Interview with Anita Amirrezvani, Author of The Blood of Flowers (Little Brown, June 2007)

Interview with Eduardo Santiago, Author of Tomorrow They Will Kiss (Little Brown, 2006)

In a beautiful debut novel, author Anita Amirrezvani takes the reader back in time to 17th century Iran to tell the story of a fourteen year old girl caught between the history of tradition and her talent as a rug designer. An engrossing and entertaining read, the novel illuminates and brings to life a time and place unknown to most of us. The author took some time out to talk with Literature Chick.

LT: You were a journalist - why write a novel?

AA: Journalism is fast-paced and immediate, while a novel requires an intense and sustained effort. The approaches are so different that in some ways, they are quite complementary. When I was writing about the arts, I enjoyed the speed and the instant gratification of daily journalism. When I went home at night to work on my novel, I had to stretch my skills in another direction. It takes a different part of the brain to develop characters over time, to create a viable plot, and to immerse readers in an unfamiliar historical period. And patience! The key is endless and enduring patience as you get deeper and deeper into your book.

LT: What was the primary impetus to writing a historical fiction work such as The Blood of Flowers?

AA: Before I started to develop the plot, one of my main concerns was to provide a more nuanced view of Iran than we normally see in news headlines. Many people probably think of Iran solely in terms of the 1980 hostage crisis and now, the nuclear issue. For nearly thirty years, the United States and Iran have not had diplomatic relations, which means that knowledge of each other at an ordinary, human level has steadily decreased. After so many years of blackout, I thought people might be interested in learning things that go beyond the politics of the moment. After all, Iranian culture has been around for thousands of years, and that’s what will endure into the future. In my book, I focus on typical traditions like the craft of carpet-making and the art of storytelling to provide a broader view of the people and the place.

LT: The book takes place in 17th century Isfahan - what type of research did you do to insure accuracy?

AA: I went to Isfahan twice while I was writing the book to visit the buildings that I describe in my novel. The great square where much of the action takes place, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, has a beautiful palace, historically important mosques, and an extensive bazaar, which are much loved by locals and tourists. Isfahan also has beautiful bridges, outdoor teahouses, ancient fire-temples, and long tree-lined avenues. Naturally, I took photos so that I could remind myself of the exact details when the time came to write about them. Back at home, one of my great pleasures was to spend time reading about the seventeenth century. Shah Abbas, who ruled for more than forty years, had a scribe named Eskandar Monshi who wrote an extensive chronicle about his reign. My book is not particularly tied to historical events, but Monshi’s account gave me insights into the way that the people of the period, especially powerful men, thought about things. I also consulted many art books, such as Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman’s Survey of Persian Art, which has extensive photos of Iranian architecture, paintings, textiles, coins, carpets, and so on. I used these massive tomes to help me paint an accurate picture of the art of the seventeenth century.

LT: Your female characters ring true. Were they based upon actual people?

AA: No, but they are based on actual situations that female characters might have faced during the time period. My heroine, for example, expects to get married at the age of fourteen, like most of her friends and her relatives. That was typical in Iran until fairly recently. My grandmother, who was born in 1910, married at fourteen, and her daughter, who was born in 1933, did the same. Today, the average age of marriage in Iran for women is 23, according to government statistics, while in the United States it is 25.

LT: What part did your own background play in the writing of the book?

AA: Probably the most important thing is that my daily experiences with my Iranian family are reflected in the book. What I mean by that is that I have incorporated typical practices -- dining habits, expressions, marriage customs, celebrations -- so that people get a sense of what life might have been like for an Iranian family. However, the main characters and the plot are wholly invented.

LT: It took you many years to research and finish the novel. Did you ever want to give up? What drove you to finish?

AA: Since it was impossible to know whether I’d ever sell my book, I ascribe my persistence to the role that the book had in my everyday life. Generally, we are all subject to the demands of people around us, in particular our bosses at work and our families, and we have to work within those frameworks. While writing my book, I enjoyed an imaginative freedom that was not possible elsewhere in my life. Even when I was stuck, tired, or disappointed, I always returned to my writing because it was one of the few places where I could proceed entirely as I wished. I didn’t tell anyone close to me that I was working on a novel for about five years, and this gave me additional liberty to develop it as I saw fit.

