Martha Anne Toll (Washington Post, NPR Book Reviewer Pen Faulkner Award)

Three Muses won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and was shortlisted for the Gotham Book Prize. Buzzfeed, NPR and the Washington Post have given Three Muses a lot of love. With a starred review from Kirkus, Three Muses made The Millions’ most anticipated second half of 2022 list. Vulture Magazine included it in “57 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Fall.” L.A. Parent called it “an exquisitely crafted novel, and POINTE Magazine selected it for its “5 New Ballet Books to Look Forward to This Fall.”

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hello everyone, and welcome to thewriter's class. I almost forgot which podcasts
I am but I mean, afterfour, when you have four podcasts,
I feel like I'm allowed to forgetwhich podcasts I'm on. And guess what,
y'all, it is a no lipstickday because my fireplace freaking crumbled.
Don dots don't even connects as areason for my fireplace come there for I'm

(00:23):
ugly. Yeah, that does notwork. You will never find that on
any text in my fireplace. Comeon, the other half is therefore,
I'm up, that does not workanyway, I'm known, no, and
I'm one half of the end.I thought, ladies, well on half
of the public face of that's toolong. Yeah, it was gonna be
a joke, but it was waytoo long. I had to explain it.
That's too much. So I'm gonnasay high five to me for introducing
myself, like, because that's semiprofessional. Any we wrote. But when

(00:48):
I say we, there's normally aJade on one of these sides, either
side, pick a shoulder. That'swhere Jade normally is, and she's not
here today. But in those books, I actually have wisdom. Imagine that
their books are and I thought thevoice wasn't I thought being grownable was easy
if only Army a memoir, inVerse, Foreign Coffee, Widow's Web,
and Widow's Debt. That is sixbooks if you're counting. If you're running,
where's the anther eleven books to equalthe entire seventeen books? Yeah,

(01:11):
y'all, I'm still sticking with thesign language can find all our books at
www dot nd. I thought Ladiesdot com and said, I'm not that
funny today, car salesman style.When you can find all our books at
wwwns, I thought Lady dot comwrong. Oh that's oh good, especially
after your fireplace rumbles. But you'renot here to hear about me. You're

(01:32):
here to hear about our wonderful gats, wonderful guests. Would you like to
introduce yourself? Sure? Well,thank you. That was a pretty exciting
introduction. I hope your fireplace feelsa lot better by the time we get
off this call. So my nameis Martha am Tole. I'm based just
outside of Washington, DC, andI wrote my debut novel, Three Muses.

(01:53):
I took a long time to writeit, but it got published three
weeks before my sixty fifth birthday,and it's done pretty well in the world.
It's a finalist for the Gotham Prize, it won the Petro Kor Prize
for Finally Crafted Fiction, and alot of people have given it a lot
of love. So I am sohonored to be here. Thank you.

(02:14):
I am so happy that it's doneso well, and it gives me.
It feels like I have a lotof pressure to be professional now, but
I'm not getting into that pressure.So my first question has no professionalism whatsoever.
Okay, literary, because for youto get all that recognitions, you
have to do a good job withsome literature, so you must write literary.

(02:35):
Yes, I write pretty literary.I think that's a fairst statement.
I don't really love saying that becauseI really believe that we are all eclectic
readers, and I'm a reader whoreads everybody from stoop to nuts, so
how I think I am literary.But I don't like saying it because I
feel like they all read all differentstuff. Okay, and I'm sticking on

(03:00):
that subject. One more question onit and then we're moving on to something
and now professional and cool okay,just cool, not professional, I mean,
not even try to lie to youin your mind. Because we had
so many genres now and so manydifferent definitions, the definition of literary has
always kind of stayed the same inyour mind. What is that definition?

(03:21):
I've never really understood it, butI have my own personal definition. One
is a deep care for the languageand how it looks on the page.
I trained as musicians, so Ilove the sound of language. And you
told me before we got on TheYork Poets, so you probably totally get
that. And then another way thatsome people describe it is more character driven

(03:46):
than plot driven, so like you'rehanging out with the characters more rather than
like having a lot of card chasesthat kind of thing. Yeah, I
learned about that recently. I'm notsure I like that, but I learned
about it. Wow, Okay,that's not good. I don't know if
we should go there. Oh no. I started writing with somebody new and

(04:10):
they were like, well, whydid your character do this? And I'm
like, who cares them? Thecard? The driving, It's fun.
Keep me anyway. So moving offof the subject altogether before I dig myself
into a hole and I probably won'tget to my goal to next year of
going to the awards. So whatadvice do you have for someone who's sitting
down to write their debut novel.Well, the first thing I want to

(04:34):
say is, my debut novel isnot actually my first novel, because like
most people who get published, Ihave a novels in the drawer. I
have a couple of novels that Iwrote before I wrote three music but didn't
get published. And so the firstthing is get your tush in the chair

