Interview with Mayra Calvani

Today's guest is Belgian based author, reviewer and freelance writer Mayra Calvani, who has dropped by to chat about her new book Sunstruck a book described as "Salvador Dali meets Terry Gilliam".  Who could resist that combination!
 

Tell me about the origins of Sunstruck – where did the idea for the novel come from; what was the impetus?

The conception of this book stemmed from two factors: my personal observations of Puerto Rican artists when I was a teen and my love for satiric writing, a taste I developed in college. My mother was—and still is—an artist, and although she’s retired now, back in the early eighties she was an active painter in San Juan, showing her works at art exhibits and galleries regularly. She took me everywhere with her, so I attended all these shows and activities and I observed. Let me tell you something, the art scene can be extremely interesting and that is because so many artists are eccentric, unconventional people. And there’s so much jealousy and gossip!

I guess all these experiences must have made an impression on me. When the time came to write my book, I knew these were the people and situations I wanted to write about. I decided I would make the book a parody, this way I could keep it light and have the freedom to exaggerate to the point of being ridiculous. I decided an upbeat, sharp, satiric, darkly humorous approach would be perfect for In the Time of Dinosaurs, so that’s the style I went for. There are a lot of absurd situations in the book. For instance, one of the characters dresses as Zorro and slashes women’s behinds; another starts a hotel where people can share a room with the animal of their choice; another, a nun, rides in a motorcycle wearing cool black glasses and carrying a six pack; another uses fresh human blood to keep her skin looking young. There’s a lot of crazy stuff like that. Ultimately, though, is about a confused young woman looking for meaning among chaos.

Tell me a bit about your protagonist, Daniella.

Daniella is in her mid twenties and already divorced. She’s trying to complete her architecture degree. She’s closest to her mom and her overweight Turkish cat. She doesn’t study as much as she should and drinks a lot more than she should. She’s naive and a bit scattered and keeps falling for the wrong kind of guy—the good-looking, irresponsible, bohemian artist type. She’s a nice girl, but she needs some serious reality check if she’s going to take control of her life. When she starts working at her ex-husband’s animal lovers hotel, she begins to realize there’s something very bizarre going on. At the same time, she’s trying to support her talented, crazy jealous boyfriend Tony, whose ego makes him blind and who doesn’t care about anybody but himself. Then something happens that changes Daniella’s life forever.

Your narrative style is an unusual one. Talk to me a bit about the point of view you chose and the structure and why it fit your characters.

I chose first person, present tense, and multiple points of view separated by chapters. So in each chapter the reader gets in the head of a different character. To be honest, I didn’t choose this consciously, it just happened automatically as I began to write. I should mention, though, that I wrote this book in my early twenties, so my writing style has changed a lot during the years. I first self published the book in Puerto Rico in the late eighties. Only 500 copies which, surprisingly, I managed to sell at local bookstores. Eventually the manuscript went through various edits until I decided to submit it to an American publisher. The editor at Zumaya Publications liked it and offered me a contract.

But to go back to your question, I think the style fits the tone and the story and gave me the freedom to explore the bizarre psychology and motivation of the characters.

What’s next for you? Are you working on a new book or do you have a wish list of projects that you’re hoping to get to soon.

Gosh, I have so many things going on at the moment. I’m a multi-tasker kind of person (sometimes I think this is a curse). I’m working on a YA novel, a MG nonfiction book, and various children’s books in different stages of development. At the same time I’m trying to find a home for a horror novel, an MG novel, and about 15 picture book manuscripts already completed. My friends don’t call me a busy bee for nothing.

Literature for Father’s Day

How about literature for Father’s Day instead of ties or dinner?

We know ties are a cliché and in a few years, Dad won’t remember one Father’s Day dinner from another. Let’s face it, not all literature is created equal -- some books are just as fleeting, though most would be a step up from a gift certificate and certainly would help support the industry that we believe important for the future. I’m proposing poetry.

First, you may have never given your father, grandfather, or a favorite father figure in your life a book of poetry. Thus, it will be memorable. A small book of poetry will also be flattering. He will appreciate being treated tenderly. In fact, present a small chapbook with a single rose or gladiolus spray. Who says that only women want romance and tenderness in their lives! You could write your own beautiful and unique poem.

You might choose to tuck it inside the cover of the Chapbook Imagining the Future: Ruminations on Fathers and Other Masculine Apparitions that Carolyn Howard-Johnson and I wrote for our Celebration Series of chapbooks. Our idea for this series is to have small books written for those who prefer something a little a little more literary than the typical greeting card, but still accessible for those who didn’t study literature in school. And at an affordable price. With cover art (and sometimes interior art) chosen from among our circle of talented writing and artist friends.

