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Interview & Giveaway with Nichole Bernier, Author of The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

But that’s the funny thing about people who don’t fit into a box. They grow to infiltrate everything, and when they suddenly go missing, they are missing everywhere.
~ from The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

Without knowing why, or even how, it happens, a person can fill a void in our lives so quickly and settle into our being so fully that, surely, they must know us as well as we know ourselves. Even better. I have such a friend, who can tell at first glance (or at first long-distance “hello” over the phone) if I’m lying or telling the truth when I answer the question, “How are you?” Yet, even through such deep connections, I bet there are things unknown between us. How well can we really know another person?

This question ripples throughout Nichole Bernier’s debut novel, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D., as one woman is bequeathed the journals of her deceased friend.

In reading Elizabeth Martin’s most personal thoughts, Kate discovers a side to her friend she hadn’t known or expected. The truth of Elizabeth’s marriage, her friendship with Kate, and her life ambitions unfolds, and, with that truth, so does Kate’s own pain and understanding of her relationships and dreams. In those discoveries, Kate finds strength to face her fears and embrace what’s genuine. This book speaks to the anxiety we so often hold about the future and to the relief we feel in finally letting go.

I’m honored to host Nichole Bernier today as she talks about her book, about life, and writing. I’m offering a giveaway, as well, with three ways to enter: tweet about the post (tag it with @Christi_Craig), post about the interview on Facebook (message me here so I count your entry), or – the most simple route – just leave your name in the comments. Come Tuesday, August 14th, you could be the winner of a copy of Nichole’s wonderful novel.

And now…welcome, Nichole!

CC: In your novel, Elizabeth’s journals act as a conduit of self-reflection for the protagonist, Kate, as Elizabeth reveals her own angst and struggles with motherhood, work, and relationships. Some of what Kate learns about herself is unexpected, and painful (and, boy, can I relate to what she discovers and how she feels). Have you ever had that experience, seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes?

NB: I was about to answer no, but then I remembered an email I received a few months ago. It was from a woman who’d been in my graduating class at journalism school, and had heard I was about to publish a novel I’d written while I was in the thick of the child-raising years. She contacted me because she was starting to write one, herself, and had just had her second child. We exchanged memories about school, and she recalled — ha ha! — how at a graduation party she had told me she was taking an unpaid internship. Apparently I said, You can do better.

I’d like to think she’s remembering a little incorrectly, and that I actually said something along the lines of, WE can do better. Because heaven knows I made poverty-level wages that year after school. Or that I said it in an emphatic, affirming way — You can do better! Someday, we all will!

But I don’t know what I said, or exactly what I meant. I don’t even remember the blur of graduation week very well, capping a rabid year working toward a degree that was not technically necessary for our field. All of us, subliminally haunted by the pressure to prove it had been worth it. I only know that that’s what her perception was, and that’s what matters in the end, really. But that thankfully, she didn’t take it badly enough that it kept her from reaching out 20 years later to a fellow mom who’s still just trying to do better.

CC: In the acknowledgements, you mention an island cottage that inspired the one in the novel, where Kate reads Elizabeth’s journals. Were you able to sneak away for a writing retreat at that cottage while working on book? And, where do you do most of your writing now?

NB: Oh, I was sneaking away whenever I could. Well, if you can call it sneaking when you kiss five kids goodbye a million times each — whether you’re going away for two hours or two days — and you sneak off after a very orchestrated hand-off to a generous husband who you’ll probably text with five minutes after you leave. Not very stealthy.

But no, I wasn’t able to steal away to that cottage. It’s someone’s primary home except for two weeks in the summer. And it doesn’t actually have that attic loft, sadly. That was an embellishment of my imagination. Though it sure would be nice if they added it, and then let us rent again someday.

As far as my writing space at home is concerned, I sort of wish I had a writing room, some serene window-walled space with a massive antique desk. But even if I did, I probably wouldn’t write there. Our house is never really quiet because we have five kids, and though I don’t need quiet to write, I need the noise to be sounds I’m not emotionally invested in.

So I’ve become that cliché of the coffeeshop writer. I love the impersonal bustle that’s a bit like being part of an office, the juicy bits of conversation you overhear, and yes, the constant flow of coffee and inability to hop up and tweeze your eyebrows. When I need real quiet, I go to the library.

CC: I love what you say in this post on your blog, how writing a novel can sometimes be a cathartic experience. I know that feeling, when a story rushes out and brings with it every inch of pain that’s been held in by grief. You also say that you never imagined yourself “as someone with a novel inside her, but now [you] can’t imagine [yourself] without it.” Do you have another novel in the works?

