback have you been getting? And what sort of feedback are you giving yourself (that is, what have you learned that you can apply in future projects)?

The feedback so far has been very positive. There is a review in The Deseret News that came out this week. Also we’ve had two audience talkbacks wherein some great questions have been brought up. People seem to like the characters and the story. They really enjoy the setting for the show — the title cards and the live piano — because it gives the piece a very nice ambience. People are also responding really well to the comical aspects of the piece, which means a lot to me; I’m self-conscious of my attempts at comedy, so it’s really great to hear an audience laugh in the right places.

As far as rewrites go, people like the characters and have actually said they want to see more of them. That the play happens just a hair too fast. Maybe there are a couple of scenes missing, though I can’t quite put my finger on what they are at the moment. It’s been great to see the show on its feet and see things work from beginning to end. Hearing the script aloud and being able to feel out the pacing with actors rather than just myself makes a huge difference in the process. I’ve cut things and rearranged things, and hope to soon figure out where those mysterious phantom scenes might go if I do go about writing them.

Something else along the lines of considering things for future projects: As a woman and a playwright, I try to create solid female roles. At least one, but I usually get away with two or even three. With this project, one of the concepts I started with was for Max and Sam to be surrounded by men, as that’s a proper presentation of the film industry in 1916. A lot of industries, actually. It made sense for the two lead actresses to be surrounded by a cast of, literally, three to five men. Next goal is to try to write a small cast that is all female. What’s it about? I couldn’t tell you. But that’s where it’s going to start.

Just one more question, a practical one: If someone’s in the area and wants to come, are tickets still available? What do they need to do? Will you be signing programs?

LOL. I can sign programs if people want; I don’t know that they will be worth much. The show has four more performances: Friday (the 16th) a Saturday matinee at 2:30, Saturday night, and Monday night. The evening shows are all at 7:30. Tickets are available at the door starting at 6:30 or at any time online at www.provostage.org. There will be post-show discussions after the matinee and Monday evening performances if anyone is interested in those.

This is the third and final entry in this series. The first part of our interview was about Ms Hallstom’s novel-in-stories Bound on Earth. The second was about her editorship of the literary journal Irreantum. This third portion is about the short-story collection, Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction, that she edited for Zarahemla Books (review).

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Let’s start with what criteria a story had to meet to even be considered for inclusion. What were the ground rules going in to this anthology?

I went into this project looking for the best stories I could find written by, for, or about Mormons over the last fifteen years or so. (Originally, I’d intended to limit the date range from 2000 to the present, but there were a number of stories published in the late 90s that I felt needed to be included, so I abandoned that idea.) Not only did I want the stories I selected to represent quality literature, but I felt it was important to include stories with recognizably Mormon elements. Most of the stories contain overt references to Mormon culture or theology, and all of the stories, in my opinion, explore Mormon themes. I also wanted the authors in this anthology to have a background in LDS culture and theology–I didn’t consider stories written “about” Mormonism by writers without close personal ties to the religion. And, finally, I wanted to make sure that the anthology’s content wouldn’t disqualify it from being taught in a BYU class. In other words, while I welcomed challenging and thought-provoking stories, I wanted to keep things PG-13.

Obviously, in order to be considered “complete” as an anthology, some authors had to be included no matter what. How did the selection process differ for those authors? I.e., were you more concerned with picking a “typical” Doug Thayer story, or just what you thought was his best?

There were definitely some big names that I knew must be included. In the beginning, I either purchased or borrowed from the library a number of important short story collections: Lewis Horne’s The House of James, Brady Udall’s Letting Loose the Hounds, Mary Clyde’s Survival Rates, Orson Scott Card’s Keeper of Dreams, Darrell Spencer’s Caution: Men in Trees, Paul Rawlins’ No Lie Like Love, Todd Robert Petersen’s Long After Dark, Margaret Blair Young’s Love Chains, Phyllis Barber’s Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination. (I include all these titles because anybody interested in Mormon lit and/or the short story should check them out.)

