Q&A (and Giveaway!) with Randy Susan Meyers

What did you do when your life unraveled?
~ from The Comfort of Lies

Meyers-The-Comfort-1E147B0Great fiction will mirror our world and make us wonder if parts of a story are real. We will keep turning the page, or we may put the book down, unable to resist the connection.

Some reviewers of Randy Susan Meyer’s new novel, The Comfort of Lies, have given the book fewer than five stars, saying they didn’t like the characters. It’s true that the three women brought together in this book (about adoption, marriage, and motherhood) behave in ways that make them unlikeable. Also true is the fact that each of these women, Tia and Juliette and Caroline, are, in one way or another, quite relatable: their thoughts and decisions, fears and obsessions, have brushed the minds of most readers. And, no one likes the ugly truth.

Perhaps that’s what drew me to The Comfort of Lies, as it exposes reasons why a person would lie, times when the truth may be more painful, and repercussions of deception.

The book jacket says it best:

Riveting and arresting, The Comfort of Lies explores the collateral damage of infidelity and the dark, private struggles many of us experience but rarely reveal.

I’m honored to host Randy Susan Meyers; I’m offering a book giveaway as well. Just leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of The Comfort of Lies. Random.org will choose the lucky reader on Tuesday, April 16th.

Now, welcome Randy!

CC: The effects of infidelity, motherhood, and adoption set the lives of three women on a path of painful awarenesses and acceptance, their feelings so understandably natural (and all-too-relatable at times). I wonder, as a reader and a writer, what was the seed for this novel? How did you decide to write on this particular topic?

RandySusanMeyers_headshotRSM: I didn’t give up a baby for adoption nor adopt a child, but with every pregnancy scare I had, I wondered about the choices I might make. Infidelity? I struggled with the issue in ways that allowed The Comfort of Lies to come frighteningly alive in my mind (and hopefully on paper.) I haven’t suffered through all of my characters’ crises but I’ve been close enough to imagine them all far too well.

Writing The Comfort of Lies drew me to dark places and gloomy themes (falling hard for a man who isn’t yours; learning your husband has cheated; an unplanned pregnancy; thinking that you’re not cut out for motherhood; giving up a child for adoption; wrestling with the pull towards work and the demands of motherhood; failing at work.) Blowing up emotional truths into a “what-if” novel forced me to visit past sins of my own, sins that were visited upon me, and sins that had always terrified me as my future possibilities. People disappearing, or not being what or whom one thought—these themes are at the core of my writing and my life. The Comfort of Lies is not an autobiographical novel—but I drew on bad times in my life and exploded those stretches into “could be far worse” and “what if.” I very much examined that thin line teetering between morality and forgiveness.

CC: The majority of this story is told from the perspective of the three women, Tia, Juliette, and Caroline. It isn’t until we near the end that we experience what’s happening from Nathan’s point of view (a pleasant surprise, by the way, I love those chapters). Did the decision to include his POV happen early in the writing process or come about in later drafts?

RSM: The decision to include Nathan’s POV, and to hold it back until the middle of the novel, was a decision made about halfway through my first draft. I very much wanted to know his belief system, to find out what story he told himself to allow his actions before and after his infidelity. Everyone is the star of their own show, and I wanted to know his ‘show.’ On the other hand, I didn’t want him to be a ‘star’ of the book, but a supporting player to the women—thus was made my decision to bring him in later in the book, and only for a limited appearance.

CC: In your blog post, “The Reader-Writer Covenant,” on your blog, you talk about giving the reader the kind of story you, yourself, want to read. Often, that means digging deep into a character’s psyche, writing stories “gritty enough to have emotional truth.” THE COMFORT OF LIES is full of difficult truths about relationships. And, it’s inevitable: stories we read (and write) affect us in visceral ways. As a writer, how do you walk away from difficult moments you’ve just transferred onto the page?