NB: There are two things I’m obsessed with these days. One is a disturbing premise set in the former Soviet Union. The other takes place on an eerie forbidden island I visited with the Park Service a few months ago, a real-life fascinating and creepy place that spans three distinct phases of history. Once my book tour quiets down I’ll be going to town on one of these stories, whichever one is keeping me up at night the most.

CC: What are you reading these days?

NB: I just finished Gone Girl — which had such exciting use of voice and tension created by unreliable narrators — and Salvage the Bones, a Katrina story about four motherless siblings that knocked me flat. Right now I’m in that hang-time between books, and since I’m on book tour, am traveling with a combination of things to pick up during flights – a hardcover, a galley, and my iPad. The ability to sample first chapters electronically is like a literary buffet, a moveable feast (at least until your battery wears out).

CC: What advice do you have for writers on the rise?

NB: You have to make your writing the absolute best it can be, and find folks who will help you get it there. Find a handful of like-minded writers who will be supportive and honest. Then revise, revise, revise.

When you’re ready to send it out into the world, do your homework. It’s so easy now to learn about agents and editors and the query process with all the resources online. On Twitter, for example, you’re hearing query preferences and pet peeves right from the horse’s mouth.

Network on social media. Write essays, articles, blogs, clever email, anything that’s a limbering-up exercise to keep your thinking process sharp and your creativity going and your voice out there. Then get thick skin and be persistent and find a way to keep up your stamina through the rejections. You’re not rejected until you’re rejected a LOT. There are as many reasons for rejection as there are Eskimo names for snow. You just have to find that one agent and editor with whom your story resonates, and who can bring it out to the world.

Nichole Bernier is author of the novel THE UNFINISHED WORK OF ELIZABETH D, and has written for magazines including Elle, Self, Health, and Men’s Journal. A Contributing Editor for Conde Nast Traveler for 14 years, she was previously on staff as the magazine’s golf and ski editor, columnist, and television spokesperson. She is a founder of the literary blog Beyond the Margins, and lives outside of Boston with her husband and five children. She can be found online at nicholebernier.com and on Twitter @nicholebernier.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway, through a comment, Twitter, Facebook (or all three). Look for the announcement of the winner on Tuesday, August 14th.

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Welcome Jenna Blum, Bestselling Author of The Stormchasers

Go get him, Karena, he said. You’re the only one who can.

And Karena knew this to be true, from the nights she was the only one who could sing Charles to sleep, the only one who could coax him off the roof, keep him from climbing the water tower, make him stop chanting that song, stop bouncing that ball, stop kicking that door. She ran out into the lot, tasting the dirt in the air, positioning herself…where Charles would either have to stop or run her down….
~ from The Stormchasers

More than once, I’ve fallen victim to the belief that I could save someone: a friend in despair, a parent on the brink, a loved one chasing a false god down a dark road. I’ve set my voice on an uncomfortable high note in hopes that enthusiasm was contagious, played counselor during marathon phone calls,  stood in the way of the inevitable and gotten pinched in the middle. Painful lessons are never pretty.

But in Jenna Blum’s amazing novel, The Stormchasers, we find a story that mixes the agony of mental illness with the beauty of landscape, the power of devotion, and the miracle of unexpected healing. A novel as much about mental illness as it is about storms, The Stormchasers gives readers vivid images of how both phenomena mirror each other in the way danger brews and crescendos, then crashes and leaves a path of destruction.

The main character, Karena Jorge, is driven in her work as a journalist and in her search to save her twin brother, Charles, from himself. She sets out on a stormchasing expedition, one that puts her in danger at times and brings her closer to a different discovery: Charles is not the only one who needs saving.

The Stormchasers, touching and poignant, is a story that I will read again. I’m so honored to host Jenna Blum today for an interview about her novel, about writing, and about karma. At the end of the interview, leave a quick comment to be entered into the drawing for a copy of The Stormchasers. Random.org will choose the winner on Tuesday, August 30th, at high noon.

**UPDATE: Because of Irene’s visit to the East Coast, and subsequent power outages over the weekend, I’m going to postpone the drawing for a copy of Jenna Blum’s novel until Thursday, Sept. 1st.**

CC: In a recent and compelling essay on the website, Style Substance Soul, you talk about a childhood fascination with tornadoes and reasons why you chase storms (even after the novel has been published). Did the idea for THE STORMCHASERS stem from your personal experience on the road with Tempest Tours, or was it your research with them that took root and sealed your strong connection with the chasing community?

