Review of Valentine's Fall

A shout out to David Kidney over at the Green Man Review for his great take on Cary Fagan's Valentine's Fall. According to David, "Fagan's writing is crisp, vivid, always enjoyable."

Read the rest of the review here.

Words To Go

Author Carole Giangrande hosts WORDS TO GO, a podcast showcase for up-and-coming writers, great reads and the spoken word.

If you’re a listener who’d love a few quiet moments with a story well told, join us.

If you’re reading something great, tell us why it grabs you — and we’ll tell the world!

Here’s how to connect and listen:

Check out the podcast at www.wordstogopodcast.com

(Google may list it as "under construction," but click on it anyway -- it works!)

...and if you’d like to subscribe(it’s free):

click on RSS on the left side of the podcast page.

Be a fan on Facebook: read about submitting work, and post your good reads. Our page is “Words To Go Podcast.”

Coming Soon: a new website with a podcast link.

Review of The Heart Specialist

Huge thanks to Linda Ellen over at Bambi Reads, who attended Claire Holden Rothman's reading at Point Claire Library in Montréal and wrote up a fantastic review of The Heart Specialist:

"I may be biased in saying this because I am very much a Montrealer who also happens to be attending McGill, but The Heart Specialist is the best literary novel I’ve read thus far."

You can read the rest of the review (and a summary of the reading) here.

An interview with Karen McLaughlin

Check out this page featuring the author of From This Distance, Karen McLaughlin:

http://www.totemfigures.com/Site/Totem_Figures/Entries/2009/10/8_Audio_Interview_with_Karen_McLaughlin.html

Not only is there an audio interview, you're also treated to some of her fabulous visual art pieces. And why not pay a visit to her blog at http://karen-mclaughlin.blogspot.com too?

The other day when I was interviewed ...

Last night I was interviewed by Sean Berry, host of The Casting Couch on Blog Talk Radio, an online radio show for aspiring actors, writers, musicians, and so forth, who are hoping to break into the entertainment industry. He's had some really interesting guests on there (aside from me, of course) so do take a look at the archives.

First off, I totally enjoyed the experience, although I'll admit to a few nerves. I didn't want to come off as sanctimonious, or boring, or sounding like a moron, but people tell me I did an okay job and that's the story I'm sticking with.

So that was fun. Why do I bring it up? Well, I think it's a neat example of the subtle things you to get a bit of publicity for your press. As much as I love the idea of going out into schoolyards dressed as a giant Cormorant mascot and harassing terrified children into buying Canada Counts, I find that people will eventually be drawn to substance over style - especially on the internet, where everything lasts forever and your thoughtful material will still be available long after a fad has died.

Not that I think I was groundbreakingly thoughtful in this interview. What the hell are 'baby gloves'? Still, I think I was able to give a little insight into the workings of a small press, talk up our books a little, and even provide useful advice for new writers trying to get published (Seriously: get an agent.)

Here's that interview if you want to give it a listen:

So you've been longlisted ...

The stream of traffic to our website just got a whole lot busier.

Because of yesterday's exciting news that one of our Spring titles, The Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman, has been longlisted for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize, we've been in a rush trying to get the word out to people who don't know and fielding inquiries from people who do know. It's been eventful, to say the least.

Full disclosure: This is my first time working with a book that has a shot at one of the two biggest Canadian book awards. Last year we were shut out, but that was okay because M is for Moose was (and is) selling like bonkers and the two eventual winners, Joseph Boyden (2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize) and Nino Ricci (2008 Governor General's Literary Award) just happened to have their early works (Born With a Tooth and Lives of the Saints, respectively) re-issued by us that very season.

So I was kept plenty busy while spared the possible heartbreak of watching one of our books lose. And if I missed the chance to experience the sheer jubilation of victory, to have my heart leap like a demented stag at the prospect of good publicity and better book sales, well, so it goes.

But thanks to Claire's genius and the toil put in by our team, we have a shot at the Giller. Huzzah!