Most of our booklets are $6.95. In addition to our newist father oriented book, we now have one for mothers (She Wore Emerald Then: Reflections on Motherhood), one that says love (Cherished Pulse: Unconventional Love Poetry), and are currently working on one for Christmas. It will be called Blooming Red (drop me a line if you'd like a sample or two!)

Think of your poetry presentation to Dad as a Father’s Day card; it costs little more than one. Or think of it as a tuck-in gift or a tie-on as part of the wrap. Any poetry book you choose can be made more personal if you tie in a little grosgrain or satin ribbon inside the crease of the book to be used as a bookmark.
And don’t forget the hug.

Here is a sample poem from Imagining the Future, and if you're a father, happy Father's Day to you!

Horizon Scanning

Your eyes squint at glare
wavering between dreams

imaginary lines
or clear delineations

from this point
it’s not possible to judge

take a stand from your degraded platform
speaker’s corner cardboard soapbox

microwave radiation
blocking your ears

you can shout your head off
until everyone gathers

it won’t change reality
or will it?

28 billion light years
one edge to the other

there you are
explorer without a map

scratching your head
the horizon problem flakes those broad shoulders


Atlas in messy hair
and bell bottoms

every mystery you solve
invokes another.

In praise of the slow read, or why we need longer attention spans

Attention spans are shortening. I hear it all the time, and don’t doubt it either. People are bombarded with fact paced moving imagery on television, in computer games, in media of all types and we scan, cram, multitask, grab a quick bite and move on. From a literary perspective, Noah Lukeman tells us that we get five pages to capture an agent or publisher’s attention, and there is evidence that the same is true for readers. If you don’t grab their interest quickly, well, there are plenty of other books out there that will, besides, we only have 5 minutes to read. But is this good? From the perspective of a reader, is it wise? There are some novels that will grab you from the first page and hold on until the last. Some of the more successful young adult books have developed the “cliffhanger” to the point of perfection. But just because a book is slow or languid, doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t engaging. Sometimes engagement takes time and effort, and complex meaning needs space to unfold. Good poetry often takes several readings before the denouement hits or the meaning becomes clear. I find that, even on re-reading, anything by Virginia Woolf needs a reading of the entire book before the full power and meaning becomes clear. Judge too quickly and you’ll miss the big picture. The last book I read (re-read) – Life of Pi – was the same. The bigger picture required the entire space of the book. I simply was unable to judge it adequately on the first five pages. Now I’m a busy gal, to be sure. I run everywhere and multitask constantly. But I’m still in favour of reading (and to be honest, writing) slowly. I don’t believe that it’s healthy to consume everything so quickly, and discard so readily. Surely there’s still value in teaching our children (and ourselves) to wait for gratification? If we don’t at least occasionally learn to wait a little we’re in danger or making judgement too soon, and allowing our desire for constant external stimulation to stop us from experiencing the beautiful in favour of the quick.

E-books, Piracy, and the Value of the Book at BookExpo 2010

The opening plenary at Book Expo America featured, as its discussion topic “The Value of the Book,” which stems, in part, from an Op-Ed piece that appeared in The New York Times (January 2, 2010) by Jonathan Galassi, President of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, titled There’s More to Publishing Than Meets the Screen.  BEA and ABA officials acknowledge that this is a watershed year for change in the industry, and it is critically important to get leaders and opinion makers with different interests and from different segments of the industry together in one room to discuss the many aspects of “value” in books. The panel featured Chief Executives and professionals from the book industry and discussion was heated, particularly around issues like piracy, the long term viability of e-books vs print books, and what direction the industry should take.

Meet Margaret Fieland

Today's guest is Margaret Fieland, a prolific poet whose work has appeared in a myriad of publications. Born and raised in New York City, Margaret Fieland has been around art and music all her life. Daughter of a painter, she is the mother of three grown sons and an accomplished flute and piccolo player. She is an avid science fiction fan, and selected Robert A. Heinlein's “Farmer in the Sky” for her tenth birthday, now long past. She lives in the suburbs west of Boston, MA with her partner and seven dogs. Her poems, articles and  stories have appeared in journals and anthologies such as  Main Channel Voices, Echolocation, and Twisted Tongue. In spite of making her living as a computer software engineer, she turned to one of her sons to format the initial version of her website, a clear illustration of the computer generation gap. You may visit her website, http://www.margaretfieland.com.  Margaret was good enough to drop by and answer  a few questions for us.