RSM: I have worked hard on formulating a ‘disconnect.’ Wanting to both write dense emotional novels, and also have a calm life, means I use the following ‘life rules:”

  1. Follow the advice of Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
  2. I write about things that contain intense emotional resonance, but only when those events and triggers are deep in the past. I will not write about topics which are freshly wounds, or from which I have not recovered enough to have a cold grasp on it. For instance, I was able to write about sisters who witnessed their father murder their mother, using my family history of my father attempting to kill my mother as a trigger for my fiction—but only because it was so far in my past that I could explore the ‘what it’ (what if he’d succeeded, which he didn’t) without either falling apart or spilling my own story onto the novel. The same goes for my explorations of infidelity. Any experience I had which informed The Comfort of Lies was from long, long ago.
  3. I shake it off. When I feel myself flooded by emotion, I force myself to stand up, and then I remind myself that was ‘one the page’ and will stay ‘on the page.’ I have an ability to be quite divisive—using emotional horror and then leaving it on the page. I get up and make supper. Plus, no drinking or any other behavior that would allow me to get sloppy on myself or on the page is ever allowed.

CC: What are you reading these days?

RSM: I just finished Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason (a debut literary thriller, which I loved,) You Are The Love of My Life by Susan Richards Shreve (I was on a panel with her and bought the book and found it entrancing,) and am now immersed in May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes (I love everything she’s ever written.)

CC: The process of writing, publication, and release of a novel all present several challenges (one of which you embraced so well with the release of The Comfort of Lies). Is there one word or phrase that keeps you moving forward on days when frustrations threaten to squelch a writer’s inspiration and determination?

RSM: My mantra: This too shall pass.

The drama of Randy Susan Meyers’ novels is informed by her years spent bartending, her work with violent offenders, and too many years being enamored by bad boys. Raised in Brooklyn New York, Randy now lives in Boston with her husband and is the mother of two grown daughters. She teaches writing seminars at Boston’s Grub Street Writers’ Center.

Read more about Randy Susan Meyers’ acclaimed debut novel, The Murderer’s Daughters, and her newly released novel, The Comfort of Lies on her website. Then, follow her on Twitter or like her author page on Facebook.

And, don’t forget to leave a quick comment for a chance to win a copy of The Comfort of Lies.

A Little Late to the Party


OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIs that Next Big Thing blog meme still making the rounds? I sure hope so, because I was tagged weeks ago and I’m just now getting around to joining the fun. Thanks to Paul August (a prolific poet) for mentioning me in his Next Big Thing post. Go take a peek at what’s in his sights, a chapbook of his poems entitled, Apologizing to Fish.

Speaking of apologizing…I don’t mean to make excuses, but (the inevitable “but”), there are two reasons why I waited so long to write my NBT post: 1) all my writing friends have been tagged and been more timely in their posting (when you procrastinate, you miss the party) and 2) I find it difficult to talk about a project I secretly fear may never be finished (there. I said it).

Earlier this year, though, I wrote about my new rally cry, fearless writing, and I realized that filling out these questions is yet another way to take a risk: share your hope, imagine The End in sight.

My Next Big Thing

1) What is the working title of your book? The Company Town.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book? During a visit to a historical site, an old iron smelting town in Upper Michigan, I stepped into one of the laborers’ cabins and felt the weight of more than just history. It was the pull of stories from the people who had lived there. When we drove home that day, I wrote feverishly in the back seat of the car, trying to re-capture every sight, feeling, thought that came to me when we walked the grounds.

3) What genre does your book fall under? Historical fiction.

