More about the pub

My perfect pub isn’t much different from yours Kelley. I would like to have all my favorite people close enough to drop by a lot. You really made me hungry with that menu and I agree with most of the food. I’d like my own easy chair maybe covered with dark old worn leather so it’s soft. Tables for setting things on but not strictly as sitting at but some of those too. I loved the way you covered the wine. Lighting only bright over the pool table, subdued everywhere else. A variety of finger snacks in bowls here and there. Oh yeah that reminds me, no one would make disparaging remarks about anyone else’s body size or make recommendations about how to make your life better based on their idea of what’s right and wrong. That’s not to say those things couldn’t be in a discussion you dig. Weirdly enough I can see a book case with books that can be read there in a few of these chairs with lamps by them. (My efficiency expert mind is busy devising a system for this book thing. Or do they call those people system analysts now?) Is my quarter up on the pool table yet?

Sly

Your quarter is certainly up but you will have to check with Nicola to get the game going. I will sit in one of your lovely leather chairs with my beer and coach from the sidelines.

Doesn’t seem weird at all to have books. It’ll be a literary pub! Every once in a while we will have live music or live stories or some such fun. Talented people, famous and not, will clamor to perform there just for the company and the beer. There will be many interesting conversations between people who are comfortable with ideas and feelings and differences. Imagine, a cozy room full of cool grown-ups. How much fun would that be?

There will be no bullshit in our pub about body size, skin color, education, whether English is your native language, or who your daddy is. People will speak ASL and English and Spanish and French and whatever else, and we will all find ways to make ourselves understood. People who do not play nicely will be given the opportunity to change their behavior (free training provided!), and if they don’t choose to change then they will be helped out the door by a big strong woman in big strong boots. The rest of us will smile and go back to our beer.

Don’t blame genre

Oversized mugs of hot chocolate for everyone!!! Oh, and there’s fluff, little marshmallows, whipped cream and shaved chocolate if anyone wants some. I’m assuming it’s -2 everywhere… Noreasters (sort of like Dairy Queen blizzards) for those in warmer places! I know… I’m taking the virtual beverage thing too far. But it’s fun.

I just wanted to say that I agree with you about the pleasure of story. I mean, it was all that I took away from your short stories that led me to Solitaire in the first place. I’ve been on this need-to-know-more kick. I read five really good stories this month, one right after the other (Solitaire, the fifth), and so I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking. And thinking. Restless, really. And then I thought, “Wow. I don’t know as much as I thought I did”. And so, the need-to-know-more thing…

And second guessing, which is new to me. Without realizing it, I think I just wanted to know what Solitaire meant to you (and everyone else here), because I know what it means to me. For whatever reason, knowing what it means to me isn’t enough. Maybe I should find a book club that plans to read Solitaire (I’m laughing).

Have fun,
Lindsey

Don’t laugh too hard (smile)! I would love book clubs from coast to coast to throw their arms around Solitaire and hug it hard. It’s one of the best ways to make a book successful.

The thing is, I know why you’re laughing, too, because it’s just not really book club fodder, is it? I’m not sure exactly why I think that only a book club brave of heart would take it on. Well, I know partly why — I think of book clubs as mainstream organisms, and expect them to be more enthusiastic about Bridget Jones and the Ya-Ya Sisters than they would be about a young woman with an identity crisis and a crocodile in her head.

I am grateful for anyone who reads at all, even if they never touch my work, but I do think that many readers have a fairly narrow band of taste (even if the band is in some extreme part of the spectrum). People tend to like certain kind of stories, or certain ways of storytelling. I wish more readers knew that it’s not necessarily the genre they like or dislike, it’s the storytelling style or the story’s concerns. Nicola and I often remark on how many people have said to one of us I don’t like science fiction, but I love your stuff! Well, if they like our stuff, of course there’s a lot of other SF they won’t like, because it’s told differently, with different conventions and concerns.

I can understand people saying I’ve never before read any SF that I enjoyed, which is to me a very different statement. But genre no longer means prose style and plot content. Things have become more subtle than that. I think genre these days is more about particular storytelling assumptions, freedoms and limitations that help us define something as SF or thriller or Russian Depression Novel. I do think there are plenty of formulaic books in all genres, but at the heart of each book is the story that wants to be told. Either a reader will connect with the story and the way it’s told, or she won’t.

