Interview with writer John Vanderslice

Helping we wrap up this week is writer John Vanderslice. He’s chatting with me about his new literary fiction, Nous Nous.

Bio:
John Vanderslice was born and raised in the Washington, DC metropolitan area but currently lives and works outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. His short stories, essays, and plays have appeared widely in literary journals, including Sou’wester, Seattle Review, Southern Humanities Review, Laurel Review, 1966, and Crazyhorse. His recent books include Island Fog (Lavender Ink, 2014), a linked short story collection, and The Last Days of Oscar Wilde (Burlesque Press, 2018), a historical novel about the famous author’s sad final years.

Welcome, John. Please tell us about your current release.
Nous Nous is the story of how and why a middle schooler is abducted from school one winter day in 2014. It’s told from the perspective of four key players: the man who carries out the crime, the girl who is abducted, a young student teacher who witnesses something that influences the entire course of the investigation, and our hero: a recently divorced Episcopal priest named Elizabeth Riddle who gets inexorably drawn into the chase for this girl and in so doing is brought up against the trauma of her failed marriage, her frayed relationships with her two children, her worries about her standing in her job, and the near constant sexism she faces from within and without her congregation. In the end, all four major players, plus a host of others, assemble at a lake house in central Arkansas, none of them knowing how it will all turn out.

What inspired you to write this book?
This was a wonderful and curious novel writing project for me. I actually drafted the book in a novel writing course I was teaching. I made my students compose an entire first draft of a short novel in 13 weeks. I really pushed them, with weekly word count goals, regular check-ins, and peer groups to give each other feedback and keep each other on task. I decided if I was going to ask all this of them, I would ask it of myself as well. I put myself in a peer group and started drafting. It was exciting! The initial idea for the book—and I had no time to waste in finding one—came while I was walking my dog one day near a school. I have an odd imagination, and it occurred to me for some reason, out of the blue, that walking a dog must be the most innocuous seeming activity imaginable. A person who is unscrupulous, as well as tragically torn as an individual, could use it as a cover for all sorts of nefarious acts. There was my germ for the book. The braided nature of the book, and all the different personalities and perspectives that developed from the braiding, came about because I was simply trying to keep my draft going from week to week. When I felt myself done with one cycle of action, I just switched character perspectives to give the draft new energy. The eventual benefit of switching perspectives like that is that it naturally created suspense in the novel. I took readers up to a point in the plot and then switched perspectives. It was very useful; but at first, an entirely accidental effect.

Excerpt from Nous Nous:
She was trying to change to the left-hand lane—even as she was approaching a stop light about to turn red—when the woman’s voice came back on the phone: different sounding, tentatively worried, perhaps even defensive.

“Mrs. Riddle, I don’t see your daughter out there. Are you sure someone else didn’t get her? Your husband, or another family member?”

Elizabeth went morbidly cold, all the way to the ends of her toes. This was the very worst thing Principal Nixon could have said to her. Way worse than, If a man cheats on a woman it must be because she’s not doing her best to keep him. (Which she’d heard on Sunday morning television a couple weeks earlier.) Worse than, I’m not against women working; I’m against mothers working. (Which she’d overheard from another parent, a woman, outside Jeannine’s school.) Worse than, It doesn’t feel the same when I get the Eucharist from you as opposed to a male priest. (Which she’d actually heard from one of her own parishioners.) This was nightmare stuff. And for a simple reason: With Max gone to Florida there was no “other family member” who could pick up Jeannine. There was no one. Only her.

“No. No, I was definitely supposed to pick her up today. And her father . . . he’s out of town this week.” Her mind was coursing brutally through possibilities: some banal, some terrible. She’d talked a friend into taking her home. She’d gone back into the school to use the restroom. She’d tried to walk home herself, to teach her mother a lesson on promptness. Max decided to remove her to Florida.  “Okay,” the woman said, “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation. I know that miscommunication happens all the time.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Elizabeth, and this made Elizabeth all the madder. Principal Nixon wasn’t supposed to deny danger; she was supposed to take care of it.

