sarah eve kelly

In between bouts of banging my head against the wall, I do a lot of thinking about education, what it means, and how it defines people. Something of myself, she says pretentiously: I’m in the creamy middle of a PhD at Cambridge. I do history. This will be my third degree (heh).

One way and another, I recently came across this article, entitled ‘The Disadvantages of an Elite Education’. For these purposes, we need only this snippet:

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work.

So says Mr (pardon me: Doctor) Ivy League.

If all goes well, I’m going to graduate with a doctorate from the best history faculty in the world in eighteen-odd months. I’m going to be Dr Sarah (Cantab). And my question is this: where in fuck does this guy get off? Or, put another way, I really don’t think the problem is with his education. Not his Ivy League education, anyway.

This sort of thinking seems to be endemic among people with postgraduate educations. They think they’re different. OK, maybe they are: they’re nerds. But hold on; someone’s about to start flailing hands and hollering that I’m missing the point. He’s talking about an elite education. Rich schools for rich kids. But again, here I am at a rich school for rich kids (I personally don’t know any rich kids, and I’m certainly not rich myself, but there you are), and all I can think is what the hell?

For reasons passing understanding, there is a perceived value difference between the hyper-educated and good, sensible people. But this guy makes it sound like apartheid: that there is such a gulf between those within the ivory tower and those without that we can’t possibly understand each other. He makes himself out to be the Earl of Bedford trying to milk a cow.

Again, I’m about to be told that I’m misinterpreting: maybe this is a specifically American thing, as so many things are?

The real question is: does education change you, or does it just fail to correct what was wrong with you in the first place? It’s no joke that most of the professors I know are profoundly socially maladjusted people, and it has fuck-all to do with the gap between their educations and anyone they might condescend to talk to. They go into what is largely a profoundly solitary profession because that’s what they do best.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe in education. Look at me! I’m doing it! I’m being educated! I don’t know how to stop! But yesterday, for example, when two guys came to see if my roof needed replacing, it never occurred to me that because of My Higher Education, I might not be able to shoot the shit about the weather. And it troubles me that there is any notion - from within higher education or outside it - that this should be difficult because of what I’ve learned and the culture in which I’ve learned it. All I can imagine is that PhDs from posh unis who feel uncomfortable chatting with the many-headed probably felt that way before they got to the posh uni.

I have a friend who gave up what would surely have been a remarkable academic career in English Lit - she was almost finished her PhD - to be a housewife and a mom. Does this mean she threw her education away, do you think? I have another friend who holds an MA in Political Science. She spent three years eyeballs-deep in HIV/AIDS research, and now she’s managing a gift shop. My uncle was shortlisted for a Rhodes Scholarship; he tossed that in to be a carpenter. Did they throw away education? Set fire to all that money?

Now, the author of this article is telling you precisely this: that there is no moral difference between a Yale-educated politician or professor and a carpenter. Or a housewife. If you read the whole article, you’ll see it’s an indictment of the system: the kids just get spoiled. They have a sense of entitlement forced upon them, a sense that they’re better than everyone else. And it seems they just can’t help absorbing that message.

(Because, you know, they got into the Ivy League, which naturally means they’re idiots.)

Good for him for acknowledging what a false premise that is (although of course, as he points out, it isn’t: the Ivy Leaguers do get better treatment than the rest of the world). But he paints the system of elite education as an abusive parent, blaming the institutions and not the individuals.

Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian. Maybe it’s because I’m Albertan. Maybe it’s because most of my closest friends - and the people I respect the most - are people who opted against higher (or at least postgraduate) education. But I just don’t get it. I’m at the University of Cambridge. At the end of this degree - should that ever come - I will arguably be a leading authority on Anglo-Jewish midwifery. So when does my sense of entitlement kick in? When do I get to start ordering off-menu? When do I get the fucking affidavit telling me I’m better than everyone else?

Don’t think the rhetoric at Cambridge isn’t piled just as sky-high as at a place like Yale or Columbia. We’re centuries older, after all. We lift our noses at you. I just don’t happen to imbibe it, because I’m not a total tool. I’m older, and I’m a foreigner, but that matters less than you think.

What baffles me is how many postgrad-educated people I know - and know of - who spend hours and days of their lives that they’ll never get back navel-gazing about this shit, about how they should treat the goddamn plebs. How they should fashion their conversation. Here is a truth that I’ve hit on any number of times over the course of my research: if the way I’m learning is how experts become expert, I’m never going to believe anything I read ever again. Not because I doubt the integrity of my scholarship, but because I haven’t found that low door in the wall yet: I’m still faking it, because I haven’t made it yet.

My MA supervisor promised me that during my thesis defence, there would come a moment when I knew it was over, knew that I’d passed. He was wrong. That moment never came. Not only do I not believe I’m morally superior to the average bear, I don’t necessarily think I’m smarter, either. I think this much: that I know a lot about one relatively small thing because that is where my fascination and my imagination took me. It doesn’t make me better than you. Am I the exception? Or have I joined a league of antisocial, entitled assholes who blindly believe everything they’re told?

(Oh my, this has turned into a rant.)

I want to make it clear that I don’t hold anything against the author of this article; it hit a nerve, but there’s wisdom to it. I’m just sick of the gilded-cage arguments; I’m sick of educated people publicly congratulating themselves because they managed to carry on a three-minute conversation with a locksmith or helped to hoist a two-by-four. The assumption is that there is somehow a skill in descending to the locksmith’s level; this is what I can’t stand. Any academic who’s seen eyes glaze over when telling people what they ‘do’ should be flattered that the locksmith let the conversation carry on even that long.

