Interview w/ Susan Beth Pfeffer
Thank again to Susan for doing a second interview. You can find out more about her on her blog and be sure to check out her books on Amazon (Life As We Knew It and the dead & the gone, the latter of which is released on June 1st, for example). Without further ado! Thanks for doing another interview with me, Susan. I think we can skip the simple introductions since I’ve done an interview with you before. So let’s get right to it. Your new book is called The Dead & the Gone, a companion novel to Life As We Knew It. What was the inspiration for writing this second book? I had a wonderful time writing Life As We Knew It and I was eager to write a sequel. However Harcourt, my publisher, wasn’t eager to have one. So one day I thought, well I’ll write a book about a whole different set of characters living through the exact same catastrophe. It won’t be a sequel, but it will be fun. And Harcourt liked the idea also, so I wrote the dead & the gone. What are some challenges in writing a companion novel such as this that ‘retells’ the same even through the eyes of someone else? Were you at all concerned about the book working as well as LAWKI? The biggest challenge was keeping the timelines the same. LAWKI takes place in eastern Pennsylvania, and d&g in New York City, so they’d both have essentially the same weather patterns.There’s a blizzard in LAWKI and a major snow/icestorm in d&g that happen at the same time. I kept my copy of LAWKI by my side so I’d keep the dates straight.I didn’t really worry about whether d&g would work as well as LAWKI, but I had other concerns. My main character is a teenage boy, and I find it much easier to write from a girl’s viewpoint. Alex, in d&g, is a Puerto Rican New Yorker, whose parents are Spanish speaking. So I knew there’d be things Alex would say and think in Spanish, a language which I have no familiarity with. I guess I just like to make things tough on myself!While I was writing LAWKI, I knew it was a very special book, although I’ve been surprised and delighted by how many people love it. the dead & the gone was harder to write, so I think of it as a greater accomplishment. I’m curious to see how people who read d&g without having read LAWKI will respond to it. The books are completely independent of each other. You can read one or the other without missing anything (although I certainly hope if you like one, you’ll read the other). The characters in the books are all Catholic and religion is a very strong theme in the book. Why did you decide to go with a more religiously themed take in comparison to the mostly non-religious feel of the first book? When I did my pre-writing for LAWKI, I decided I wanted the family to be non-religious, so they were. But when I was working on d&g, I wanted the characters to be as different as possible from Miranda and her family. So instead of a rural upper middle class girl from a non-religious family, I created an urban lower middle class boy from a deeply religious family.There were a couple of reasons why I made Alex and his family Catholic, but the biggest one was the strength and power of the Catholic Church in New York City. I could see the Catholic Church knowing what was going on, being in regular communication with whatever remained of the city government. And because of the Church’s strong organization, it could provide a structure for those people who need it. Additionally, one of the key points in the novel is the idea of having faith tested. What about the testing of faith do you think makes it a good personal struggle? (This might seem like a somewhat obvious question, but people think differently about things, so I’m curious). The testing of faith only works as a good personal struggle if the characters have strong religious beliefs to begin with. But if you do, and if your world is disintegrating in front of your very eyes, you have to find a way to reconcile your beliefs with the reality you’re facing. People go through that all the time, with illnesses and personal problems. Different people respond different ways, but it’s an interesting conflict. What made you decide to set this particular book in New York City? Was it easier to write a story in an urban sprawl? I actually considered other cities for d&g. I think I considered Buffalo. But I lived in NYC (a long time ago) and I go there regularly. It’s the city I know best. And it worked out really well, because NYC in some ways becomes a character in the story. Alex and his sisters aren’t alone fighting for survival. So is New York City.There were some aspects of writing about a city that really exists that were tougher than creating a small town in Pennsylvania. My editor lives in NYC, and she actually thought I should be accurate in my descriptions. Humph. If I wanted to be accurate about things, I wouldn’t be ending the world with such gleeful abandon. Rumor has it that you’re working on a third book in the same world. Would you mind talking a little about it for those that don’t read your blog? Are you trying to take a very different direction, stick with a similar theme, etc.? I’ve been working on a possible third (and no doubt final) book, something that takes the LAWKI/d&g world and describes what’s going on five years later. It has a completely different set of characters, but one character from LAWKI and one from d&g show up, so the readers of both books can find out what happened to
Wednesday: Too Far Away
I’m going slightly insane at the moment. I won’t know with any certainty if “Interstellar Realty” will be rejected until Wednesday, since that is apparently the day when finalists are announced. It’s driving me absolutely bonkers right now. Some part of me wishes they’d just call me and say “no, it sucked, better luck next time”. Obviously I’d love to be a semi-finalist or a finalist, but I’m being realistic, however pessimistic that might be. You can hit me at any point and tell me to stop being that way, though. It might help. The good news is I spent some time with Jennifer who took the Modern German Fiction class along with me two quarters ago and we had a fascinating discussion about Philip K. Dick and his amazing work Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. We may be having another discussion next weekend, which would be a lot of fun, to be honest. As soon as I know what my grade is on my first serious essay for my PKD class I’ll post it. Alright, I’m off before my head explodes! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Magazine Review: F & SF, July 2008
Just thought I’d let you all know that I posted my review of the July 2008 issue of F & SF magazine. You can check it out here. Enjoy!