Paul Goat Allen: You're a debut novelist – can you tell us a little about how you got from there to here? What did you do prior to writing this novel and what inspired/motivated you to finally do it?
Skyler White: Oh, ack! I’ve done an awful lot of things before this, and truthfully, I guess it was the ultimate failure of all of them that inspired me to write. Writing is the first thing I’ve found that allows me to bring my whole self and all my – shall we say “colorful”? – experiences to the table. My first career attempt was ballet, but I found myself intellectually thwarted as a dancer. I then went full-tilt into academia, but was physically restless. I was very happy directing theater, but the nights-and-weekend schedule didn’t work once I had children. I made an attempt at online retail and found I have less than no talent at marketing.
Finally, my husband and my best friend sat me down, pointed to my checkered past, and suggested writing as the one constant. And it was true. I’d always used it as a self-exploration or management tool, but it was something I truly loved, so I just leapt in. I think had I really understood the odds against me I would have kept looking, but I was naïve (and a little desperate), so “novelist” seemed the most practical career path. You can laugh at me now.
My first manuscript, now residing in a box under my bed, turned out to be an exercise in ‘process’. I learned a lot, but it wasn’t a very good book. ‘and Falling, Fly’ was my second full manuscript, and honestly, I never expected it to sell; I just knew I had to write it to get it out of my system before I set my hand to something more ‘commercially viable.’
Ultimately, it was a tarot reading that motivated me to throw my whole self into writing ‘and Falling, Fly’: “If you don’t write this book, no matter what other success you have, you will feel like you failed.” I knew it was going to be weird and risky before I wrote it. I just didn’t feel like I had another option. It was in my way.
After it was finished, I started entering the manuscript in contests as a learning exercise. I had entered the first book in contests and learned a ton. But ‘and Falling, Fly’ got a much different reaction. Whereas the first book had gotten solid B’s, this one was getting A’s and F’s and almost nothing in between. It was getting generous, praising notes, and, literally, “You are going to Hell for this.”
Eventually an editor, who’d been a final round contest judge, called with an offer. I flipped out. Then I called one of the agents who’d requested a full, signed with her, waited while she shopped it for the three stomach-churning days we could delay the first editor. Holly Root sold it to Leis Pederson in a two-book deal on the third day, and there I was on the other side of the “agented” and “published” divide. Weird.
Since then, I’ve had fierce conversations with people who say the slushpile is dead and that The Big Six [Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Penguin, Random House, and Simon & Schuster] only sign conventional, sure-fire stuff. I know it doesn’t happen a lot, and I’m very, very grateful it happened for me, but I want writers to know there are editors and agents who will take a chance on the difficult and untried.
PGA: Your bio references an appearance on "reality TV." Please elaborate…
SW: My husband and I swapped houses (but not spouses!) for the show ‘Trading Spaces’ (not ‘Trading Spouses’) a couple of years ago. We had a blast and got a cool, 20-foot, coral-red tree painted on our living room wall out of the deal.
PGA: Your narrative voice isn't conventionally "paranormal fantasy" – it's deeply, darkly poetic, heavy with allegory, and intensely emotional. Can you point to authors and/or books that you've read that have influenced your style?
SW: I’ve been stewing over this question since you asked it, and I can’t really come up with a good answer. I find trying to talk cogently about my writing style or voice feels like trying to talk about my personality. I don’t know where it comes from. Everything is an influence. And unlike themes or characters, whose origins I do feel like I can trace, narrative style just feels like an extension of the self. I write like I think. I don’t have the objectivity needed to answer the question. I can’t get outside my head enough.
I can tell you authors that others have compared me to, but some are ones I haven’t read. My interest in allegory I can trace way back to my childhood, and the emotionality, well… that’s me. But I think you’re asking a more interesting question than where the individual elements you’ve articulated originate, and I just don’t have a good answer, or rather I feel like it’s a question for the reader, and not for me to answer. It feels perceptual. It feels like, “What are you like in bed?” and I’m tempted to say, “I have no idea. We’ve slept together now; you tell me.”
PGA: This is arguably the most powerful novel I've ever read concerning Desire. It's intoxicating, especially the sex scenes.... just brilliant. How hard was it to write the intimate scenes between Olivia and Dominic? I've heard from several authors that writing "good" sex scenes is the hardest thing to do.
SW: Thank you! Ida, a character in my next book, at one point says, “Sex is subtext.” And since that’s actually how I feel about the topic, it’s not so difficult to write. I feel a little guilty, because I know it’s a place a lot of writers struggle, as you say; but for me, it feels like tipping that first brick after you’ve spent hours lining up the Dominos. Once the characters and their relationships are in place, the actual sex almost writes itself.
It’s one of my recent irritations that I’m being told now that “Serious Literature” looks down its long nose at explicit sex. Why is this powerful, interesting, universal topic so off-limits to thoughtful exploration? I don’t get it. I won’t have it. I love writing sex scenes, and I can’t imagine writing anything that would hold my attention long enough to generate 100,000 words that didn’t include them. It’s one of the reasons I love genre fiction and can’t imagine venturing outside its confines of freedoms. Sorry. I’ll just be stepping off the soapbox now…
PGA: Have any tattoos?
SW: Nope. I’m too fickle. But my husband had one that runs from his second toe to his first rib, so I have some familiarity with the process.
PGA: I loved the lines about Hell being obsolete. Subtle social commentary?
SW: Or not so subtle. But yeah, basically. It’s not so much that I feel like the old mythologies have nothing left to say as that I’m interested in poking them a bit to see how they play against my present reality. Whether it’s the vampire mythos or the Christian one, I’m looking for relevance and curious about what where we come from symbolically says about who we are.
PGA: Can you give readers a little teaser regarding your next novel, In Dreams Begin?
SW: Happily! ‘In Dreams Begin’ is a time-travel story that exists in the ‘and Falling, Fly’ story universe and shares a few characters. It’s about Laura, a contemporary graphic artist who wakes up on her wedding night channeled into the body of the Victorian Irish revolutionary, famous beauty, and possibly part-faerie, Maud Gonne just before she’s introduced to the poet WB Yeats. Laura, the modern cynic falls, (rather embarrassingly) immediately in love with the wildly romantic Irish poet.
It’s been a tremendously fun project to work on because history kept handing me such amazing stuff, allowing me to explore body-image, feminism, fidelity and possession across a hundred years, through several perspectives and all echoed in lines from Yeats’s published poems and Maud Gonne’s autobiography. My editor at Berkley has done an amazing job securing rights for me, so I’m going to be able to include the most relevant quotes and historical annotations in the manuscript, which is very exciting! It’s due out November 2.