I suppose this is a class thing. Where I come from, the world is run by oil barons with ninth-grade educations. Maybe that’s the one gift that Fort McMurray, Alberta, the last place God made, has bestowed on me. The people who are better than us aren’t the ones with the elite educations; they’re the ones who saw a well, tapped it, and went for a beer.

Till next time, &c &c.

There is - egad - a romance in the novel I’m currently writing. I love the boy; I love the girl; I can’t make them talk. Paranormal romance author Jill Myles claims that in her writing, she treats her characters like Barbies and tries to get them to make out. That is an excellent tactic. I wish I could do it.

The major problem is that the romance begins in 1576. And so I think of falling in love (I have some experience with this). I think of this: screaming down Groat Road behind the wheel of prospective boyfriend’s car circa 1998 listening to Everclear’s timeless ‘Santa Monica’ and hearing a quiet voice from the passenger seat saying, ‘I’m fine with you driving my car, but we don’t know each other all that well - I just gotta say [bracing for impact] that if something happens you’re paying for it…’

(Reader, I married him.)

I think of coffee shops and sharing Italian sodas and inept chess matches. I think of watching Crimes and Misdemeanors and sharing a blanket on a couch. I think of charged instant messaging. I think of that moment on The Office in the second season when Jim and Pam share an iPod for one beautiful moment when all is clear: they are in love.

I think of awkward moments with condoms. (Sorry, Mom.)

Now, I haven’t been on the market since 1998. There have been fraught moments since then, charged moments, but nothing substantial. I lit my follow-spot on the guy who let me drive his car and haven’t looked back. And I can’t imagine falling in love in the new millennium. Texting. Webcams. Skype. As Liz Lemon says, there are so many more ways for a guy to not call you now!

All the same, I can’t divorce even my very first feelings of real love from technology and modernity. Theatres, televisions, telephones, chat, email, cars. Italian sodas, even. Meeting at the Choklit Shoppe. I know that the core of love itself is a timeless thing, and I know a lot about history, but I keep trying to imagine how two people met and fell in love in 1576. Was it all just making eyes and meeting in alcoves?

In my first novel, I wrote a scene in which the boy is trying very ineffectually to relace the stays of the girl. This was lifted directly from life, from the first time a guy tried first to take my bra off, and then to put it back on. (Sorry, Mom.) That was easy; that could transpose. I have a lot more trouble taking contemporary forms of entertainment - jousts, bear-baiting - and turning them into venues for romance.

I imagine the answer is to hitch my camera to the shoulder of my protagonist and see - really see - what she sees. To understand deeply and completely that she doesn’t have a mobile in her pocket, that she doesn’t have video games distracting her. That messages took weeks. And understand, most importantly, not what was different about sixteenth-century lovin’, but what was the same.

It’s all just an excuse anyway: I’m shit at writing romance. How I ever managed to beguile anyone is a mystery to me; I have absolutely zero frame of reference to work from.

And now: back to it.

Till next time, &c &c.

Coming to you this Friday morning with a lot of absolutely brilliant thoughts on publishing. Sat down to write; didn’t have a drink. Sat down to write; noticed that Brother John had chosen a pair of trousers that were about nine times too small for him (this was funny). Changed John’s pants; sat down to write. Gaby the Cat starts yelling. Fed Gaby - she didn’t want food. Noticed the litter box: ick. Cleaned out the litter box. She is still mewling but I choose to ignore it for the moment.

Man: other living things. Now, to business.

One of the great things about coming from a broken home - well, my broken home - is that you get to examine both parents’ book collections on their own. If they were still married, who knows: the books might be piled willy-nilly and you might not know whose was whose. Both my parents have remarried, but for whatever reason neither of my stepparents has any real interest in reading, nor in collecting books. So my parents’ collections stand alone.

This much I remember from my childhood. D.H. Lawrence. Alice Munro. Salman Rushdie. Marcel Proust. John Fowles. Margaret Laurence (big one). Anne Tyler. Anne Michaels. Margaret Atwood. A few Annes; a few Margarets. Not unlike the characters in my own historical novels.

The bookcases are wooden now, but that’s because my parents are bona fide middle class now. Back in the day, when they were shabby genteel, the books sat on two-by-fours held up by cinderblocks; they were artfully arranged in artfully concealed cardboard boxes. They piled up everywhere. Both my parents love books. I think that’s probably what kept them married for the entire twelve minutes they were married.

This was my first impression of reading. Books piled upon books. And it was about a lot more than reading - in fact, I don’t know if reading qua reading was the single most important feature of them. It was the way they made a room look. For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted a house with built-in bookcases, wall after wall filled with books. Is this because I’m an avid reader? Of course, but. It’s also because I love the look and smell of books. It’s the only aesthetic taste I’ve ever really developed. Soft furniture and hardwood floors and books.

My parents worshiped books; so, in turn, did I. It was my first real motivator for becoming a writer. This is deep-tissue stuff; it goes all the way back. I wanted to make more of what filled those rooms.

Whither iPad, world?

[Big fat NB: I am not Cnut trying to hold back the waves. I am not a reactionary about technology. Ebooks are here; digital publishing is here. I’m not going to sit in my basement with a stick and flint and cry about moveable type. That’s not what this is about.]

The first thing I saw in the iPad demonstration was an image of one of the bookshelves I so covet. An image on a nine-inch screen. You choose the book you want with your finger. God knows how many books this thing can hold. I was attracted to it at first because I find now that I’m attracted to shiny things on spec: I have a laptop; I have a netbook; I have an iPod Touch. I love them all, each in different ways. They give and give and ask very little of me.

