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Q&A for Double-blind

You're about to release your second book, a novel called Double-blind. Was writing a novel different from writing short stories?

Yes. More intricate. I'm much more comfortable drafting a novel than a short story, have been for years. The biggest specific difference between Double-blind and The shadow side of grace is voice. Double-blind is narrated in the first-person, so it's one flawed perspective. Then there was the tricky part of indicating that things are going on that the narrator simply doesn't see. And the narrator himself … not sure how much I trust him.

So who's the narrator?

Dr. Josh Bozeman is an American psychiatrist who is contracted to some MK-Ultra-style research and ends up in Newfoundland. The novel's a study of empathy and complicity.

Was it hard to maintain the narrator's voice throughout the length of a novel?

I didn't make it first-person until maybe the seventh draft. Once I finally let Josh talk, he didn't shut up – I'd hear him in my sleep, murmuring away—and the ms got better. Tighter. It was over 400 pages in third-person limited and boring as bus exhaust. Now it's about 170 pages in published form—a bit short. When I see it on the H shelf by Kenneth J. Harvey or Joel Thomas Hynes, it'll be hard not to think "Awww, his is bigger than mine."

You're a woman …

Bravo. They're 38Ds.

… who's written a novel narrated by a man.

Yep.

Weren't you intimidated?

I stood on a chair while the mouse ran round the kitchen and screamed for someone to save me. Seriously, I'm always nervous writing first-person. Gender's not the issue – writing well is. And I need to spend a lot of time in the narrator's head, which means I become him or her for a time. To make Josh Bozeman even remotely sympathetic, I had to be him, think like him, see like him. That was frightening. As it would be with any narrator. A lot like acting. As for Josh being male … I dunno, I played with boys a lot growing up. I still find men easier to talk to than women. There are socialized differences, sure, but are we really all that different? I don't spend much time on Josh's sex life, because he doesn't, and it's not that relevant to the story. He refers to a sudden throb in his crotch at one point, one of those almost instant erections, and in his later years he frets about his weak stream because his prostate is swollen...Josh can be quite cold, and that bothered me much more than his testicles.

I've narrated through men before. In The shadow side of grace, Keefer Breen the consciousness for third-person limited in two stories. Pavel Pantserjanksi in "Courtiers" is first-person male. I expect overall I have more male characters than female. Not sure why. Don't really care. Maybe it's some extended proto-sociological comment on the long dominance of men in human history. Maybe I'm still playing with the boys.

What have you learned about the writing business since releasing your first book?

I'm a slow learner. I can be told something a thousand times, but I generally don't take it in until I go through it myself. The stories have lives of their own, that's one discovery. People have been very moved by the story "Astigmatism," which I'd thought was one of the weaker pieces. I learned that I most certainly did not carry off the dark comedy I wanted in the story "I may tell all my bones," which keeps getting singled out as a poor piece. And people seem to like "obliged to drink bad water," which is reassuring, as I'm using a similar structure in my next novel. And Keefer … lots of response on Keefer Breen. I keep getting asked if I'll do a novel about Keefer. No. He reveals himself to me in pieces; he's a short story kinda guy. He also demands a stern naturalism in the narration, so if I tried to force a novel around him, it would likely read like a bad imitation of David Adams Richards, whose work I admire. Can't have that.

I've also learned that people can be very brazen when they see you at a signing table. Very blunt. One lady informed me my book was far too expensive, seeing as I was just starting out. Another picked it up, looked it over, then slammed it down in disgust: "This is not Earl Pilgrim."

What else? Learned I love to read to an audience, but I loathe networking. I need the peace of rural Newfoundland more than I ever knew. Toronto is a tempting siren, but even St. John's can smother me. I need to take more time, more care. And I've learned that a good editor is a deep blessing.

You mentioned David Adams Richards. Which other Canadian writers do you read?

Have I got to think within a flag here? I'm reading Marie-Claire Blais's Augustino and the Choir of Destruction; it's all one sentence, one paragraph, demands careful attention. I mentioned Hynes. I'm re-reading Alistair MacLeod's The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. I like Michael Crummey's work. Agnes Walsh. My attention's eastward right now: reading lots of Ian Rankin, Anthony Powell. I've got some Louis de Bernieres waiting, and I'm reading Donne and Dostoevsky again. I think very highly of the American novelist Tim O'Brien. And I want to explore Richard Powers' work.

American writers. And you have an American narrator.

Yeah. In other pieces I have a Russian narrator, a Canadian narrator and several different third-person consciousnesses.

Why?

Because. After that, the stories and novel speak for themselves.

Will you ever write anything autobiographical?

Other people are far more interesting. I relate a lot to two characters in my next novel, Cait Wright and Claire Furey, but they aren't transcriptions of me. Christine Monroe-Dupuis in Double-blind is about my age, stutters, gets depression, but she's hardly autobiographical. If I ever do write an autobiographical character, should I send out a press release?

So you don't like autobiographical fiction?

On the contrary, I'm as nosy as anyone else, and there is that unstable perception of, what, authenticity? or the excitement of voyeurism? – when you're told something is based on the writer's experiences. It's just not what I want to write. Not now.

Q&A for The shadow side of grace

Some of the stories in The shadow side of grace have specific historical settings. So do your plays. Peter's Accent is set in London in 1593, and Aphasia is mostly in Moscow in August of 1939. What's with all the history?

