September 13, 2024 • 48 mins
Debut novelist Scott Alexander Howard drops by the podcast to discuss his eerie literary work, The Other Valley. We discuss Ferrante, Atwood and the story behind the term speculative fiction.
The Other Valley tells the story of Odile, an awkward, quiet girl, vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns a spot, she'll decide who may cross her town's heavily guarded border into the next valley over. There, it is the same valley and same town, but to the east, the town is 20 years ahead in time. To the west, its 20 years behind.
Scott holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard where he studied the relationship between memory, emotion and literature.
Follow Scott Alexander Howard:
Website: scottalexanderhoward.com
Instagram: @scottalexanderhoward.com
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
Are definitions of speculative fiction now that I
like to say things like it's anyfiction that doesn't take the
rules of our world for granted,
Amy Mair (00:11):
I like that. Yeah,
Unknown (00:12):
that's a pretty good like all purpose term, right?
Amy Mair (00:42):
Oh, hello, welcome back to the Red Fern book
review. I am your host, AmyTyler, and today we're going to
talk with first time authorScott Alexander Howard, and his
book is the other Valley, andit's a mash up. It's a work of
speculative fiction which justreally simply is literary
(01:06):
fiction with a sense ofotherness or a dash of sci fi
thrown in, but otherwise a veryrealistic kind of story setting.
And his background is quiteinteresting. He has a PhD in
philosophy from the Universityof Toronto, and was a
(01:26):
postdoctoral fellow at Harvard.
And this book kind of meets thespace where memory, emotion and
literature come together. Andwhat I really like about it is
it is very philosophical, but Ialso found it to be a bit of a
thriller. So another interestingthing to me about Scott is he
(01:49):
is, we're both from the same orwe both live in Vancouver, so
that's always kind of fun. Andthe way I found his book is I
went to my favorite localbookstore, which is it's book
warehouse on Main Street andabout 10 minutes from my house.
And I went in there, and Ialways say, well, what's the
(02:09):
latest? What should I bereading? And they suggested this
book. And then they let me knowthat if I do get them on the
podcast, to get them in there tosign some books. So I've I
passed on that message to Scott,but anyway, let's move over and
talk with Scott. Hi, Scott.
(02:33):
Thanks so much for joining thepodcast today.
Unknown (02:36):
Thanks so much for having me before
Amy Mair (02:38):
we get started. I just wanted to comment on your
background. I love I'm lookingat the furniture behind you.
Looks like you have some midcentury modern furniture, sofa
and bookcase. But I'm alsolooking at all the books in your
collection. You've got a biglibrary behind you. What if, if
I could get a little closer, ifpeople could see what? What are
(02:58):
some of the books that you haveon your shelf that inspire you.
Unknown (03:04):
This shelf was built by my father in law. Actually, I'm
craning my neck to see what Iactually have back there. Let's
see. I mean, there's a lot ofthere's a lot of Ferrante,
actually, that's the first thingI see. It's very recognizable
with the Europa additions.
Amy Mair (03:17):
Oh yeah, yeah. Maybe
Unknown (03:19):
that's when we can talk about later. Okay,
Amy Mair (03:21):
so to start, what I wanted to first talk about is
the genre that you're writingin, or that you wrote in for
this novel. And so this is awork of speculative fiction,
which I think a lot of peopleknow about, but maybe not
everybody. And I was wonderingif you could kind of explain to
(03:41):
people what is speculativefiction and why did you choose
to write in this genre?
Unknown (03:49):
Yeah, I think I don't, I didn't prepare, like my, my
history of speculative fictionas a term, but I think for my
this is defeasible, but myunderstanding is that it's
actually a term coined byMargaret Atwood, I think was
maybe meant to distinguish TheHandmaid's Tale from sci fi,
which at the time she was reallykeen to do, because I think her
(04:13):
view is that nothing in the bookactually is impossible. There's
no spaceships, there's no, youknow, counterfactual time travel
or anything like that. It'sjust, you know, a political
change, and everything thathappens in the book had already
happened at some point. And, youknow, in our world, so
speculative was meant to sortof, I think, bring some kind of,
like literary respectability tothe story and distinguish it
(04:37):
from from sci fi, which isregarded less favorably by the
literary sort of mainstream. Andthen the funny irony is that
over time, speculative becamethis big tent kind of umbrella
term that incorporates sci fiitself as well as a lot of
fantasy and other forms of magicrealism in any kind of
counterfactual, including thingslike The Handmaid's Tale. So I
(04:59):
think. It's maybe kind of, it'sflipped its meaning from what
she originally intended. But Iwould, I've read like
definitions of speculativefiction now that I like to say
things like, it's any fictionthat doesn't take the rules of
our world for granted,
Amy Mair (05:17):
we like that. Yeah, that's
Unknown (05:18):
a pretty good like all purpose term, right?
Amy Mair (05:23):
So why did you choose this genre? I
Unknown (05:28):
think that it kind of chose me. It wasn't that I
decided to write a book. Then Ithought, you know, which book,
what kind of genre should Ichoose to write in? It was more
like I had the idea in a flashone day, which was of this
eternal sequence of small townsthat are all staggered precisely
in time from each other. So inthese kind of this succession of
(05:48):
valleys that goes on forever,the same town repeats, but
always 20 years ahead or behindin time, depending on which way
you go, that idea is inherentlya kind of fantastical idea,
because it involves time in someway. It's sort of a time travel
story. So it kind of puts itinto the Sci Fi camp. But it
also has no science in it. Youknow, the world's very rustic,
(06:11):
and the rules of this are neverlike, you know, the explanation
for why this town exists in theway that does is never given.
It's just treated as a as as afact. So it kind of became
speculative fiction by default,you know, but it was sort of the
idea that led that decision,rather than the other way
around.
Amy Mair (06:28):
What made you keep it somewhat grounded in reality?
Because I guess you could havetaken that kind of story idea
and made it more fantastical.
What made you want to keep itsort of a little bit grounded? I
when we were emailing back andforth, the one thing I said to
you, this seems to me like kindof, I would describe it as eerie
(06:51):
literary fiction, like there'sjust something about it that's a
little bit unsettling, which Ithink is intent, obviously,
intentionally so. But what, whydid you decide to keep it a
little bit grounded?
Unknown (07:08):
Well, first of all, eerie literary fiction is great.
That's, that's precisely what Iwas gunning for. So I'm glad
that it landed that way. Oh,good, yeah. I had sort of
eeriness as one of my if I hadnot, I did not actually do, like
a, like a teenage mood board, orsomething like that. You know,
my took out my writing, but Ifeel like, figuratively, I did
have one, and the eeriness waskind of one of the main notes, I
(07:29):
think, one of the main moodsthat attracted me, you know,
something like that, or theuncanny, as for, I don't know, I
kind of liked, I liked thecombination, though, of eeriness
with something a little bit moregrounded and a little bit more
like rustic and physical, likethe I made sure there's a lot of
description in the book of theway that the world, you know,
(07:51):
smells and tastes and feels, youknow, sensorily. That's just the
kind of writer that I am. But Ithink it also created an
interesting tonal balancebetween the sort of loftier
metaphysical strangeness of theworld and, yeah, just the
feeling of what it would be liketo actually be there. I like to
sort of treat something unrealusing the register of realism
(08:14):
and so sort of the rustic,vaguely past, like setting of
the towns they're sort of oldfashioned, combined with
something that's more usually afuturistic trope, like time
travel. I don't know, it justfelt interesting to me. You
know, I felt like there wassome, some fertile ground there.
Amy Mair (08:30):
Now, talking about the physical town, if you look at
the cover, it's quite abeautiful cover, and it's, you
know, it looks it's it's avantage point of overlooking a
lake that over with a mountainin the background, and it looks
like the Ogan Okanagan, which isnot, you know, a few hours to
(08:52):
the east, or it's fromVancouver, and you're from that
region. And so I wanted to askyou, Was that intentional that
the cover is, is that supposedto be where you're from, and if
also, how did the how and whereyou grew up? How does that
appear or not appear in thisbook?
Unknown (09:12):
It definitely appears.
I think it's, it's fairly commonfor a debut novelist to sort of
use their hometown to someextent. It's kind of Yeah, for
the taking, you know. And I alsothink that, you know, I started
reading, I didn't write any ofthis book in Kelowna. I had left
by that point. Kelowna is, Isort of grew up in West Kelowna,
Rose Valley area of of, sort ofthe Central Okanagan, but also
(09:32):
the southern Okanagan, likeOliver, so it's a much smaller
town. And, you know, I moved. Imoved away from there when I was
18. But I really like I sort ofenjoy accessing writing through
memory. I think that thedistance between where I was
writing the book and what I waswriting about, the sort of
(09:53):
landscape I was evoking, washelpful for me, as far as why. I
used it beyond just kind of theconvenience of knowing this
landscape very well. I thinkthat so for those who don't know
that, the Okanagan is kind of aweird region in Canada. It's not
really what we think of when wethink about British Columbia,
(10:13):
which is sort of, you know, thehuge trees in the Pacific
Northwest, and very rainy, andit looks like Twilight, you
know, and the Okanagan is hometo Canada's only desert, you
know, it's a strange ecologicalenvironment where there's these
deep fjord like lakes that aresurrounded by orchards and sort
of rolling hills. But then inthe mountains above that, it's
(10:34):
very it's pretty harsh, likeit's very dry and arid. There's
sort of these, like barren pinedotted mountains. And I really
liked that kind of combinationof the pastoral and sort of
bucolic mixed with this, orsurrounded by this sort of harsh
emptiness. I think that workedwell with the tone of the book
(10:56):
and the tone of the world, whichis this mix of longing and
foreboding, you know? So I feltlike there was kind of a
complementarity between thelandscape and the story in the
world. And I think also justusing valleys, the original idea
for this book, for a day or two,I just thought of this sequence
of towns, kind of existing on aflat plain. And very quickly I
(11:17):
realized, you know, if thatpresented logistical challenges,
you could see what was going ontoo easily, perhaps from one to
the other. And so logistically,natural borders of mountains was
helpful for me, but I think italso worked thematically,
because the past and the futureare so close in the book, you're
aware that they're there, butthey're they're also just out of
(11:39):
sight, and that kind of feltappropriate, too.