But I have two observations about the iPad. The first is in the form of a friend’s tweet: ‘I’m holding out for the Mini iPad.’ Basically: I’m happy with my Touch. I don’t really know what an iPad offers that I can’t get from my Touch. I’m probably woefully ignorant. The second is this: I’m sorry, dudes, but it looks like a Speak n’ Spell. What’s the point in an almost-life-sized QWERTY keyboard if there’s no way to type?

The bigger question is this. There’s no denying that ebooks are the Way of the Future, even if the Future is going to take a long time to get here. I decided I wanted to be a writer in, what, 1984. Long time ago. Finally I put all my ducks in a row; finally I pull my shit together and have something to offer, and two things happen: the bottom falls out of the market, and there are iPads. This means it’s harder than it’s ever been to sell a book; there’s more competition than there’s ever been; and it’s very possible that when I do make my bones and publish for the first time, it’s gonna be read on an iPad. Not filling up shelves held up by cinderblocks.

This might sound like whining, but it’s a small-scale big deal for me: if my first real desire to write came from existing in those rooms full of books, what do I do with a future where there are no more rooms full of books?

Well, first I take a deep breath. Books aren’t going anywhere yet. In my lifetime, my dream of walls of bookcases and hardwood floors and soft furniture is entirely within reach (if I ever get a job). If it all goes digital after I die, well, I’ll be dead.

Second, I realise this wonderful thing: it doesn’t stop me wanting to write; it doesn’t actually stop me wanting to be read. There is, for example, no bound paper version of this blog, which I have loved and given to and returned to for (holy shit) eight years now. And yet here I am. You can’t be a reactionary about technology and rely on it as much as I do.

Third, and the revelation stops here: I don’t want an iPad. I just don’t. I never wanted a Kindle and I don’t want this. This is a relief: one less thing to covet. We could all do with coveting just a bit less. I don’t want a Mazarati and I don’t want an iPad. All is right with the universe.

I thought I could fold this into some other thoughts I’m having - mostly about advances - but there’s no comfortable segue, this has gone on long enough, and I have index cards to scribble on (almost typed ’struggle on’, which is more apt). So more on that later. Happy weekend, all; shabbat shalom.

Till next time, &c &c.

… is his ability to complete one thing and begin another.

You may have noticed that your hostess is going through a small-scale existential crisis. The words aren’t flying onto the page; Sarah feels imbued neither with purpose nor with conviction. It’s a tough place to be.

Today, in the throes of attempting to look everywhere except at either my computer screen or the ream of papers surrounding me, I saw an old friend: high up on my mom’s book case was my Master’s thesis, sitting in proud red leatherette under a half-inch of dust. I pulled it down. ‘Have you read this?’ I asked my mom. She admitted that she hadn’t, but was quick to reassure me that she was very proud of me and that she was sure it was very good.

Now, if you want to keep your friends, pretty much the last thing you should do is force your Master’s thesis on them. I’m always looking round the corner for the person who found this tome a mesmerising page-turner, but I’m not holding my breath. In short: I don’t bear a grudge against my mom (although, you know, it was dedicated to her, and she hadn’t read the dedication either).

The thesis is very good. Did I think this while I was writing it? No. Did I think this when I defended it to a committee of my superiors? No. Did I think this when I saw it bound in red leatherette for the first time? No. It took a long time to see it for what it was, and a lot of that time was taken up in forgetting. Forgetting the bits that I glossed over. Forgetting the bits that were finished not because I’d said all I had to say, but because I was too tired of looking at the page, or had indigestion, or went out drinking. Forgetting all the rough edges.

Given some objective distance – viz. a lot of time spent not looking at it or thinking about it – I can return to the old MA thesis and thumb through it with a fond eye, not only giving the Sarah of 2006-7 a reassuring pat on the back, but seeing, as a historian, that it’s a fine piece of scholarship.

It was something I finished. It was something I thought I couldn’t do, and yet here it is, in living colour.

It feels good to have things done. I’m sitting here in amongst a pile of papers and books and, well, knitting stuff, and all of it (except the knitting stuff) is related either to a presentation I have to give next week or a scholarship application that I have to send, like, last week. All of it’s sitting here on point, tools to help me through this massive quagmire of writing and research that, for reasons passing understanding, I decided I wanted for myself.

But the thesis is here too.

It’s bound; there’s nothing I can do to it. If I read it closely enough, I can remember little tiffs with my supervisor, points of contention during the defence, but I read the words and think: I won. It’s finished.

It’s about the Elizabethan privy chamber. It has nothing to do with Anglo-Jewish women or medical ethics or hospital minutes. It’s not on point – and it is. Because I’m sitting here looking at it, knowing that this thing that I was convinced was beyond me is complete and well-done. It reminds me that I did it once, and it riles up the tiny voice in the back of my head telling me I can do it again.

The only thing that could help more is having my name on a novel sitting next to it. But one thing at a time.

Till next time, &c &c.

Golly, writers have to pay attention to a lot of rules these days.

Not just submission guidelines, either. Like, writing rules.

On one hand, you’ve got industry insiders telling you which paranormal creatures are coming in, and which ones are going out. (I don’t write paranormal, but I think maybe vampires are going out and angels are coming in and zombies are going strong? If I’m wrong, check back in ten minutes and maybe I’ll be right.) You’ve got word count guidelines. You’ve got agents who love prologues and agents who hate prologues. Your novel has got to ask the Seven Vital Questions. You can’t have a Happy Moment until Four of the Seven Vital Questions have been Answered (and this can’t happen until after the tenth chapter). Your novel must not begin with the protagonist waking up from a dream, and certainly cannot end that way. The novel’s Third Vital Question can neither be asked nor answered on Shrove Tuesday.

