Newsletter
FAQs
FAQs
September 26, 2024
Could there possibly be a more boring title for my first newsletter in eight months? Whenever I see a link for FAQs on a site I'm exploring for a specific piece of information, I usually ignore it. I don't want to waste time reading everybody else's questions, and what are the chances that my own question has even been asked enough to make it onto the list?
Having now dismissed FAQs as generally unimportant and annoying, I will proceed with my own list of FAQs about my novels. If the topic bores you, you could just quickly scroll through the list of 9 below (in bold print), and if you've never been curious about any of them, you should probably close this newsletter and do something more productive. For anyone who is interested, however, these are for you.
So here goes, one FAQ per book, starting with book number 1, Suncatchers. Q: In Chapter 39, exactly what happened to Perry that he considered an "epiphany" during his long drive to Rockford that night?
A: Having written only short stories, plays, poems, and articles before 1992, I basically knew nothing about writing novels when I started writing Suncatchers that year. One of the few rules I knew was fairly standard was "show, don't tell," so I set out with that goal in mind. In Chapter 39, I wanted to suggest Perry's epiphany rather than spelling it out, but judging from some of the questions I received, I must have erred by being too vague. My intention at this pivotal point was to show Perry realizing he had a big question to answer: What do I do with what I've learned about God? And further, What do I do about Jesus? I hoped it would be subtle yet clear that he personally applied the truth of the Gospel to himself that night, opened his heart, and became a child of God. Maybe I tried too hard not to insult my readers by overexplaining, and maybe I further confused readers several pages later when Perry said to Eldeen near the very end, "I have something important to tell all of you." That was supposed to connect with his epiphany in Chapter 39, suggesting that he was now ready to share the good news of his salvation with others. I do value subtlety in fiction, but not if it leaves readers scratching their heads.
It was easy to think of the question most frequently asked for book number 2, Some Wildflower in My Heart. Q: What was your inspiration for Birdie? Did you ever know anyone like her?
A: Although I've known many godly women in my circle of family and friends, I never knew a "real Birdie." Before writing the first word of this book, I had already created the character of Margaret in my mind, and I knew it would take a very special, contrasting character to reach someone like her. I happened to come across the photo of a pioneer woman named Sarah Jayne Oliver in a fascinating book of non-fiction I was reading at the time, titled Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier by Joanna Stratton, and Sarah Oliver's face suggested the kind of woman I needed for my character. I based Birdie's physical description on that photo and gave her some of Sarah Jayne's personal character traits as mentioned in Stratton's book. Of all the characters in my novels, Birdie is the one I would most like to be. Sadly, I see more of Margaret in myself, but Birdie Freeman gives me a goal to keep striving toward. I love the way a reader, John Lovell, summed up Birdie as "the lantern that led Margaret out of the dark."
For book number 3, By the Light of a Thousand Stars, the teenage boys elicited the greatest number of comments and questions. This FAQ is similar to the previous one. Q: Was Hardy Biddle modeled on a real boy you knew?
A: I was writing this book in my late forties, when our son was 15-16 years old, so I had many immediate, firsthand opportunities to observe teenage boys and their interactions. Our son likes to say he provided the original pattern for Hardy, but even though he and his friends did provide a wealth of colorful details to draw on, they weren't generally that uninhibited, flippant, obstreperous, and sarcastic. But like Hardy, Jess did enjoy buying retro items of clothing at thrift stores and exchanging quick, dry barbs and witticisms with his friends, so those characteristics became a distinctive part of Hardy's personality. Once Hardy first appeared on the scene in Chapter 4, he took on a life of his own, and it almost seemed that he wrote his own lines after that.
The FAQ for book number 4, A Garden to Keep, can be summed up with a paraphrase that went more or less like this. Q: I don't want to be nosy, but was this book somewhat autobiographical? I mean, your husband is a band director also, isn't he, and aren't you a lover of poetry?
A: Yes, my husband has been a band director for all of our 53 years of marriage, and out of all my main characters, I'm probably most like Elizabeth, including her love of poetry. One of my friends told me she was deeply angry at my husband, Dan, as she read this book because she automatically identified him with Elizabeth's unfaithful husband, Ken. I'm thankful to say, however, that although I've been close to women who have endured the same deep pain that Elizabeth went through, I haven't experienced it personally; however, I've seen, heard, read about, and felt the insidious ways both husbands and wives can become careless and open to temptation in a marriage. A good marriage doesn't just happen after the ceremony but takes the consistent, dedicated attention of both partners. But I'm straying from the FAQ, so let me repeat that this book shouldn't be read as the author's thinly disguised autobiography. I did often pick Dan's brain, of course, for specific facts concerning the inner workings of a band director's mind and operating procedures, even his process of choosing music for his group to perform. When Elizabeth describes her favorite of all the band pieces Ken has ever conducted—a transcription of Richard Wagner's Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral from his opera Lohengrin—those words came straight from my heart. Out of all the pieces Dan's band has played, that is my very favorite.
