Janet developed her singular (skewed?) worldview through a witch’s brew of nature, nurture and the times in which it was shaped. She was joined in the lower middle-class milieu by her beloved brother, Robert, after six years navigating solo. After finishing high school (and lacking any clear, purpose-driven agenda), Janet used her prodigious secretarial skills to obtain employment in the surreal environs of the corporate/legal “fun house,” finally toggling between that and seedy bars, wherein the degradations of serving alcohol/dancing half-naked seemed almost preferable to the former form of servitude. Janet has always scribbled poems and short stories, but never did anything with them, most being lost to various relocations. The preservation of her (alleged) sanity, however, made this form of therapy necessary to her survival; well, that and reading about the despair of other fellow passengers.
Literary Influences: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cormac McCarthy, Joan Didion, Terrence McKenna, Annie Proulx, Franz Kafka, Herman Hesse, William Shakespeare (as reinterpreted by my father, Orren. S. Champer), William Hjortsberg, Jim Thompson and poets William Butler Yeats, Arthur Rimbaud, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Bob Dylan (all in no particular order), and a host of others, almost all of them dead.
What readers will take away from your book(s): The greatest mysteries will never be entirely solved, most truths will remain impenetrable. But for as long as we are in the light, we must make the effort – to the degree that we can individually tolerate. After all, to paraphrase Nietzsche: “If you look into the abyss for too long, it starts to look back at you.”
Ideal target audience: Readers who happily read between the lines, who appreciate sub-text, even if disturbing, who remain “untriggered” by appalling subject matter, who realize on some level that if you don’t shine light into dark corners, you might be overwhelmed with what festers there, waiting patiently for what brings it forth in all its horror. Meet it halfway, I say, and try to stay ahead of the game.
Describe your book as a cross between two well-known books: THE OTHER (Thomas Tryon, story about twins that takes place in the past, about 40 years before time of writing) and HAMLET (where the protagonist descends into either a vortex of madness or endures the labor pains of a new paradigm, depending upon your interpretation.) And there are, of course, too many to enumerate.
The book that changed your life: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Hamlet with dogs), a stunning first novel, heart-breaking and illuminating. Also, Elemire Zolla’s “Archetypes – the Persistence of Unifying Patterns. This one also verges on poetry – profound, interpreting eastern and western traditions, described as “a global metaphysical system.”
Who would play the protagonist if they made a movie out of your book? I always imagined a younger Rooney Mara, for her otherworldly yet unflinching aura. Saorise Ronan could work as well.
If your protagonist could befriend any character from literature, who would he or she choose? Catherine “Cathy” Earnshaw (Wuthering Heights). I just think they’d get along. Right up to the bitter end.
If you could write a retelling of any book (classic or modern) and put your own spin on it, which book would you choose and why? Romeo and Juliet, because of Shakespeare’s “easter eggs” embedded in it. Of course, Hamlet would be ideal as well, for the same reason.
Your favorite literary character: Ophelia in HAMLET, because as a product of her environment and upbringing, she was driven to destruction by her adherence to its arbitrary “rules” for female behavior. But then, there’s Lady MacBeth. This is a tough one.
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