LT: The characters tell stories in the book. Tell us a bit about these stories - where do they come from? Their allegorical nature?

AA: When I was writing my book, it occurred to me that although Westerners are familiar with European tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, as well as with the Greek and Roman myths and with A Thousand and One Nights, Iranian oral culture as such is little known to the general American public. There are seven tales in my novel, some of which come from sources that are about a thousand years old. I wrote the first and the last tales myself because I needed stories that matched the arc of the plot. As for as the allegorical nature of the stories, I chose them carefully and changed them as needed in order to reflect the heroine’s emotional development.

LT: What are your future plans?

AA: A second book, naturally. It’s not a sequel, but it will continue my explorations into Iranian history. Recently, I’ve noticed a surge of non-fiction books on medieval leaders such as Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, but to my surprise, there have been few novels on pre-modern Iranian movers and shakers, and even fewer on powerful women. That’s fertile terrain for the novelist, and I’m happy that there’s so much rich material to enjoy and to share.

Interview with author Eduardo Santiago, author of Tomorrow They Will Kiss(Little Brown, 2006)

LC: Tell us a bit about how growing up in Cuba and then Miami has influenced your writing.

ES: I lived in Cuba until I was nine years old, after that we spent some time in Madrid, Spain, then we moved to Los Angeles. I spent all my summers with my aunt in Miami. But leaving Cuba physically was not the same as leaving Cuba emotionally. My childhood memories remained very vivid. There are a lot of factual events in my novel that seemed unreal to me, maybe because they were filtered through a child’s eyes. Those memories nagged at me until I discovered a way to put them down, as creatively as possible, into my novel.

LC: Do you consider yourself a multi cultural writer?

ES: Absolutely, I still have my Cuban passport (although it’s not valid), and very strong ties to the Cuban community, both in the U.S. and back in Cuba. But I live an American life. Although I am fully bilingual, I mostly speak English in my daily life, even with my siblings and my Cuban friends. In my writing, I always try to bring both experiences together, as I have done in Tomorrow They Will Kiss. I don’t think I would know how to write from just one side of the Florida Straits.

LC: Where you influenced by women in your life? You write with such understanding and knowledge of female character.

ES: I don’t think the women in my life knew how profoundly they were influencing me. My aunts were just all very colorful and outspoken. They were natural storytellers who had opinions about everything and weren’t reluctant to express themselves. So they handed me a large palette of color that I can now use when I write the way a painter would use colors. None of my characters are based on any one woman, they all composites of women both here in the U.S. and some who stayed behind in Cuba.

LC: How long did it take to write this first novel?

ES: All in all about a year and a half. Including about a dozen rewrites. This novel, once I got the idea, practically wrote itself, and as soon as it was finished, Michael Mezzo who at the time was an editor at Little, Brown and Co. approached me and I sold it – before it even went out to other publishers. But the way I looked at it, when Little, Brown and Co. says they want you, what are you going to do? Wait for a better offer? Our relationship has been wonderful so far, just supportive as any first time author could want.

LC: Why the telenovela element in the book?

ES: Telenovelas were always a huge part of our family life. In Cuba they were on the radio, that was in the 50’s. Here they are on tv, every single night, so even though I didn’t sit down and watch them with my parents, they were always background music. So it was inevitable that they would find their way into my work. Even now, my parents watch three a night, five nights a week. If they’re bad they watch them so they can rag on them, if they’re good they watch them because they love them. Basically, they’re addicts. But in Tomorrow They Will Kiss what I tried to do, and I hope I accomplished, was to give readers an understanding of how important telenovelas have been to the immigrants and exiles. How they connect them go each other in a country where they feel so disconnected.

LC: Does the novel's title have double meaning - i.e. freedom of Cuba?

ES: Yes! Not just double, but multiple. I actually expected my publisher to ask for a different title, but they never suggested it, not once. I know writers that have to submit lists of titles. But was always Tomorrow They Will Kiss. I don’t want to tell you what all the meanings are because I think part of the fun of reading the book is to find out for yourself. But, yes, the title was chosen very carefully to convey a multitude of meanings.