So what does this longlisting mean for us, the folks on the front lines? Well, there's a press release to write and release ASAP. There's a few tweaks to the website that need to get done - nothing major, though that could change should The Heart Specialist make the cut for the shortlist. There's fielding inquiries from foreign publishers looking to see if they'd want to add The Heart Specialist to their lists. There's blogging and tweeting and facebooking to be done.

Oh, and there's the waiting. The tortuous waiting. Let's see how much candy is eaten before October 6th.

And now for something completely different ...

Starting next week, I'm going to take a new approach to this blog that will hopefully be even more interesting than what we've got right now. We're going to try and provide more access, more candor, more insight into the day-to-day operations of a small press. So look forward to that!

In the meantime, here's a Wordle based on the entry page of this blog. Interesting what comes up as the most oft-repeated word:



***

We're going to be in Eden Mills on Sunday for the Eden Mills Writers Festival. Charles Pachter, Hélène Rioux, and Jonathan Kaplansky will be there.

Or if you're in the Sharon, ON area this weekend, why not check out the Words Alive Literary Festival? Jeffrey Round will be there to promote his new novel, The Honey Locust.

June Hutton at the Sunshine Coast Festival

June Hutton, author of Underground, made an appearance at the Sunshine Coast Festival in Sechelt, BC from August 12-15. She was gracious enough to report back to us on all that went down.

June Hutton (Underground) and Andrew Davidson (The Gargoyle) dish up dessert at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts salmon dinner. It’s an annual tradition at the festival that writers don aprons and serve readers.

Underground is my first novel, so I arrive at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts not sure what to expect. It’s my first public reading and no one knows who I am. So I’m nervous. Armed with work, I prepare to hide out in my hotel room.

It is an unseasonably cold first day, lashed with rain. Before I can reach the safety of my room, Wayson Choy kindly offers to buy Anthony De Sa and me hot Thai soup to warm us up. It seems that Anthony, whom I first met while waiting for the ferry, could be the one person who has heard of me. Over bowls of soup he says that Cormorant Books has designed a wonderful trailer for my novel, and that he has shown it several times to his high school students. My fear dissipates a little.

Joseph Boyden is the opening night act and later, over a beverage, we chat about rifles. I had forgotten until then that he and I met last year at a Vancouver International Writers Festival reception and that he had looked around the room and said, Hey, it’s you, me and Nino Ricci! It turns out that each of us has been published by Cormorant Books.

Next day I attend several events, and I meet more writers. An interesting discovery: many admit to being nervous. One even claims that nerves give his performance the necessary edge. At one point, I meet Marina Endicott who has read my book! The stage fright recedes a bit.

Later, a group of writers plans to go star-gazing on the beach until the wee hours, a ritual started, I believe, by Steven Galloway. But my first festival reading is the next day, and I want to be fresh. I doubt Hal Wake will be at the beach, either, but he notes pointedly: You’re not reading until 3 in the afternoon.

True, I counter, but I don’t want a raw throat. It’s nearing midnight. And it’s cold. True as well: the fear is back and I don’t want anyone to see it.

The next day, I show up early for my sound check, as was suggested in my author package. You’re early, one of the crew says. I nod and smile confidently. No, he says, I mean really early. He holds up his watch. It’s only 2 p.m. I’m on at 3. Oops.

I kill time until it really is my turn to read, noting anxiously that an audience isn’t exactly flooding into the theatre. Andrew Davidson comes by to encourage me. I’ll be terrific, he says. What a nice thing to do!

Suddenly, I hear my name. Applause booms from a large crowd (when did they arrive?). I leap onto the stage prepared to march to the microphone. Instead, John Cleese-like, I slam my toe into the wooden block set up before the podium for shorties like me. Before my nerves can completely take over, though, I slap my book onto the lectern and launch into my talk.

There’s laughter, sympathetic moans, more applause. Some familiar faces in the audience, including Gil Adamson, Andreas Schroeder and M.A.C. Farrant, add to Andrew’s beaming encouragement.

My God, it’s working. I love it.