As I read through each collection, I noted the story or stories that I liked the most and that I felt best fit the vision of Dispensation. Often, the “Mormon-ness” of a story was an important factor as I made decisions. For example, “The 12-Inch Dog” is probably my favorite story from Darrell Spencer’s Caution: Men in Trees, but it’s not particularly Mormon. The story we ended up using, the also excellent “Blood Work,” was a better fit because it dealt head-on with Mormon characters and themes. Orson Scott Card’s story “Christmas at Helaman’s House” was one of the four stories categorized under the heading “Mormon Stories” in his short story collection, and I felt it was important to include a Mormon story from Card in Dispensation. (My favorite Card story from Keeper of Dreams is the dystopian “Elephants of Poznan,” and while it isn’t Mormon fiction, it’s a really cool story, and I was glad to be able to reprint it in the most recent issue of Irreantum.)

I also took into account author preference when dealing with well-known authors, especially when there were two or three stories that I enjoyed equally. Some authors pointed me in the direction of stories I didn’t know existed. Paul Rawlins, for example, had recently published “The Garden” in the literary magazine Image and sent it to me after I approached him about a different story, and I was so happy he did. “The Garden” is one of my favorite stories in the book.

Some stories you originally discovered and published in Irreantum. How did your past history with those stories affect your objectivity?

Well, to be honest, I never felt conflicted about including stories from Irreantum. In fact, only two of the twenty-eight stories—Jack Harrell’s “Calling and Election” and Darin Cozzens’ “Light of The New Day”—were chosen from the many stories I’ve come in contact with as I’ve worked on Irreantum. Both Cozzens and Harrell are important and accomplished enough Mormon short story writers that they would have been included in this anthology even without the Irreantum connection, and both of these stories show them at the top of their game. Both stories won 1st place in the Irreantum fiction contest, also, and I was interested in highlighting stories that have won important contests.

Same question to the nth power regarding your story “Thanksgiving.”

Unlike the Irreantum stories, I was quite conflicted about using one of my own stories in the anthology. Chris Bigelow (Zarahemla’s publisher) and I discussed it, and decided that since “Thanksgiving” had won awards from both the Utah Arts Council and Dialogue magazine it would be an appropriate choice. And for me, personally, I’ve felt my writer-self getting slowly swallowed up by my editor-self over the last couple of years—between Dispensation and Irreantum and Segullah and teaching, I’ve had very little time for my own writing. I didn’t get into this business to become an editor, although I’ve appreciated the editing opportunities that have come my way. But my primary intention has always been to be a writer, and if Chris agreed that “Thanksgiving” should be included, I didn’t want to sacrifice my writer-self to my editor-self yet again.

I noticed that a high percentage of stories are from outsider perspectives — characters who are not LDS or on the outs with that heritage. Which suggests to me that you to some measure agree with the oft-stated maxim that the way to write great LDS literature is to get at it from the outside, not the inside. Comment?

Well, I disagree with this question on a number of levels. First, a “high percentage” of the stories aren’t from outsider perspectives, in my opinion. By my count, in seventeen of the twenty-eight stories, the point-of-view character would describe him or herself as a Mormon. In many of the stories, the point-of-view character might not be Mormon, but his or her interaction with a Mormon is the crux of the story (“Buckeye the Elder,” “Healthy Partners,” etc.). Only four stories are written from the perspective of characters who are “on the outs” with Mormonism (by which you mean, I suppose, that the character makes it known that he or she was once an active Mormon but isn’t anymore).

And I’ve got to say, thumbing through the anthology in order to make an accounting of which point-of-view character is Mormon enough has been a little irritating. LDS writers should be able to write from the point-of-view of all sorts of people, and Mormon stories should be able to include the points-of-view of those with all sorts of Mormon experiences (“inside” or “outside”), without these choices being translated into a sweeping generalization about what kind of literature a Mormon author ought to write. Some of these stories were written by believing Mormons about non-Mormons. Some were written by former Mormons about believing Mormons. And drawing these distinctions, frankly, is giving me a headache. Honestly, the “insider-ness” or “outsider-ness” of each point-of-view character never even occurred to me as I was editing this anthology. I just wanted to include strong fiction. This isn’t to say that I didn’t reject some stories with antagonistic “outsider” characters. I did do that. But not because the narrator was on the outs with Mormonism. It was because the story was too agenda-driven to work as good literature. I rejected stories with an “insider” main character if they were excessively agenda-driven, too.