LC: What would you say is one of the key problems with the identity of Cuban Americans?

ES: Well, when this novel takes place we were all very new to this country, and our identity was much more in question than it is today. Also, we must keep in mind that back in the 60’s we expected our exile to be much more temporary than it turned out to be. Now that we’ve been here such a long time, and many of us expect to be here for the rest of ouir lives, it’s not really a problem. Personally, I enjoy having one foot here and one foot there. I’m Cuban-American, but Cuban first. I’m very clear on that.

LC: Is this book a commentary on the nature of immigration in America?

ES: I don’t think so. Certainly, that was not my main intention. Although from what I hear from people who’ve read the novel, it’s definitely a key ingredient. I was much more concerned with the nature of friendship and how often good intentions go awry. When I was writing this novel I was much more focused on how sometimes the people who claim to love you and care for you will often hold you back – and what it takes to break away and become your own person, live your dream, follow your destiny.

LC: Do you consider yourself a political person?

ES: Only in the sense that I am constantly horrified, saddened and baffled by the choices and decisions of world leaders. So I try to take a long view of the world, which keeps me from being too much of a reactionary. Has there always been terrorism, injustice, senseless poverty, tyranny, political dishonesty and gut-wrenching suffering in the world? Yes! Has there been some progress since the Middle Ages? Yes. My faith remains with the individual – and so I do vote and I try to live responsibly. In spite of all this chaos I try to carve out a little corner for myself where I can live out my days with some dignity and (increasing) sanity. And I try to surround myself with people, who, if the ship sinks, will be willing to be on the life raft with me. That’s about as political as I get. I read the papers, I watch the news, I cringe, shudder, and I grab my two-year old niece, Olivia, and go get some ice cream and try to make her feel safe.

Eliot Fintushel is Cool!

Author Eliot Fintushel’s book, Breakfast With the Ones You Love(Bantam Spectra, 2007) is at times a science fiction adventure complete with a quirky, beautiful heroine named Lea and at times a spiritual book about Judaic mysticism complete with a hero, Jack, who is one of the Chosen. Either way, this new release from the acclaimed short story writer will leave readers feeling moved, educated and entertained. Fintushel took some time to talk with Literature Chick.

LT: Did you always know you would be a writer?

EF: As a child, I wrote passionately, and I imagined that I would be a writer someday. In my early teens I typed a novel called SEDUCTION OF THE VOID, cover decorated with blood from a pierced thumb. I actually did submit it to two or three publishers and very deservedly got my rejection slips. At some point, though, I gave up on the project of being a writer, and I decided to become enlightened instead. I think that I imagined that I would disappear and merge into the universe in a kind of a puff of green smoke. I did all kinds of very extreme practices to that end--and I still do one or two of them. I practiced Zen at a big center for many years and actually did discover something. Then I became a performer of mask and mime theater, did very well at it, wrote material for myself and for ensembles I worked with. The great thing about performing is that the audience tells you at once what's good and what's not, moment by moment by moment--if you know how to listen. With writing, it may be months, if ever, before you know. When I moved from New York to California, I left all my theater contacts behind, so I figured I'd better find a way of making a living that didn't depend on location. For that reason, I started writing. Someone had told me that genre markets were the easiest to break into, so I wrote science fiction stories at the rate of about one every ten days. I sent them out practically before the ink was dry, and when they came back, I sent them out again. At the end of a year, I was selling lots of them to big magazines and making two or three thousand bucks a year at it. Part 2 of my plan was, on the basis of a track record selling short stories, to start selling novels to some big publishing house. That part has taken me about fifteen years. Meanwhile, I've managed to stay alive by doing performance art and children's shows, teaching improvisation, playing the theremin on street corners, and writing articles and reviews for this or that magazine.

LT: Why the genre of science fiction and the sub genre of Judaic writing?

