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***The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished fiction genre writers for INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION. Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7
****Valerie Nieman’s ’s To the Bones is the twenty-eighth
in a never-ending series called INSIDE
THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris
Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction
genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE
THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are at the end of this piece.
Name of fiction work? And were there other names you
considered that you would like to share with us? To the
Bones
I started
using The Incidental Zombie partway through the writing, but it
didn’t stick
Fiction
genre? Ex science fiction, short story,
fantasy novella, romance, drama, crime, plays, flash fiction, historical,
comedy, movie script, screenplay, etc.
And how many pages long?
This is genre mashup, a satirical look at the effects of the coal
industry in West Virginia, refracted through horror, Appalachian tall tale,
quest literature, and Celtic mythology.
Oh, and a bit of romance as well. 2014 pages
Has this been published? And it is totally fine if the
answer is no. If yes, what publisher
and what publication date? To the Bones will be
published in spring of 2019 by West Virginia University Press.
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. Some wonderful beta readers gave me good
advice, and I began marketing it in July 2017 (With To the Bones safely
placed, it’s time to find home for Backwater!)
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 form 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!
What is the
summary of this specific fiction work? From the WVU Press catalog:
“Darrick MacBrehon, a government auditor, wakes among the dead. Bloodied and
disoriented from a gaping head wound, the man who staggers out of the mine
crack in Redbird, West Virginia, is much more powerful—and dangerous—than the
one thrown in. An orphan with an unknown past, he must now figure out how to
have a future.
Hard-as-nails
Lourana Taylor works as a sweepstakes operator and spends her time searching for
any clues that might lead to Dreama, her missing daughter. Could this
stranger’s tale of a pit of bones be connected? With help from disgraced deputy
Marco DeLucca and Zadie Person, a local journalist investigating an acid
mine spill, Darrick and Lourana push against everyone who tries to block the
truth. Along the way, the bonds of love and friendship are tested, and bodies
pile up on both sides.
In a town
where the river flows orange and the founding—and controlling—family is rumored
to ‘strip a man to the bones,’ the conspiracy that bleeds Redbird runs as deep
as the coal veins that feed it.”
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.
Other works
you have published? Neena Gathering, my first novel, was an Appalachian
post-apocalyptic science fiction story that might be classified as YA these
days. Initially was published in 1988 by Pageant Books, a paperback imprint of
Crown Publishers. It was going along
nicely, including translations, when Crown was taken over by Random House. The Pageant line was axed and the book went
out of print. In 2013, I was approached
by Permuted Press about returning the book to print as a “classic in the
post-apocalyptic genre.” Not only did I get a new advance, but they brought the
book back as a trade paperback, an e-book, and an Audible book beautifully
voted by Cassandra Morris. So it’s come
back to life and is available today, so many years after its birth.
My
most recent new novel was Blood Clay, which came out in 2012
and won the Eric Hoffer Prize in General Fiction. It’s set in Northi Carolina
and focuses on “strangers in the South,” both a woman who moves there from the
North and a natie, who has tried to leave but been forced to return home. Other fiction books were Survivors, a Rust Belt
novel, and Fidelitties, a collection of short stories.
Appalachian
heritage is the common thread binding Valerie Nieman’s wide range of writing,
from science fiction to mainstream to horror novels, and both lyric and
narrative poetry. Her fourth novel, To
the Bones, a genre-bending satire of the coal industry and its effects
on Appalachia, is a spring 2019 release from West Virginia University Press.
Her third poetry collection, Leopard
Lady: A Life in Verse, was published in fall 2018, with work that has
appeared in The Missouri Review, Chautauqua, and other journals. Her
writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Eyes Glowing at the
Edge of the Woods (WVU) and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry
Anthology (U Georgia).
She has held state and NEA creative writingA graduate of West Virginia University and Queens
University of Charlotte and a former journalist, she teaches creative writing
at North Carolina A&T State University.