I love this one: the market can’t handle X, Y, or Z. But don’t write for the market.

All the same people who are giving us these Seedlings of Wisdom are also telling us this: just write. Everything else is procrastination. Just Do It.

Here’s the thing. All these rules need a spreadsheet and I’m no good at Excel (which is too bad, because the temp agencies I’ll be applying to with tears on my CV after my PhD is done really want Excel).

Anne Lamott says of her writing students: ‘The problem that comes up over and over again is that these people really want to be published. They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published.’

It’s a stout thing to say: I write for the joy. I write to create. I write because I have to. All these things are true of me. But hell yeah, I want to be published too. Even in this market, even for the proverbial dozen doughnuts and a stick in the eye. I want it.

And I have to say this, even though it’s gonna make me sound like one of the bad guys: it’s hard to keep your joy. It’s really hard. And it’s not just the market. I think the cacophony of available information and advice can hurt us if we’re not careful. There are so many opinions, so many tips, so many Don’t Go Theres that writers are afraid to move. They’re being told to Just Do It but they no longer know how.

No one ever apologises for this, nor should they. The bar is constantly moving for writers, and it’s the writer’s job to know where the bar is and clear it. Because an unknown writer is nothing, no one: the rules are never going to change to make the unknown writer happy. In fact, a few less unknown writers overall would probably do the world some good. They could move on from writing dreams and do something useful. Patricia Finney says if you get the urge to write, don’t. Fight it every way you can. Only if you lose every one of those fights should you give in to writing. If at all possible, make your mark on the world in some other way.

I say I’ve lost all the fights. I can’t do Excel, after all.

But I submit this: looking for tips and tricks and What’s Hot and What You Must Never Do In A Novel is just like research, and just like reading over what you’ve just written and worrying one sentence for weeks on end. It’s procrastinating. We are being besieged with Rules and while it’s good that they’re there – it’s good that we have access to so much information – there’s an extent to which we have to treat the Rules like pop-up ads and block them out. Otherwise nothing gets done. You know John Irving still writes longhand? There’s something in that.

Writing is terribly, terribly solitary. If you want to write you have to be willing to stand in a corner and just watch without interacting with anyone. The words on the page are yours; whether they ever see the light of day is your call. And the sad sorry fucking truth is that you can’t write for the market: the market is fickle; the market changes. Publishing is slow. You can’t write What’s Hot Now because by the time it’s on shelves, it won’t be Hot anymore. But if you really like What’s Hot Now, write it, because it’ll come back. These things always do.

It’s not for us to be arbiters of the Rules, nor to complain about them, nor to necessarily pay any attention to them until that first draft is in the can. The Rules won’t help you with your first draft. They help you to polish; they help you to present. But if you’re in the Creamy Middle of your first draft, don’t read a tweet or a blog post and panic and go back and change everything. Keep your horse blinders on and keep going.

Once again, most of you probably don’t need to hear this. But I needed to write it down, for myself.

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.

On magic:

(I’m writing this across the table from my marvellously autistic brother who looks exactly like me and who I love more than anyone in the world. John is working on a 500-piece puzzle, and every time he puts two pieces together, he claps and says ‘Good job, John!’ He also says ‘ICE LINEUP!’ and ‘PURPLE VACUUM CLEANER!’ and ‘ORANGE VACUUM CLEANER!’ - and, just now, ‘You’ve just had LOTS of oats.’ He will keep saying each thing until it’s said back to him. Look up ‘echolalia’ in the dictionary. So if this seems a bit disjointed, that’s why.)

Yes, I was one of those kids who waited until Mom had tucked me in and left the room before pulling out a flashlight and a coffee-table-sized edition of STORIES FROM THE BALLET. I thought I was supersly, but Mom was just winking at it: she loved that she had a kid who did this.

(She did, obliquely, warn me that my vision would eventually fail. To this day I have perfect vision, but I’m sure she’s right anyway.)

I believed in stories. I didn’t like that Sara in A LITTLE PRINCESS had a tiger-skin rug, because come on, poor tiger, right? (This was Little Sarah being present-centred, I suppose.) But I read my favourite stories again and again, loved them more each time. I don’t think I knew, then, about the magic of storytelling – but I think that itself is part of the magic, that you don’t know it’s there.

I didn’t discover magic until I started writing – really writing – myself. I was replete with arrogance, but I thought I was full of magic. My characters were Velveteen Rabbits, waiting to become real, and I – unlike the Velveteen Rabbit – was sure that they would become real.

When I began making a daily discipline of writing, I became a reactionary about magic. Stories, I’ve said any number of times on this site alone, are the result of sweated labour. It isn’t just love that makes the Velveteen Rabbit real, and certainly not magic: it’s his willingness to lay stifled under the blanket of a sick child, to become threadbare, to become ugly. Stories are work.

Now, today, I’m not so sure. I think magic might lurk after all.

This is what happens when you escape the vacuum in writing. You can either take what people have to say and incorporate it or not, or you can turn your story into a book-by-committee and stand paralysed before turning every corner, worried that there isn’t enough suspense, worried that no one will care, worried that the names aren’t right – and finally, worried that you don’t care.

This is what happens when you believe in the magic again, but are sure that you don’t have it.

(That author you think is a hack, though – she has it. The authors you admire – well, of course they have it. But you don’t, and you should stick to the typing pool.)

Most writing manuals written by earnest writers you admire tell you that most of writing feels like banging your head against a wall. It feels very much like despair, very much like pain. But then you have those days when you feel like you can fly. All of this is very true. When you try and nothing comes – or when only offal comes – it’s painful.

