Riding the rails with Pip Tattnall, no. 2

Another piece of the launch interview for A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage can be found--it's going to be a bit like a scavenger hunt--at Mole's burrow. Dale Favier asked me an interesting question about the origin of the novel and the Depression, and I have responded with a basket of family eels, slippery bits of stories and mysteries (illegitimacy, runaways, Southern racial mixing) that intrigued me as a child and young woman. Still do.

Many thanks to Dale Favier, who has recently published a collection of poetry, Opening the World, with Pindrop Press in the UK. (If you are a blogger and want to ask a question and host Q and A plus some information--or else host a short excerpt and information--please write me at smaragdineknot [at] gmail.com.)

Part one of the interview and comments can be found at Hannah Stephenson's The Storialist.  Comments off--please comment on Dale's blog or facebook site.

Riding the rails with Pip Tattnall: no. 1

The first piece of my one-and-many interview for the March 30th book launch of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage is up at Hannah Stephenson's grand blog, The Storialist. The interview will be strewn, like a dismantled Osiris, around the world, and to see and read all one has to travel and pick up the pieces. Why? Because it's a traveling book set in the Depression, and protagonist Pip Tattnall is fleeing the tragedy at the heart of his childhood and growing up as a road kid, riding the rails into manhood.

And whether you shop at your local indie (mine are The Book Nook and Augur's in Cooperstown, both a portion of larger stores, and The Green Toad in Oneonta) or at a chain shop or online, I hope you will want A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage for your very own. It's close to my heart, this book, and uses landscapes and facts close to my family history.

Thanks to Hannah for her interesting question and the time she spent making a post about the book! Comments off; please comment at The Storialist.

Very High Romance

You know, I just tumbled into a site where I read the most dreadful, laughable bit of a novel--all full of grammar mistakes and European counts and barons and crazy syntax and misspellings and lovely young girls and jewels and passionate flingings-about. Then I read a statement by the author, all about her joy in making stories and the stored-up treasure in her heart, and I was so, so touched somehow that this royal nonsense, poorly-worded and poorly-punctuated and packed with rubbishy dreams, came flowing from her heart, so that she thanked God for the goodness of the world and for her precious gift.

Still in pre-order.
The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction

La! I was abashed.

All the same, if you have to choose between that one and mine, I do advise--forgive me!--that you send for mine. There are no counts and barons and jewels (except for a bit of jet bead that some boys pretend is a jewel), and though there is love, it is often unspoken or refused. No Cinderella-worthy carriages fetch a baron home; no, just a train to go steaming by, if only the traveler can catch hold without paying with a leg or life. I trust there are no mistakes on hand, no bizarre commas or lack thereof, no grammatical contortions.

But the joy of telling stories: evidently that is the same.

Moonlight Requisition

Blogger? Tumbler? Enjoy chatting on some sort of social media? Interested in hosting one smallish question (yours) and some information about A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (Mercer University Press, winner of The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction) in time for the March 30th book launch?

The idea is for one large interview to appear (cut up in pieces like Osiris--to be eventually collected like Osiris as well), sprinkled here and there over the web. To put it another way (without that troublesome Osiris), your question will appear in three ways: on your blog, along with my answer; here, as a question only but pointing to your blog; and lastly as an item in a round-up Table-of-Contents post (also linking to your blog.)

Confused yet?

Along with the piece of an interview, I'll ask you to post some information about the book--an image, some comments, some information.  Note: you don't have to be an author or have a blog that focuses primarily on books. In fact, I think the idea of having launch posts on all sorts of blogs is a fun idea.

Write me at smaragdineknot [AT] gmail.com for The Complete Skinny on The Great Blog Pilferage. Or, less sweetly, An Infestation of Blogs. Or Major Palace Annexation. (I hope for major, rather than minor--one never knows with takeovers.) Or whatever it shall be named.

Update, late March 4th:  So far I have three visual artists, a novelist, two poets, and one historian signed up. And I've already answered two questions. Come play!