Amy Mair (11:43):
So could you give everyone just a kind of beyond
you've talked about the settinglike these were like worlds
years ahead and years behind,neither direction, these
valleys. But can you talk alittle bit about, maybe the main
character, Odile, and what's,what's the synopsis of the book,
(12:04):
or what's the kind of centraltension of the book?
Unknown (12:08):
Yeah, well, so to recap, kind of the basic
landscape of the world, youknow, we've got, it's a, I like
to say it's a small town that'sphysically neighbored by its own
future and past. And so, youknow, across the mountains to
the east, the same townreappears, but it's 20 years
ahead in time. To the west, it'sthe same town, but 20 years in
the past and so on forever. Andtravel between these towns is
(12:31):
forbidden, but if you aregrieving, you can ask permission
to hike to a past version of thetown where your lost loved one
is still alive and well. And ifyou can, if you're allowed to go
there, you are not allowed tointeract with this person or be
recognized by them, but with amask on and under armed guard,
you can stand at a distance andlook at them again. And some
(12:54):
people find this ritualconsoling. And the story follows
a teenage girl, 16 year oldnamed Odile, who notices some of
these visitors from the futurenear her school, but against
protocol and by accident, shedoes recognize who they are, and
thus she realizes which one ofher classmates they must be
there to see, and thus which oneof her classmates must be about
(13:16):
to die. And instead of stayingaway from him, as she's sort of
told to she becomes closer tohim and starts to fall in love
with him, but this secret thatshe knows about his future
creates a obvious moral andemotional dilemma for her that
changes the course of her lifeuntil she's tempted to go back
in time and try to change it.
Amy Mair (13:37):
Okay, that's a good and why did you, why did you
choose Odile like to tell,through which to tell the story.
You could have chosen one of theother characters or someone of a
different age, like, whatappealed to you about her? Um, I
mean, in
Unknown (13:58):
a way, I do kind of have someone of a different age,
because the story is bifurcatedinto Odile at 16 and Odile at 36
so I kind of got to have it bothways. That's I think, I mean in
terms of the process, the waythat I started to write this
book, when I finally I had theidea for it for years before I
did anything with it. And thenthe idea was, was of that world,
(14:20):
and I didn't have a story to putthere. And so when I started to
get serious about writing it,I've likened it to bird
watching. I would kind of sit inthe bushes of this world and
kind of just watch charactersthat I would make up a new one
each time I sat down to write.
And I would just create theselittle vignettes where I write
about, you know, one persongoing about their day in this
world. And after a few of these,I wrote somebody who was based
(14:43):
on, very loosely based on, agirl that I went to elementary
school with who used to do whatOdile does at the start of the
book, which is out of a kind ofmortal shyness she would stand
against the wall at. Recess, andat lunchtime, she's just stand
against the wall of the schoolbeside the cloakroom door and
just stare straight ahead. And Ididn't I never really figured
(15:08):
out why she did that, but thiskind of memory worked its way
into a character, and as soon asI had that on the page, I
started to just wonder moreabout her, you know what? What
made her that way? What was shethinking about as she did that?
And from there, I kind of justpoured a lot of myself into the
character, and, you know, dialedup a lot of my own traits, like
shyness and a certain kind of,you know, severity and
(15:31):
indecisiveness and worry andstuff like that too, like some
of my more negative traits, Ifeel like Odile, like it's a
little bit of a psychologicalraw deal for me. And then other
parts of myself, like myirreverence and humor, a lot of
that went into other charactersthat surround her and sort of
draw her out of her shell, whichis people like Ed May, who's the
boy I was talking about earlier,who's doomed, and his friend,
(15:51):
Alon.
Amy Mair (15:55):
So Odile grapples with a lot of deep existential
questions, and you yourself havea background in philosophy.
You're an academic, and I'm justwondering how did your academic
background and your personalphilosophical beliefs show up or
(16:19):
inform your writing of thisbook.
Unknown (16:23):
Well, I like the word inform more than I like words
like Inspire. I think becauselike inform is sort of like a
structural thing, and that'skind of how I feel about it. I
feel like philosophy reallyforms the background to how I
approach certain questions. Butit's not as though I'm bringing
(16:44):
particular philosophical ideas,you know, from dry as bones
academia and then sort ofdressing them up in fiction. I
think I was at the time when Iwrote this. I was just leaving
academia after many, many years,and so I was, at least in my
mind, I was trying to write asunphilosophical novel as I
could, which, it turns out isstill quite a philosophical
(17:05):
novel. I think that the one ofthe things that I recognize the
most in terms of continuitybetween the world I used to be
in and philosophy. And in thisbook, my dissertation was about
emotions that have to do withtime's passage, especially
nostalgia and other forms oflyrical affect. So like the
(17:28):
Japanese concept of mononouaware, which is sort of the
feeling that you get from ahaiku poem, sort of the
definitive mood of Haiku. It'sthis poignant sensitivity to
life's transients, and that's afeeling that's very much
threaded throughout the otherValley. Within academia, it was
kind of a weird fit, because, ornot all of academia, but within
(17:48):
academic, analytical philosophy,that's a very dry and technical
discipline, and I think I took asort of weird delight at the
time in approaching this softersubject matter using these
really hard tools. But it was atrick that kind of got old. I
found. And instead of, you know,analyzing lyric, poetry and
fiction, like I was doing withinphilosophy, I think I knew that
(18:11):
eventually I had to have theguts to try to write it instead,
which is what I secretly wantedto do the whole time the
Amy Mair (18:16):
book is also, I think of it as a little as a bit of a
thriller, and that, to me, issort of counter to philosophy.
Or maybe they seem just sodifferent, and somehow you've
married them together, andyou've created, you know,
(18:37):
philosophy, not for you, but forsome people, could be a bit dry,
depending.
Unknown (18:42):
Yeah, I don't, I don't shy away from the term thriller.
I think that one of the thingsthat I learned from quite
honestly, while I was writing, Iread a lot of literary fiction,
but I also, you know, waswatching kind of prestige TV,
and, you know, something like aspropulsive as uh, Breaking Bad,
(19:02):
or something like that wasactually an influence on this
book, too. I really wanted tokind of keep that tension
ratcheting up. I find that Ineed tension as a writer. I
think writing without tensionfor me is like, is kind of like
driving on empty, you know, justsort of rolling along. I I sort
of see the tension in the bookas more fundamental than
anything that could beconsidered philosophical. So it
(19:24):
was never a challenge, I guess,to create that or to marry those
things. I think I'm, you know, anovelist who likes tension, and
then just happens to have this,this big, weird background and
philosophy. So that stuff justkind of bubbles up, whether I
want it to or not. Thephilosophical stuff is just,
it's built into how I approach,you know, the subject matter.
And since Odile is in this book,kind of training to become a
(19:47):
kind of like judge of otherpeople's grief. And I had sort
of worked on the emotions as anacademic, you know, some of that
stuff kind of came to bear in anatural way.
Amy Mair (19:57):
Well, why don't with that? Why don't we do. A little
reading.
Unknown (20:01):
Yeah, I'd love to, so to set this up, because I'm not.
I always, I always read from thevery start of the book, and I'm
not going to do that so, butthen I have to do a bit of
setup. So the government of thistown, which oversees all of
those travel and visitationrequests that have to do with
with grief. The government'scalled the Conseil, and there's
a few candidates from localschools, including Odile, who
(20:24):
are trying out to becomeapprentices at the Conseil. And
this vetting process involveslearning more about the way that
the Conseil operates. And thencandidates have their reasoning
skills and temperament sort oftested each week. And if you
pass the test, you advance. Ifyou don't, you get cut. And the
pastel read is a little excerptfrom one of those training
(20:44):
sessions. So odile's Teacher,who's a concierge named Madame
avrat, is talking to them aboutwhat would happen if the Conseil
authorized a visit to the west,which is back in time by 20
years, and then the visitorslipped their guard. No she
repeated, the present is adelicate thing. We picked up our
(21:08):
pencils. Yes, there are muchgreater risks associated with
Western visitation. She said, ifsomething were to go awry, if
there was any interference inthat valley, we here at home
would receive no warning. Theresult will be instantaneous, a
relationship, an occupation, anindividual, a family, vanished,
(21:31):
eliminated. You'll have heard itreferred to in such terms,
interference meansdisappearance. Well, the slogans
are useful enough, but those arecrude schoolyard concepts, and
from you, we expect a deeperunderstanding. Consider this,
something that vanishes, createsan absence, and such an absence,
in principle, can be detected,whereas what we are talking
(21:54):
about now is undetectable. Why?
Because there was never anythingto detect from the moment of
interference in the valley Westthat change, whatever it may be,
is a 20 year old fact. To youand me, it is not a new fact
entering our lives to our horroror delight. It's important not
to picture it that way. No, itis simply a fact like any other,
(22:17):
just as obvious as the taste ofa tomato, something you'd have
no reason to second guess atyour age 15 or 16, you'll have
lived your entire life in avalley where that thing is taken
for granted. Thus you might be aperson who never had such and
such a family member, who neverfancied such and such a
relationship, who never did thethings which today you swear are
(22:40):
your most treasured experiences.
Those things are not gone. Theynever were and never words leave
no trace, no obscure memory, Nonagging sense of something
amiss, no fleeting shiver,nothing at all. These are the
stakes of interference. This iswhy the Conseil is so vital. We
(23:04):
are the bulwark against nonbeing against a replacement so
utter and complete that what islost is never mourned.
Amy Mair (23:12):
A lot of the words or names. There's a lot of
references to French words andnames.