As far as the “oft-repeated maxim” goes (and I suppose you’re referring to Wallace Stegner’s observation that the “Great Mormon Novel” will be penned by someone who has left the church, then come “part way” back? http://www.motleyvision.org/2009/abandon-all-hope-mormon-lit-cant-be-great/): I wholeheartedly reject that idea. Some of my favorite stories in this anthology were written by believing Mormons, about believing Mormons, so, obviously, it’s possible for an insider to write excellent fiction. If I don’t believe this is possible, what in the world am I doing as a writer and an editor and a teacher operating from within Mormon culture? But this idea has already been debated quite vociferously on AMV, and this interview is already pretty lengthy, so I’ll leave it at that.

Describe briefly, if you can, the gathering process. Where did you look? How many stories did you read? Did you try to balance the number of story types? Were some inclusion decisions made based on how hard or easy permission was to obtain?

At the very beginning of the process, I asked a number of people I trust to recommend writers and stories. I also got some great suggestions from AML members, both via the AML-list and the now-defunct AML forum. From that, I compiled a list and started reading. I got my hands on the previously-mentioned short story collections, and I also read a number of stories published in Mormon magazines and in mainstream literary journals. Once I’d worked through all the recommendations, I simply started reading back issues of Irreantum, Dialogue, and Sunstone, and found some great stories there that I would have otherwise overlooked. It was important to me that this anthology not only showcase well-known writers, but also highlight up-and-coming Mormon writers who are incredibly talented but not (yet) as famous.

I don’t know if I can count the number of stories I read. I just know I read a lot of them. Tons. For about six months, almost all my fiction reading time was dedicated solely to the short stories I was considering for this collection. And, yes, I did try to have some balance: I wanted to be sure to include stories with an international or multicultural perspective; I wanted to include some speculative fiction; I wanted to include both traditional and more experimental fiction-writing methods, and so on. I was also acutely aware that I had more male writers than female writers from which to choose. Although I’d hoped at the outset to have equal representation by both men and women, in the end I found myself with ten stories by women and eighteen by men. Which is to say that, while balance was certainly on my mind, ultimately the quality of each individual story was the most important factor in making my decisions.

As far as permissions are concerned, there were a few stories that were important enough that we were willing to pay for them. Most previous publishers (and authors holding rights) graciously allowed us to reprint the stories without a fee, which was very helpful. We were able to publish all the stories we wanted to publish, which was a relief, since our budget for reprint rights was pretty small.

Did you determine book length first and choose the right number of stories to fit, or did you pick the right stories and see how long it was? If the former, how hard was it to narrow them down?

Initially, I’d planned to choose twenty stories. After my first round of cuts, I had twenty-five. Then a few more must-have stories pushed their way under my nose, and the number increased to twenty-eight, and at that point we had to put a stop to it, mainly in order to keep the price of the book under $20. And even with twenty-eight stories, which is a lot, there were still a number of stories that were difficult to cut.

Finally, to get us back the title of this series, how did you decide what order to arrange the selected stories in?

Some of it was personal preference on my part. I wanted to make sure that my favorite stories, for example, were spaced throughout the anthology, so the reader’s attention would be continuously engaged. What I’ve realized, though, is that with the short story, one person’s taste can be so wildly different from another’s that my favorite stories might be another literature-lover’s least favorite. Stories that I would call home runs have been other people’s “ho hum”s. I should have expected this (in all my years working on the Irreantum fiction contest, for example, never once has there been a story that was a unanimous first place winner among the committee members when we sat down to begin deliberations)—but it’s still surprising to me the range of responses a short story call elicit. I also wanted the arrangement of stories to ensure that similar stories weren’t back-to-back . . . although some stories were similar stylistically but dissimilar thematically, and vice versa. In the end, I simply wanted the anthology to take its readers on a journey to both familiar and unexpected places, to introduce us to both recognizable and surprising characters, and to explore both time-honored and exciting new themes. It’s my hope that Dispensation has accomplished this goal, and that the stories in the book will be read and enjoyed by all sorts of readers.

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A couple Saturdays ago, my wife and I were visiting friends who are notable (among other reasons) for buying art. They have a Bryan Mark Taylor for instance and they had two other pieces on the wall near their computer that I found quite striking. They were the work of Casey Jex Smith, whose name I suppose I should have recognized as I had seen it often enough. For instance, he was the driving force behind the now defunct Mormon arts forum Head of Shiz.

Our friends then set me in front of their computer to look at his site, and also that of his wife, Amanda Michelle Smith.