By the end of my hour on stage I’m hooked. Now a veteran of the reading circuit (meaning I survived), I’m ready for a fall season of festival readings.

That night, with my reading over, I throw caution to the wind, of which there is plenty, and join the gang on the beach.

June Hutton (Underground) and Anthony De Sa (Barnacle Love) join the gang at the beach to discuss the writing life. Photo by Steven Galloway (Cellist of Sarajevo)

Where Claire Writes

Here's a cute little article by Montréal book personality Ms. Julie, featuring Claire Holden Rothman's workspace.

Here's a taste:

I am not particularly sensitive to space and my work room is functional rather than beautiful, with a shelf of books on one side and a window overlooking the garden on the other. It’s just off the kitchen, so I can stir soups for my sons on breaks.

Have a peek, won't you?

Postmodern Monsters

One of our favourite hidden gems here at the old birdhouse is Kathlyn Bradshaw's The Frankenstein Murders, a novel that takes place three years after the events of Mary Shelley's original classic. Read a preview here.

Seeing it on the bookshelf next to me just now reminds me that there's been a glut of movies, books, and other media inspired by Frankenstein in the 150-plus years since it was first published. And I figured, well, this is the Internet, let's do what's all the rage and MAKE A LIST.

To make things more interesting, our list isn't made up of direct adaptations of the original story, but rather characters that adopt thematic elements or incorporate obvious references to Frankenstein's Monster. That opens the field up significantly, because it's pretty safe to say that the entire genre of modern science fiction was invented the day young Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin took up Lord Byron's drunken writing challenge.

So without further ado, here are our four favourite characters inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein:

4) The Incredible Hulk

First appearing in 1962 and created by the legendary duo of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics, Hulk was originally conceived as a hybrid of Frankenstein's monster and the pro/antagonist of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Several television series, multiple movies, numerous video games, and countless comics later, the character has gone on to become a pop culture icon in his own right: THE symbol of repressed emotion and uncontrollable rage. But the Angriest Man Alive hasn't strayed too far from his literary roots. His appearance - especially in the early comics - is obviously inspired by the Frankenstein monster's as portrayed Boris Karloff, and his origin at the testing site of a "gamma bomb" is a clear riff on the dangers-of-science theme that Shelley first established.

3) Gojira (Godzilla)

I really, really wanted to put Jurassic Park on this list. But let's be honest - there's only one film featuring a giant reptile that deserves to be here. Ishiro Honda's Gojira, released in 1954, was a smash hit that spawned 27 sequels of varying quality. But it was the original movie that best follows in Frankenstein's footsteps, embodying the sheer horror of science gone wrong (or in this case, terribly terribly right) in the form of a destructive being.

Because of the intentionally terrible voiceover work and giant monster kung fu that characterizes most of the later movies, people tend to forget that the original Gojira was actually a serious meditation on the effect the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the firebomings of Tokyo, had on the mindset of the Japanese people. The focus was less on giant monster action and more on the human consequences of science divorced from morality.

2) Edward Scissorhands

However, Frankenstein wasn't all gloom and doom. The monster wasn't born a soulless killing machine - in fact, he began good and only turned to evil after being spurned by his "father". What if Dr. Frankenstein, instead of being horrified, actually loved his creation?

Enter Edward Scissorhands, star of Tim Burton's 1990 film titled, shockingly, Edward Scissorhands. Edward was built by an inventor (Vincent Price!) and raised as his son. Thrust into the outside world after the tragic death of his father, Ed is increasingly exposed to human cruelty, but - thanks to strength provided by the love of a select few individuals (including a very young Winona Ryder) - he never betrays his gentle spirit.

Edward Scissorhands unearths and expands on optimism buried within the text of Frankenstein: that even the most unnatural-seeming evils can be prevented with ample doses of human affection. I'd say this is why Edward - and The Monster before him - continue to strike a chord with audiences.

1) Roy Batty

Anyone with a passing knowledge of science fiction history will argue that robots are the spiritual successors of Frankenstein's monster - and it's hard not to agree when almost every story involving automatons ends with them wreaking on their flesh-and-blood creators.