@valnieman on
Twitter
@valnieman on
Instagram
@valerienieman1
on Facebook
Newly released: Leopard Lady: A Life in
Verse, as featured at the Coney Island Museum
Coming in Spring 2019: To the Bones, an
Appalachian horror/ecojustice novel
Upcoming appearances
and workshops (Visit my website or Facebook
page for updates.)
Twitter @valnieman,
Instagram @valnieman
MARCH 27 - Water Bean Cafe, Huntersville,
NC.
APRIL 11 - Reading at Flyleaf Books, Chapel
Hill.
APRIL 13 - Isothermal Community College Writers
Workshop, Spindale, NC.
April 28 - NC Poetry Society Series
at McIntyre's Books, Pittsboro, NC.
MAY 7 - Reading and visit with The Nexus
Poets, 7 pm, New Bern, NC.
MAY 16-17 - Bridgewater International Poetry
Festival, Bridgewater College, Virginia.
MAY 18-19 - Greensboro Bound book
festival, Greensboro, NC.
JUNE 11 - Ohio County Public Library reading,
Wheeling, WV.
JULY 6 - Writing workshop with Netwest Group, 1-4
pm, Hayesville, NC.
JULY 7-13 - Teaching "Flashes of
Brilliance" at John C. Campbell Folk School.
JULY 15 - Reading at The Inner
Geek/Empire Books, 7 pm, Huntington, WV.
INSIDE THE EMOTION OF
FICTION links
001 11 15 2018 Nathaniel
Kaine’s
Thriller Novel
John
Hunter – The Veteran
002 11 18 2018 Ed
Protzzel’s
Futuristic/Mystery/Thriller
The
Antiquities Dealer
003 11 23 2018 Janice
Seagraves’s
Science
Fiction Romance
Exodus
Arcon
004 11 29 2018
Christian Fennell’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
The Fiddler
in the Night
005 12 02 2018 Jessica
Mathews’s
Adult
Paranormal Romance
Death
Adjacent
006 12 04 2018 Robin
Jansen’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Ruby the
Indomitable
007 12 12 2018 Adair Valerez’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Scrim
008 12 17 218
Kit Frazier’s
Mystery Novel
Dead Copy
009 12 21 2019 Robert Craven’s
Noir/Spy Novel
The Road
of a Thousand Tigers
010 01 13 2019 Kristine Goodfellow’s
Contemporary
Romantic Fiction
The Other
Twin
011 01 17 2019 Nancy J Cohen’s
Cozy Mystery
Trimmed To
Death
012 01 20 2019 Charles Salzberg’s
Crime Novel
Second
Story Man
013 01 23 2019 Alexis Fancher’s
Flash Fiction
His Full
Attention
014 01 27 2019 Brian L Tucker’s
Young Adult/Historical
POKEWEED: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVELLA
015 01 31 2019 Robin Tidwell’s
Dystopian
Reduced
016 02 07 2019 J.D. Trafford’s
Legal
Fiction/Mystery
Little Boy
Lost
017 02 08 2019 Paula Shene’s
Young Adult
ScieFi/Fantasy/Romance/Adventure
My Quest
Begins
018 02 13 2019 Talia Carner’s
Mainstream
Fiction/ Suspense/ Historical
Hotel
Moscow
019 02 15 2019 Rick Robinson’s
Multidimensional
Fiction
Alligator
Alley
020 02 21 2019 LaVerne Thompson’s
Urban Fantasy
The Soul
Collectors
021 02 27 2019 Marlon L Fick’s
Post-Colonialist
Novel
The
Nowhere Man
022 03 02 2019 Carol Johnson’s
Mainstream
Novel
Silk And
Ashes
023 03 06 2019 Samuel Snoek-Brown’s
Short Story
Collection
There Is
No Other Way to Worship Them
024 03 08 2019 Marlin Barton’s
Short Story
Collection
Pasture
Art
025 03 18 2019 Laura Hunter’s
Historical
Fiction
Beloved
Mother
026 03 21 2019 Maggie Rivers’s
Romance
Magical
Mistletoe
027 03 25 2019 Faith Gibson’s
Paranormal
Romance
Rafael
028 03 27 2019 Valerie Nieman’s
Tall Tale
To The
Bones