I’ve since been nosing around a bit, reading up on them — reviews like this and gushing like this — and I must say, of all the Mormon artists I know, I have a hard time imagining a more in-your-face journeying than some of the stuff they’re sticking in galleries.

So of course I ran them down.

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Theric: Last Saturday after I saw two of your paintings on a friend’s wall, Casey, I hopped online and spent a while perusing your work online. I was struck by how intentionally religious so much of your work is — specifically in the names of works, bits of temple iconography, images from old Church clip art and 1970s Bookcraft picture books — I’m curious how the greater art world reacts to your defiant Mormonness?

Casey: Half of the art world is intrigued by the mysterious iconography of small, quirky population residing in Utah. The other half dismisses my work outright. I try to work with people who are the former but have had the displeasure of working with many of the latter. However open-minded the art world pretends to be, they are not as a whole.

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Theric: I wasn’t surprised to see that you have a 2003 BFA from BYU. Your style was something I saw a lot in BYU galleries at the time — the seemingly random images bleeding into each over a plain background — I’m glad to finally be able to ask this of someone from your generation of BYU artists: what was so compelling about that mode of composition and how did you distinguish yourself from your peers?

Casey: When I was at BYU I wasn’t making that kind of art at all. I did two shows that were conceptually based on the question of male violence and where does it come from. A nature/nurture thing and reaction to 911. For those shows I did large reproductions violent boy drawings on canvas, sculptures of melted GI Joes, projections of war video games on the XBOX, and canvases with ironic stills taken from the GI Joe Cartoon. It was very mediocre work. I didn’t start having the overlapping imagery on a white background until my 2nd semester of grad school at the San Francisco Art Institute. I started using drawing as my primary medium again. With that I think comes a natural tendency to draw what is important and leave the background unfinished. In drawing as opposed to painting, it’s more accepted to do that.

But I do remember well the work you are talking about. The printmaking department had a big influence on that kind of work. I remember lots of map fragments, drawn lines, sacred geometry, and almost no color.

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Theric: Amanda, I see your work and I think immediately of Henry Darger, only with the addition of ceramic flowers. (I might as well add now that while I like Darger quite a lot, I like your work better. Just don’t tell the people dropping tons of cash on Darger.) Are you intentionally referencing him? And if so, to what end? (And if not, how did you come by your blond girls in not-quite-normalland?)

Amanda: This is actually a question I’ve been getting for years.  Funny thing is, and maybe this is a little embarassing to admit too, but I didn’t even know who Henry Darger was until I was in graduate school and I got this question for the first time.  At that point I sought out his work, became familiar with it and came to love him.  I’ve even shown at his gallery in NYC, but he’s never been a direct influence on my work.  While Darger has created a fantasy world spirited little girls fighting for their lives, I feel like his narratives are very different from mine, which are mostly stories from my life.  I grew up with three sisters and my mother, my dad not being around very much and not very involved in my upbringing.  I lived in this hyper-feminine household and so these little girls just became my mouthpieces for telling stories.  They’re characters I feel comfortable speaking through.

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Theric: One thing I like best about your work is how most pieces flit back and forth between painting and sculpture. Could you comment on what you’re trying to accomplish by melding the second and third dimensions?

Amanda: I think at first that this was just unintentional.  I started college as a psych major, and then I was a visual technology major, then I was a painting major and ended up being forced to take ceramics as an elective.  I found out then that you could paint on clay and when I discovered that it became only natural to want to take advantage of clays three dimensional nature and get the best of both worlds.  I love reliefs.  I’ve been looking at the work of the della Robbia’s and wanting to get even more 3D lately.

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Theric: Since Casey had a book published by the Mormon Artists Group, I assume you’re tapped into some of the Mormon artist communities. What sort of relationship do you have with the community / communities and what value do you find therein?

Casey: Glen has been a huge supporter of my work. He has purchased several pieces, published the drawings I make during church meetings on Sundays, come to my openings in NYC, and put me in his newsletters. He has been a great friend as well and we have had many wonderful conversations about what it means to be Mormon and creating art. This kind of feedback is really important to me because my work most of the time exists outside of Mormon Culture and is purchased and seen by a secular audience. I am fine with that, but half of my original intent is to help push the definitions of what “Mormon Art” is for Mormons. Glen has helped my work circulate within the Mormon art world.