But as number two on our list helps demonstrate, The Monster was never so one-dimensional as the majority of his malevolent mechanical brethren. And a few SF authors (most notably, the late great Isaac Asimov) have tried to depict artificial beings as complex characters. But it is Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner (based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick) that best captures one of the most fundamental messages of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: that what we create shows us exactly who we are.

Roy Batty (the role that defines Rutger Hauer's career) is a "replicant", one of many human-like machines built to operate in the harshness of space. Furious at the way his kind are treated as slaves, Batty goes rogue, fighting not just against his makers but what they have made of him.

All in all that sounds like (and is) your typical SF story. But What sets Blade Runner apart from others of its ilk is the way it blurs the lines between man and machine - between "man" and "monster", so to speak - and questions the qualities that we use to define ourselves as human beings. While both Roy Batty and The Monster both commit acts of evil, they also reveal flashes of compassion, honour, curiousity, and wonderment. These "monsters" are no better or worse than we are. To "own" the goodness displayed by these characters is to also "own" their ugliness. Once you move past the convenient excuse of their unnatural origins, it's hard not to see their humanity - and to be troubled by it.

This idea of mirroring, by the way, is one of the overarching themes of The Frankenstein Murders, and one of the reasons why it resonates so deeply with us. Keep that in mind the next time you're looking for a pithy read.

***

Well folks, that does it with this list. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Please let us know what you think - and go check out the preview of The Frankenstein Murders already!

The Young Rascal's Guide to Publishing: Pushing Buttons

Go here for other installments of The Guide

One of the fun things the fledglings at Cormorant Books like to do to promote our books is come up with freebies (or swag, or loot, or what have you).

Freebies are great. Everybody loves freebies. Making stuff is fun too. But in order to justify the expense, you better darn well make sure that there's a specific purpose behind them. And you better make sure people want them in the first place.

Here we'll talk a bit about one of the things we've become known for at events: buttons.

Buttons are awesome. They're small, easy to carry, relatively inexpensive to produce, and infinitely customizable. So it's very easy to fall into the trap of "Oh, hey, everyone loves buttons, we can put any old junk on them and people will wear them and everyone will talk about how great we are."

Nope. Sorry. Doesn't work that way.

Thanks to a stroke of genius by our fabulous Duchess of Production, we've been making buttons for a couple of years now, and have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't. Here's a crazy-short list of observations I've compiled in that time:

1. Nobody cares about your colophon

Unless your colophon is an exquisite work of art, instantly identifiable and perennially fashionable, nobody is going to pick up that button. Even then, it's a longshot. Ever see anyone wearing a Nike swoosh button? Me neither.

Buttons, like everything promotional, only work if they're either ubiquitous, or have a hook. We can't afford to make a million buttons, and if we walked around trying to pin them on random strangers we'd end up in jail, so the hook is the way to go.

Our hook is The Sassy Slogan. Observe:















As mentioned above, free isn't enough - especially when you're working an event where free catalogues, free bookmarks, free books, free candy, and all manner of swag is being hurled about like confetti. People can only carry so much. You have to provide value if you want them to take your stuff. With an item like a button, the value is in design. So design is the most important thing to consider.

2. Buttons aren't magical

I can't repeat enough the point that buttons will not grant you instant fame and bestselling books. We've found that they're most useful at events like festivals or book fairs, in driving foot traffic your way. Word spreads pretty quickly at places like these, so as long as you're offering something that people can be excited about (like scandalous buttons), you're guaranteed a bit of attention.

Here's the catch: the people who are drawn to your booth by the buttons ... will for the most part only be looking for buttons. And that's it. Swag, as useful as it is in bringing people to you, only accomplishes half the job. And while fun freebies help to engage people, it's still up to you figure out what they want and what you can offer them - to form a rapport, in other words. Which is something you should be doing anyways.


I hope everyone found this helpful. Next time, we'll be talking about something we're still trying to figure out: online trailers!