EF: I write science fiction partly because it's the most easily salable, but also because it suits my wild mind to do so. Mostly, however, my fiction is not so much science fiction as metaphysical fiction--what can happen between seeing a thing and knowing its name, for example, or between waking and knowing (or believing you know) who you are. Not infrequently, I have received hate mail from sci-fi fans who are upset that such stuff has been allowed to seep into their magazines. I have written some straight-ahead literary fiction, one short for The Ohio Review, before it folded. I write Judaic stuff because I know it, I grew up in it, and I have a deep and abiding fondness for the culture. When I was a child, all the grownups were from Eastern Europe and spoke Yiddish. To write or cut paper on Saturday was frowned upon. Once, I hid under the bed, fearful that the Jewish police would come knocking because I had eaten a little milchik after fleishik. I still soulfully sing Yiddish opera ditties in the shower, plus much of Moishe Oisher's cantorial repertoire for the High Holidays and S'lichot.

LT: Breakfast With the Ones You Love deals with the nature of identity, spirituality and family all tied up in a complex, off the wall story. Where did the idea come from? The character of Lea? Of Jack/Yid?

EF: Well, I guess I just have the sort of a mind that takes things to infinity--just my natural bent. Couple years ago I memorized Revelation, that horrendous, immoral, vicious, disgusting--and most Jewish, alas!--of the New Testament books, added masks and some songs in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and toured it across the states and in Canada, a wild one-man show. So BREAKFAST's Messianic spaceship is just par for the course for me. You think this is off-the-wall? You should check out my short stories (www.fintushel.com/stories_page.htm) because you ain't seen nuttin' yet. Jack is an idealized me--well, a piece of me, and, possibly, Lea is my sister Mollie, hard on the outside, sweet and soft inside. When I read parts of my book these days, I confess that it makes me cry, and it's Lea's voice that does it to me. Where did she come from, really? I don't know. But she moves me. A gift.

LT: The nature of Kabbalah and Judaic mysticism is vital to the plot of the book; do you practice either?

EF: No. Occultism, Jewish or otherwise, is a disease of the mind, a defect. However, I believe very deeply in art, and even more deeply in the importance of meditation, not to mystify, but to clarify. This world is such a wonder altogether, what silliness to go invent exotic fabulations, mystic gestures at the mirror--excepting, consciously, as Art. I am a good and thorough Jewish atheist.

LT: Much of your writing is for young adults, this book seems to have an older demographic - would you agree?

EF: I don't think I've ever written anything for young adults, actually, although I wrote a few children's stories for Pitspopany Press. I never had YA in mind in writing this book, but, in hindsight, the YA appeal is clear. After all, it's the coming of age story of a young woman--how she learns to love (herself and everybody). Still, some pretty complex and sophisticated notions are batted about, there are a lot of sly references and subtextual cavorting going on--let's hope that that makes it the kind of a book that one can read at fifteen and then profitably revisit at fifty.

LT: The notion of salvation seems to weave throughout the work - would you agree?

EF: Salvation, in a religious sense, is at issue everywhere in the book, yes, but it functions only as metaphor for a very much simpler, psychological process. There is no Olam Habaa but this world of ours. The only salvific thing I know of is the melting/opening/remembering of which each of us is capable right now, and the redemption of evil by awareness of it--which is the main point of the angels' ritual inquisition of Jack near the very end, before he is allowed to enter the supernal realm with the rest of his tribe--not to give away too much, I hope . . .

LT: If you were not a writer, would you be a Rabbi?

EF: I do not think of myself as a writer, although I certainly write. I'm not trying to be cute--it's just that I do a lot of things, and when the Muse, if any, bops me, I'm as likely to play the theremin or to dance or to improvise a scene as I am to write. As to being a Rabbi . . . well, when I was a young teenager, I wanted to go to a Yeshiva to become a rabbi or a cantor, but now that I know myself a little better, I'm quite sure that I would not have endured it, and that I would have caused myself and everyone else a lot of sorrow on my way to getting out of there. Except as culture, as art, I'm not fond of any religion. I feel that it's very seriously questionable whether what good religions do is worth the horrific evil of the attendant magnification of ethnocentrism--medieval Crusades, Biblical wars of conquest on the desert, et cetera, et cetera, et bloody cetera.