But I know what it is to fly, too, and I’ve come to distrust those days. That is often where my worst writing comes from, though I don’t know it at the time. Those days make me arrogant; they make me feel like my best work isn’t work at all.

So between high-flying arrogance and total paralysis, where do we find ourselves? What state of mind can we adopt so that we can work?

I don’t have answers today. I’m only asking questions. Because there’s a sense of having lost the joy of the thing, of having let the magic slip out of my fingers (not through: out of), if it was ever there. (Maybe the magic is just arrogance – maybe you need arrogance to keep going.)

(To this, my brother John says ‘SWIMMING!’ I say it back. ‘MUSHROOM SOUP!’ he bellows. I bellow it back.)

From listening to other writers, I learn one thing: I have to bend my mind so that I can be proud of all of my writing, of everything I commit to paper. X number of words make a draft. You have to have a draft. To paraphrase Anne Lamott very badly, I can’t let perfectionism stand between me and a shitty draft. I can’t let the memory of days when I could fly stand between me and a shitty draft. The minute you clap THE END onto something, you have something to work with. The last ten thousand words of my novel have been absolutely uninspiring, but it could be that they all had to be committed to paper for me to write one perfect paragraph. Who knows. The lesson is a daunting one. This isn’t the time to stop and think: this is the time to keep going.

(John puts two more pieces together and claps. Good job, John! And then: ‘STOVE!’ ‘FIRE ALARM!’ The puzzle looks like a mess right now, but it’ll make sense eventually.)

Till next time, &c. &c.

GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI. Tell me that’s a book you don’t want to read. Wait, I have a better idea. Go read the first chapter, and then tell me you’re not absolutely dying to read the rest.

Check this out:

After a one-night stand with a fallen angel and a bite from a vampire, forgettable Jackie Brighton has been changed into a succubus.  Now, she’s turned into a babe, needs sex to survive, and can puts people to sleep with a touch of her fingertips. Sounds great, right? Except for the fact that she’s caught between both the Heavenly and Infernal Host in an ancient turf-war, and now both sides want a piece of her…

How’s a girl supposed to save the world when the enemy is so hard to resist?

How can you resist that? (Quick answer: you can’t.)

Well, good news: GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI, the debut of paranormal romance author Jill Myles, was released on 29 December by Pocket. Today, this site is the stop on Ms Myles’s blog book tour, and I was delighted to be able to pelt her with all sorts of questions about the role of history and research in her stunning debut.

And readers, this is not only an interview, not only a blog tour, but a CONTEST as well: Jill’s agent, the gorgeous and talented Holly Root of Waxman Literary, is giving away a free query critique to one lucky commenter. Be sure to comment on each of Jill’s interviews (one comment per post only, please), and on January 27, Jill and Holly will reveal the winner!

SK: Welcome, Jill! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer all my fangirl questions. You must be so delighted about your new release! Now, to business: what role do history and historical research play in GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI?

JM: Inspiration, mostly! I took tidbits of history and yoinked them into my story, for lack of a better term. What’s in my book is not 100% historically accurate, and it’s not all factual, of course. But I used some historical bits as scaffolding for different storylines, especially the villain.

SK: Historically-inspired villains are always the best villains! You’ve said that you like to draw on Egyptian history in your research. Can you tell us a little about how Egyptian history caught your attention?

JM: Egyptian history has always appealed to me. I think I started my fascination with Egyptian history after watching (sadly enough) an Indiana Jones movie. After that, I checked out all the history books I could possibly find on Egypt. It was fascinating to think that so far back in history, there was such an advanced, intelligent civilization. Pyramids! Mummies! God-kings! How can that not appeal to you as a kid? And then when I found out that there were female pharaohs? I was a total goner. Been in love ever since. My favorite dynasty is the 18th, of course.

SK: Well, naturally. But the opening of GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI is full of hat-tips to urban life today - dumpsters, Burger King napkins, hotel key cards, and ‘beer beauty’. Was it a conscious decision to lay this on thickly to juxtapose the ancient mythologies of succubi, angels, and vampires? What was your approach to creating a setting that was both Jackie’s world and the world of these mythical creatures?

JM: No! But that sounds really clever and like I did it on purpose, so I’m going to go with that. I think I worked backward, actually. Jackie’s setting and world came first. Then when I started introducing immortals, I wanted them to be really, really old. So that’s when I dug back into history and started pulling out the bits that I loved and incorporating them into the story.

SK: So how heavily do you rely on research? Are established myths written in stone or do you bend them to suit the story?

JM: Totally bend. As for how much I research for the story, it depends. If I’m looking for something specific — let’s say a famous place in ancient Egypt that I can use for the story — I’ll start researching broadly, and usually by Wikipedia. Not as the end-all-be-all, of course, but as a good springboard for where to start. Once I start following something specific, I’ll reference more specific source documentation, university websites, reference books, etc. I was really fascinated by a piece of history mentioned in passing in Herodotus’s Histories, and I ended up reading half of the darn thing just trying to find more information about my one obscure character.

SK: Welcome to the story of my life! I’m glad I’m not the only one who can get sucked into a good story and watch the day fly by. What do you think is more important to your story, the romance or the mythology? If you had to write one or the other, which would you choose, and why?

JM: Oh… poop. That’s a really hard question. It… depends on the book? I wrote a heavily-mythology based urban fantasy (still in my trunk!) and I’ve written romances with zero mythology. So it really depends on what the story calls for and what I’m in the mood for.

SK: Ooh, really hoping for that manuscript to come out of the trunk one day! Sooo… do you ever… you know… use research to procrastinate?

JM: Oh, I’ve been in a Wikipedia trance many, many times more than I like to admit. You know when you go to look up, say, the population of Sheridan, Wyoming, and end up on a page about Edward III? Yeah. That happens fairly often, sad to say.