And speaking of connecting, please join me in a virtual toast to the Nebula Jury who liked Solitaire well enough to put it on the final ballot for the Nebula Award, doing great honor to the book and giving me a very interesting start to the week.

Numbers game

Hi Kelley:

I read “Strings” as a result of an email sent (and posted) to Nadja. Wow!!!!!!! Thanks for the taste. I can see Solitaire is next on my list.

Great work and website. Isn’t it nice to be “riding high on the crest of public approval.”

Aren’t we all imprisoned by a means of our own device?

Scott

I’m very fond of Strings, glad you liked it. I’m assuming since you found the post on Nadja’s website, that you also followed the trail to C.A. Casey’s article at Strange Horizons (but here it is again for people who may not know about it). I enjoyed the article thoroughly, and was jazzed that Nadja actually read the story.

Riding high on the crest of public approval doesn’t suck, for as long as it lasts. The trick is not to turn it into heroin, because one day the fix just won’t be there. Public approval is ephemeral, and contextual. Solitaire got a very strong response for a first SF novel, but that same response might be considered mediocre for a mainstream novel with same caliber of advance quotes and the same amount of pre-publication buzz. And if the critical approval doesn’t translate into sales, well… publishing is a business, and they don’t pay royalties on good reviews.

I don’t know how much you know (or care) about the business of publishing, but what I’m waiting for now are the sell-through figures. I know how many books were printed, ordered and shipped to booksellers. If stores are going to return large quantities of the book (because they think they will never sell them, or they’re tight on inventory space, or they have policies about turning inventory on a regular schedule), they will generally do so within about 6 months –” in my case, by the end of February. It’s nice when stores order lots of books, and bad when they return lots. At the end of all this, HarperCollins will look at the percentage of books that “sold through” (shipments minus returns) and use this to roll their numbers and determine whether the book has been a financial success for them.

At the same time, bookstores will have noted the individual store sell-through. When my next book is published, they’ll go back to these records as a guide. The worst place a writer can find herself is on the downward spiral of “well, we ordered way too many last time, let’s cut that order in half this time” (as opposed to, “wow, her last book did well for us, let’s bring in a few more this time”). It’s better in some ways to sell 90% of 100 books than 50% of 180 books.

In the meantime, I am not ungrateful! I’m delighted with the response. Happy writer. I like being approved of. And even though Solitaire certainly hasn’t been universally praised, the criticism has almost always been intelligent and interesting. And really, the best part is the growing interaction I have with readers through this site. I even find myself answering Virtual Pint questions when I should be working on my new book (grin).

Sure, we’re all prisoners of our own device (the Eagles said so, it must be true). That’s what fear is. Solitaire was written on some level for anyone who’s experienced the liberation of kicking down one of her own particular walls.

The dream pub

It seems strange that my first contact with the world of authors’ sites would be after reading only two chapters of a writer’s book (and nothing of her stories), but that is a sincere tribute to the person, the book, and the site. I’m looking forward very much to cozy nights in the pub exploring the worlds of Kelley Eskridge and Nicola.

John Young

I hope the virtual pub is comfortable and properly provisioned. I’m finding it pretty cozy myself, really enjoying it. And, of course, I hope you enjoy the book as well, and would look forward to any comments you might wish to share.

I’m curious about what brought you here after only two chapters. Please note, this isn’t a veiled request for lots of ego strokes about marvelous writing or whatever, but rather a question about the psychology around the access made possible by the web and an individual website. Did something in the book make you curious about me specifically? Do you generally go out and look for more information about artists whose work interests you? What are your criteria for sticking with a site like this? This is an open question for anyone, really. Those of you who have read through the material on this site know that I’m interested in notions of access and connection. I know what kind I’m willing to grant — less than some, more than others — and I know what kind I hope for from people whose work I admire. But that’s just me. I’m guessing that mileage varies wildly in this regard. If anyone wants to talk about this, I would find it interesting and instructive.