JB: That’s a great question! I had the idea for THE STORMCHASERS–a novel about a bipolar young man who chases tornadoes when he’s manic and his twin sister, who basically chases him–long before I started chasing storms with Tempest. In fact, I wrote an abbreviated draft of the novel in my graduate MA program at Boston University, back in 1996.  I didn’t have a stormchasing community before I started chasing with Tempest to research subsequent drafts of the novel, and what I didn’t expect were the lifelong friends I would make chasing.  I chase with the same people every year, my esteemed mentors and friends like me who are still learning, and they are my storm family. THE STORMCHASERS continues to introduce me to new folks in the chasing community, for which I’m profoundly grateful.

CC: All of the characters in your novel are written in such a way – authentic and relatable – that readers will think of them long after they close the cover of your book. Do you have a special technique you use, early on in your writing, for developing characters?

JB: Thank you for the generous comment about my characters!  I suppose they come off as real because to me, they are real.  They just happen to exist in a dimension halfway between the ether and the paper, hovering somewhere above my head.  My first job as a writer is to get them out where others can come to know and love them the same way I do.  I’ve been told that my characters are lovable despite their flaws–or sometimes hateful because of them or sometimes just plain flawed–and I take that as proof I’ve succeeded in getting them down as real people.  Because who among us isn’t flawed?

When I’m first getting to know the characters, I start by writing down everything I know about them, which ranges from macro big-picture stuff–basic family history–to the fact that Charles Hallingdahl, for instance, the brother in THE STORMCHASERS, ate only green food as a child. Not all the details make it into the novels.  But because they’re part of the character, I write them down.  More details reveal themselves as I go along, and the biggest struggle is to remain true to the characters’ characters, to not graft behaviors onto them because it suits the plot or it’s something I myself would do.

CC: In your career, you’ve traveled all over and seen a variety of landscape. Do you have a favorite place that you’d love to call home or visit time and again?

JB: Again, a great question, and one that strikes a poignant chord with me these days, because although I’m proud to say I have a home in Boston and a house in rural Minnesota where my mom and grandmother were born, I’ve been on the road at least 300 of 365 days in the past year.  One night, when I was checking into a hotel in Florida, the desk clerk looked at my MA license and said, “Wow, you’re far from home.” I thought: Yes, I sure am, both literally and metaphorically. I’ve traveled and divided my geography so much that I’m not sure where my central home is.  But I love my writing community and friends in Boston.  And geographically, my heart belongs to the heartland.  The landscape of the Midwest and the High Plains makes sense to me and allows me to breathe freely–all that space and big sky.

CC: What are you reading these days?

JB: Galleys!  I have the privilege of reading books before they’re published to supply authors with quotes for their book jackets (you’re like Ah-ha, *that’s* where those come from). It’s a great kind of sneak preview.  I read Rebecca Rasmussen’s incredible debut THE BIRD SISTERS and Kaira Rouda’s inspiring novel HERE, HOME, HOPE.  Three novels I highly, highly recommend for 2012:  Anna Solomon’s THE LITTLE BRIDE, about a Jewish mail-order bride who ends up in the Dakotas.  Nichole Bernier’s THE UNFINISHED WORK OF ELIZABETH D., about a woman discovering her best friend’s secret life after that friend’s death.  And Jami Attenberg’s THE MIDDLESTEINS, which is about food, family, love, life, and loss–all the important stuff–and will tell you why it’s vitally important to include cinnamon in pastry.

CC: What advice do you have for writers on the rise?

JB: Usually I would cite Winston Churchill here:  “Never give in, never give in, never give in.” And that’s still true. But in today’s swiftly changing publishing landscape, it’s also important to be open to new ways of doing things. There’s no room for a lazy writer these days (if there ever was!).  Expect to do your own legwork, your own homework, your own promotion.  Use social media. Reach out to and support as many other writers as you can.  It’s good karma, and that must always come back to help you in the end.

Thanks, Jenna. And, for all you readers out there, don’t forget to drop your name in the comment section for a chance to win a copy of The Stormchasers.

JENNA BLUM is the New York Times and # 1 international bestselling author of THOSE WHO SAVE US and THE STORMCHASERS.  She is also one of Oprah’s Top Thirty Women Writers. For more information about Jenna Blum and her bestselling novels, visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or Like her page on Facebook.