Give us your elevator
pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?
What do a homicidal houseplant, an enchanted office picnic,
sentient fog, and the perfect piece of toast have in common? They’re all part
of, a short story collection covering everything from white flight to marriage
in the afterlife with a dose of twisted obsession, covert complicity, and
peculiar empowerment.
Which character (or
story) did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character (or story) gave
you the most trouble, and why?
It’s hard to say which character or story I most enjoyed
writing, because they all had their own challenges, and thus their own sort of gratification.
But one character who always makes me smile is Harlan from “Death Sure Changes
a Person,” the first story in the collection (link below). He’s just so honest
and sweet, and always tries to think the best of his wife Lucille, even when
she keeps coming back to visit him from the dead with problematic advice about
the new woman he’s interested in.
“You, Commuter” was a bit of a challenge, because it has
this disembodied communal narrator that I don’t usually write; a shifting,
lurking “we” that envelops the protagonist and projects her anxieties back to
her. It was a tricky balance between a narrator with enough physicality to be
present in her surroundings, yet flexible enough to inhabit different
perspectives—kind of like an existential Cheshire Cat.
Tell us a bit about
the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.
This process was almost like a fable about the importance of
patience in the publication process.
I sent the collection out to my first round of presses and
then settled in to wait. Months went by, and I decided to start casting the net
wider with another round of submissions. More months went by, and just as I was
starting to despair, I got some interest from one of my second set of
submissions. Once I looked at all the specifics, however, it just didn’t feel
like the best fit for the collection, so I had to take the unexpected and
surreal step of declining an offer. That’s when I really started to wonder what
the heck I was doing with this book.
Then, in an e-mail
from the heavens, one of my first-round publishers said yes! Now I’m with Aqueduct
Press, on the same author page
as Ursula K. Le Guin, N.K. Jemisin, Karen Joy Fowler, Nisi Shawl and so many other award-winning
authors my head is spinning!
My favorite writing
advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the
writing of this book?
There’s a quote I particularly like from Carrie Fisher that
isn’t about writing per se, but still makes a lot of sense for my practice: “Stay
afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to
wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”
This basically applies to every aspect of my writing life,
from teaching to submitting to networking to embarking on a new story when I
have no idea where the hell it’s going. Whenever I start to freak out about
something because I haven’t done it before, I just keep telling myself I’ll
know how to do it by the time I’m done.
Who is your ideal
reader?
My ideal reader is someone who, like me, inhabits the
liminal space between science fiction and standard—or “literary”—fiction. I
usually call my work speculative fiction, because it does involve alternate
versions of reality, but it’s not all about rockets and robots.
I’ve always read between genres, from Asimov to Nabokov, and
enjoyed stories that spring from a sense of “what if.” I’m interested in how
people would interact if we weren’t constrained by all of the physical and
societal norms of the day—how would we really
treat each other if we had the power to do X or Y? Sure, the science should be
as solid as possible, but it’s secondary to the real human impact of whatever
phenomenon the story is about. The kind of literary synthesis Margaret Atwood
attains is my dream.
Inquiring foodies and
hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any
recipes to share?)
Breakfast a la “Aftermilk”:
·
Toast: set out the butter before you hit the
plunger, and butter that sucker as soon as it pops up.
·
Cereal: stick with your granolas and your
clusters.
·
Orange juice with pulp is an abomination.
That’s all I got.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR: www.taracampbell.com
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR PILE: www.organporium.com
READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “Death Sure Changes a Person”: http://litbreak.com/death-sure-changes-a-person/