Your comment also got me imagining my dream pub. A neighborhood place, a little shabby from the outside with an entrance off the main road, so that the regulars can feel safe and just that bit smug about our good fortune. There would always a table free for me and mine, of course (grin). A main room with just enough bustle that never got too far on the wrong side of noise and crowd. A snug with soft leather armchairs and a lovely fireplace. Oranjeboom, Redhook, Fullers ESB and proper Dublin Guinness on draft. Decent champagne and brandy. A couple of startling and dramatic wines. A bartender who is a renaissance person with an extensive lending library and a genuine talent for making people feel welcome. Giant hamburgers with homemade buns and sautéed onions, and special handed-down-for-generations mayonnaise-based secret sauces. Fried zucchini and fried okra. Haddock and the best chips in the universe. Hummus with enough lemon, served with hot Greek pita. Vegetarian chili and cole slaw layered in pita bread (trust me). Sandwiches from Boat Street here in Seattle (artichoke-heart-salad, or pate and cornichons, or poached chicken with roasted red peppers, all on crusty baguettes) and The Other Coast Café (amazing deli concoctions, also in Seattle, lucky us). Good music. Indirect lighting. A room at the back with pool tables for Nicola.

My local isn’t Kelley’s Dream Pub, but it’s a great place. Good Philly cheese steak sandwiches and imperial pints of Bass. A fireplace. My kind of music. They like us and take great care of us, although there’s that tricky matter of not having my favorite table always waiting whenever I want it…. However, I’ve learned that one advantage of being a writer is the ability to visit the pub in off-hours and have the run of the place. We met a good friend there recently and parked ourselves in front of the fireplace for an entire weekday afternoon; Nicola took Official Virtual Pint Photos; and we all found that lovely drinking pace that maintains rousing good spirits without veering into conversational stupidity. A grand day. I’ll take as many of those as I can get.

Mileage varies

Dear Kelley,

Chocolate milkshakes.

Ah. Damn… And I’m usually pretty good with metaphors. I pulled a Buckner on that one (Red Sox player, ball went flying between his legs, lost the World Series, attempted suicide after the game, but the bus went between his legs). I completely missed it. I thought the crocodile was a metaphor for madness…

I am new to science fiction and have been reading more and more of it since last month.. trying to understand the scientific part of it. I think I overlooked the metaphor in order to understand something that I didn’t really need to… which is crazy… when I was in high school, I lived for metaphors… and even crazier when, here, it’s kind of the whole point. Well, now that I know the crocodile is a metaphor for that fear you mentioned, I’m going to reread Solitaire.

take care,
Lindsey

No Buckners here, amiga. You didn’t misread. The crocodile is certainly a metaphor for madness. That’s even made explicit in the text (“She wanted to lie back and rest in the jaws of madness.”) It’s just that I think the equation “well, she was alone for a really long time so she went nuts” is too simplistic. Madness, like anything else, is a specific experience. So it was my job to imagine it specifically, and to make it particular to Jackal. That’s why I describe the crocodile as being one embodiment of her fear –” she is so afraid of “not being herself” that her fear threatens to pull her apart and swallow her up.

I believe this happens. Things we fear come to rule our lives, if we allow it. Jackal’s fear is influencing her to make bad choices right from the opening of the book. For me, the VC section was (among other things) my chance to explore that intersection of fear and choice. Jackal fights off the crocodile and doesn’t give in to madness, but that’s not the end of her struggle with fear. She falls into a much more subtle trap of fear when she turns herself to stone, when she erases the people and things that she loves so they can’t hurt her anymore. And so on. Fear has many ways to control us, some of which seem so sensible and comforting at the time. I regret the impact it has had on my life, which is of course one reason I write about it.

And please remember that this is just my version of the story. You get to read Solitaire any way you want. I can tell you what happens to Jackal, and I can tell you what it means to me, but it’s your job to decide what it means to you. That’s one of the biggest pleasures of story for me (and story can be words, music, movies, theatre, visual art) –” it becomes mine, filtered through my experience, my imagination, my hopes and fears. The best stories help explain myself to me, or show me something that I want to be or feel or do. And if all someone takes away from Solitaire is a newly-discovered taste for brandy and orange juice, that’s cool with me. It’s the connection, large or small, that matters.