Unknown (23:22):
I think that a lot of the writing process is sort of
it begins as whimsy and justmucking around, throwing things
in, and then the things thatserve a purpose, the things that
stick in some way, they have adifferent meaning for why
there's a different reason forwhy they stick than why they
(23:44):
might have initially been thrownin. So the kind of happenstance
explanation for the French isthat I was, I was editing a book
about the cartography of Parisat the time, and there was,
there were words like conseiland a name like Ed May, and I
liked the flavor of them. I alsohad already started to base the
landscape on the Okanagan, and Ihad noticed that the Okanagan
(24:07):
resembles parts of theMediterranean in that sort of
aridity. And so I started tothink, well, what if we bore a
little bit from the land thatlooks like this other land, and
sort of put in not just French,but also some Spanish and
Maltese and Italian place namesor not place names, mostly the
place names are French, but thepeople's names sometimes are
(24:29):
Maltese as well. So that waskind of why it worked its way
into the early drafts. And thenthe reason it stuck around was
precisely, as you say, thissense of, I think it was the
right degree of otherness. Youknow, I I knew that I wanted it
to feel slightly foreign,slightly alien. I didn't, I
(24:49):
didn't want people named ScottHoward in the book. But then I
think that at the same time, Ididn't want to go for full on
Sci Fi, fantasy namingconvention side. Like names that
have no earthly precedent. So Ithought that a foreign language,
at least foreign to most of thisbook's readers, was the right
kind of otherness, you know,just using something that's
(25:11):
familiar in a way, but alsounfamiliar in a way, it just
kind of helped create the tonethat I wanted.
Amy Mair (25:17):
So I wanted to ask you a bit about the publishing and
writing process. Um, you're afirst time novelist, and it's a
very unique, special, scarytime. Um, how did you get your
first get get your book deal?
How'd that go, come about?
Unknown (25:36):
Yeah, I mean, so I, as you're saying, I have, I have a
PhD in philosophy. It's not anMFA in Creative Writing, which
is, I think, the most commonroute in Canada to make those
kinds of professionalconnections that assist in
publication. I also didn't haveshort stories or poetry
published. I only have, youknow, peer reviewed philosophy
papers that are very tacticaland completely useless. No
(25:59):
connection to the publishingindustry at all going into this.
So I had to just cold query foran agent, which, if you don't
know, just means emailing peoplewho get 1000 emails a week,
basically in a small, compressedbit of time, saying, Please read
my book, and then your emailends up in what's called a slush
(26:20):
pile, and you have to just praythat you know an agent will, or
an agent or an assistant of anagent, will pull your email out
of the slush pile and actuallypass it on and give it a chance.
And that's a notoriously hardprocess, at least if you don't
have kind of connections torecommend you to an agent's
attention. And so, yeah, I gotno interest in Canada. But then
(26:44):
eventually, two American agentsread the pages, and I got
offered representation, I thinkafter about five months of
querying, which is, you know,not a huge amount of time. It's
not, yeah, it's, I always, Ialways think, like, on one hand,
it's not bad, but on the otherhand, there are very long five
months when you don't know ifthere's ever going to be light
(27:05):
at the end of the tunnel,because it just kind of happens
all the sudden. And then, in myexperience, the sort of
conventional wisdom that oncethings start happening, they
happen fast, that was born out.
It took my agent about a day tosell the book, you know, after I
was just thinking, like, Oh,this is going nowhere, you know,
then all of a sudden, I have anagent. Then she sells the book
(27:26):
very quickly. We had anovernight Read and request for a
meeting from an editor at Simonand Schuster in New York. And,
you know, we met with some otherpeople, but nobody really
matched her energy, especiallyonce Simon and Schuster Canada
got on board too. So I think ittook ultimately, like a week or
something. So after writing inisolation for so long, it just
(27:48):
felt like surreal, and I thinkmore than joy, which is what
people expect, it's just feltlike relief, like, Oh, thank
God, this worked out.
Amy Mair (28:00):
That's amazing. And then I wanted to ask you, from
the initial idea, like you talkabout this kind of idea coming
in your head, of these valleyafter Valley, different time
periods, how different is thefinal book from your initial
(28:24):
idea. And I know you would havehad people working with you, and
then you went through theprocess yourself. But is it very
different from what youinitially thought of?
Unknown (28:36):
Yeah, I think it is. I mean, it's funny how much I
have, sort of, I still possess,like the original notes. You
know, I first wrote down theidea for the book. I remember
talking to Anita prose, whowrote the maid, and, yeah, she
was saying how the idea came toher on a on a plane, and she
wrote on a napkin. I wonder ifshe still has the napkin. So I
(28:58):
still have my because I did itin Microsoft Word. I have, I
still have my my figurativenapkin ended up becoming like 80
pages long because I kept onadding notes to it as I thought
of them. And it's funny for menow to look back at the first
page or two of that and see allthe things that remained exactly
intact from the start, and anequal amount of things that are
radically different andcompletely opposite to how I had
(29:20):
initially imagined that thisproject would go because I had
the idea, I think, yeah, it's 10years ago this year coming on to
10 years, like, within a coupleof months, and I didn't do
anything with it for a long timebecause I was still an academic,
and it's just an all consumingjob, especially if you're trying
to find, You know, trying togenerate more work for yourself.
(29:43):
So when I finally decided tocrack down and prioritize the
novel, I think it took me aboutthree and a half years to write
it all in, during which time Imy wife and I moved like five
different times, and then thepandemic hit. You know, it's not
an easy time. Um. Um, so it'shard for me to kind of
individuate how many drafts thatI wrote, but, you know, maybe
(30:05):
like two and a half fullrewrites from scratch and then
years of revising. You know, somuch, so much on the cutting
room floor. But I think the themain difference is, from the
very start to the end, I thinkI'd initially imagined that the
book would be a lot more kind ofdreamy and just purely kind of
contemplative, the philosophicalsort of side of it would have
(30:28):
been maybe dialed up a lot more.
And then as I wrote and I rereadmy first draft and just a lot
more kind of causal connectivetissue started to grow between
these scenes that I sort ofthought of as these dreamy
fragments, until I could justfeel like this gravitational
pull that the book wanted to besomething more tight and with a
(30:51):
lot more narrative momentum thanI think I'd originally conceived
of it as having so and you kindof just have to accept what the
project is telling you it wantsto be, you know, you have to
just be like, you know, I can'tforce this book to be, to kind
of conform to what you know, thefirst idea I had for you have to
sort of listen to listen to whatit's telling you and go with it.
Amy Mair (31:15):
So to that point, are you? Because you talk to
authors, and sometimes they knowthe very ending when they start,
and others say the characterslead them. And is that kind of
So is that what you're saying,that you have this idea and then
it the characters kind of leadyou, or the story kind of leads
(31:37):
you like you're Did yousometimes feel like you weren't
leading the story?
Unknown (31:42):
Yeah, it's funny. I had the other day. I had this weird
dream. I had this dream thatToni Morrison was still alive,
and I, like, got off a bus, andI just got suddenly, like, Toni
Morrison was giving a reading,and I was the only one there,
and I was so excited, because Iget to talk to Toni Morrison,
and she said this now, not inthe dream, but in real life,
she's known for saying somethingabout if your characters are
(32:05):
leading, you're doing somethingwrong. You know you have to be
in control of the characters.
And I've always agree
Amy Mair (32:10):
with that, but, yeah, I don't want to disagree with
her.
Unknown (32:14):
I know you can, but I'm the same way. I've always
thought, you know, well, thatcontradicts common, wisdom that
you should, if it's a characterled book, then the character
should be leading. I think,though, that you can sort of
reconcile the two intuitions,because, you know, like a good
parent, for example. To go backto the child analogy, like a
good parent, sort of the childthinks it's leading, but you're
(32:37):
actually setting the parametersfor it. And at the same time,
you also have to accept, like,Okay, this kid does not want to
be in piano. To be in pianolessons. I'm not going to force
them to do it. They want to bein sports. I'll let them do
sports. So I feel like there iskind of a give and take with
your characters. They lead alittle bit, and you also sort of
gently adjust the world they'reliving in so that the way that
they choose to go is somewherethat you want them to go. So I
(32:59):
think that there's no easyanswer to the do the characters
lead or do you lead them?
Question, it is sort of acollaboration, which is, it's a
bizarre thing, you know,because, of course, it's all you
you've made them up.
Amy Mair (33:13):
And what about your writing routine? Do you write at
the same time every day? Do youhave to have a special? Do you
write by hand? There was someoneI interviewed recently, I can't
remember that writes their booksby hand. I could not on that.
But anyway, just what are yoursort of quirks, or what's your
(33:35):
process?
Unknown (33:37):
Yeah, I think, I think I read that Martin McInnis,
who's another sort of literary,speculative novelist who wrote a
book called in ascension. Ithink I read that. He does it
longhand. I don't know. Ireally, I admire that. I don't.
I just do too much. I changethings too much. I kind of can't
do that. And also, I thinkcomputer uses just degraded my
handwriting so badly, but myprocess is very much like word
(34:00):
count based. So some people goby putting in time. I have to go
by putting in words, because I'mvery good at wasting time. If
that's if I just have to make itfour hours, I'll sit around for
four hours and do nothing. So Ineed to, I have a program that
locks me into a certain wordgoal, like I have to produce,
you know, 1200 words a day, orwhatever it is, or else I cannot
use any other part of mycomputer like, no internet, no,
(34:22):
no, nothing.
Amy Mair (34:23):
I just read about this. What's it called?
Unknown (34:25):
It's called cold turkey. Oh, okay, yeah. I wrote
the whole all of the otherValley until I started to really
revise. It is written in coldturkey. And my the next book I'm
writing is also, it's great. Itbasically just turns your
computer into a uselesstypewriter until you meet
whatever goal you found yourselfto meeting. So I do that, and I
(34:46):
think for me, like mornings arebest, I'm kind of useless as the
day goes by, but the thoughts dokeep percolating. So you can
kind of make notes as you goalong. And as far as locations,
I I wrote the whole. First Bookin public libraries I've never
had, like a home office. Can'tafford one, so it's just, you
know, finding some place to go,yeah, and then as far as
(35:09):
motivation goes, you know, justa existential fear of failure,
just sprinting ahead of thegaping maw of catastrophic
disgrace, I think keeps me goingmost days.