Tell us about what you write: I'm a professional Computer Software engineer – BA in mathematics, MS in computer science, but I've written poetry as far back as I can remember, though not with publication in mind and not with any level of dedication.

What got you writing for publication?  What really propelled me into writing for publication was organizing my poetry. I used to keep the poems, when I kept them, in notebooks. They were totally unorganized, and I could never find anything. Then I wrote a poem I wanted to keep, so I got off the stick and put them up, first on my computer, and after that online, originally in Yahoo briefcase, and later in Google Documents.

Why was the organization such a key factor in moving your writing forward? Once I had the poems organized and findable, I could finally submit, and I could look them over and gain perspective on how I was doing. What ended up happening was that I submitted a poem to a contest on a whim and ended up a finalist. This was so encouraging that I started writing more, working more seriously on growing as a writer, joined critique groups, etc.

What are you working on now? Well, there's my chapter book, The Ugly Little Boy. I'm also working on a rhymed picture book and a series of math poems.

Almost every writer is inspired by someone else. Does anyone inspire you? Lewis Carroll. My all time favorite book is “Alice in Wonderland,” which I reread every exam time when I was in college, as I made it a habit to avoid the library during exams. I'm also very fond of Carroll's poetry. I've got several stanzas of Jabberwocky and You Are Old, Father William memorized.

How long have you been writing? I've been writing poetry since my teens, but only with publication in mind for the past three or four years. As a story writer I'm pretty much of a novice, as I only started writing stories after I hooked up with Linda Barnett Johnson after the first Muse online writer's conference three years ago and joined her writing forums.  I'm 62 now, so that's a lot of years of writing.

What made you want to start writing? Good question – I started and became addicted. I really love writing -- and I just plain enjoy writing poetry, rhymed and unrhymed. I've developed my own algorithm for generating rhymes, which means that I often don't have to use a rhyming dictionary at all.  Besides, if I don't write it down it stays stuck in my head.

When did you start writing? Like many teens, I started writing (bad) poetry in my teens as an outlet for my teenage angst. Then later on I started writing poetry for the people I was dating, and after that for family birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, -- basically everything.

What's the strangest thing you've ever written? I don't think anything I write is strange {looks innocently up at ceiling}. I have written several surreal poems, and I have one I really like called “Machine A Ecrire” (French for typewriter), unpublished, in the shape of a typewriter. The sentences are “variations” on the stuff they had us all typing when we were in school.

Where do you get your ideas? Darned if I know. Some of the poetry is “inspired,” some is in response to exercises or prompts I dig up, some is from lines that come to me as I'm falling asleep, some from events in my life. Lots of places. One poem I wrote this week was inspired by some words in the comments in the "spam" folder on my website {grin}.

When do you write – set times or as the mood moves you? Since I have a full time job, whenever the spirit moves me, and I have (or can make) the time. The nice thing about poetry is that a lot of it is short and taking a couple of minutes to jot down poetry is pretty easy to do. Waiting for appointments is a favorite time to write. I've had good luck being "inspired" by those articles you find in waiting rooms.

When you're not writing, what do you like to do? Read, listen to music, play my flute and my piccolo, walk our dogs, do crossword puzzles.

Tour with VBT-Writers on the Move through April. New and famous authors, plus useful information.

The Hypothetical Library gets Dangerous

The Hypothetical Library is a sort of Borgesian blog run by book cover designer Charile Orr.  The blog asks real authors to posit a pretend book, including cover copy and Charlie then designs a cover for it.  Of course this makes the book so rich with potential, especially when the copy is good, as it invariably is, that the temptation for any author would be to go ahead and write it.  That is, unless the book is dangerous.  That's dangerous as in The Dangerous Alphabet, subversive perhaps, but maybe even deadly.  That's what this week's guest Neil Gaiman has come up with -- a book so dangerous that reading it would cause the world to end.  Seeing the provocative cover that Charlie Orr has come up with certainly evokes a response.  You can't help but begin to imagine the words that would be between the covers--to begin postulating the impossible in your own head.  Gaiman, the master of the absurd and macabre (always with a touch of fatherly tenderness), is the perfect author for this kind of thing, and he is having a week long stint, which includes an audio book and special e-book version.  Check it out, if you dare.

Who said that poetry and construction work don't mix?

Members of the construction team which built Poets House's new home joined actor Bill Murray in May 2009 for the first poetry reading at 10 River Terrace. Produced for Poets House by Limey Films, Inc.