The value of art

Dear Kelley,

I ran across Solitaire a week or so before Christmas, attracted by the cover image, and was amazed and delighted to discover that you had finally written a novel. My first encounter with your work was when I read “Strings” in the (’94?) edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. Perhaps it was partly the nature of the character that made that story so precious to me (I’m a violinist as well), but it instantly became (and still is) one of my favorite pieces of short fiction. I’m not easily overwhelmed, but by the final page I was weeping. Reading it aloud to my girlfriend a little over a year later, I couldn’t keep my voice steady when I came to the end. Your work is extremely powerful, and I felt blessed just to have read that one story — it caused me to make a serious inquiry into what I value about life, and living. I can say without hesitation that it changed me.

After my experience with “Strings,” I sought out the rest of your work, and loved it, but since ’99 or so I’d been tormented by the “is this it? is that all?” sensation one feels when waiting (and waiting . . .) for a favorite artist to produce something new. And then, finally, I found Solitaire, and I rushed home with it, and I read and re-read until I became completely absorbed in Jackal Segura’s life, and her story. Then, when I finally set it down (I usually devour books at an alarming pace, but this one I savored, taking it a few chapters at a time) I realized I didn’t have any words to use to tell you how grateful I am. You gave me a journey I can make again and again, and a whole world.

I don’t mean to be so effusive with my praise, but there are very few authors whose work I can connect with on so many different levels, and I value those few quite highly. Your writing inspires me to live as fully as I can, to create, to dream, to love . . . and to hope.

Sincerely,
Aislinn

These are lovely words to give to any artist, and it means a great deal to me to receive them. Thank you.

The waiting wasn’t so much fun on this end, either. Nicola and I share a metaphor about writing, which is that there are points where a work-in-progress becomes a desert — nothing but dust ahead, nothing but dust behind. All the writer can do is stick her chin out and keep slogging. There were a couple of years of dust during the writing of Solitaire, when the work went particularly slowly because of the demands of my job at Wizards of the Coast, and also because I made a serious wrong turn in the narrative. I had to trash about 15 or 20 thousand words, about a year’s worth of work at the time. That was a very bad day. It took a while to get back on track. So, thanks for being patient.

I’m still getting used to the fact that strangers have read my short fiction and liked it well enough to go out looking for more. I’m not trying to be coy — it’s literally amazing to me that someone might pick up Solitaire and think (some version of) hot damn, Kelley Eskridge wrote a book! My stories have been so few and far between (at least in publication terms, although not in terms of my own process) that it hadn’t occurred to me that people would persist in seeking out my work.

Nicola and I were talking last night about the ways that art gets in and stirs up the soul. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced art that changed me like a lightning strike, but there are particular works that have influenced me incrementally but immensely, like weather systems moving across the ocean. They are works that speak to the deepest parts of me, and force me to recognize things within myself –” values, as you’ve said. In almost every case, they are works that confront me with the truth that I can be more than I have let myself imagine –” I can work harder, be braver, see more clearly, endure more, go farther, have more joy.

And then there are those experiences of art that are like mainlining joy, struggle, sadness, fear and courage, hope, loss, redemption. Emotion speedballs. Music does that for me, and movies, and particular piercing moments in books. There is nothing like it, for my money. I will always be fascinated by the quality of humans that compels us to seek out such moments, and to create them for each other. I think whatever power there is in my work comes from this place, but that’s me looking at it from the inside out. You are a musician –” is making music like this for you? I know there are other uses for art, and perhaps one day they will interest me more than this one. But not now (grin).

Crocodiles

Hi Kelley,

Not a beer drinker (though I wish I could be because it always looks so fun)… So, I bring wine to the table.

Anyway….I read your short stories online and I liked them, so I thought I’d give Solitaire a try. I found it next to Slow River (and had to grin). When I read the jacket and saw the word, “corporate”, I stopped smiling… What if it’s boring? What if I don’t get it? Do I really want to spend twenty-five bucks on something I might not get? Fuckit. I’m buying it.

And I am so glad that I did. What a story! I’ve been thinking about it for the past two days.