Amy Mair (35:20):
Okay, so I wanted to ask you, especially as a first
time novelist, you you've neverdone this before, and you create
this piece of art, and what wasthe message that you really main
(35:43):
message that you in your headyou want to get across. And I'm
asking you that because I wantto know then you put it out in
the world, and readers are goingto have their own ideas. And I I
just wanted to find out a littlebit about what were you what did
you think you were putting outin the world? And this novel is
done well, so you're gettingfeedback. And I'm just
wondering, are you learningthings about your book that you
(36:04):
didn't know, or are peoplekeying into things that you
didn't think were special, butare like, what is that like?
Unknown (36:13):
Yeah, I think, I think in one sense, it's not like a
messagey book in so far as a lotof contemporary fiction kind of
gets, I don't know whether itactually is intrinsically this,
but it gets talked about asthough, you know, a novel is
more or less an essay that hascharacters and dialog, rather
than, you know, than just beingnonfiction. It's not really a
(36:35):
thesis book in that sense. Ithink it's because it's eerie
and uncanny. I think it is a bitmore cryptic than didactic. It's
evocative of a mood, and ittries to sort of make certain
themes and questions live forthe reader more than certain
theses. But the kinds of thingsI was dwelling on that I sort of
(36:55):
see the book as pointing towardsare maybe like reflections on
the contingency of our identity,like what makes you the person
that you are, how much of thatis happenstance and
circumstance, how much of thatcould have gone otherwise with
little changes. And I thinkalso, at the risk of sounding
sappy, I also think that it'skind of about the preciousness
(37:17):
of happiness in a life, and thesometimes narrow window that we
have for joy, and the cost oftrying to sort of pry that
window open and extend itagainst the way that the world
is taking you, I don't know. I'mnot sure if I've said that well,
but I feel like that's kind ofthe main things, or questions
(37:38):
about identity and questionsabout happiness and regret. And
then, as far as the book beingout in the world, and like,
which reader reactions havesurprised me, I think, yeah, it
has been really interesting. AndI'll preface it by saying that I
I try to stay away from hearingtoo much about reactions. Yeah,
(37:59):
I know, yeah. And it's not evenout of, like, fear so much and
like, I know some people are howto say, I think it's kind of
like,
Amy Mair (38:12):
you don't want it to totally impact your art, or your
or the work that you're doing,you want to do,
Unknown (38:20):
yeah, I think it's, it's unhealthy, maybe, to let
readers responses affect the wayyou see your work, because my
part of the process just tocreate something that satisfies
me and to sort of write the bookthat I'd want to read, and if I
start worrying about how thestory is going to be received by
by people, then, you know, itfeels less like I'm writing and
more like I'm marketing, youknow, like I kind of have to
(38:41):
just keep it private and thenhope that it, hope that it
speaks to someone else, from theprivacy of me to the privacy of
them reading right, but as butthen that said, you know, I also
I am exposed to readerresponses, sometimes through
reviews, sometimes throughInstagram, sometimes through
just My fan mail, which isreally nice. And I think what
(39:03):
has been the most surprising hasbeen maybe bemusing, is like the
diametrically opposeddescriptions that people will
give of how the book reads. Sowe were talking about kind of
this melding of philosophy andthriller materials, I think that
that's kind of something thatsometimes readers will sort of
(39:25):
see it as just one or the other.
So I've for every number ofblurbs and reviews that I have
that say that it's like a quiet,very slow meditation on grief
and loss. There's a number ofreviews that'll be like it's a
rip roaring stay up all night,jumbo jet page turner. So I kind
of have to try to balance thoseout and be like, not sure if
this is coming up, if it'slooking like a coherent
(39:46):
description of the same book.
But at the same time, Iobviously was trying to do both
of those things. And I think itstands to reason, because every
reader is different, and, youknow, every book is hopefully
kind of multi dimensional. So I.
Yeah, it makes sense thatreaders would sometimes pick out
different dimensions of yourbook as the dominant one. You
know, like, if you go to like, awhiskey tasting or something,
(40:06):
one person will say the maintaste is x, and someone else
will be like, No, the main tasteis y, and they're not wrong.
They're just, it's just hittingthem differently.
Amy Mair (40:15):
Well, it doesn't surprise me that people would
think it's a stay up all nightthriller in that. I mean, this
is not, as I call it, an airportnovel. This is, you know, it's
not a difficult read, but it'sfor somebody that's wanting a
deeper experience, and so maybethat type of reader finds it.
Unknown (40:35):
Thank you. Yeah, I do think that what I'm always
looking for as a reader is sortof that literary page turner,
you know, something that's gotlyricism, that pays a lot of
attention to language, but it'salso, you know, it's got romance
and suspense. And I think a lotof readers do see that
combination. It's not justpolarizing. You know, I had a,
there was an Italian readerrecently who said they described
(40:58):
it once I ran it through GoogleTranslate. Anyway, I'm not sure
what it was in the original, butshe described it as a tender and
ruthless novel. I was like,that's pretty good. I like that.
It
Amy Mair (41:06):
is Ruth. It is kind of ruthless. But maybe that, that
does seem like maybe that wasn'tthe exact word that she meant.
Well, it was, it
Unknown (41:15):
was praise. Yeah, it was praise. Um,
Amy Mair (41:19):
okay. And before we go, I wanted to ask you about
authors that have influenced youand you were you obviously like
Veronique. So what do you likeabout her, her writing, or this?
We assume it's a her, the theyes, we don't know for sure.
Unknown (41:38):
Yeah, I'm on I'm on Team. It's a her. I think what I
connect with in the Neapolitanquartet, I guess, is just this,
like, simple frankness and Yeah,speaking of tender and ruthless,
I mean, there's a certainruthlessness to the world she's
describing. There's a ruthlesshonesty to the character that I
(42:03):
really was inspired by, youknow, it's just like, oh, wow,
you can do this. And so that wassomething that felt very
liberating to read around thetime when I started to write
this book. I think other, Imean, Isha Guru is a big one.
Amy Mair (42:17):
Oh yeah, I can see that in this work. I can see,
Never Let Me Go, obviously,like,
Unknown (42:26):
yeah, the way that he is so sparing with kind of the
exposition, you know, the worldbuilding there is so much just
by a vision, rather than givingyou a bunch of information
about, oh, here's how thecloning works. You know, it's
just it provides the kind ofstructure of their lives, and
it's just taken for granted fromthere. And that was inspiring,
too. People like Yoko Ogawa,like the memory police, was kind
(42:49):
of, it's much more on the dreamyside, but it's but that was also
one that I thought of inspeculative fiction. More kind
of died in the bull speculativefiction, I guess, like Ted
Chiang and China vieville weresort of big, but also I was
writing about a teenager, and atleast in the first half of the
book. And it occurred to merecently that, in a way, some of
(43:13):
my favorite writers when I was ateenager have sort of bubbled up
in this book too. So those wereKafka and Whitman, which is a
sort of a weird combination, notoften like seen as buddies and
but I do think that, you know,the eeriness and the crypticness
of Kafka married with sort ofthat big hearted tenderness of
(43:37):
Whitman. I do sort of see it inwhat I was trying to do, like
the kind of strange tonalmarriage that I was trying to
execute in this book, maybe kindof stems from those early
influences.
Amy Mair (43:49):
Can you tell us, I'm sure you're probably working on
something new. Can you tell usabout that what you're working
on?
Unknown (43:57):
Yeah, so the new novel is, it's not speculative
fiction, as far as I know. Yet,I think it's only like lightly
counterfactual. I think of it asprimarily a kind of domestic,
sort of kitchen sink drama. ButI might toss out key words, like
it's kind of like about theacademic underclass and economic
(44:20):
precarity. It's about art andambition. There's a lot of stuff
about kind of climate strain,especially wildfires, and the
decision to have children ornot, and about hope and
hopelessness and time and a bitof nostalgia seems to always
kind of crop up in my writing,no matter what I try to do. But
(44:40):
then also it's wrapped into thissort of story of a missing
person. So I'm trying to doanother weird sort of tonal
hodgepodge and see how, see howit works. I just wanted
Amy Mair (44:48):
to add one little note, the bookstore that I
really like in Vancouver is bookwarehouse on Main Have you been
over there or recently? Or haveyou been over there yet? I.
Unknown (45:00):
No, I haven't been to book warehouse on Main for a
while because
Amy Mair (45:03):
I went in there. And the reason why, the reason why
we're doing this podcast, thereason why I bought the book was
they told me I had to read it,and then, and when I went to the
checkout, they know me, and Isaid, I said, Well, I'm gonna
put this on the podcast. They'relike, Okay, well, if you get a
hold them, tell them to comeover and sign some copies. So
I've got to
Unknown (45:23):
do that. Yeah, so you should go over there. I
absolutely will. Yeah, I haven'tgone everywhere in Vancouver
yet. Yeah, but
Amy Mair (45:29):
that's a good, that's a nice little it's a, well,
there's not a lot of independentbookstores anymore, but it's,
it's one of the ones. And Ialways say the name doesn't
sound like it's an independentbookstore, but it is, it's a
good one. So, okay, well, I
Unknown (45:42):
publicly apologized to book warehouse, and I will be
there right quick.
Amy Mair (45:46):
Thanks so much to Scott for coming on the podcast.
That was really fun, and Ilearned something new. And I
think you probably did too, thatthe term speculative fiction
came from Margaret Atwood.
Potentially, that's reallyinteresting, and that makes
perfect sense with TheHandmaid's Tale, and I'm really
glad that she invented thegenre. So I also wanted to let
(46:12):
you know that we're back. It'sfall, and this is officially
season five, and I'm going to bepublishing at a more regular
rate this fall. I'm going to beaiming for two times a month.
And I'm also in working on somenew things. I'm thinking about
(46:32):
changing my name to my podcast.
I named it the red firm bookreview, because that was a
personal it was somethingpersonal to me. Where the Red
Fern Grows is my favorite book.