Michael Rowe on Bigotry

Cormorant author Michael Rowe (Other Men's Sons) runs a blog over at Huffington Post, recently calling Rep. Virginia Foxx on a particularly uninformed remark made during the debate on hate crime legislation.

"Addressing the House, Rep. Foxx announced that the murder of Matthew Shepard, widely acknowledged to be the most famous gay bashing hate crime in American history, was in fact a 'hoax,' perpetrated by activists eager to pass 'these bills.'"

You can read the rest of the post here.

Beverly Stone: Vulgar

Meet Beverley Stone, all-around awesome person. For the next few weeks, she'll be blogging about life as an author, with the same warm and honest humanity that defines her novel No Beautiful Shore. Settle in and enjoy a peek into the mind of a very talented writer.

Narcissism and the Single Novelist
IV. Provocative

Honestly and truly, send her an email.

At the end of the day I check the email address for my website. Most of the time there is nothing but spam, but sometimes someone writes me a nice note, or has a question, and I get to discuss No Beautiful Shore with a reader. A lovely thing, feedback.

Except sometimes, it’s not so lovely. A reader who shall remain nameless, but who we will call for the purposes of this blog, Mrs. Pickle-Up-Posterior (“PUP”), wrote me to tell me that she would not keep my book in her home, as it was a piece of vulgar trash.

Ouch. Gratuitous criticism goes right to your guts and settles down there, burning and making you feel vulnerable. It hurt for days, weeks. I wrote PUP back to say that I was sorry that I had disappointed her.

No Beautiful Shore is kind of like The Shipping News meets Last Exit to Brooklyn. I meant it to be that way, in all of its raw, uncomfortable, vulgar glory, but I still feel bad that I enraged PUP.

Oh well, at least she will remember my name. She will have to since she will never, ever buy another thing I write as long as she has breath in her body, or something like that.



Want more on Bev? Visit her website at www.beverleystone.com

Beverly Stone: Scattered

Meet Beverley Stone, all-around awesome person. For the next few weeks, she'll be blogging about life as an author, with the same warm and honest humanity that defines her novel No Beautiful Shore. Settle in and enjoy a peek into the mind of a very talented writer.

Narcissism and the Single Novelist
III. Provocative

The intrepid Beverley Stone.

I have the attention span of a small rodent. Focusing on one thing for any length of time makes me fidgety. I am sure that, back in the day when I would have had 18 children to protect from wolves or to keep from falling over wharves, this would have been a benefit. But as a writer, not so much.

I have trouble staying in one character’s head for a very long time. It gets claustrophobic in there, with all the little fragment of thoughts, so I have to jump out and into another head. Because of this, I can’t write in chapters, but little fragments of single point-of-view that strung together make a whole (or will make a whole, when I am done).

Take for example, the New Story, still very much in draft. The first crack at it was written from alternating first person points-of view between the two narrators. In draft two, I have stuck the stories together into two chucks – same story told from two different perspectives.

I may take it all apart again at some point, if I can only get myself focused enough to concentrate on the story.


Want more on Bev? Visit her website at www.beverleystone.com

Beverly Stone: Provocative

Meet Beverley Stone, all-around awesome person. For the next few weeks, she'll be blogging about life as an author, with the same warm and honest humanity that defines her novel No Beautiful Shore. Settle in and enjoy a peek into the mind of a very talented writer.

Narcissism and the Single Novelist
II. Provocative

No updo.

First of all, I have to say thanks to Bryan for enhancing my credibility by posting the only glam shot I have ever had taken with my hair “swept into an updo,” directly above the blog entry where I say I never do such things. In case you are wondering, I got myself all titivated off (as my people say) to attend the Book Lovers Ball, 2008. I decided that I would wear my vintage 1960’s cocktail fit-out and go as Holly Golightly. However, upon examining my wrinkles in the mirror, I realized that I couldn’t pull it off, even if I could find one of those fancy cigarette holders. I decided to go as Gladys Golightly, Holly’s older sister, who had her own money for the powder room, and would never, ever have abandoned Cat to the streets of NYC. Gladys -- practical, responsible, and unfairly excluded from the story by that Capote fellow. Perhaps I will write my own novel from Glad’s point-of-view: Breakfast at Zellers.