I read the other questions here and was surprised to find people wondering about Steel Breeze. I had forgotten about them and everyone from Ko… And I think it had everything to do with Jackal rubbing everyone out while she was in VC. I almost didn’t want to finish the book after Snow got rubbed out. It was agonizing. This is serious, I thought, breathe. If Jackal came out of VC and Steel Breeze, her family, Neill, Snow and the others were never mentioned again, I would understand that… But I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way.

I didn’t quite understand how editing would work for the other solos. To me, it seemed that the crocodile was a breaking point and that the way to survive in VC was to get past the breaking point without breaking. The way I saw it, Jackal took herself apart instead of letting her crocodile rip her to pieces. So, were the other solos so damaged because they passed the breaking point and broke? If so, how would editing work for them when, in their virtual memories (aftershock) they are in a different place than Jackal? Like, a broken place. It just seems that, for the ones that are in the broken place, it’s not a matter of finally facing the crocodile, but a matter of being able to go back to the first time they met the crocodile, so they can take themselves apart and get to the unbroken place where doors can be imagined. I feel like I’m doing a bad job expressing this idea, so I hope it makes some kind of sense.

Thanks for taking the time to read all of this,

cheers,
Lindsey

Beer, wine, champagne, chocolate milkshakes –” bring it on, I like it all.

The way I read your question has to do with the difference between confronting (or being confronted by) one’s crocodiles, and being psychologically and emotional functional in the daily world.

The crocodile in this book is one of my metaphors for a particular, fundamental fear that I believe we all have to some extent –” fear of discovering that we are not as good at (insert your notion of important human attributes here) as the people around us. That we are broken people in a world where only perfect people enjoy love and success. We are Bad. Jackal’s crocodile is a combination of guilt, imposter syndrome, and a huge need to please others so that she can like herself. It’s not a new fear –” it’s been driving her most of her life.

I think lots of people go through life with one or more crocodiles lurking in the back brain. Sometimes we lock ourselves into little psychological boxes to avoid dealing with them, or to protect ourselves from their attacks. This influences our behavior and keeps us from living as fully as we can, but it doesn’t mean we’re nuts. We have tools (therapy, religion, mountain climbing, career, love, whatever) to help us manage the fear and get on with whatever lives we have decided to permit ourselves. What Jackal offers the other solos is such a tool to short-cut through the fear (as symbolized by the cell with no windows or doors) into a more expanded space. They still have flashbacks and get sucked into VC, but now they will have more options to deal with it.

The solos are screwed up because they’ve been forced to be alone with themselves in ways that (IMO) most cultures don’t socialize for. We’re not taught basic concepts and behaviors of autonomy to nearly the same extent as concepts of community. “Plays nicely” was certainly a lot more important to my grade school teachers than “independently sets her own standards and then strives to meet them.” And it’s clear in the context of the book that virtual solitary confinement is intended as a punishment. I am ambivalent about this, which is why it was only through being so alone that Jackal could win her way to a greater freedom.

It amuses me that some reviews describe Jackal as passive. Deciding to play nicely, or to play along, is not the same thing as being passive. That’s not a word I would apply to anyone who makes an effort to become self-aware. For me, it’s the most active choice there is.

Having said that, I don’t think anyone has to be particularly sane or self-aware to live a functional life. The average consumer in Jackal’s world won’t need to be emotionally mature to get her kicks from an infinitely customizable virtual adventure. Nor will the solos have to walk through the same fire as Jackal to “earn” the right to the wider virtual world. Some of them will be getting a free ride. In general, I don’t believe that people must become self-aware, or confront fear, or evolve spiritually to have lives that are comfortable and sometimes happy. It’s only necessary that our definition of comfort and happiness match the life we are living. How, and whether, we make that match is where story happens.

This is all highly metaphorical, of course, and like most metaphor breaks down at some level of detailed examination. One of the reasons that I’ve been thinking, lately, that I’m not a “real” science fiction writer is that metaphor is so much more interesting to me than the science necessary to support its creation.

I’m not sure if I’ve expressed all these ideas coherently. If I haven’t, please let me know, and I’ll take another swing at it. And thanks for taking a chance with your twenty-five bucks.