Aside from the Mormon Artists Group, there is a small group of BYU graduates (Jared Lindsay Clark, Todd Chilton, Sean Morello, Jared Latimer, Adam Bateman, Trent Reynolds, Allan Ludwig, Daniel Everett, Ryan Browning, Susan Krueger-Barber, Chris Lynn, and others) that have stayed in touch and supported each other in navigating the art world. I wish there were more women in that list. My biggest support of course has been my wife Amanda who is dealing with the gallery system too.

Amanda: I love Glen Nelson who heads up the Mormon Artists Group, but I’ve never worked with him directly, I’ve only met him through Casey.  I have a lot of friends who are Mormon artists though and I’m married to one as well.  I feel like there’s definitely a community there and I feel like it’s incredibly valuable to have a group of people you can bond with over faith, career ambitions and common experiences.  The Mormon art world is so small and comfortable.

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Theric: Getting narrower in our definition of community, do you ever create work together?

Amanda: I love to collaborate with Casey.  We’ve been so busy lately in our own careers that we haven’t made a lot of time for collaborations, but we have grand ideas and we’ve done some in the past.  I feel a little insecure working with him just because I think he’s a genius and a brilliant draftsman.  Ceramics is technically very challenging for people who aren’t familiar with the medium so usually our collaborations tend to be drawings.  I always end up feeling like my portion of the work looks clumsy inserted next to his impeccably rendered pen drawings.

Casey: She’s insecure but in all honesty she is a better draftswoman, especially when it comes to the human form. My figures are always awkward and stiff and hers are graceful and full of expression. I love to collaborate with her but it’s hard to just make enough solo work to supply the galleries I work with and her as well. We will collaborate in the future when we hit a slow spot.

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Theric: How did you two meet, anyway? Did art play a role in that?

Amanda: Yes, I think art’s played a role in everything we have since the beginning.  I moved to the Bay Area about a year after Casey started grad school at the San Francisco Art Institute.  From the minute I moved out here I started hearing about Casey this and Casey that.  I’d never even met this guy and he had a girlfriend at the time and yet at least four different people tried to set us up.  Long story short, my friend was dating his roommate and she brought me to one of his art shows.  It was kind of like a blind date.  I was so impressed with his work not only because it was technically impressive and beautiful but because it had so much integrity and substance, plus he was cute, so I fell for him.

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Theric: Creating as a couple — no matter what it’s like now — is a particularly Mormon pastime in the sense that someday, the goal is, you will be Creators. In that sense, how does your work reflect your faith (and vice versa)?

Amanda: Well to be honest I’ve never thought of that before.  I mean, I think creating artwork has given Casey and I a special kind of bond that I’m very grateful for.  As far as my work reflecting my faith, most of my artwork doesn’t revolve around Mormon themes, but my values are absolutely imbedded in it.  While the trend in contemporary art seems to be moving more in the direction of the edgy and the abject I find myself going in another direction.  I want my artwork to be rated G and I try to make it “virtuous, lovely and of good report or praiseworthy” although that’s up for debate.

Casey: Ditto.

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Theric: I think it’s safe to say you’re both still at the beginning of your artistic careers. So how do you balance art with concerns like rent and family planning? And how is success changing your approaches to art?

Casey: It’s hard. Part of me does feel like I’m a pathetic musician holding out to be a rockstar. I have a writer friend that ditched his writing career to go back to law school and get a proper job that could support his family. But I just don’t have a fall back. There is no plan B. Luckily we’ve had a bit of success to keep us going and help us feel that we’re not wasting our time. Having a baby in August might change some things. We’ll see.

Amanda: It is hard to balance our love of art with provident living and family planning.  Both making art and living the gospel are labors of love but if they’re ever at odds we try to make living the gospel priority number one.  If it wasn’t, I think we’d both be unemployed starving artists, making art all day everyday.  It would be our only priority, our religion.  Instead, we go to work, come home and go to work on our art when we’re not too tired.  We’re expecting our first baby in August, so we’ll see how that changes things.  I have a feeling it will slow us down even more.

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Theric: What advice do you offer Mormon artist couples like yourselves?

Amanda: I think sometimes the pressures of the art world make it easy to lose sight of what’s important.  There’s not a lot of room for faith in it, so I guess my advice would have to be that you can have both.  Keep your testimony strong and keep working hard on your art.  I also think you have to sacrifice for each other because it’s not an easy career choice financially or emotionally.