It was my favorite book as akid, but now I think I want to
grow a bit and maybe have thepodcast named after more what I
(46:55):
do as opposed to what I liked,and with that, I'm working on
some other new changes. So ifyou have any ideas for a podcast
name, let me know. I'd love tohear it, and you can reach me on
Instagram at Red Fern bookreview. So I will talk to you
(47:16):
soon, And thanks so much fortuning in. You.
Are definitions of speculative fiction now that I
like to say things like it's anyfiction that doesn't take the
rules of our world for granted,
Amy Mair (00:11):
I like that. Yeah,
Unknown (00:12):
that's a pretty good like all purpose term, right?
Amy Mair (00:42):
Oh, hello, welcome back to the Red Fern book
review. I am your host, AmyTyler, and today we're going to
talk with first time authorScott Alexander Howard, and his
book is the other Valley, andit's a mash up. It's a work of
speculative fiction which justreally simply is literary
(01:06):
fiction with a sense ofotherness or a dash of sci fi
thrown in, but otherwise a veryrealistic kind of story setting.
And his background is quiteinteresting. He has a PhD in
philosophy from the Universityof Toronto, and was a
(01:26):
postdoctoral fellow at Harvard.
And this book kind of meets thespace where memory, emotion and
literature come together. Andwhat I really like about it is
it is very philosophical, but Ialso found it to be a bit of a
thriller. So another interestingthing to me about Scott is he
(01:49):
is, we're both from the same orwe both live in Vancouver, so
that's always kind of fun. Andthe way I found his book is I
went to my favorite localbookstore, which is it's book
warehouse on Main Street andabout 10 minutes from my house.
And I went in there, and Ialways say, well, what's the
(02:09):
latest? What should I bereading? And they suggested this
book. And then they let me knowthat if I do get them on the
podcast, to get them in there tosign some books. So I've I
passed on that message to Scott,but anyway, let's move over and
talk with Scott. Hi, Scott.
(02:33):
Thanks so much for joining thepodcast today.
Unknown (02:36):
Thanks so much for having me before
Amy Mair (02:38):
we get started. I just wanted to comment on your
background. I love I'm lookingat the furniture behind you.
Looks like you have some midcentury modern furniture, sofa
and bookcase. But I'm alsolooking at all the books in your
collection. You've got a biglibrary behind you. What if, if
I could get a little closer, ifpeople could see what? What are
(02:58):
some of the books that you haveon your shelf that inspire you.
Unknown (03:04):
This shelf was built by my father in law. Actually, I'm
craning my neck to see what Iactually have back there. Let's
see. I mean, there's a lot ofthere's a lot of Ferrante,
actually, that's the first thingI see. It's very recognizable
with the Europa additions.
Amy Mair (03:17):
Oh yeah, yeah. Maybe
Unknown (03:19):
that's when we can talk about later. Okay,
Amy Mair (03:21):
so to start, what I wanted to first talk about is
the genre that you're writingin, or that you wrote in for
this novel. And so this is awork of speculative fiction,
which I think a lot of peopleknow about, but maybe not
everybody. And I was wonderingif you could kind of explain to
(03:41):
people what is speculativefiction and why did you choose
to write in this genre?
Unknown (03:49):
Yeah, I think I don't, I didn't prepare, like my, my
history of speculative fictionas a term, but I think for my
this is defeasible, but myunderstanding is that it's
actually a term coined byMargaret Atwood, I think was
maybe meant to distinguish TheHandmaid's Tale from sci fi,
which at the time she was reallykeen to do, because I think her
(04:13):
view is that nothing in the bookactually is impossible. There's
no spaceships, there's no, youknow, counterfactual time travel
or anything like that. It'sjust, you know, a political
change, and everything thathappens in the book had already
happened at some point. And, youknow, in our world, so
speculative was meant to sortof, I think, bring some kind of,
like literary respectability tothe story and distinguish it
(04:37):
from from sci fi, which isregarded less favorably by the
literary sort of mainstream. Andthen the funny irony is that
over time, speculative becamethis big tent kind of umbrella
term that incorporates sci fiitself as well as a lot of
fantasy and other forms of magicrealism in any kind of
counterfactual, including thingslike The Handmaid's Tale. So I
(04:59):
think. It's maybe kind of, it'sflipped its meaning from what
she originally intended. But Iwould, I've read like
definitions of speculativefiction now that I like to say
things like, it's any fictionthat doesn't take the rules of
our world for granted,
Amy Mair (05:17):
we like that. Yeah, that's
Unknown (05:18):
a pretty good like all purpose term, right?
Amy Mair (05:23):
So why did you choose this genre? I
Unknown (05:28):
think that it kind of chose me. It wasn't that I
decided to write a book. Then Ithought, you know, which book,
what kind of genre should Ichoose to write in? It was more
like I had the idea in a flashone day, which was of this
eternal sequence of small townsthat are all staggered precisely
in time from each other. So inthese kind of this succession of
(05:48):
valleys that goes on forever,the same town repeats, but
always 20 years ahead or behindin time, depending on which way
you go, that idea is inherentlya kind of fantastical idea,
because it involves time in someway. It's sort of a time travel
story. So it kind of puts itinto the Sci Fi camp. But it
also has no science in it. Youknow, the world's very rustic,
(06:11):
and the rules of this are neverlike, you know, the explanation
for why this town exists in theway that does is never given.
It's just treated as a as as afact. So it kind of became
speculative fiction by default,you know, but it was sort of the
idea that led that decision,rather than the other way
around.
Amy Mair (06:28):
What made you keep it somewhat grounded in reality?
Because I guess you could havetaken that kind of story idea
and made it more fantastical.
What made you want to keep itsort of a little bit grounded? I
when we were emailing back andforth, the one thing I said to
you, this seems to me like kindof, I would describe it as eerie
(06:51):
literary fiction, like there'sjust something about it that's a
little bit unsettling, which Ithink is intent, obviously,
intentionally so. But what, whydid you decide to keep it a
little bit grounded?
Unknown (07:08):
Well, first of all, eerie literary fiction is great.
That's, that's precisely what Iwas gunning for. So I'm glad
that it landed that way. Oh,good, yeah. I had sort of
eeriness as one of my if I hadnot, I did not actually do, like
a, like a teenage mood board, orsomething like that. You know,
my took out my writing, but Ifeel like, figuratively, I did
have one, and the eeriness waskind of one of the main notes, I
(07:29):
think, one of the main moodsthat attracted me, you know,
something like that, or theuncanny, as for, I don't know, I
kind of liked, I liked thecombination, though, of eeriness
with something a little bit moregrounded and a little bit more
like rustic and physical, likethe I made sure there's a lot of
description in the book of theway that the world, you know,
(07:51):
smells and tastes and feels, youknow, sensorily. That's just the
kind of writer that I am. But Ithink it also created an
interesting tonal balancebetween the sort of loftier
metaphysical strangeness of theworld and, yeah, just the
feeling of what it would be liketo actually be there. I like to
sort of treat something unrealusing the register of realism
(08:14):
and so sort of the rustic,vaguely past, like setting of
the towns they're sort of oldfashioned, combined with
something that's more usually afuturistic trope, like time
travel. I don't know, it justfelt interesting to me. You
know, I felt like there wassome, some fertile ground there.
Amy Mair (08:30):
Now, talking about the physical town, if you look at
the cover, it's quite abeautiful cover, and it's, you
know, it looks it's it's avantage point of overlooking a
lake that over with a mountainin the background, and it looks
like the Ogan Okanagan, which isnot, you know, a few hours to
(08:52):
the east, or it's fromVancouver, and you're from that
region. And so I wanted to askyou, Was that intentional that
the cover is, is that supposedto be where you're from, and if
also, how did the how and whereyou grew up? How does that
appear or not appear in thisbook?
Unknown (09:12):
It definitely appears.
I think it's, it's fairly commonfor a debut novelist to sort of
use their hometown to someextent. It's kind of Yeah, for
the taking, you know. And I alsothink that, you know, I started
reading, I didn't write any ofthis book in Kelowna. I had left
by that point. Kelowna is, Isort of grew up in West Kelowna,
Rose Valley area of of, sort ofthe Central Okanagan, but also
(09:32):
the southern Okanagan, likeOliver, so it's a much smaller
town. And, you know, I moved. Imoved away from there when I was
18. But I really like I sort ofenjoy accessing writing through
memory. I think that thedistance between where I was
writing the book and what I waswriting about, the sort of
(09:53):
landscape I was evoking, washelpful for me, as far as why. I
used it beyond just kind of theconvenience of knowing this
landscape very well. I thinkthat so for those who don't know
that, the Okanagan is kind of aweird region in Canada. It's not
really what we think of when wethink about British Columbia,
(10:13):
which is sort of, you know, thehuge trees in the Pacific
Northwest, and very rainy, andit looks like Twilight, you
know, and the Okanagan is hometo Canada's only desert, you
know, it's a strange ecologicalenvironment where there's these
deep fjord like lakes that aresurrounded by orchards and sort
of rolling hills. But then inthe mountains above that, it's
(10:34):
very it's pretty harsh, likeit's very dry and arid. There's
sort of these, like barren pinedotted mountains. And I really
liked that kind of combinationof the pastoral and sort of
bucolic mixed with this, orsurrounded by this sort of harsh
emptiness. I think that workedwell with the tone of the book
(10:56):
and the tone of the world, whichis this mix of longing and
foreboding, you know? So I feltlike there was kind of a
complementarity between thelandscape and the story in the
world. And I think also justusing valleys, the original idea
for this book, for a day or two,I just thought of this sequence
of towns, kind of existing on aflat plain. And very quickly I
(11:17):
realized, you know, if thatpresented logistical challenges,
you could see what was going ontoo easily, perhaps from one to
the other. And so logistically,natural borders of mountains was
helpful for me, but I think italso worked thematically,
because the past and the futureare so close in the book, you're
aware that they're there, butthey're they're also just out of
(11:39):
sight, and that kind of feltappropriate, too.