Bryan has given me what I think are some pretty confining terms for this blog. I have been told that I can neither swear not slur others, but otherwise the sky is the limit. Well, fahooie on Cormorant Books, I say.

See that was provocative. I ask myself, why am I like this? Where does this desire to show people that they are not the boss of me come from? I am four-years old on some fundamental emotional level. Saying or doing things to chafe at people’s comfort level is not a wining quality in an employee, spouse or blog writer. I do, as a friend of mine pointed out, really enjoy saying things to bother people.

It’s not that I set out to be an irritant, but it is a gift. I read back what I have written sometimes, and I think, ‘My Lord, Beverley. Don’t be writing that.’ (read this statement as if it was said by your mom, because I am channeling mine here). It’s not that I start with that goal in mind, but my characters make some unconventional, uncomfortable choices, as does Janice in No Beautiful Shore. Unlike a character in a Hollywood romance, she stays with the man she doesn’t love, mostly because she is scared. I think that is what people do in real life – they are too scared to make changes.

So when I am not consumed by the black dogs of doubt, I am overwhelmed by the desire to say things that shock people. I’d apologize, but that would be insincere.

I like being a bit of an excrement disturber. Notice that I did not say the vulgar word for excrement that starts with an “s”, and I promise you, I would not, even if my mouth was full of it. I am all about colouring inside the lines. And I never, ever wear my hair in an updo either.



Want more on Bev? Visit her website at www.beverleystone.com

Beverley Stone: Narcissism and the Single Novelist Part I

Meet Beverley Stone, all-around awesome person. For the next few weeks, she'll be blogging about life as an author, with the same warm and honest humanity that defines her novel No Beautiful Shore. Settle in and enjoy a peek into the mind of a very talented writer.

Narcissism and the Single Novelist
I. Doubtful

Smile!

When Bryan asked me to blog for Cormorant, I cringed and said, maybe later, very busy, etc. Unlike the authors that Mr. Harper knows, I do not go to galas each night of the week and spend my days getting my hair swept into an updo and my nails painted chartreuse. I work in an office with nice people, nine to five, Monday to Friday. Not much happens in my daily life to blog about.

But as a writer, I like to think that if my days are outwardly boring; I have a “rich inner life,” as the artsy types say. The thing that most people ask me about (other than is my writing autobiographical) is how does a story take form? What is happening in your head as you write? Since not much happens on the outside, I thought I’d tell you what’s happening on the inside.

Here goes. Topic one: bone-crushing doubt.

Doubt – and I think someone else said this first – is the black lung disease of writers. The act of booting up the computer triggers it at a cellular level. I think, for me, it might be terminal.

I am working on something new and I am fighting with my doubts every step of the way. How will I find a publisher now that capitalism is on its knees, begging for handouts? Do I have anything even vaguely interesting to say? Mostly, I think that I am wasting my time and that of others – people like yourself, who might otherwise be boiling pasta or cleaning out under the bathroom sink instead of trolling online for narcissistic blogs by unknown, Canadian writers.

It takes a lot of effort to move that doubt aside some days, as it stands like a needy cat in front of your computer screen. The truth is though, it’s just not relevant to the story, so you have to make yourself chase it away. You can’t think about who will publish or who will read the story. That’s the outside world pressing in, which I think can’t be much help in an honest day’s writing.


Want more on Bev? Visit her website at www.beverleystone.com

cormorantbooks.com at The Globe and Mail Online Books site

I'm shocked I didn't pick up on this when it first came out. That's what I get for my lapse in attention - now I have to go print this out and show it to my parents:

Cormorant Books re-launches its website, and that makes me reflect ...

Big thanks to Peter Scowen, who works his butt off to support us online. Without people at major media outlets like The Globe and Mail to give us a platform, life for us marketing-types would be so much harder.