LT: Do you find that the life of a writer is a difficult one?

EF: Difficult?? Difficult?? What could be difficult about doing what you love and getting paid for it? Of course, it's necessary to learn not to want anything much that you haven't already got, because, by and large, there's little dough in writing, but that's a knack easy to acquire for folks who, above all, love to dream and to wordsmith.

LT: What are your future plans? new book?

EF: I want to play all of Debussy's chamber and piano works on my theremin for lots and lots of people.

Birdie Clark's Because She Can (Warner Books, 2007)

The recent brouhaha over the firing of Judith Regan, President of Regan Books, a division of Harper Collins, has left the media wondering what really went on behind the scenes. Did media mogul fire Regan over the O.J. Simpson debacle (the book and interview)? Or was the firing due to Regan's anti-semitic comments to member of the Harper Collins staff? Regan, a controversial figure from the start, was fodder for a ton of rumors; staff members came and went unable to handle her difficult behavior while she continued to develop and sell best-selling books. Was she a woman misunderstood or a woman in search of fame, no matter how she could obtain it?

In Bridie Clark's new release, Because She Can, editor Claire Truman goes to work for a beast of a boss, the publishing giant and tyrant, Vivian Grant. Grant, is the head of Grant Publishers, a division of a larger company; as such she has sold more best-sellers than any other publisher in the country. Claire, in search of more money and the ability to find great authors, naively ignores all the warnings about Grant and takes on a job with the company. Things go spectaculary well for a bit, until Grant loses her cool and her vampire teeth come out. Determined to hold on for a year and reluctant to leave her newest author in a lurch, Claire deals with the abuse.In the midst of her work nightmare, Claire falls hard for her college crush, the rich and gorgeous Randall. Randall is all she has ever dreamed of and although things are lacking (no communication) in their relationship, she sticks it out.

Claire is a main character much like alot of us - we deny the reality in front of our eyes and talk ourselves into staying when we should be walking out the door. Claire will only come to realize what is truly important when she opens her eyes.Clark, a former editor at an unnamed publishing house, has written a fun, readable book. A quick read, the reader will wonder if there is a measure of truth to the tale of this very hostile work environment or if Clark is simply pulling from recent headlines. Either way, you'll cheer Claire on.

The Continuity Girl by Leah McLaren (Warner 5 Spot, April 2007)

On every movie shoot there is a person who is known as the continuity expert or the script supervisor. This person, usually a woman, must be exceptionally detail oriented as she has to insure that every take matches the previous one, that the small aspects (i.e. taking a sip of water, wearing a certain pair of shoes) are consistent. In Leah McLaren’s The Continuity Girl, Meredith Moore is the ultimate continuity girl; she lives her life on the straight and narrow, never moving off course...that is until her biological clock begins ticking loudly. As her 35th birthday approaches, she realizes that the one thing she really wants is a baby, not necessarily a husband, and so with the focus she uses on her job she begins to shop for the perfect sperm donor.

Although the plot line is not unique, McLaren has created a group of interesting characters that are funny, real and honest. Meredith’s best friend Mish has just miscarried, having created a fetus with sperm from her gay roommate. Meredith’s substitute gynecologist is the gorgeous Dr. Veil, a man that ultimately holds our heroine’s heart. Meredith’s mother, Irma, is an award winning poet who lives in a filthy London flat with no food in the fridge.

When Meredith loses her job on a Toronto film set, she moves to London to work on the elusive Osmond Crouch’s new film. In London, she meets a slew of men from the German artist to the bird obsessed Barnaby, but none seem right as sperm donor. When Dr. Veil comes to Europe to start fertility treatments for the star of the Crouch’s movie, he and Meredith fall hard and quick for one another. Soon, Meredith learns that life, unlike the movies, has its constant ups and downs, its total surprises.

McLaren writes in a style that is both insightful and humorous. The story is related in a way that is visual; we feel like we have stepped inside Osmond’s Italian villa, we know what Irma looks like. It is the author’s ability with words that makes the story a fun, compelling read.

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