Today we are joined by author Skyler White whose debut book and Falling, Fly was released this past Tuesday (March 2). Skyler kindly took a few moments out of her busy schedule to chat with RAO Reviews about her new book (read my review of the book here). After reading the interview, if you have any questions for Skyler, feel free to leave them below.
First, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for allowing RAO Reviews to interview you.
I’m so happy to be here. The book blogger community is such an amazing asset to writers and readers and part of why I like belonging to both groups!
With your debut book, you are introducing a very unique brand of “vampire”. Even your take on fallen angels and how they were conceived is quite refreshing. How’d this come about? How was this vision born?
Thank you! The tweaks I made on the vampire and angel mythologies came out of the things I was wanting to play with, so the vision evolved more than was born. Olivia is the fallen angel of desire – desire in its fallen or corrupted state. So she has no direct access to what she wants; she has to get it through others. Because she’s out of touch with her true nature, she latches on to what others want her to be. And that’s such a dependent posture, and such a predatory one, that it *is* vampirism.
I wrote ‘and Falling, Fly’ because I felt like Olivia. I felt out-of-touch with my own desire. I had transitioned from the teenage monster-to-be-feared to the adult creature-that-is-wanted, and while it made things much more manageable, it felt fallen. I’d like to say I’ve got it all worked out and the answer is in the book, but the book is an exploration more than an explanation.
It did help me be clearer about the tension I felt between being authentic and being likeable, and how I saw the difficulties in being a woman in a world that sends strong messages about your worth being tied to who wants you. It helped me get in touch with my own desires, gave me access to the difference between what I was actually hungry for and what I was consuming – both in terms of food and products.
The grand themes of the novel seem to be desire, redemption and ultimately freedom through love. What do these words mean to you? Is there a message within these pages to be found by the readers?
That’s an interesting question. I think maybe there is a message to readers, but maybe the message is a question rather than an answer. I’m very curious about these things you mention… about desire and redemption, freedom and love. I’m fascinated by them, but find them difficult. I wrestle with them, but I love the struggle. Adventures are not vacations. So perhaps the question behind the novel was, “Am I alone?” Are there other people out there interested in these questions? If there are, the message is, “Come play!”
There’s also the age-old battle of mythology versus science within ‘and Falling, Fly’. Is this something you see the world never being able to meld as one? For instance, I for one don’t see them as competing, but rather explain two very different things and rather complimentary to each other. I got the feeling your novel was saying the same thing.
Exactly! They’re different vocabularies for different terrains, and I love them both and love mixing them. There are only problems when either thinks it is adequate to both.
One thing that I love about ‘and Falling, Fly’ is that it is very “anti-Twilight” and you are attempting to bring vampires back to the mature audiences to which they were born. Was this a conscious choice, or something that happened naturally?
It was a very conscious choice, but not done relative to the ‘Twilight’ books. I wasn’t even aware of them until after I’d sold ‘and Falling, Fly’. But I’m more interested in grown-up relationships than adolescent ones, and I’m more interested in what’s ahead than re-experiencing my teenage years. I love teenagers, but I don’t want to see teenage girls the way those books do.
Do you see any of yourself in Olivia?
More than I’d like to.
The book opens with a quote from Carl Gustav Jung and throughout the book there are references to psychological things, such as archetypes, which was Jung’s main theory/point of study. What is it about archetypes and myths that intrigues you?
Oooh, you don’t serve up the quick and easy questions, do you? I do a whole workshop on myth and the modern writer, so it’s clearly a topic I love, but I’ll try not to get carried away. Actually, the answer there has a lot to do with the question you asked earlier, about mythology vs. science. I think there are things that we know (or that we need to know) that are only accessible through symbol and story. In the same way that we simply couldn’t see the rings around Saturn until there were telescopes, we can’t see into certain spaces of our selves without the mirror of myth.
Can you tell us a little bit about the writing process you went through while working on this book?
I’m a very slow writer. This book started with a lot of pre-writing, trying to get the characters and the main plot points into a manageable outline. And I worked with that until the first line came to me in the shower one day: “The angel of desire is damned.” Once I knew where to start, it was just about getting myself in front of the keyboard and working. It took me about nine months to get a rough draft finished. But it was really rough. It went through eleven drafts before it was ready.
Steampunk seems to be a genre that, mind the pun, is gathering steam in the literary world. Has this genre always appealed to you?
Less as a genre than as an aesthetic. I love the way steampunk looks. And I love the steampunk community ethic too. I’m a huge fan of any immersive hobby, whether it’s steampunk with its handicraft costumes and teas, or role-playing games with their dice or rattan swords. Anything that people give themselves and their imaginations to, that creates alternate worlds they inhabit, is exciting to me.
What’s your favorite thing about being an author?
This. At best, a book is the first half of a conversation. And it’s the lonely half. I do love writing, but being able to talk to folks, to hear from others about their experiences, has really been wonderful.
Any treasured authors or books which really propelled you to pursue writing?
Most of my favorite books and authors serve more as a disincentive than a propeller. I read them and think that I have no business playing in their worlds.
What’s next for you? Do you have another novel planned?
I do! It’s coming out in December. It isn’t a sequel to ‘and Falling, Fly’ per se, but it takes place in the same story-world and there are a few overlapping characters. ‘In Dreams Begin’ time-travels between present-day Portland, Oregon and the Victorian occultists and Irish nationalists in Ireland, England and France around the turn of the century. It’s the story of a contemporary graphic artist who falls asleep on her wedding night and wakes up in the body of Maud Gonne, a famously beautiful, six-foot tall, red-headed Irish revolutionary who may have been part faerie. The woman who channeled Laura into Maud then introduces her to WB Yeats, and the two – Victorian romantic poet and time-shifted, modern cynic – fall rather helplessly in love.
And lastly, is there anything you’d like to add?
Just thanks so much for your interest and interesting questions!
Skyler White is the author of dark fantasy novels ‘and Falling, Fly’ (Berkley, March 2010) and ‘In Dreams Begin’ (Berkley, December 2010). She lives in Austin, TX.