Talkin’ about love

i just wanted to pass along praise for Solitaire. i loved the cover, and while it’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover, your words ended up in my hands and in my head because of the art. amen for that.

i’m not a big sci-fi reader, but i was cruising through the pages, and then one line nailed me like a Mack truck. the line about wanting to be in Snow’s arms spoke so much to me about humanity and existence, and how a lover can have such influence and healing, be a haven. that line alone made it clear that i’d finish the book, and i ended up reading cover to cover that night.

being much more of a romantic than a sci-fi fan, it was the words about Snow and Jackal and the way they cared about and understood each other that were my favorites. your words were familiar and the ache for their relationship to survive is like the ache i have for my future and the possibility of love like that.

thanks for sharing your talents, and for using your talents to share emotion, compassion, intelligence, humanity, independence and togetherness, etc etc etc!

can’t wait for more,
maria

Thanks very much. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

I find it challenging to write about love. I think it depends on describing small and sometimes inherently uninteresting moments in ways that reflect the greater whole, like building a pinhole camera to watch an eclipse. It seems to me that often writers choose to focus on the Big Moments of love, but in life (at least, in mine) those are only about 10% of the package –” the rest is daily, built primarily, as Jackal describes it, on the dozen hourly acts of will that bind people together. Those are the bones of love. It’s hard enough to write honestly and well about the beginning of love, or the end: but writing about persistence of love is, I think, a very particular and delicate skill. Something to keep working on, for sure. I will be a Happy Writer when I can write that well.

Having said all that, of course the Big Moments –” where the foundation either holds, or not –” are part of any story. Much of what interests me as a writer boils down to examining moments of choice, and even when the choice seems small it can still be a big moment. The things that drive our choices are so varied. There are a million stories there.

I wasn’t sure as I was writing Solitaire that Jackal and Snow would be together after VC. I didn’t make that decision until very shortly before I wrote the scene where Jackal finds Snow outside Shangri-La. It was hard to write about their saying goodbye (in the phone call just before Jackal goes into VC) and to think that it might be true. I’m glad it wasn’t.

The choice about whether to have Snow come to the NNA was really, at base, a fundamental decision of whether to write a book about the presence or absence of hope. I decided that it was a braver choice, as well as a happier one, to have them try to work things out. It can be hard to sustain hope. It’s a choice that has to be made over and over again –” I think will plays a greater part than disposition in the choice (well, I believe that about almost every choice, but that’s my bias). I believe the courage to hope is a quintessentially human thing.

I don’t know if I’m a romantic or not. I don’t believe that romantic love conquers all –” I think in many cases it just makes life damn complicated. And I don’t understand people who think that bad love is better than no love at all. I think some people don’t know how to love, and that some people love each other but are not good together. Feelings aren’t enough, no matter how intense. The persistence of love depends on doing as well as feeling. I do believe with all my heart that this kind of love (and lover) can be a haven, a fortress, a greenhouse, a grand adventure, and the best story in the world.

Space for story

Dear Kelley,

No question, rather a comment. I’m very glad that I didn’t read any of the reviews or the questions posted here. I simply read the book. (Great cover, btw).

Solitaire was a delight. I congratulate you on your knowledge of facilitating techniques. You must know someone in the business because it was so accurate.

What makes a book for me a really good read? It nudges everything else just a tad aside. Like finding that little bit of elbow room at a crowded bar, it allowed me to order up a portion of Jackal, a sip of Snow, and a shot of Neill neat. That’s not any easy feat when life around me feels so complicated. I truly want to thank you for that.

As to the most recent questions/comments posted on your website, it never bothered me that you didn’t develop Steel Breeze into a major plot twist. I felt that they were superfluous from the start, a convenient excuse to convict Jackal. I read it as Jackal was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wasn’t expecting a conspiracy intrique novel. You’re probably too young to remember the Patty Hearst scenario. Yet, had you gone down that road, I’m sure comparisons would’ve been made.

Getting back to my original point: thanks for the great read. I’m nominating you for a Lammy because I can, and because I think you deserve a thunderous round of applause.

I’m just a reader, but I say bravo, Kelley, bravo.

Best regards,

Jeanne Westby

You may certainly describe yourself as “just a reader” if you wish, but I never will. Readers are the earth and sky to me. So thanks for all these kind words, and I’m glad you liked the book.