For book number 5, No Dark Valley, the FAQ relates to the character of Bruce. Q: Why did you choose to switch to Bruce's viewpoint midway through the novel when we were so firmly planted in Celia's?
A: Shifting the viewpoint was not my intention at all when I started writing this book, and I certainly didn't aim for it to slide into something so close to a romance. Two things happened almost simultaneously to bring about those changes. First, the longer I wrote Celia's side of the story, the more stuck I felt about where it was headed and about all the negativity in her narrative voice. Just as this frustration reached full boil, a male colleague made a passing comment to me in the campus dining hall one day. He had just finished reading my fourth novel and told me that even though he didn't love poetry as much as Elizabeth did, he still enjoyed the book. Before we parted, he added, "But please don't let yourself become a writer who caters only to women readers, okay?" I gave that a lot of thought, realizing that my previous three books had all been about specific troubles endured by women characters. Except for my first novel, Suncatchers, the viewpoints had all been feminine. (In Suncatchers, by the way, I had decided to tell the story through the nonbeliever's thoughts and feelings, and that character was Perry. I later read that it was risky for a woman writer to attempt a man's perspective, so I hadn't tried it again.) At any rate, my friend's comment that day at lunch gave me the idea of switching to Bruce's voice for the rest of No Dark Valley. I clearly remember the wonderful feeling of freedom after escaping Celia's gloomy outlook! Bruce took over then and dictated a different direction for the whole plot. If you cringed over the decidedly romantic turn of this book, I'm placing all the blame on Bruce. I had to rein him in a few times when he became unbelievably sensitive and intuitive, but he kept pushing that side of himself forward. It was a great relief to me during the editing process when one of the editors, a man, told me that his father was an "incredible romantic like Bruce." This editor still remembered when every room in his family's house was filled with bouquets of red roses because his dad had ordered his mom twenty-five dozen red roses for their twenty-fifth anniversary. Very Bruce-like.
Btw, No Dark Valley, published in 2004, was actually launched from a short story titled "Such a Narrow Life," which I had written for Moody magazine in 1991, the focus of which was Celia's grandmother's funeral. In the intervening years, I had often wondered how Celia's life would have unfolded after the funeral, so after A Garden to Keep was published, I decided to return to Celia and find out. I suppose this is the closest I've come to writing a sequel. As you probably know, I prefer to take my characters to a satisfying cut-off point and let the story fade away from there.
Book number six, Winter Birds, seems to be the book that readers either love or hate. The FAQ for this one surprised me, however, since I had always felt that Sophie showed a gratifying turnaround by the end of the book. I suspect some readers bailed out too early, so I've always urged those on the "hate" side to go back and give it another chance. At any rate, here's the FAQ. Q: Why would you write a book so heavy and bleak that claims to be Christian fiction?
A: I realized one day how flat and depressing this novel would sound if I tried to answer the question "What is Winter Birds about?" If I answered truthfully—"It's about an aging woman who sits in her apartment all day and thinks about death"—no one would want to pick it up. But if someone asks why I would write such a book, my simple answer would be that it was the story God placed on my heart to write at that time. I've always believed that Christian novelists can't ignore the dark side of life and still fulfill their mission of showing Christ's redeeming power in a convincing, realistic light. Sophie was not an attractive main character in appearance or temperament, but I hoped she would evoke a reader's sympathy and interest despite her cynicism and general state of melancholy. As I wrote her story, I grew to love her as Rachel did. Eventually, Sophie learns to love also, and in the last sentence of the book, she is prepared to "follow" Rachel in more than a literal way.
When people ask which book is my personal favorite, I always hesitate. As their "mother," each one seems to have its own personality and appeal, but if forced to give an answer, I would very likely end up naming Winter Birds.
For book number 7, Sometimes a Light Surprises, a few readers have wondered about the title, specifically one word in the title. Q: Why did you repeat an important word like "Light" when you had already used it in the title of By the Light of a Thousand Stars?