Casey: You can be an artist and good member at the same time. You can tackle difficult questions in your art without turning your back on your faith.

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Theric: Any question I should have asked, but didn’t? Any upcoming shows or suchlike that you want to plug before you close? Anything else at all? Favorite sandwich?

Casey: Favorite sandwich is an italian sub with everything except mayo. I have a show at Galerie Polaris in Paris right now and I’m working on a show at Allegra LaViola Gallery for October that will have a live performance of a Dungeons & Dragons adventure that is based on a drawing of Lehi’s Vision.

Amanda: Favorite sandwich… does a burrito count?  Upcoming shows, I have a group show in NYC at Allegra LaViola Gallery coming up in June.  It’s called “Off the Wall.”  That’s about it right now.

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Theric: Thanks so much for participating, both of you. Let me start by congratulating Sandra on her AML Award for online writing. Hilariously enough, on your blog you had said just the week before that you “only learned about it [the AML] a few weeks ago.” How does it feel to go from ignorant to laureled in so short a time?

Sandra:   I think mostly what I feel is conspicuous.  It is rather like walking into a party to realize that everyone happened to look toward the door just as you entered.

Howard:  I’m glad I decided on pants that day.  

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Theric: What is it that makes your blog so dang good anyway?

Howard:  Sandra’s blog is so dang good because it gives me a new and refreshing perspective on what’s going on in my house. I can’t promise that it’ll do this for anybody else, though.

Sandra: I don’t spend much time thinking about whether the things I write are good or not.  I just write about the things that matter to me.

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Theric: Of course, Howard’s been doing the the online comic Schlock Mercenary (also updated daily) for a long, long time now — even got a Hugo nod last year. So combining online art, success and awards is old hat for the Taylers. Plenty people would like to replicate that success. What’s your secret?

Howard:  There is no secret. We can’t teach anybody how to accomplish what we’ve accomplished. But we can explain how to do the things we do. There’s a subtle, critical difference there.

Sandra:  The short version is lots of hard work, and long hours, over a long period of time.

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Theric: The two of you work together on Schlock Mercenary — how do you distribute responsibilities?

Howard:  I do the funny parts and the artsy parts, Sandra does everything else.

Sandra:  That about sums it up.  There are some tasks that stick with one person or the other, but a few tasks get batted back and forth like a ping pong ball.

Howard: Oh, and we recently hired out the coloring. Travis Walton now does about half the artsy parts.

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Theric: Were you both already creators before meeting each other? Did creation play a role in bringing you together?

Sandra:  Howard’s creativity and energy were a lot of what attracted me to him. I think I was smitten from the moment Howard explained his “lego theory” of creativity, which is the idea that each creative form has a set of bricks and once you learn how to assemble things from bricks, then switching brick sets is just a matter of learning how the new shapes work.  Later he put this theory into action by switching creative tracks from being a musician to being a cartoonist.  The fact that Howard wanted to make a living doing creative work was prominent in our earliest discussions about how to build a life together.  More importantly, Howard supports my creative endeavors as much as I support him.

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Theric: How does creating together impact your marriage?

Howard:  Well, we made four children. That’s had an impact. It’s not ex-nihilo creation, but the principle is the same. We made something together, and what me made has changed us for the better. From there the artistic pursuits are just frosting on the cake. Delicious, ex-nihilo frosting. Except when we borrow sugar.

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Theric: Taking a step backwards, when you first moved online, you weren’t making money that way. How did you stick through the lean times to current era in which you are presumably better fed?

Howard: You know that part in the Zelda games when Link has to cross a field of water (or sometimes lava) by shooting ice arrows to create solid patches he can walk across? My job was to make ice arrows. Sandra’s job was to shoot them into the right places so that we could get across the dangerous (sometimes flaming) depths before the patch we were on thawed out again.

Sandra: I call the lean years our walk of faith.  We stuck to it because we had a strong sense that it was the right thing for our family to be doing at that time.

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Theric: Related question: how have your successes changed you or your relationship?

Sandra: Our lives are constantly shifting and so is our relationship.  I love the way that we have built a strong business partnership as well as a personal one.

Howard:  I look forward to the day when Sandra’s making ice arrows and I can hire somebody to shoot them for me. My hand is getting tired.