Question Time!

Curious about the inner workings of a small but prestigious Canadian press? Wondering how words get from inside an author's head to the nightstand beside your bed? Perplexed about the publishing process?

Well, have we got news for you!

Now's your chance to find out all you ever wanted to know about us, Cormorant Books - what we do, how we do it, and why.

Send in your questions by either commenting on this post, or sending us an email at b.ibeas@cormorantbooks.com, and at some point in the future, we'll round them all up and answer them, right here! Who knows, this might become a regular thing ...

So get your curiousity caps on and fire away!

Linda Rogers @ Open Book Toronto

Hop on over to our friends at Open Book Toronto and check out the profile for Linda Rogers, author of The Empress Letters and its upcoming sequel The Third Day Book.

There's a Q & A, a bio, and blog posts by Miss Rogers. You should go, if only to get an idea of the kind of person she is. We love Linda here at the office - she's truly a character.

So what're you waiting for?

Q&A with Kathlyn Bradshaw

In our continuing effort to provide you with interesting content, today we're posting a Q&A with Kathlyn Bradshaw, author of The Frankenstein Murders, a sequel/re-imagining of the Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein and a gripping psychological horror-mystery in its own right. Enjoy!

Q&A With Kathlyn Bradshaw

Where did you get the idea to re-imagine the story of Frankenstein?

KB: Basically I started out with a question: “What if everything is not what it seems?” At the end of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Ernest Frankenstein is the sole surviving member of his family, and Mr. Clerval has lost his son. What would have been their reaction to Victor’s story? What I wanted to do was to consider Victor Frankenstein’s story from a different perspective. When Captain Robert Walton meets Victor, the captain seems to take everything Victor says at face value. I wanted to present the responses of characters either unconnected to or at least less enamored of Victor and, therefore, more critical of his story.

There must have been a lot of detailed research in writing a book that so closely mimics the writing of Mary Shelley. Could you explain the process you went through in researching the characters and settings for the novel?

KB: Not surprisingly, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was my primary resource. I read and reread that novel numerous times - in whole or in part - at the same time taking many, many notes. While I never had any illusions that I could write like Mary Shelley, my goal was to create a story that connected as much as possible to Frankenstein.

In terms of researching, a few of the characters in my book do appear in Shelley’s novel: Victor Frankenstein’s professors at university, Henry Clerval’s father, and Ernest Frankenstein all have (modest) roles in her narrative. I gave them all moderately bigger parts, building on whatever information I could glean from Frankenstein. The rest of the characters in my book were my creation.

The settings were another matter. Mary Shelley definitely had the advantage over me in that she actually had seen most of the places visited by Victor Frankenstein, and at a similar time in history. I was writing from a twenty-first century perspective about places I had never been. Had I kept a list of the historical and travel books and websites I consulted to attempt this task, the list would be lengthy.

What sort of struggles did you have to deal with in writing this book? Was there a learning curve in writing your first novel?

KB: To write a novel of this length and maintain coherence and continuity, while at the same time building the story was a big challenge. Technically, I had written a novel - of sorts - before this book. My first attempt at book writing, however, had little merit beyond giving me the opportunity to practice developing a story of such length and detail.

Were there any specific books or movies, besides Frankenstein, that inspired you while writing the novel?

KB: Anything written at or around the time that Mary Shelley was writing was definitely helpful, but any stories with a gothic and/or mysterious setting were also useful, for instance, classics such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Movie and television adaptations of stories such as these helped in two ways. First, they provided visual and aural inspiration, and second, they too were derived from someone else’s novel.

What do you hope readers will take from this novel?

KB: On a basic level, I would hope that readers would get some enjoyment out of the book. If readers also took away a new perspective - that they, unlike Captain Walton, do not take the story at face value - that would be good too.


The Frankenstein Murders will be in stores on October 24. Click here for a free preview.

Coming soon: The Implied Author, a series of posts by Mark Blagrave (author of Silver Salts)