A: I could write many pages about the frustrating negotiations between writers and editors concerning titles! This FAQ touches on the very argument I made with the editors about why their suggestion of "Sometimes a Light Surprises" for the title wasn't a good choice. It wasn't that I didn't think it was a good title, but it was someone else's title and it also repeated the key word "Light," which I had already used for one of my books. William Cowper had chosen those exact words for the title (and first line) of a beautiful hymn text he wrote in the late 1700s. I loved his text so much that I used it in my novel as a strong influence on Ben's heart and mind. The closing scene shows Ben reading the words again as he reflects on the hope they offer. However, I had chosen a different line from the Cowper text as my preferred title—"A Season of Clear Shining." If I remember correctly, the editorial staff said they had just published a different novel with the word "season" in the title, so another one so soon might confuse readers and lessen the appeal of mine. They also brushed aside my concern about the word "Light" since By the Light of a Thousand Stars had been published ten years earlier and "no one will even notice the repetition," they claimed. It was a compromise I finally decided I could live with, but I'll admit that every time I look at that novel, Ben's favorite words come to mind: "Say it ain't so, Joe."
Out of my nine titles, by the way, there were only four that didn't get questioned, discussed, and tweaked in some way during the editing process (Suncatchers, Some Wildflower in My Heart, To See the Moon Again, and Every Ocean Has a Shore. This last one doesn't really count, though, since I self-published it and had no editors weighing in!) I'm grateful that the three publishers I worked with were always willing to consider my input about both the titles and cover art, also that title negotiations were never rancorous and unprofessional. I recall a couple of the editors' title suggestions that I rejected out of hand: One February Day and Borne on a Gentle Breeze. I also remember my disappointment over a few of mine they didn't like as much as I did: Though the Night Be Long and Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.
The FAQ for book number 8, To See the Moon Again, was actually one I had anticipated and tried to steer clear of as I revised and re-revised. Q: Isn't the baby-selling part somewhat far-fetched for the time period of the book?
A: This was honestly my main concern about the plot of this book. I had thoroughly researched the whole subject of questionable adoptions, surrogacy agreements gone wrong, under-the-table international deals, etc. and had found surprising, corroborated reports about the different ways some adoptive couples had been connected with the babies they eventually took home. There was convincing evidence that some of these murky deals were still being made and brought to light into the twenty-first century. Most often the adoptive couples had no idea that their babies weren't legally relinquished by their mothers. I also had in-depth conversations with two adoption specialists in our area to ask questions about procedures and laws and about possible ways of circumventing them. Carmen's situation in To See the Moon Again was similar to some I had read about, but the Massachusetts setting, the adoption agency, the people involved in the scheme, and the specific, deceitful methods they used were all fictional. One of the ground rules of writing realistic fiction is that it should be believable within the context of the setting, and if readers discount it as highly implausible, it's not enough for the author to say, "But it really happened, and I can prove it!" So if this book ever goes out of print and I decide to republish it myself, I'll have an opportunity to try to make it more credible for the doubters.
And now for the final FAQ for book number 9, Every Ocean Has a Shore. There was one detail that garnered the most questions by far! Q: Why didn't you have Carmen and Fawna meet again?
A: Truly, I didn't expect this one to become such a great chorus of voices from my readers. Yes, I know that Fawna's prior encounter with Carmen on the train was referred to a number of times and that Fawna even dreamed of meeting her again, but isn't it true that we often briefly cross paths with someone who leaves a profound impression on us, yet we never see or hear from that person again? That seemed a far more realistic scenario to me than contriving a reconnection. Let me pause here, however, and admit that at one point early on, I did jump ahead and engage in a moment of wild imagining. . . wouldn't it be fun at the end if I made all three primary characters—Alice, Gary, and Fawna—appear by accident in the same place at the same time, along with Eldeen and Carmen!? I even got excited and thought of a place where it could happen. I soon hit the brakes on that idea, though, recognizing it as strained and gimmicky. And that's why I never considered a reunion between Carmen and Fawna, believing it would ultimately seem forced. (Idea: Maybe I should announce a contest among readers to write a believable, satisfying scene in which the two of them do meet—and then I'll pick a winner!)
Along this line, I dislike novels that tie everything up too neatly, but I can hear what you're thinking: "Well, don't worry, Jamie, you didn't come anywhere close to doing that in this book! Alice really hasn't made a single firm decision by the end of the book, and is Gary really going to stay in Vermont, and what about Fawna's whole future with Maynard and her career path? And poor Eldeen. . . did you tie that part up neatly?" And you're right—this story is not over by a long shot, but each character is "headed in the right direction," to borrow E.B. White's words. I did worry a bit that it would seem like a stretch for all three of the main characters in Every Ocean to come to the point of considering God's grace and providential dealings. God used different paths and instruments, though, to lead each of them to that point—specific people, places, memories, circumstances, even a book on a shelf.
All right, that's the end of my list of FAQs. I should have done this in installments, so if you labored all the way through, I'm impressed!