28 Inside the Emotion of Fiction TO THE BONES by Valerie Neiman published by West Virginia Press on April 25, 2019.
https://wvupressonline.com/node/779
Were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? I started using The Incidental Zombie partway through the writing, but it didn’t stick
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? After investing more than six years in a novel I still love, Backwater, including three go-arounds with agents and numerous revisions, I was worn out. I decided that I would write a novel in less than a year, working fast and drawing on memory and personal experience rather than research. For the setting and the story, I went back to West Virginia, my home for three decades, and the place where my first novel was set. I sketched in a rough outline and set myself a daily word count, which I mostly met. Nine months later, the first draft was done, early in spring 2017.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I write at a cobbled-up desk, made from a narrow door sitting atop of a pair of two-drawer filing cabinets. I face my iMac and the wall, with a flurry of notes and reminders posted above and a map of the Great Glen of Scotland to my left – reminders for a work in progress! I keep my back to the sliding glass doors and a view of the outside, as that would lure me away.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I’m pretty strict about writing – seldom any alcohol, no music. I may make notes longhand, but when I draft, it’s always at the keyboard. I write best in the morning, but I’ve always had to work around work, whether in my days as a newspaper reporter and farmer, or now as a college professor. I have a lot more time as an academic, but not as much energy!
https://www.katherinescottcrawford.com/
Can you give the reader just enough information for them to understand what is going on in the excerpt? Lourana has been desperately searching for her daughter. When this battered man said he woke up in a pit full of bones, she takes a chance and brings him home to learn more. Darrick has been talking with her about her family and what has happened to it as a result of mining and the Kavanagh family when the excerpt begins.
Please include the excerpt and include page numbers as reference. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
From Chapter 4
She got up and cleared the table, rattling the glasses and bowls into the sink.
“What did they take?”
Lourana stood staring into the sink, the suds rising. Seemed like she spent too much of her life cleaning up messes. “What didn’t they? Pap, like I told you, wore out from work. Then him dying took the heart out of Mama. My ex, his back ruined, addicted. But when Dreama disappeared, my little girl, that was the last straw. My little girl.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook herself, refused the tears.
“It was so damned hard to get away. I thought we’d done it at last, my ex getting clean so he could get a job that wasn’t tied up with the Kavanaghs, and we were out of here.” She remembered looking out the back window of the car as they crossed the bridge, thinking, Screw you, Redbird, that’ll show you. Her chest nearly caved in at the memory. “Three years later, Dreama graduates from South Charleston High School and damn if she don’t run right back and take a job at KCL. I don’t know what possessed her.”
“Maybe it was home.”
“What’s home?” Lourana wished she could feel real anger, but what came out was flat and factual. “I was born in Redbird and I’ll most likely die here, sooner than later, but it’s not home like you want it to be. You don’t want to be here unless you are from here, and if you’re from here and you got any sense, you want to leave.”
“They never found out what happened to your daughter?”
“The police said she probably run off with some man. Not that she wouldn’t, maybe, she wasn’t no plastic doll baby, but she would have let me know she was all right. That was what my family did—you went somewhere, you always called to let folks know you got there safe.”
“Lourana, when I was in the hole. I found something. A necklace.”
She turned from the sink. Soap dripped from her arms onto the floor.
“What did it look like?” What if it was Dreama’s necklace, that single strand of gold beads she’d taken to wearing every day in the months before she disappeared? Lourana held her breath as he dug into his pants pocket and pulled out an antique silver locket, heart shaped, swinging from a dirty chain. She put out her hand. He dropped it into her palm as though it burned him. His face went white. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. If I said anything that pained you. About the bones.”
She pushed on the catch and the heart sprang open. Inside, where there should be a picture of a boyfriend or a curl of baby hair, was nothing. How sad. “It’s not hers, at least, not anything that I remember her having.” The chain slid through her fingers and she dropped it on the counter next to the dish drainer.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? I believe there are two kinds of people: stayers and leavers. Those who cut free from their home towns and go searching, and those who are comfortable remaining in familiar territory, or who can’t find the means to escape. Lourana’s dialogue here draws on some of my own feelings as a “leaver,” as well as comments I remember from people back in my Rust Belt hometown and my emotional home place in West Virginia. It also starts to sketch in some of the problems confronting coal country people, job losses, environmental degradation, damaged bodies, opioid addition – and often, a deep love for home despite all that.
https://www.facebook.com/valerienieman1
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SCRIM
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DEAD COPY
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THE ROAD OF A THOUSAND TIGERS
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Second Story Man
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HIS FULL ATTENTION
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POKEWEED: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVELLA
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REDUCED
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LITTLE BOY LOST
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VOID
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HOTEL MOSCOW
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ALLIGATOR ALLEY
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VOID
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THE NOWHERE MAN
By Marlon L. Fick
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VOID
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By Samuel Snoek-Brown
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“Pasture Art” from the short story collection by the same title PASTURE ART
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