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Theric: Moving beyond just the two of you, what role does creativity play in family life? (Or, in other words, how do you keep the kids unstrangled when you’re just trying to get some work done?)

Howard:  I do a lot of my work outside the house. Sandra doesn’t have that luxury, though.

Sandra: They’re all in school now.  This gives us 6 hours per day to scramble and get work done.  Summers are a challenge.

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Theric: It seems to me that the act of creation is particularly Mormon in the sense that Creators is what we intend to be someday. In that sense, how is your faith reflected in your work?

Howard:  Mormons have a special relationship with the concept of creation, but the reverse is absolutely not the case. And not all Latter-day Saints want to create art, or books, or blogs, or statuary. I’m creating things because that’s what I enjoy, and after lots of practice that’s kind of what I’m best at. Being Mormon perhaps gives me an excuse to place more spiritual value in what I do than I might otherwise, but that’s the smallest part of what my membership in this Church provides.

How, then, does my faith come across in my work? To be brief, I try to only use my powers for good. And like Sandra, if I’m blogging about something inherently Mormon, I take time to explain my terms.

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Theric: What advice do you have for Mormon artist couples like yourselves?

Howard:  What you paint, or write, or sculpt, or perform is ultimately going to fade. Your relationship with each other is an eternal one. Don’t lose sight of that.

Sandra: Develop an ongoing relationship with divine inspiration.  It will never lead you wrong.

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Theric: What’s up next for Brother and Sister Tayler?

Sandra: Lots more work.

Howard:  But we’ve got work to do first.

How and why did you become involved with Our Visions, Our Voices?

Last January, I was on the internet looking for sites that might be interested in hearing about my new novel, Torn by God: A Family’s Struggle with Polygamy. I came across the Mormon Women’s Literary blog run by Joanna Brooks and Holly Welker. They were just starting to put together a three-state series of readings called, Our Visions, Our Voices: A Mormon Women’s Literary Tour. The tour was to be composed of women who write from a Mormon perspective, whether it be LDS, RDLS, or women with an outside or post-Mormon perspective. I was particularly interested in the project because of the great range of diversity it promised.

The Mormon experience is rich and powerful, especially when encountered during the formative years of childhood. As we grow older, each of us must decide whether to remain faithful to that early religious training, or to re-evaluate the doctrine and take another path. Either way, the lessons we learned as children remain with us, affecting us in profound ways. I found that out while I was in the process of writing Torn by God. At times, I felt afraid that I might somehow be punished for what I was writing. That fear surprised me, and it made me a little angry, because I wasn’t writing anything against the Church, I was just trying to understand what happened between my parents when I was a child. The problem was I was asking questions. I came to realize that somewhere along the way, I had learned that you should never question anything about the Church. But how can that be right? If we think we have all the answers, how can we ever learn anything new?

That’s what I like best about being involved with the women of Our Visions, Our Voices. In order to write about their experience, whether it be in the form of poetry, or fiction, or memoir, or essay, they each must ask themselves questions. They must dig deep if they want to communicate their experience in a meaningful way to others. When I encounter this deep self-exploration, by reading or listening to their words, it enriches my experience and understanding not only of Mormonism, but of life itself.

What will you be doing for your reading?

I will be reading from my novel, Torn by God: A Family’s Struggle with Polygamy. I have written short stories and poetry (in conjunction with a new novel I am working on), but I think Torn by God is most relevant to the main focus of the tour.

What do you hope this literary tour accomplishes and what affect has your participation so far had on your connection with Mormonism?

I think one problem that exists in the Mormon community is that there is a sense of isolation from the rest of the world. That feeling of isolation is created in part by the community’s rejection of negative influences, but there is also a lot of misunderstanding by those outside the faith. I believe knowledge is the path to understanding. Each time an individual explores their experience of the Mormon faith through poetry, literature, or essay, they expand the knowledge base. Even when Mormon women write about other aspects of life, they help people outside the Mormon experience see that we are all fundamentally the same. This body of writing can provide a point of access toward mutual understanding.

I truly value the connection that I’ve had so far with the women on the tour. Up to now, it has just been by way of email (the email messages have been flying back and forth between Joanna and Holly and the rest of the group). Now, I’m looking forward to meeting everyone in person and establishing a relationship for the future. Hopefully, we will all get together again next year for a second tour of Our Visions, Our Voices.

Thanks, Zoe!

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.