4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? I barely survived the first draft. Thinking about a movie rendition is like dreaming of how I will spend those lottery earnings when I haven’t even bought the ticket. Girl, stay in today.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? One sentence? Don’t we get a page and a half of tiny type with skinny margins to write a synopsis? One sentence! Argh! I’m already over my quota with this answer, but here goes: A young woman mistakes a bustling factory town for a safe haven but finds she can’t escape her secrets and can’t ignore the Company’s own dark truths.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? To that I’ll just say, I hope no agent is reading this (or that weak one-sentence synopsis) right now. Lordy.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?Too long. I kept trying to craft the perfect ending, until I thought, Oh for crying out loud. Write the last scene as you see it and be done with this. A first draft is a FIRST draft. Once I got over my angst, I reached the end in one sitting.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? Here are my ambitions: Anna Solomon’s The Little Bride, for the way place sets the mood and becomes its own character and Jenna Blum’s Those Who Save Us, for the way history propels the story.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book? Photos of the laborers who lived in the cabins, and a book by Sarah Cowie, The Plurality of Power: An Archeology of Industrial Capitalism, which discusses all that was uncovered from underneath the surface of Fayette, markers of class structure and separation in even the smallest of communities.

10)What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? I don’t know, perhaps photos?

Fayette
The town of Fayette, MI.
hotel
The hotel where the protagonist works.
Slag Beach, the Company dump
Slag Beach, the Company dumping grounds.
flowers on slag beach
Flowers growing on Slag Beach today.

Now, I’m directing you to a post by Rochelle Melander on her Next Big Thing. She got creative with the task of answering the list of questions and turned her post into a writing exercise for anyone who’s considering a project or envisioning their writing journey. Take a look, see where the Next Big Thing takes you.

* Book and pen photo credit: mconnors on Morguefile.com

Stories at the Table, Beginnings and Endings, and a Prompt

I love how, in continued practice, techniques naturally unfold and lessons slide into place. 

Stories

Last Saturday at our monthly creative writing class, a few core writers and I sat around the table and read our stories based on the previous month’s prompt, After the storm. We followed along the lines of Barbara Hurd’s essay, “Wordwrack: Openings,” which begins with a beautiful first line:

A nor’easter smacked into Cape Ann last night, and this morning the wrack’s dark line lies tangled and heaped.

Like Hurd, we told our own stories of storms and the debris left behind, markers – some physical, some emotional –  that became signs of relief as much as evidence of our fears.

The amazing part in listening to these stories this month was witnessing how the writing in this group has morphed from a very natural, everyday style of storytelling to a strong use of technique. A few writers made the decision not to begin their stories in a traditional way, with a mini-prologue of sorts, but to open with the moment that carried the most heat, weaving in backstory when necessary. Their stories read like true flash nonfiction: “discrete, sharply focused…[revealing] the secrets of human nature contained therein” (as Dinty Moore says in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction).

And, the way these writer told their stories segued perfectly into this month’s topic: beginnings and endings. 

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.                                          ~ Graham Greene

Because the pieces we write in this group are so short and only a glimpse into our experiences, beginnings and endings are both critical in holding our readers attention or in conveying our message.

Beginnings

“[T]o begin is to commit, to stay, to hold.” ~Jenny Boully

Embryonic moments from an experience – like In the beginning or When I was born – don’t always mark the perfect opening for a story; a great beginning is when a certain energy strikes the page, when the reader tightens her grip on the book or the listener narrows his focus on what he is hearing. 

Endings

“An ending tumbles toward you over and over again; an ending will not stay flat, will not stay put; an ending troubles and taunts; an ending is sleep lost. . . . [An ending] is an emptiness that tugs you to read the ending once more, to read the beginning again.” ~ Jenny Boully

Likewise, endings do not always bring us to a nice, clean close. As in real life, endings can come without warning or they can leave us deep in thought for days, even months afterward. They might even push us to return to the beginning, to search for clues or to simply recover the emotion lost or gained in the experience. 

A wonderful example of all this is Vicky Mlyneic’s essay on BREVITY, “This I Am Allowed.” Read it, see where she begins; consider what she leaves out and where she stops. Then, turn to your own story. The place you begin and end can make all the difference. 

The Prompt

And then it happened.

* Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com