(04:57):
and don't move. Do not waitfor inspiration, because inspiration is not a
thing until I mean, it's athing in the world, but we all
feel inspired like inspiration comes from work. I'm kind of a worker, be
so. And the other thing is, don't worry about what gets on the
page. It might be garbage.You're going to write your way through it.
You have to write your way througha lot of things you're gonna end

(05:20):
up throwing out. And so don'thold yourself back. I love it.
I love that last one, especiallydon't hold yourself back. Yeah. I
was just at a conference and theywere talking about how a lot of times
your editor hat hops on when it'stime for you to be doing it.
Yeah, getting get rid of thatmaybe, Yeah, I mean, you

(05:42):
need that editor. You need theeditor girl when you're doing some revisions,
but don't don't start there. SoThree Muses obviously is the one that got
published. I was a bit aboutyour publishing journey for three Muses, and
then we'll talk about the brook.I swear we'll push you. Okay.
I think since we last talk,I had some big news. I got

(06:04):
a second book coming out. Butcan we save that for the end of
the We'll come back to that,right, No, I'm gonna talk about
that now anything, Just like,do the facial expressions that we're good.
So my second book is called Duadfor One and it's coming out in twenty
twenty five. But let's talk aboutthis book which is on the shelves,

(06:24):
Three Muses, and my journey thepublication was. I started in twenty ten,
and I worked really, really hard, and I bumped into a lot
of um, I guess dead endsor I went down a lot of avenues
that weren't working. So there werea lot of rewrites to try to figure
out where it was going. Likethis is this is a it's a serious

(06:46):
book, but it's it's really verymuch about love and it's it's at the
story of a Holocaust survivor who fallsin love with a ballerina, and the
ballerina like, when I started thinkingabout her, I started trying to talk
about all these famous ballets and peoplehave heard about, like the Knutcrackers,
see that kind of thing. Andso then I had to get rid of

(07:06):
all of those because I'm like,this is my book, and those ballets
have nothing to do with my book. So one of the things that took
me so long is I wrote allmy own ballets. I made them up
from scratch, and that what wasreally fun to do. And then it
took me a long time to figureout the structure, what order it should

(07:27):
go in. I wanted readers toreally love these characters and stay engaged,
but they also had a lot ofthings that I get worked out. And
I finally landed a literary agent forthis novel in about twenty seventeen ish sixteen
ish, and she spent two yearsand she gave me extremely good feedback,

(07:51):
serious editing, and we worked together. It was great. So then she
went out with an initial submission tothe biggest publisher we have in America and
nobody took it. That's very typical, and then she wasn't really interested in
going to independent publishers, which iswhere I always thought it should go.

(08:13):
So we had an amicable parting,and then I started sending it out and
then it started getting to be finalistsand contest and I'm like, oh,
yay, baby, this is goingto go somewhere. So I submitted it
to the Regal House Publishing Novel Contestand it won. That's the Petrick Core
Prize for finally crafted fiction, andit came with an honorarian publication. So

(08:35):
that is the story of this baby. It took a long time to get
worn. But you know what,that's sometimes true of the best things,
right, So I was gonna sayit's true if everything that's revolving, Yes,
I think that's true. I agreewith you. Yeah, Okay,
So I know you don't have alot of time, so I'm going to
wrap this up now. I'm sorry. Okay, I was going to ask

(08:58):
a whole other question. I lookedat the time as that you're really late,
So let me go ahead and wrapOkay. I'll find out more information
about you and where can they buythe book? Three muses? So three
Muses avail your book? Any bookstorecan order. It's definitely on Amazon.
On bookshop, which is the independentplace where I prefer to buy books.

(09:18):
At your local bookshop, they canorder. It should be no problem.
But it's definitely available on Amazon inaudible. So you can listen to it e
book if you want to read iton your kindle paper ilin holding paper.
And my name once more is Marthaand with an E A N N E.
Toll. And my website is thereand you can sign up for my
newsletter there and you can read allabout me on my website which is Martha

(09:43):
and Toll dot com. And whileI have here, I just want to
say thank you. It's been reallyfun to talk to you. I'm so
sorry so brief few mouths come back. Thank you, thanks so much of
course. Oh you can find iteverything that your ladies are up to at
www dot and I thought ladies dotcom. And while you're there, to
go down to the middle of thepage, not the bottom of the page,

(10:03):
but the middle of the page,and you can see the charities that
we probably support. We ask thatyou support them too. This does not
and also mean by money. Youcan do this by giving them wisdom because
some people need some information and youcan also do it by getting you off
your hands dirty and going on outthere and helping them out. But we
thank you in advance for so foryour support. Remember that wisdom is all
around you if you're open to findingit and accepting It's a piece of love

(10:24):
you guys, from Willona and theMissing Jade. Oh yeah, thanks for listening.