It is a great cover. It’s gorgeous, simple, reflects the essence of the story, and makes people want to walk across the aisle and pick up the book. The artist is Bruce Jensen, who has done much good work. It was a particular pleasure to learn that he’d been assigned Solitaire because he did the cover of Nicola’s first book, Ammonite, which she and I both really liked (lovely image of a planet with a subtle cloud-cover in the shape of an ammonite –” although our pleasure was diminished when the then-president of the publishing house wandered by the editor’s desk and insisted that a spaceship be put in the picture. It’s science fiction. There has to be a spaceship. I swear this is a true story.)

In my corporate life I was, among other things, a professional facilitator. I ran meetings (mine, and other people’s) for groups of 2 to 250 people many times a day for years. The last 6 years of my corporate life focused on process development and improvement, project management, team-building, managing, coaching, and facilitating. I taught workshops on communication and leading effective meetings. I mentored folks. I had an absolute blast. If I ever have to go back to corporate work, it’s what I would choose to do again. And it sounds as though you’re in the business yourself (you’re the first person who has chosen the word ‘accurate’). I’d be interested to hear more about what you do. Me, I think everyone should have some training in this area. People might actually get more done with a little less unnecessary friction (and it seems to me there’s more than enough of the necessary kind to satisfy even those who need conflict to feel that they have done something meaningful).

I like the image of elbow room at the bar. It’s certainly my experience that a good story makes a space for itself inside my head. For me, it’s as if the best stories carve out little caves where they can take up residence and echo back and forth to one another. I can’t imagine my life without books, movies, theatre, conversation (the best talking, for me, always includes story. Let me tell you what happened to me today….). I fall in love with worlds, with characters, with a particular feeling or a specific moment. I imagine myself living that life, making those choices, having a beer with those people, being a part of their world. Writing is another way to give myself that chance.

One of the best compliments I’ve had about Solitaire came from Bill Sheehan, who said in his review for Barnes & Noble.com that I had obvious affection for my characters, and that the best moments in the book had the quality of “actual, felt life.” That’s the essence of the connection that I talk so often about wanting to make with readers. And I’m coming to understand more and more how important these seemingly simple things are to me as a reader and a writer.

I just read the A.M. Homes short story collection The Safety of Objects. She’s a good writer, and I can understand why some people like her work a lot, but I don’t, and I couldn’t figure out why. Nicola and I had a conversation (over beer, naturally) about it the other night, and she went off and read a couple of the stories and said, “Oh, it’s because she doesn’t seem to like any of her characters very much. There’s very little compassion.”

I think she’s right. Homes is perceptive and can write a killer sentence, but she doesn’t tell the kind of story I want to read or write. I can’t imagine wanting those worlds, or those characters, making a space in my head. So telling me that Jackal and Snow and Neill mattered to you (which is how I read your email, and certainly hope you will correct me if I misunderstood), and that you enjoyed their company, is a gift to me. So is the Lammy nomination, which I certainly appreciate.

And I do remember Patty Hearst –” I’m not so young as all that (grin). I recently went to a friend’s 30th birthday party, where I was the oldest person in the room. She observed to me privately that all her under-30 friends asked her, “How do you feel?” in tones of concern or compassion, and all her over-30 friends said, “Congratulations, life is so much cooler on this side of the fence.” And so it is.

Accidental

It looks like I waited so long before posting my question that Albert more or less beat me to it, but with a different interpretation. I did not think Jackal had been set up by them: I understood her part of responsibility, but it puzzled me that Steel Breeze did not merit mention in the book’s conclusion, when everything else was tied up and resolved or explained to some degree. There was a tremendous shift of priorities in Jackal’s world in the last part of the book, and that made sense, yet the Steel Breeze thread was left hanging like a discarded plot device. In the greater scheme of things, with the world government coming about, and Jackal and her friends filling their roles in its chinks, suddenly the opposition fell silent, neither defeated nor continuing its terrorist campaign. I wondered where they’d gone.

I reiterate here what you knew from my journal, for the sake of your site’s visitors: I enjoyed Solitaire tremendously. Its part of trauma didn’t feel gratuitous or exploitative. You handled it well, leaving my imagination to do its job. 🙂

I look forward to your next novel.