SK: Again, glad I’m not the only one, though my Wyoming census repertoire needs work. So, in conclusion, I have to say that GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI has renewed my faith in romance novels. Would you ever consider writing historical romance, succubi or no succubi? If so, where would you set it and when?

JM: Yes! I actually have a straight-up historical romance brewing on a back-burner. No succubi or vampires allowed. I really love the medieval milieu, but it’s hard for me to turn off the part of the brain that says “Using hay in the bathroom is not sexy! No dentistry is not sexy! Black death is not sexy!” so I was playing around with Victorian times instead.  Mostly, I think, because I am fascinated at how lewd some of the ‘innocent’ parlor games were. And bustles. Bustles are fascinating.

SK: Having worn a bustle on my wedding day, I have to agree that they’re fascinating, particularly in the sense of ‘how the hell do you go to the bathroom with one of those things attached to you?’ But hay can be pretty sexy.

Here endeth the lesson - again, thanks so much, Jill, and congratulations on this tremendous achievement!

Because a) it is a free market; b) you have excellent taste; and c) money can be exchanged for goods and services, you’re definitely going to want to order a copy of GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI or mosey down to your local bookshop and get in the queue. And when you’ve finished and are desperate for more of Jackie Brighton’s exploits as a newly-minted succubus, you can take heart, because the next book in the series, SUCCUBI LIKE IT HOT, will be released later this year (now available for pre-order!).

This site is only one of many stops on Ms Myles’s blog junket this month - if you want to read more (and you do), here are the interviews already done, courtesy of fellow writers:

• Jill talks to Amy Bai about inspiration and the joys of authorhood;
• Dorothy Windsor grills Jill about the harrowing hunt for an agent;
• Jen Hayley gets Jill’s take on the best way to nab a great agent;
• Kerri O’Connell delves into the world of mythology in GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI; and
• Jill talks to Stina Leicht about the role of mythology in urban fantasy.

Be sure to check out Julianne Douglas’s interview with Jill on the ever-vexing question of procrastination and a writer’s discipline, coming out tomorrow, January 8. For the full roster of Jill’s interviews, Shelli Johannes-Wells has kindly provided a schedule.

And remember to comment on every site for your chance at a free query critique from agent Holly Root!

Most importantly, run out and buy this book!

(I’ve never used this many successive exclamation points on this site. Thank you, Jill!)

Till next time, &c. &c.

Yesterday the news broke that Canadian science fiction author Peter Watts was detained by US Customs and ultimately arrested for assaulting a federal officer. If you feel the outrage that I feel, donate to his legal defense fund.

My recent stories are neither as serious nor as dire as Peter Watts’s, but given I’ve just returned to the UK (anyone who knows me will be staggered to know that I woke of my own accord at 6:20 and did not, in fact, stay up all night to be posting this early) and they are fresh in my mind, here goes:

Heathrow Airport, Terminal Three, London: Security, 24 November 2009

INT - DAY

Security Officer: Ma’am? Ma’am?
Sarah (small voice): Yes?
Security Officer: Can you provide a boarding card for this young lady?
Sarah (observing that SO is holding up Katrina, the teddy bear she’s had since she was five years old): …
Security Officer: Ma’am?

Sarah (thinking): Security officers don’t make jokes. You mustn’t make jokes to security officers.

Sarah: Please tell me you’re not serious?
Security officer: Wha-at? She’s a good-looking bear, ma’am. You can’t take a joke? Yeah. Cute bear. (Throws Katrina into the X-ray machine)

Calgary International Airport, Calgary: Security, 24 November 2009

INT - NIGHT

Security officer #1: Any liquids, gels, or aerosols, ma’am?
Sarah (distracted, pulling out laptop): Not that I know of…
Security officer #1 (holding up 200ml bottle of Superdrug-purchased astringent): What’s this, ma’am?
Sarah: Oh, thaaaaaaat. Right. I’ll get a bag for it.
Security officer #1: I’m afraid I’m going to have to confiscate this, ma’am.
Sarah (observing quarter-inch of liquid at bottom of bottle): Aw, come on! There’s hardly anything left in it.
Security officer #1: We have to go by the number specified on the bottle, ma’am.
Sarah: Look at my teddy bear! Isn’ she cute? Her name is Katrina. She doesn’t have a boarding card.
Security officer #1: Sorry, ma’am. I’m going to have to take this. It may contain dangerous materials. (Throws astringent bottle over shoulder)

On the other side of the X-ray machine…

Security officer #2: Mind if I have a look through your bag, ma’am?
Sarah: What if I say no?
Security officer #2 (opening backpack): Ha-ha.
Sarah: (maintaining studied silence)
Security officer #2 (holding up newly-purchased Dove aerosol anti-perspirant): Ah, deodorant.
Sarah: Right, that.
Security officer #2: I’m gonna have to take this from you, ma’am.
Sarah: The seal’s still on it! I’m only flying two hundred kilometres!
Security officer #2 (removing anti-perspirant): Sorry, ma’am.
Sarah: Jeez, man, why’d you have to go and do that?
Security officer #2 (leaning forward, whispering): Because we’re idiots, ma’am. I’m super sorry.

NB: Finding yourself without deodorant is a touchy thing.