Amy Mair (11:43):
So could you give everyone just a kind of beyond
you've talked about the settinglike these were like worlds
years ahead and years behind,neither direction, these
valleys. But can you talk alittle bit about, maybe the main
character, Odile, and what's,what's the synopsis of the book,
(12:04):
or what's the kind of centraltension of the book?
Unknown (12:08):
Yeah, well, so to recap, kind of the basic
landscape of the world, youknow, we've got, it's a, I like
to say it's a small town that'sphysically neighbored by its own
future and past. And so, youknow, across the mountains to
the east, the same townreappears, but it's 20 years
ahead in time. To the west, it'sthe same town, but 20 years in
the past and so on forever. Andtravel between these towns is
(12:31):
forbidden, but if you aregrieving, you can ask permission
to hike to a past version of thetown where your lost loved one
is still alive and well. And ifyou can, if you're allowed to go
there, you are not allowed tointeract with this person or be
recognized by them, but with amask on and under armed guard,
you can stand at a distance andlook at them again. And some
(12:54):
people find this ritualconsoling. And the story follows
a teenage girl, 16 year oldnamed Odile, who notices some of
these visitors from the futurenear her school, but against
protocol and by accident, shedoes recognize who they are, and
thus she realizes which one ofher classmates they must be
there to see, and thus which oneof her classmates must be about
(13:16):
to die. And instead of stayingaway from him, as she's sort of
told to she becomes closer tohim and starts to fall in love
with him, but this secret thatshe knows about his future
creates a obvious moral andemotional dilemma for her that
changes the course of her lifeuntil she's tempted to go back
in time and try to change it.
Amy Mair (13:37):
Okay, that's a good and why did you, why did you
choose Odile like to tell,through which to tell the story.
You could have chosen one of theother characters or someone of a
different age, like, whatappealed to you about her? Um, I
mean, in
Unknown (13:58):
a way, I do kind of have someone of a different age,
because the story is bifurcatedinto Odile at 16 and Odile at 36
so I kind of got to have it bothways. That's I think, I mean in
terms of the process, the waythat I started to write this
book, when I finally I had theidea for it for years before I
did anything with it. And thenthe idea was, was of that world,
(14:20):
and I didn't have a story to putthere. And so when I started to
get serious about writing it,I've likened it to bird
watching. I would kind of sit inthe bushes of this world and
kind of just watch charactersthat I would make up a new one
each time I sat down to write.
And I would just create theselittle vignettes where I write
about, you know, one persongoing about their day in this
world. And after a few of these,I wrote somebody who was based
(14:43):
on, very loosely based on, agirl that I went to elementary
school with who used to do whatOdile does at the start of the
book, which is out of a kind ofmortal shyness she would stand
against the wall at. Recess, andat lunchtime, she's just stand
against the wall of the schoolbeside the cloakroom door and
just stare straight ahead. And Ididn't I never really figured
(15:08):
out why she did that, but thiskind of memory worked its way
into a character, and as soon asI had that on the page, I
started to just wonder moreabout her, you know what? What
made her that way? What was shethinking about as she did that?
And from there, I kind of justpoured a lot of myself into the
character, and, you know, dialedup a lot of my own traits, like
shyness and a certain kind of,you know, severity and
(15:31):
indecisiveness and worry andstuff like that too, like some
of my more negative traits, Ifeel like Odile, like it's a
little bit of a psychologicalraw deal for me. And then other
parts of myself, like myirreverence and humor, a lot of
that went into other charactersthat surround her and sort of
draw her out of her shell, whichis people like Ed May, who's the
boy I was talking about earlier,who's doomed, and his friend,
(15:51):
Alon.
Amy Mair (15:55):
So Odile grapples with a lot of deep existential
questions, and you yourself havea background in philosophy.
You're an academic, and I'm justwondering how did your academic
background and your personalphilosophical beliefs show up or
(16:19):
inform your writing of thisbook.
Unknown (16:23):
Well, I like the word inform more than I like words
like Inspire. I think becauselike inform is sort of like a
structural thing, and that'skind of how I feel about it. I
feel like philosophy reallyforms the background to how I
approach certain questions. Butit's not as though I'm bringing
(16:44):
particular philosophical ideas,you know, from dry as bones
academia and then sort ofdressing them up in fiction. I
think I was at the time when Iwrote this. I was just leaving
academia after many, many years,and so I was, at least in my
mind, I was trying to write asunphilosophical novel as I
could, which, it turns out isstill quite a philosophical
(17:05):
novel. I think that the one ofthe things that I recognize the
most in terms of continuitybetween the world I used to be
in and philosophy. And in thisbook, my dissertation was about
emotions that have to do withtime's passage, especially
nostalgia and other forms oflyrical affect. So like the
(17:28):
Japanese concept of mononouaware, which is sort of the
feeling that you get from ahaiku poem, sort of the
definitive mood of Haiku. It'sthis poignant sensitivity to
life's transients, and that's afeeling that's very much
threaded throughout the otherValley. Within academia, it was
kind of a weird fit, because, ornot all of academia, but within
(17:48):
academic, analytical philosophy,that's a very dry and technical
discipline, and I think I took asort of weird delight at the
time in approaching this softersubject matter using these
really hard tools. But it was atrick that kind of got old. I
found. And instead of, you know,analyzing lyric, poetry and
fiction, like I was doing withinphilosophy, I think I knew that
(18:11):
eventually I had to have theguts to try to write it instead,
which is what I secretly wantedto do the whole time the
Amy Mair (18:16):
book is also, I think of it as a little as a bit of a
thriller, and that, to me, issort of counter to philosophy.
Or maybe they seem just sodifferent, and somehow you've
married them together, andyou've created, you know,
(18:37):
philosophy, not for you, but forsome people, could be a bit dry,
depending.
Unknown (18:42):
Yeah, I don't, I don't shy away from the term thriller.
I think that one of the thingsthat I learned from quite
honestly, while I was writing, Iread a lot of literary fiction,
but I also, you know, waswatching kind of prestige TV,
and, you know, something like aspropulsive as uh, Breaking Bad,
(19:02):
or something like that wasactually an influence on this
book, too. I really wanted tokind of keep that tension
ratcheting up. I find that Ineed tension as a writer. I
think writing without tensionfor me is like, is kind of like
driving on empty, you know, justsort of rolling along. I I sort
of see the tension in the bookas more fundamental than
anything that could beconsidered philosophical. So it
(19:24):
was never a challenge, I guess,to create that or to marry those
things. I think I'm, you know, anovelist who likes tension, and
then just happens to have this,this big, weird background and
philosophy. So that stuff justkind of bubbles up, whether I
want it to or not. Thephilosophical stuff is just,
it's built into how I approach,you know, the subject matter.
And since Odile is in this book,kind of training to become a
(19:47):
kind of like judge of otherpeople's grief. And I had sort
of worked on the emotions as anacademic, you know, some of that
stuff kind of came to bear in anatural way.
Amy Mair (19:57):
Well, why don't with that? Why don't we do. A little
reading.
Unknown (20:01):
Yeah, I'd love to, so to set this up, because I'm not.
I always, I always read from thevery start of the book, and I'm
not going to do that so, butthen I have to do a bit of
setup. So the government of thistown, which oversees all of
those travel and visitationrequests that have to do with
with grief. The government'scalled the Conseil, and there's
a few candidates from localschools, including Odile, who
(20:24):
are trying out to becomeapprentices at the Conseil. And
this vetting process involveslearning more about the way that
the Conseil operates. And thencandidates have their reasoning
skills and temperament sort oftested each week. And if you
pass the test, you advance. Ifyou don't, you get cut. And the
pastel read is a little excerptfrom one of those training
(20:44):
sessions. So odile's Teacher,who's a concierge named Madame
avrat, is talking to them aboutwhat would happen if the Conseil
authorized a visit to the west,which is back in time by 20
years, and then the visitorslipped their guard. No she
repeated, the present is adelicate thing. We picked up our
(21:08):
pencils. Yes, there are muchgreater risks associated with
Western visitation. She said, ifsomething were to go awry, if
there was any interference inthat valley, we here at home
would receive no warning. Theresult will be instantaneous, a
relationship, an occupation, anindividual, a family, vanished,
(21:31):
eliminated. You'll have heard itreferred to in such terms,
interference meansdisappearance. Well, the slogans
are useful enough, but those arecrude schoolyard concepts, and
from you, we expect a deeperunderstanding. Consider this,
something that vanishes, createsan absence, and such an absence,
in principle, can be detected,whereas what we are talking
(21:54):
about now is undetectable. Why?
Because there was never anythingto detect from the moment of
interference in the valley Westthat change, whatever it may be,
is a 20 year old fact. To youand me, it is not a new fact
entering our lives to our horroror delight. It's important not
to picture it that way. No, itis simply a fact like any other,
(22:17):
just as obvious as the taste ofa tomato, something you'd have
no reason to second guess atyour age 15 or 16, you'll have
lived your entire life in avalley where that thing is taken
for granted. Thus you might be aperson who never had such and
such a family member, who neverfancied such and such a
relationship, who never did thethings which today you swear are
(22:40):
your most treasured experiences.
Those things are not gone. Theynever were and never words leave
no trace, no obscure memory, Nonagging sense of something
amiss, no fleeting shiver,nothing at all. These are the
stakes of interference. This iswhy the Conseil is so vital. We
(23:04):
are the bulwark against nonbeing against a replacement so
utter and complete that what islost is never mourned.
Amy Mair (23:12):
A lot of the words or names. There's a lot of
references to French words andnames.