I can't devise a plot on my own, or one of those apparently timeless, contemporary stories, to save my life. This was a disheartening discovery. So I read a lot of history to fix the moment. But then I've always read history - I'm nosy. Ravenous for details. I found out recently that the British clothing allowance during the Second World War was 48 coupons. For the year. A new coat would cost all 48. This is a delicious detail, the sort of that adds texture to a story. A wartime English character would know how much a new coat cost, and that knowledge could easily be a motive or character flick for her at some point. Take Anthony Powell's character Pamela Flitton in A Dance to the Music of Time. Pam is a predatory soul, and it's noted at one point during the war she's wearing a gorgeous coat. Another character comments that she either blew her entire allowance on it, or she got it off someone else. This tells us a great deal about Pam. Either she's impulsive and self-centred or conniving and self-centred ... or indeed all of the above. This is what I mean by "texture" in a story.

Other times it's lightning. Peter's Accent is an example. At university, fulfilling a non-Shakespeare Renaissance credit only half-awake, I read in an introduction of Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy that Kyd was arrested and tortured in Bridewell on suspicion of writing an inflammatory tract called The Dutch Church Libel. This Libel was not only sprinkled with references to the plays of Christopher Marlowe but threatens to cause mayhem "per Tamburlaine." Kyd and Marlowe had once shared lodgings. Oddly, Marlowe himself was not arrested but instead commanded to report to the Privy Council every day. A few days after that, Marlowe gets a dagger in the eye in the company of three men of dubious honour - one of them, Robert Poley, is later named in a Ben Jonson poem and compared to a treacherous parrot. The Kyd and Marlowe tangle is all stink, grit, blood and, somewhere, principles: irresistible.

There's a lot of violence in The shadow side of grace.

There's a lot of violence, period. We live in a nightmare where light plays on our eyelids - Augustine's distance from God. I think it's a recognition we need to make: there's capacity for much ugliness in all of us. It takes so little to wear down the disciplines of justice and compassion, which is why justice and compassion need vigorous protection. In "The mercy of his means," Danny says to Keefer, quite rightly, "You got capacities you don't even know about." How can we begin to address what's wrong with others if we don't recognize and, if necessary, struggle with, what's wrong with ourselves?

How long have you been writing?

I made up my mind at age 7. December, just before Christmas in grade 2. I've been noisily working at it since. But my God, I'm a slow learner. In 2002, a mentor told me he was dismayed by the lack of structure in a manuscript. Here I am years later, still having trouble with structure. I outline much more than I used to, make sure I have some understanding of narrative arcs before I start. That helps. And my endings. I know and sketch the ending before anything else.

Narrative arcs? Outlines? Don't you discover as you write?

Partially. There's always discovery. But I'm Aristotelian and proud of it: conflict and change, plot points, beginning, middle, end, universal truths. I go mad reading stories where the writer constantly reminds me he's telling me a story - conflicts languish unaddressed, characters inform you they're not real. These choices molest a story's unity and can open slick doors to lazy writing and lazy thought. No. Cast me a spell. Weave a circle round me thrice. Sit me by the fire and transform me with empathy and some stumbling comprehension of what it feels like to be someone else: tell me a story. That's all I want to do: tell you a story.

Is your work autobiographical?

The narrator of "Late lunch" in The shadow side of grace is someone I'm afraid I might become. Other than that, no. My work is full of observations I've made - behaviour, speech, motive - but my own life is mercifully happy and quiet. It would make a dull book.

Are any of your characters based on real people?

To varying degrees, they all are. I'm a thief. Tom's laugh, Jody's eyes, Sherrie's fancy tea towels you can't actually dry dishes with, Ian's black and yellow plaid shirt, may all go into a character called Bedelia. Of course, Bedelia will have plenty of her own meat, drives, conflicts. My three army surgeons in "Resistance" are based not on individuals but on modes of behaviour that constantly surface during war. Dick and Elsie Harnum in "The bundle" are very close to my grandparents Francis, in backstory, attitudes and speech. Major Eva Pritchett in "Tricks of radiance" owes a lot to Major Rhoda Sainsbury. And Stewart Taylor from "Accidentals" really existed.

Why do your characters recur?

I can't help it. When I tell you a story, I want that story to be part of a broader world. This then anchors my characters and their situations. And sometimes characters just barge back into the study, put their feet on my desk and tell me where they've been. The shadow side of grace is a seedbag that way. Keefer Breen turns up three times, partially because he works in a major hospital (the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's) - and he's got more stories stuck to him yet. Mahon's General Store is mentioned in two different stories, and the Mahon family turns up again in a novel-in-progress called Sky Waves. (So do Robert Wright and the narrator from the story "Trail marks.") Derek Howse from "Lockdown" is a minor character in Double-blind, a novel due out in the fall of 2007. I like connections in fiction - like dance steps or water currents. I love Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, Hardy's Wessex, Powell's London, Richards' Miramachi.

Are you working on anything new?

Two novels. Double-blind is due out this fall, and I'm trying to knit together Sky Waves, which has a deep dual structure of radio waves and a fishing net. A few short stories are piling up. And God help me, I'm trying to write poetry.

Be honest. Do you really get up at 4:30 in the morning?

Most days, yes. It's generally the only way I can get anything done, as I need to work full-time to support my family. I once watched Alistair MacLeod listen with good grace to someone complaining how she never "had the time" to write. This to a man who taught most of his adult life and still wrote masterpieces; MacLeod knows a few things about displine and time. He cleared his throat. "People got up this morning at four o'clock to scrub toilets. What makes us so precious?"

How do you write?

With the light on.

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