Vancouver International Airport: Security, 2 December 2009

INT - DAY

Security officer: We’re going to have to search you, ma’am.
Sarah (assuming the position): Right.
Security officer: Arms down, ma’am!
Security officer: (prodding Sarah’s arms and legs) OK, now arms up.
Security officer: I’m going to touch your waist now, is that OK?
Sarah: What if I say no, ha-ha?
Security officer: (pulling waistband of Sarah’s pants and feeling around) We can do this in private if you prefer.
Sarah: No thank you.
Security officer: Please turn around now. Arms up.
Security officer (feeling all the same spots with Sarah now pointed at the gawking populace): Arms down, please. Feet further apart, please. (Feeling the insides of Sarah’s thighs)
Sarah (thinking): My mother told me not to let people do this to me.
Security officer: Please lean against the conveyor belt, ma’am, and hold your right foot behind you with your right hand.
Sarah: (feeling pleased that she had the foresight to wear yoga pants today)
Security officer: Now lean forward.
Sarah: (feeling hand plucking at her underwire and roving up) Steady now!
Security officer: Sorry, ma’am.
Sarah: You ask permission to feel my waist, but not those?
Security officer: Left foot now, ma’am. (Feeling inside Sarah’s shoe)
Sarah: (now very late for her flight, feeling devirginated, about to say something rude)
Security officer (disappointed): Thank you, ma’am. That will be all.
Sarah: (grabs bag and runs, no doubt looking very guilty)

Edmonton International Airport: Security, 10 December 2009

INT - NIGHT

Sarah: Look, all my liquids, gels, and aerosols in a bag! Even my lighter. All there, in the bag.
Security officer #1: Thanks very much, ma’am. Move along.
Sarah: (walking through metal detector, smug)
Security officer #2: Is this your bag, ma’am?
Sarah: Yes…
Security officer #2: We’re going to have to run this again, ma’am.
Sarah: (clutching Katrina)
Security officer #2: Seems you forgot some of your liquids, ma’am. We’re going to have to do a manual search through your bag.
Sarah (reaching for backpack): I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if there’s anything, it’ll be in the cosmetic bag right in here…
Security officer #2 (bodyblocking): DON’T touch the bag, please, ma’am.
Sarah: (throwing caution to the wind and very visibly rolling her eyes)
Security officer #2 (empties backpack)
Security officer #2 (hands over tube of mascara)
Security officer #2 (hands over second, empty tube of mascara)
Security officer #2 (hands over one, two tubes of lipstick)
Security officer #2 (hands over lavender roll-on headache remedy half the size of pinky finger)
Sarah (stuffing items into airport-issued plastic bag) That stuff totally doesn’t even work.
Security officer #2: Careful with that, ma’am. The bag has to be able to close.
Sarah (dumping out contents of plastic bag and rearranging): These have never been considered liquids before.
Security officer #2 (swelling chest): They’ve always been considered gels, ma’am.
Security officer #2 (ramming items back into backpack)
Sarah (watching): If I’m now allowed to touch my own things, I’ll repack that myself, please. I like to have my things in a certain order.
Sarah (running to gate with backpack that will no longer close, Katrina in tow)

Calgary International Airport: Security, 10 December 2009

Security officer: Hey, weren’t you here like two weeks ago? Cute bear! Love it.

For the postscript, find Sarah sitting in a seat of her own choosing aboard a Boeing 333 aircraft destined for London Heathrow from Calgary (flight times 6:20pm MST-10:10 am GMT). File the following under ONLY IN CANADA. Sarah hears the following from the flight deck while the plane is still grounded (bearing in mind that everything, once said, was repeated in French, after the fine Canadian fashion):

6:15: We’ll be pushing back in about five minutes here. Flight attendants please prepare for departure and crosscheck.

6:20: This is your first officer speaking. We have to de-ice the plane. This will take about fifteen minutes.

6:30: Many apologies from the flight deck. The de-icing equipment has been taken by a flight bound for Frankfurt. We’ll be pushing back in about twenty minutes.

7:10: Pushing back. Flight attendants, please prepare for departure and crosscheck.

7:35: This is your first officer speaking. There has been a medical emergency to the rear of the aircraft. We’ll have to return to the gate to evacuate the passenger. Flight attendants, please prepare for arrival and crosscheck.

8:00: Please be patient and remain in your seats while the medical team removes the passenger from the rear of the aircraft. We’ll be taxiing out as soon as she’s off the plane. Flight attendants, please prepare for departure and crosscheck.

8:30: This is your first officer speaking. We’ve been informed that there are three pieces of luggage that Heathrow Airport will not accept because they contain dangerous materials. We have to return to the gate to remove the luggage in question. Flight attendants, please prepare for arrival and crosscheck.

8:55: This is your first officer speaking from the flight deck, and I have some pretty silly, pretty good news. Turns out the luggage Heathrow wouldn’t accept never actually made it on to the plane, so we’ll be taxiing out to the runway immediately. Please ensure all hand luggage is properly stowed. Flight attendants, please prepare for departure and crosscheck.

Ten minutes later, against all odds, the Little Boeing That Could actually made it into the air. The flight landed in London at 2:00pm GMT, your narrator had hauled her ass up about eight flights of stairs with two suitcases, a backpack, and Katrina in tow by 4:00, and, safely deposited home, has literally lived to tell the tale.

The visit was worth it, the people were worth it, but by golly I never want to fly again. Please donate whatever you can to Peter Watts’s cause. My stories were irritating when they were happening but funny in the retelling; his never will be.

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.

It is Agent Appreciation Day. Today we celebrate our advocates, re-experience our astonishment and gratitude that someone so knowledgeable, so hard-working, and so excellently beyond cool believes in our work, and generally raise a toast to the people whose zeal brings us closer to our dreams.