Unknown (23:22):
I think that a lot of the writing process is sort of
it begins as whimsy and justmucking around, throwing things
in, and then the things thatserve a purpose, the things that
stick in some way, they have adifferent meaning for why
there's a different reason forwhy they stick than why they
(23:44):
might have initially been thrownin. So the kind of happenstance
explanation for the French isthat I was, I was editing a book
about the cartography of Parisat the time, and there was,
there were words like conseiland a name like Ed May, and I
liked the flavor of them. I alsohad already started to base the
landscape on the Okanagan, and Ihad noticed that the Okanagan
(24:07):
resembles parts of theMediterranean in that sort of
aridity. And so I started tothink, well, what if we bore a
little bit from the land thatlooks like this other land, and
sort of put in not just French,but also some Spanish and
Maltese and Italian place namesor not place names, mostly the
place names are French, but thepeople's names sometimes are
(24:29):
Maltese as well. So that waskind of why it worked its way
into the early drafts. And thenthe reason it stuck around was
precisely, as you say, thissense of, I think it was the
right degree of otherness. Youknow, I I knew that I wanted it
to feel slightly foreign,slightly alien. I didn't, I
(24:49):
didn't want people named ScottHoward in the book. But then I
think that at the same time, Ididn't want to go for full on
Sci Fi, fantasy namingconvention side. Like names that
have no earthly precedent. So Ithought that a foreign language,
at least foreign to most of thisbook's readers, was the right
kind of otherness, you know,just using something that's
(25:11):
familiar in a way, but alsounfamiliar in a way, it just
kind of helped create the tonethat I wanted.
Amy Mair (25:17):
So I wanted to ask you a bit about the publishing and
writing process. Um, you're afirst time novelist, and it's a
very unique, special, scarytime. Um, how did you get your
first get get your book deal?
How'd that go, come about?
Unknown (25:36):
Yeah, I mean, so I, as you're saying, I have, I have a
PhD in philosophy. It's not anMFA in Creative Writing, which
is, I think, the most commonroute in Canada to make those
kinds of professionalconnections that assist in
publication. I also didn't haveshort stories or poetry
published. I only have, youknow, peer reviewed philosophy
papers that are very tacticaland completely useless. No
(25:59):
connection to the publishingindustry at all going into this.
So I had to just cold query foran agent, which, if you don't
know, just means emailing peoplewho get 1000 emails a week,
basically in a small, compressedbit of time, saying, Please read
my book, and then your emailends up in what's called a slush
(26:20):
pile, and you have to just praythat you know an agent will, or
an agent or an assistant of anagent, will pull your email out
of the slush pile and actuallypass it on and give it a chance.
And that's a notoriously hardprocess, at least if you don't
have kind of connections torecommend you to an agent's
attention. And so, yeah, I gotno interest in Canada. But then
(26:44):
eventually, two American agentsread the pages, and I got
offered representation, I thinkafter about five months of
querying, which is, you know,not a huge amount of time. It's
not, yeah, it's, I always, Ialways think, like, on one hand,
it's not bad, but on the otherhand, there are very long five
months when you don't know ifthere's ever going to be light
(27:05):
at the end of the tunnel,because it just kind of happens
all the sudden. And then, in myexperience, the sort of
conventional wisdom that oncethings start happening, they
happen fast, that was born out.
It took my agent about a day tosell the book, you know, after I
was just thinking, like, Oh,this is going nowhere, you know,
then all of a sudden, I have anagent. Then she sells the book
(27:26):
very quickly. We had anovernight Read and request for a
meeting from an editor at Simonand Schuster in New York. And,
you know, we met with some otherpeople, but nobody really
matched her energy, especiallyonce Simon and Schuster Canada
got on board too. So I think ittook ultimately, like a week or
something. So after writing inisolation for so long, it just
(27:48):
felt like surreal, and I thinkmore than joy, which is what
people expect, it's just feltlike relief, like, Oh, thank
God, this worked out.
Amy Mair (28:00):
That's amazing. And then I wanted to ask you, from
the initial idea, like you talkabout this kind of idea coming
in your head, of these valleyafter Valley, different time
periods, how different is thefinal book from your initial
(28:24):
idea. And I know you would havehad people working with you, and
then you went through theprocess yourself. But is it very
different from what youinitially thought of?
Unknown (28:36):
Yeah, I think it is. I mean, it's funny how much I
have, sort of, I still possess,like the original notes. You
know, I first wrote down theidea for the book. I remember
talking to Anita prose, whowrote the maid, and, yeah, she
was saying how the idea came toher on a on a plane, and she
wrote on a napkin. I wonder ifshe still has the napkin. So I
(28:58):
still have my because I did itin Microsoft Word. I have, I
still have my my figurativenapkin ended up becoming like 80
pages long because I kept onadding notes to it as I thought
of them. And it's funny for menow to look back at the first
page or two of that and see allthe things that remained exactly
intact from the start, and anequal amount of things that are
radically different andcompletely opposite to how I had
(29:20):
initially imagined that thisproject would go because I had
the idea, I think, yeah, it's 10years ago this year coming on to
10 years, like, within a coupleof months, and I didn't do
anything with it for a long timebecause I was still an academic,
and it's just an all consumingjob, especially if you're trying
to find, You know, trying togenerate more work for yourself.
(29:43):
So when I finally decided tocrack down and prioritize the
novel, I think it took me aboutthree and a half years to write
it all in, during which time Imy wife and I moved like five
different times, and then thepandemic hit. You know, it's not
an easy time. Um. Um, so it'shard for me to kind of
individuate how many drafts thatI wrote, but, you know, maybe
(30:05):
like two and a half fullrewrites from scratch and then
years of revising. You know, somuch, so much on the cutting
room floor. But I think the themain difference is, from the
very start to the end, I thinkI'd initially imagined that the
book would be a lot more kind ofdreamy and just purely kind of
contemplative, the philosophicalsort of side of it would have
(30:28):
been maybe dialed up a lot more.
And then as I wrote and I rereadmy first draft and just a lot
more kind of causal connectivetissue started to grow between
these scenes that I sort ofthought of as these dreamy
fragments, until I could justfeel like this gravitational
pull that the book wanted to besomething more tight and with a
(30:51):
lot more narrative momentum thanI think I'd originally conceived
of it as having so and you kindof just have to accept what the
project is telling you it wantsto be, you know, you have to
just be like, you know, I can'tforce this book to be, to kind
of conform to what you know, thefirst idea I had for you have to
sort of listen to listen to whatit's telling you and go with it.
Amy Mair (31:15):
So to that point, are you? Because you talk to
authors, and sometimes they knowthe very ending when they start,
and others say the characterslead them. And is that kind of
So is that what you're saying,that you have this idea and then
it the characters kind of leadyou, or the story kind of leads
(31:37):
you like you're Did yousometimes feel like you weren't
leading the story?
Unknown (31:42):
Yeah, it's funny. I had the other day. I had this weird
dream. I had this dream thatToni Morrison was still alive,
and I, like, got off a bus, andI just got suddenly, like, Toni
Morrison was giving a reading,and I was the only one there,
and I was so excited, because Iget to talk to Toni Morrison,
and she said this now, not inthe dream, but in real life,
she's known for saying somethingabout if your characters are
(32:05):
leading, you're doing somethingwrong. You know you have to be
in control of the characters.
And I've always agree
Amy Mair (32:10):
with that, but, yeah, I don't want to disagree with
her.
Unknown (32:14):
I know you can, but I'm the same way. I've always
thought, you know, well, thatcontradicts common, wisdom that
you should, if it's a characterled book, then the character
should be leading. I think,though, that you can sort of
reconcile the two intuitions,because, you know, like a good
parent, for example. To go backto the child analogy, like a
good parent, sort of the childthinks it's leading, but you're
(32:37):
actually setting the parametersfor it. And at the same time,
you also have to accept, like,Okay, this kid does not want to
be in piano. To be in pianolessons. I'm not going to force
them to do it. They want to bein sports. I'll let them do
sports. So I feel like there iskind of a give and take with
your characters. They lead alittle bit, and you also sort of
gently adjust the world they'reliving in so that the way that
they choose to go is somewherethat you want them to go. So I
(32:59):
think that there's no easyanswer to the do the characters
lead or do you lead them?
Question, it is sort of acollaboration, which is, it's a
bizarre thing, you know,because, of course, it's all you
you've made them up.
Amy Mair (33:13):
And what about your writing routine? Do you write at
the same time every day? Do youhave to have a special? Do you
write by hand? There was someoneI interviewed recently, I can't
remember that writes their booksby hand. I could not on that.
But anyway, just what are yoursort of quirks, or what's your
(33:35):
process?
Unknown (33:37):
Yeah, I think, I think I read that Martin McInnis,
who's another sort of literary,speculative novelist who wrote a
book called in ascension. Ithink I read that. He does it
longhand. I don't know. Ireally, I admire that. I don't.
I just do too much. I changethings too much. I kind of can't
do that. And also, I thinkcomputer uses just degraded my
handwriting so badly, but myprocess is very much like word
(34:00):
count based. So some people goby putting in time. I have to go
by putting in words, because I'mvery good at wasting time. If
that's if I just have to make itfour hours, I'll sit around for
four hours and do nothing. So Ineed to, I have a program that
locks me into a certain wordgoal, like I have to produce,
you know, 1200 words a day, orwhatever it is, or else I cannot
use any other part of mycomputer like, no internet, no,
(34:22):
no, nothing.
Amy Mair (34:23):
I just read about this. What's it called?
Unknown (34:25):
It's called cold turkey. Oh, okay, yeah. I wrote
the whole all of the otherValley until I started to really
revise. It is written in coldturkey. And my the next book I'm
writing is also, it's great. Itbasically just turns your
computer into a uselesstypewriter until you meet
whatever goal you found yourselfto meeting. So I do that, and I
(34:46):
think for me, like mornings arebest, I'm kind of useless as the
day goes by, but the thoughts dokeep percolating. So you can
kind of make notes as you goalong. And as far as locations,
I I wrote the whole. First Bookin public libraries I've never
had, like a home office. Can'tafford one, so it's just, you
know, finding some place to go,yeah, and then as far as
(35:09):
motivation goes, you know, justa existential fear of failure,
just sprinting ahead of thegaping maw of catastrophic
disgrace, I think keeps me goingmost days.