Ide Cyan

I’m sorry this has taken so long, but getting your question right on top of Albert’s really put my brain in a twist. It would be easy to say, well, no book is perfect or yes, a world-building error or some equally shuffling first-novelist patter. And I tried . But the question of Breeze and their role in the story won’t go away so easily.

I think of the elevator incident as the white squall that appears from a clear sky and sinks Jackal’s life: a stew of small choices and random factors that bring a great storm into being, like the proverbial flap of the butterfly’s wing a half a world away. Steel Breeze is one of those factors. One can infer from casual references throughout the last section of the book that they are indeed still active, still fighting the bad fight, but they certainly aren’t high on Jackal’s radar screen. Although this has never bothered me, it’s clearly bothering some readers. Fair enough, but I would much rather be criticized for an active choice than for an error of ignorance or a failure of imagination, so let me be clear: it was a conscious decision to have Jackal’s interaction with Steel Breeze be almost literally a hit and run, and for Breeze to become no more important in Jackal’s re-created world than her parents or her loss of Hope, or any of the thousand other hits she took after her world fell away (which is to say, important but not differentiated. It’s all one big scar.)

So why don’t readers get this? Why does this need to be addressed in ways that other things don’t (meaning, for example, how come no one’s grumpy that she doesn’t ever think once about trying to reach out to her father? Or that we don’t find out until page 211 that there were 98 children on those elevators? Or maybe everyone is grumpy about it and no one’s told me yet.). Whenever I tried to think about how to a better job with this, I kept getting caught on why do I have to do it at all?

That reaction interested me intensely. It’s what made me rewrite this answer about a million times, trying to get to the core of it. I don’t mind being involved in a learning process –” I love to learn. I am willing to describe my own mistakes when I recognize them. But I wasn’t able to do that satisfactorily in this case. So I was doing laundry yesterday, still trying to parse my way through it, and my inner voice remarked to me, Well, if they didn’t like this accident, they’re really gonna hate the next book!

An epiphany, with wet bath towels. I finally understand that Solitaire is more about the white squall or the butterfly’s wing than I ever consciously realized. Everyone at Ko, including Jackal, tries so hard to keep it all under control, and look what happens –” the bottom falls out anyway. This may seem incredibly obvious to everyone else, but it never occurred to me that I was making my metaphors that literal. When I was writing it, it seemed important that Jackal’s tragedy happen when a piece of random violence collides with one of her own great fears, so that she could more easily make a fatal mistake; and I gave her the fear of falling from a great height because it’s one of mine. It seemed that simple at the time.

I love the writing brain: it does like to play.

So now I know that the elevator incident is not a simply plot device to get Jackal out of one life into another. It’s also a manifestation of accident, and accident wants my writing attention right now. The next book also involves the accidental, whose consequences propel people in unexpected directions and present them with unimagined choices. Which is, of course, where the real story is for me: not about the horrors or delights of randomness in the world, but in the ways we choose to respond when the chaos wagon rolls down our street. And so I will be thinking, as I approach the new book, of how the characters react not just to the specific accident, but to the existence of the accidental. And then I will have to find ways to integrate that into the story in better ways than I was able to in Solitaire.

I will have to pay particular attention to the ending of the new book. I am certainly not interested in the ‘complete package’ resolution. I have to admit I’ve been puzzled that many (most?) readers find Solitaire so neatly wrapped up. I think the world is rarely tidy, and I tried to shape the ending of Solitaire so that it would feel like the moment between exhaling and inhaling again, a literal breathing space while everyone gathers their energy for the next arc of the story, the next round of life. I wanted to end it in a space where hope could exist. To me that’s not an end, but a beginning. Clearly I haven’t done that in the way I envisioned. So another new question for me as a writer is, how to resolve the experience of the next book, create a resonant and compelling ending, without tidying away all that messiness that accident and choice create in our lives?

Which brings me to my current answer to your question, that I will have to be satisfied with for now: Steel Breeze went to the place where other accidents go, spinning off around a corner like a car hubcap come loose and never seen again. I didn’t forget about them: I sent them away unresolved because life is full of things that we never get to grips with. It’ll happen again: because of this conversation, I have discovered another layer that needs to be in the new book. Hopefully, it will be more skillfully done.

I’m extremely grateful for the chance to think about all this.