My agent, Jenny Bent, until recently of the Trident Media Group, hung up her own shingle in March 2009 and has been jumping from strength to strength since, as any subscriber to Publishers’ Lunch will know. The Bent Agency has been so successful, in fact, that Jenny’s recently hired on a new agent, Susan Hawk, to handle young adult  and middle-grade authors. Jenny’s online presence is gentle, encouraging, savvy, and very occasionally whimsical. (Ref. a tweet from 18 Nov: ‘So sad that I ate all the skittles. I should have bought the economy bag’, followed up on 2 Dec by this: ‘Because skittles may in fact taste better than skinny feels.’ A woman very much after my own heart.) Her love for writers and writing shines through in her blog posts, in her tweets, in her constant advocacy, and (most importantly) in her emails to me.

The truth is, though, that there are a lot of agents like that. What sets Jenny apart is her willingness to nurture her authors, her awe-inspiring patience in the kind of market that makes editors demand that manuscripts be more or less press-ready, in a market where there’s no time or money or manpower to take the rough edges off the best work we have to offer. Jenny flouts that trend and takes the time.

Believe me, I know. When I started querying I was an agent’s nightmare. I was terrible at pitches, terrible at synopses (my stomach still churns just thinking of them), and my novel - if you’re kind - was rough, rudderless, and not remotely agent-ready. I got a lot of requests for material and they languished until Jenny came along. I queried, got a request within an hour, and within four days I was on the phone with her, discussing at length what a colossal shipwreck my manuscript was.

Here’s the cool thing, though: she still wanted me. She saw the good in the manuscript and wanted me. And over the course of six months, she helped me turn an idea for a good novel into a good novel; she taught me what a story is and made me a better writer. She’s been patient with my questions and my blunders; she’s been effusive over my successes; she’s always written back quickly; and she hasn’t been paid a penny for any of it. With tenacity like that, with belief like that, it’s really no wonder she’s one of the best literary agents in New York.

So Jenny, I raise my glass to you, and hope you get some much-deserved rest over the holidays. It’s very easy for a writer to be colossally self-absorbed, and most of the time I am. But it does me a service to remember, every now and again, exactly where I wouldn’t be without Jenny fighting for me.

Hug your agent. Do it now.

Till next time, &c &c.

The month of October was lost. I didn’t write a word. (I took notes, arranged footnotes, read, made bullet points - but all for school.) I read a novel so toe-stretchingly good that I was paralysed under the squatting weight of my own mediocrity for an entire month.

What do you do with that? I never thought confidence was something you really had to have to write, because I never felt like I had a lot, and yet I was writing. It wasn’t just my confidence that was decimated, though: it was the notion that I could bring a new narrative to the canon. If I couldn’t be exactly as good as this author - or better - there wasn’t any point. So every day I opened my document, read a few paragraphs out loud, bit my lip, dusted behind the bookcases, emitted a long, jolting sigh, and closed it again.

Then, on Hallowe’en, I had an idea. I read a different book. Here was an author I admired just as much, and who writes with an entirely different voice. That these two voices could sit at either end of a spectrum, and be just as worthy as one another, convinced me to go back to my own pages.

I’m always leery of reading anything I know will be very good while I’m writing myself (which is just about always). I know I’m going to want that voice, want exactly that kind of detail, want to make my characters speak in exactly that way. So when Stephen King tells me that the first rule of writing is to write a lot and read a lot, I get confused: if other writers mess this much with my mojo, why should I let them in?

This paralysis was worse than any other paralysis. If I wanted to keep writing, I had to look for solutions. And my solution was this: if you’re writing, you shouldn’t shut your door on other voices; you should open it wider. Get a whole cacophony of voices in your head, not just one. Because all writers are thieves (I stole that saying), they should rob as many shops as possible. You’re never going to sound like Nick Hornby. You’re never going to sound like A.S. Byatt. You have to get over wanting to. The world already has those folks; it doesn’t have you yet.

Besides, I can’t imagine there’s a single writer I admire who hasn’t been through this - hasn’t wanted to sound like someone else. It’s usually why writers get into writing in the first place. The voice you so admire didn’t emerge fully formed from Zeus’s head: it is, like yours, a cacophony of other voices in other rooms, mixed in a specific but largely accidental way to create an individual. That’s you, too, and that’s me.

People who read my site are probably sick of hearing about Hilary Mantel, but she was the one who paralysed me. The one who got me moving again was John Irving. There couldn’t be two more different voices on the western English spectrum. John Irving is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the best writers alive. He is a dyslexic wrestler who writes longhand and has probably made me cry more times than any one person I know personally. He is a genius. Hilary Mantel is also a genius. These are wonderful influences, but I can’t read them one at a time or my own writing will collapse. I have to read them both, and I shouldn’t only be reading those two. I should be reading Sarah Waters. I should be reading Michel Faber. I should be reading Stephen King. I should be reading Michael Palin’s Python Diaries. I should be reading all of it. To do otherwise would be to try to bake a cake using only flour, or only flour and eggs: both important - can’t bake a cake without them! - but whither sugar; whither vanilla extract? The cake is your voice, and it needs all the ingredients.

That might be the worst metaphor I’ve ever made. I totally didn’t steal it. That’s all mine.

Conclusion: it wasn’t Hilary Mantel who paralysed me in October. It was the fact that after I finished her novel, I was too terrified to read anything else. I was trying (sigh) to bake a cake out of thin air. You can’t stop reading, because if you do, you’ll stop writing. And if for whatever reason you’re cocky enough to write without reading, what you write probably isn’t worth being read.

So read outside your writing. Read outside your genre. Read outside your language, if you can. Every single book you read - every chapter - will inform and evolve your own voice. Don’t be afraid: these books aren’t making you irrelevant; they’re making you better.

Or maybe I’m the only person who needed to be told that?

Till next time, &c &c.