Amy Mair (35:20):
Okay, so I wanted to ask you, especially as a first
time novelist, you you've neverdone this before, and you create
this piece of art, and what wasthe message that you really main
(35:43):
message that you in your headyou want to get across. And I'm
asking you that because I wantto know then you put it out in
the world, and readers are goingto have their own ideas. And I I
just wanted to find out a littlebit about what were you what did
you think you were putting outin the world? And this novel is
done well, so you're gettingfeedback. And I'm just
wondering, are you learningthings about your book that you
(36:04):
didn't know, or are peoplekeying into things that you
didn't think were special, butare like, what is that like?
Unknown (36:13):
Yeah, I think, I think in one sense, it's not like a
messagey book in so far as a lotof contemporary fiction kind of
gets, I don't know whether itactually is intrinsically this,
but it gets talked about asthough, you know, a novel is
more or less an essay that hascharacters and dialog, rather
than, you know, than just beingnonfiction. It's not really a
(36:35):
thesis book in that sense. Ithink it's because it's eerie
and uncanny. I think it is a bitmore cryptic than didactic. It's
evocative of a mood, and ittries to sort of make certain
themes and questions live forthe reader more than certain
theses. But the kinds of thingsI was dwelling on that I sort of
(36:55):
see the book as pointing towardsare maybe like reflections on
the contingency of our identity,like what makes you the person
that you are, how much of thatis happenstance and
circumstance, how much of thatcould have gone otherwise with
little changes. And I thinkalso, at the risk of sounding
sappy, I also think that it'skind of about the preciousness
(37:17):
of happiness in a life, and thesometimes narrow window that we
have for joy, and the cost oftrying to sort of pry that
window open and extend itagainst the way that the world
is taking you, I don't know. I'mnot sure if I've said that well,
but I feel like that's kind ofthe main things, or questions
(37:38):
about identity and questionsabout happiness and regret. And
then, as far as the book beingout in the world, and like,
which reader reactions havesurprised me, I think, yeah, it
has been really interesting. AndI'll preface it by saying that I
I try to stay away from hearingtoo much about reactions. Yeah,
(37:59):
I know, yeah. And it's not evenout of, like, fear so much and
like, I know some people are howto say, I think it's kind of
like,
Amy Mair (38:12):
you don't want it to totally impact your art, or your
or the work that you're doing,you want to do,
Unknown (38:20):
yeah, I think it's, it's unhealthy, maybe, to let
readers responses affect the wayyou see your work, because my
part of the process just tocreate something that satisfies
me and to sort of write the bookthat I'd want to read, and if I
start worrying about how thestory is going to be received by
by people, then, you know, itfeels less like I'm writing and
more like I'm marketing, youknow, like I kind of have to
(38:41):
just keep it private and thenhope that it, hope that it
speaks to someone else, from theprivacy of me to the privacy of
them reading right, but as butthen that said, you know, I also
I am exposed to readerresponses, sometimes through
reviews, sometimes throughInstagram, sometimes through
just My fan mail, which isreally nice. And I think what
(39:03):
has been the most surprising hasbeen maybe bemusing, is like the
diametrically opposeddescriptions that people will
give of how the book reads. Sowe were talking about kind of
this melding of philosophy andthriller materials, I think that
that's kind of something thatsometimes readers will sort of
(39:25):
see it as just one or the other.
So I've for every number ofblurbs and reviews that I have
that say that it's like a quiet,very slow meditation on grief
and loss. There's a number ofreviews that'll be like it's a
rip roaring stay up all night,jumbo jet page turner. So I kind
of have to try to balance thoseout and be like, not sure if
this is coming up, if it'slooking like a coherent
(39:46):
description of the same book.
But at the same time, Iobviously was trying to do both
of those things. And I think itstands to reason, because every
reader is different, and, youknow, every book is hopefully
kind of multi dimensional. So I.
Yeah, it makes sense thatreaders would sometimes pick out
different dimensions of yourbook as the dominant one. You
know, like, if you go to like, awhiskey tasting or something,
(40:06):
one person will say the maintaste is x, and someone else
will be like, No, the main tasteis y, and they're not wrong.
They're just, it's just hittingthem differently.
Amy Mair (40:15):
Well, it doesn't surprise me that people would
think it's a stay up all nightthriller in that. I mean, this
is not, as I call it, an airportnovel. This is, you know, it's
not a difficult read, but it'sfor somebody that's wanting a
deeper experience, and so maybethat type of reader finds it.
Unknown (40:35):
Thank you. Yeah, I do think that what I'm always
looking for as a reader is sortof that literary page turner,
you know, something that's gotlyricism, that pays a lot of
attention to language, but it'salso, you know, it's got romance
and suspense. And I think a lotof readers do see that
combination. It's not justpolarizing. You know, I had a,
there was an Italian readerrecently who said they described
(40:58):
it once I ran it through GoogleTranslate. Anyway, I'm not sure
what it was in the original, butshe described it as a tender and
ruthless novel. I was like,that's pretty good. I like that.
It
Amy Mair (41:06):
is Ruth. It is kind of ruthless. But maybe that, that
does seem like maybe that wasn'tthe exact word that she meant.
Well, it was, it
Unknown (41:15):
was praise. Yeah, it was praise. Um,
Amy Mair (41:19):
okay. And before we go, I wanted to ask you about
authors that have influenced youand you were you obviously like
Veronique. So what do you likeabout her, her writing, or this?
We assume it's a her, the theyes, we don't know for sure.
Unknown (41:38):
Yeah, I'm on I'm on Team. It's a her. I think what I
connect with in the Neapolitanquartet, I guess, is just this,
like, simple frankness and Yeah,speaking of tender and ruthless,
I mean, there's a certainruthlessness to the world she's
describing. There's a ruthlesshonesty to the character that I
(42:03):
really was inspired by, youknow, it's just like, oh, wow,
you can do this. And so that wassomething that felt very
liberating to read around thetime when I started to write
this book. I think other, Imean, Isha Guru is a big one.
Amy Mair (42:17):
Oh yeah, I can see that in this work. I can see,
Never Let Me Go, obviously,like,
Unknown (42:26):
yeah, the way that he is so sparing with kind of the
exposition, you know, the worldbuilding there is so much just
by a vision, rather than givingyou a bunch of information
about, oh, here's how thecloning works. You know, it's
just it provides the kind ofstructure of their lives, and
it's just taken for granted fromthere. And that was inspiring,
too. People like Yoko Ogawa,like the memory police, was kind
(42:49):
of, it's much more on the dreamyside, but it's but that was also
one that I thought of inspeculative fiction. More kind
of died in the bull speculativefiction, I guess, like Ted
Chiang and China vieville weresort of big, but also I was
writing about a teenager, and atleast in the first half of the
book. And it occurred to merecently that, in a way, some of
(43:13):
my favorite writers when I was ateenager have sort of bubbled up
in this book too. So those wereKafka and Whitman, which is a
sort of a weird combination, notoften like seen as buddies and
but I do think that, you know,the eeriness and the crypticness
of Kafka married with sort ofthat big hearted tenderness of
(43:37):
Whitman. I do sort of see it inwhat I was trying to do, like
the kind of strange tonalmarriage that I was trying to
execute in this book, maybe kindof stems from those early
influences.
Amy Mair (43:49):
Can you tell us, I'm sure you're probably working on
something new. Can you tell usabout that what you're working
on?
Unknown (43:57):
Yeah, so the new novel is, it's not speculative
fiction, as far as I know. Yet,I think it's only like lightly
counterfactual. I think of it asprimarily a kind of domestic,
sort of kitchen sink drama. ButI might toss out key words, like
it's kind of like about theacademic underclass and economic
(44:20):
precarity. It's about art andambition. There's a lot of stuff
about kind of climate strain,especially wildfires, and the
decision to have children ornot, and about hope and
hopelessness and time and a bitof nostalgia seems to always
kind of crop up in my writing,no matter what I try to do. But
(44:40):
then also it's wrapped into thissort of story of a missing
person. So I'm trying to doanother weird sort of tonal
hodgepodge and see how, see howit works. I just wanted
Amy Mair (44:48):
to add one little note, the bookstore that I
really like in Vancouver is bookwarehouse on Main Have you been
over there or recently? Or haveyou been over there yet? I.
Unknown (45:00):
No, I haven't been to book warehouse on Main for a
while because
Amy Mair (45:03):
I went in there. And the reason why, the reason why
we're doing this podcast, thereason why I bought the book was
they told me I had to read it,and then, and when I went to the
checkout, they know me, and Isaid, I said, Well, I'm gonna
put this on the podcast. They'relike, Okay, well, if you get a
hold them, tell them to comeover and sign some copies. So
I've got to
Unknown (45:23):
do that. Yeah, so you should go over there. I
absolutely will. Yeah, I haven'tgone everywhere in Vancouver
yet. Yeah, but
Amy Mair (45:29):
that's a good, that's a nice little it's a, well,
there's not a lot of independentbookstores anymore, but it's,
it's one of the ones. And Ialways say the name doesn't
sound like it's an independentbookstore, but it is, it's a
good one. So, okay, well, I
Unknown (45:42):
publicly apologized to book warehouse, and I will be
there right quick.
Amy Mair (45:46):
Thanks so much to Scott for coming on the podcast.
That was really fun, and Ilearned something new. And I
think you probably did too, thatthe term speculative fiction
came from Margaret Atwood.
Potentially, that's reallyinteresting, and that makes
perfect sense with TheHandmaid's Tale, and I'm really
glad that she invented thegenre. So I also wanted to let
(46:12):
you know that we're back. It'sfall, and this is officially
season five, and I'm going to bepublishing at a more regular
rate this fall. I'm going to beaiming for two times a month.
And I'm also in working on somenew things. I'm thinking about
(46:32):
changing my name to my podcast.
I named it the red firm bookreview, because that was a
personal it was somethingpersonal to me. Where the Red
Fern Grows is my favorite book.
It was my favorite book as akid, but now I think I want to
grow a bit and maybe have thepodcast named after more what I
(46:55):
do as opposed to what I liked,and with that, I'm working on
some other new changes. So ifyou have any ideas for a podcast
name, let me know. I'd love tohear it, and you can reach me on
Instagram at Red Fern bookreview. So I will talk to you
(47:16):
soon, And thanks so much fortuning in. You.
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