Category: Interview

Posted in Historical Fiction, Interview

Kathryn Fitzmaurice’s A DIAMOND IN THE DESERT: Interview & Giveaway

Posted on by beckylevine

Several months ago, I was lucky enough to get an ARC of Kathryn Fitzmaurice’s newest novel, A Diamond in the Desert.

Thanks, Kathryn!

You know those moments, when someone sends you a copy of their book, and you know you want to read it, but you’re thinking…what if? What if you don’t like it? What if it doesn’t grab you? What if it’s not your kind of book?

Believe me, all those bits of worry were a complete waste of time. A Diamond in the Desert is brilliant. I’ve been reading a LOT of historical fiction lately, and while much of the YA genre dispenses with most of the heavy detail and dense historical context that I’m not fond of, Kathryn goes beyond that. The book’s chapters are short, some less than a page, and the voice is light and tight, all at once. She has worked magic–created a world in which the hero is pretty much closing in on himself, with good reason, and pulling back from sharing his thoughts and feelings, and yet…it’s a world in which we fall in love with that character and his story. We know him by his reluctance to let us in. Believe me, this book will challenge all your ideas about what historical fiction is and excite you about what it can be.

And one of you will get challenged right away, because Kathryn’s book launches today, and I’m giving away a copy of A Diamond in the Desert to a commenter on this post. Just leave a comment by Monday, February 20th, and I’ll put your name in the hat. Make sure to leave contact info in the comment!

And now, read on, to see what Kathryn has to say.

BL: What made you decide to write about the Japanese internment camps and the baseball played there?

KF: The idea to write this story came when I visited my oldest son’s middle school National History Day competition. One of his friends, a girl, had built a model of the Zenimura baseball field as it sat outside the camp. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I asked her if I could interview her grandfather, who played outfield for the team. After that interview, I wanted to know everything I could about Gila River, so I contacted two other players and interviewed them, also. I thought I would write a short article about the big game, where they beat the Arizona state champions, because, honestly, the idea of a novel was overwhelming. There was so much I didn’t know, and I wasn’t Japanese. It took a long time before I came up with the courage to start writing the novel. Those months of researching everything and talking with Mr. Furukawa, who was the pitcher for the team, helped tremendously.

Mr. Tetsuo Furukawa, at age 13, after baseball practice in Gila River, Arizona

BL: Please describe your research process. Do you research and write at the same time? Is your research complete before you get to the revision stage?

KF: After I completed the interviews with the three gentlemen who were on the team, I visited the Laguna Niguel National Archives Building and asked them to order the Gila River newspaper so I could read it. Because I am not Japanese, I felt like I really needed to read all three and half years of the newspaper before writing even one word of the story. It was very intimidating to write about a culture I was not a part of. I was constantly calling Mr. Furukawa to ask him things. I would read about something in the newspaper, an event, (for example, the young girl almost drowning in the dirt canal), and call him to see if he remembered it and what it was like from his point of view. When I got through the newspapers on microfiche, I then bought many books about baseball in the 1940’s, and several about the war. I made a timeline for all three things, one for baseball, one for the war, and one for everything that had happened in Gila River that I wanted to write about. I put the most important events on sticky notes and taped them on the wall of my home office, so that the timeline stretched over four walls. I also taped up a map of the camp and photos of the main character. This took many months, but I felt like it was necessary in order to make me understand, as best as an outsider could, the time period. The only thing I really understood was the setting because I grew up outside of Phoenix. I knew the desert, I knew the way the sun looked when it set, the Gila monsters and snakes, the roadrunners. I knew how it felt to live in the climate. When I started writing the story, with each draft, I would send it to Mr. Furukawa and he would read it and make suggestions. When I was finished writing, I put everything in a folder, in order, so I could go back to it whenever I needed to see it.

BL: All of your chapters are short, many of them less than a page. I love the tightness of this structure, the feeling of scenes that are almost snapshots. Did you know right away you wanted to use this structure, or was it something you developed as you wrote and revised?

KF: This probably happened for two reasons. First, the events I was writing about were all on sticky notes, and so when I was writing, each thing felt, to me, as if it was done, as if there was nothing else to say about it. Also, the first draft was written in poems, with haiku chapter titles, but then when Jennifer Rofe (my agent) and I looked more closely at the entire manuscript, we decided this would not be what young boys would want to read, a book of poems about baseball, so I rewrote the whole manuscript into regular verse.

BL: Why did this structure feel right to you, for Tetsu’s story?

KF: I think, because I can only write from my own point of view, even after interviewing people and reading about what happened, I was not actually there, and so, writing in short snippets made it feel easier for me to understand.

BL: The history of the 1940s causes what happens to Tetsu, but you use few actual instances of outside-the-camp history in the book, and you don’t spend a lot of words on those you include. I’m thinking, for example, of Franklin Roosevelt’s death. For me, the sparseness of these “big” historical moments really brought home the camp’s isolation. How did you pick which historic events you wanted to let inside Tetsu’s immediate story?

KF: For the baseball events, I picked the ones that I thought would have mattered to a young boy who loved baseball, the World Series games, when a new baseball was invented that would travel farther, when Joe DiMaggio was drafted, things like that. For the war, I chose the things that were somehow related to the camp, Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to the camp, what they did at the camp to celebrate the president’s birthday, things that affected them specifically. I also added a few major war events which were in the Gila River newspaper. I figured if the editors there wrote about them, they were important to the Japanese people at the camp, so I tried to include them in the story.

