This year I abandoned the novel I worked on for ages. Fragments survive in the novel I’m working on now, but it’s a fundamentally different book, and that feels great. For years, I resisted writing a nonfiction book first, because I really didn’t want to write a memoir. But it turned out that (1) I really did need, as several . . .
Before I realized I was writing a nonfiction book about my ancestors, I wrote what ultimately became the second chapter of Ancestor Trouble as an essay for a reading with Alexander Chee at the KGB Bar. I’d been trying and failing for a couple years to write about my great-grandfather, Charley, and his story at last took a preliminary shape as I scrambled to put together something new for that night.
Over the years I worked on Ancestor Trouble, All Hallows’ Eve and Samhain became important to me. As a kid, I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Halloween, on the theory that it was demonic, so developing a tenderness and receptivity to what this time of year probably meant to my ancestors centuries ago took a long time. I’m filled with particular . . .
I always believed that as an intuitive writer I couldn’t stick to an outline, but I was wrong. The loose structure I came up with when I started writing Ancestor Trouble was my guiding light. If you’re curious, I write a little bit about my book’s structure and table of contents in my latest newsletter. I’d also like to thank Honorée . . .
This website has undergone a complete redesign for the first time since it launched in 2002, almost two decades ago. Eep! I adore this iteration so much that I’m hoping to blog more often, if only to spend more time looking at it. All thanks to Lorissa Shepstone and Gordon Clemmons, the brilliant Being Wicked team. Late last week I . . .