BL: Can you tell us a little bit about new projects you’re working on now?

KF: I just completed a contemporary fiction MG novel about a girl who tries to change her destiny. She’s named after a poet and is expected to become one, though she doesn’t like poetry at all. Molly O’Neill at HarperCollins is editing it. Our current title is Tied Up in Destiny, due out winter 2013, though that may change. I’ve started another contemporary fiction MG novel, only five pages in at the moment, which is changing everyday as I figure it out!

Thank you very much for interviewing me, Becky. I know you’re working on a YA historical fiction novel also!

Posted in Blog Contest, Interview

Interview: Martha Engber of THE WIND THIEF

Posted on by beckylevine

I know Martha Engber through the California Writers Club–our paths have crossed a few times over recent years. Martha’s novel The Wind Thief was just released, and Martha sent me an ARC of the book, so I could read it before interviewing her for my blog. The Wind Thief is the story of two heroes, Ajay and Madina. Ajay, a thief, is on his way to America—via some wrong turns in the Sahara Desert. He is saved, and caught, when he sees Madina climbing down a perilous cliff face, from the top of which she has been talking with a wind. The story blends the grim reality of the desert and Medina and Ajay’s difficult lives with a fairy-tale quality, as long as you’re thinking the Grimm/grim version.

Read through the interview about how Martha wrote the book and, in these not-so-easy times, got it published. Then, leave a comment, and I’ll enter you in a contest for the ARC, read just once, by me, with much pleasure! I’ll draw the winner’s name next Wednesday, November 11th.

 

BL: The Wind Thief is set in several countries, all over the world. The feel of the settings is very realistic, yet with a lightness of detail that’s nicely evocative. Are these places you’ve visited yourself?

ME: Writing is a freedom I don’t find anywhere else. No matter how constrained I am in daily life — either due to time, schedules or expected behavior — I can run without barriers when I write. In other words, I go where I want, whenever I want, in whatever manner I want, and good luck to anyone who says I can’t. When I was writing The Wind Thief, my task was to formulate the inner life of a woman who sees wind not as a scientific singularity–an element of nature like fire and water–but as a world of winds, each with its own personality and purpose.

I needed a place from which this woman could arise: a place where wind rules; a place that’s isolating, where a person could be reared in ignorance and poverty that rules out technology (GPS, email, satellite television showing images of the world). This place had to be one steeped in a culture of ancient, magical stories while lacking the opportunity for an easy escape. That’s how I came to decide on the Sahara Desert. I have never been there, nor to the other locales, so now you have your answer.

BL: So what would you respond to people who say to write what we know?

ME: If by write what we know means to write about the landscapes where we’ve been and the people we’ve met and the specific circumstances we’ve experienced, I’m all for it. But beyond that, I reserve the right to go where my mind wanders or where the story and characters take me.

BL: I love the premise of the book–these winds that speak (or maybe don’t) to Madina, one of the two main characters. I also love how they weave their way (or maybe don’t!) into the life/mindset of the other main character, Ajay. Where did this idea about the winds come from, for you as the writer?

ME: I love wind. It can be unspeakably gentle, or it can kill you. That power, along with a vague notion that winds can be so different, converged one night during a spring windstorm that woke me up. Rather than be a windstorm, what was going on seemed like a storm of many winds. One that punched the house. Another that skimmed the top. A wind that boomeranged, racing in one direction, then in the opposite. The experience was very scary, yet fascinating! That’s when I began to think, what if wind is not singular, but plural? What if they’re sentient? What’s their individual purposes? What if those purposes cross? What if the winds warred?

BL: Today, it seems as though it may be harder than ever to get one’s novel published, perhaps especially a more literary novel like yours. Can you tell us a bit about your path to publication?

ME: The Wind Thief was snapped up by a well-known San Francisco agent within six query attempts. Within two weeks of active submission on her part, she found an interested editor at a big publishing house. Though the editor loved the story, she ultimately passed because she wasn’t sure how to market the book. After 15 or so more failed submissions to big publishers and their various imprints, the agent said I was on my own. Over the next six years, I kept working on the manuscript, which got better as my skills increased, while submitting to small publishers.

My current editor, Armando Benitez of Alondra Press in Houston, said he liked my story, but would pass, but would look at the manuscript again if I ever decided to rewrite it. I was mentally done with this book and so set it aside. He emailed four months later and said, “So where’s the rewrite?” to which I said, “Um, if you can give me a few days…”

BL: Do you participate in a critique group or work with any critique partners? How do you think that process affected the writing and revising of your book?

ME: I moved to California in 1993, at which time I took a break from journalism to raise my kids and embark on fiction in a disciplined way. I joined a critique group that broke up after a year or two, at which point the remaining members and I started a critique group that’s still going, though most of the members change out after a while.

I could not have gotten The Wind Thief published without a critique group. I’d like to say I’ve grown smart enough to see every problem within my own manuscript, but I haven’t yet reached that level of wisdom, nor do I think I ever will.

BL: Can you tell us a bit about any projects you’re working on now?

ME: The next book coming down the pike is titled Spirit Rising, the story of two Native American women warriors from opposing tribes in pre-colonial New England. The novel I’m currently working on is Winter Light, the story of a 15-year-old at-risk girl from suburban Chicago who must literally and figuratively survive the blizzard winter of 1979.