“There’s no miscommunication. I pick up Jeannine. That’s what I do. Every single day. There’s no other plan, no other backup possibility. We didn’t talk about doing anything different today when I dropped her off. She should be out there safely waiting for me.” That should and that safely were not accidental word choices. She was putting Principal Nixon on notice. If anything happened to my daughter—in fact, if I don’t see you jumping into action right now and doing everything humanly possible to find out exactly what did happen to my daughter—there will be a price to pay. A steep, steep price. A seriously steep price.

“Mrs. Riddle, we will find her. Are you sure you didn’t—”

“I’m completely sure. And I’m terribly worried now, I don’t mind saying. I’m freaking out, to be honest. I will be there in minutes, and my daughter better be waiting for me. Go find her, Ms. Nixon. Go!”

What exciting story are you working on next?
Well, I finished (I think) a novel last year about James, the brother of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. I had a great deal of fun imagining a home life for the biological family of Jesus, who in my book is gone because he’s just started this unlikely and fatally-doomed ministry. Working on that novel was one of the purest pleasures of my writing life, but I’ve put any marketing effort for the novel on hold while I try to promote, and do right by, NOUS NOUS. For a while after finishing my James brother of Jesus novel, I just piddled at little things, kind of treading water. Then I thought I wanted to start a novel about the renowned but finally mysterious student-teacher relationship of Aristotle and Alexander the Great. (It’s been something I’ve been curious about for years.) But after messing around with what eventually felt like very problematic writing, I put that particular project aside and wrote a short story about a young guy visiting Paris for the first time. (I’ve traveled to various parts of France, and I find the entire country fascinating.) I realized this was hardly the first short story I’d set in contemporary France, and every such story I’ve written I’ve liked. That was an ah-ha moment. And my real current project was born: to write a series of stories about different Americans, of diverse ages, traveling through France in the twenty-first century. The stories will not be linked in the manner of a novel-in-stories, but they will clearly fit together into a book. Can’t wait to work my way through them. The tentative title for the book will be On the Île de la Cité.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
There are kind of two answers to that question. I have been fascinated with writing since I was in elementary school. As a kid, I always enjoyed writing, and I spent considerable private time making up my own stories, comics, newspapers, etc. At some point in high school, however, about the time when I had to decide where exactly I wanted to apply to college and why—struggling through Calculus and Physics while claiming I was going to study science in college like my brothers—I realized that the only thing I really wanted to do in life (and the only thing I was really good at) was to write. At that moment, WRITER became my identity. Miraculously, I’ve been able to see it through.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I do not write full-time in the sense of forty hours a week, but I make sure I write regularly and often. And once I have my teeth in a project, I like to see it through, for better or worse. (The Aristotle-Alexander thing is a real exception for me.) Thus, like a lot of writers, I have various novels that I have not yet found a home for, but I firmly believe do need a home. Also, like a lot of writers, I believe that you cannot merely wait for inspiration to hit you. Then you will end up writing very rarely. For me, the inspiration, and the ideas, tends to come when I am physically present at my writing desk and working on something. That’s when the “magic” happens. It doesn’t happen walking around, considering what I might like to write about. It happens when I physically begin writing, no matter where my head was before I started. It’s always easier when my pen is moving or my hands are going on the keyboard.

As for time, that is of course the challenge for everybody. In my own case, I teach at a college, which is a far, far more labor-intensive profession than the public (or my students) appreciates. I simply have to make time in my schedule for writing. I think that’s case, though, for anyone who creatively writes while also holding down a “real” job. Or working as a stay-at-home parent. (Which I did for several years when I was younger—talk about a tough job!) My way of making time, for decades, has been to simply get up early, start a pot of coffee, and start working as soon as I feel awake. I try to make sure to get at least one good hour in before I rush out and devoted myself to job duties. I also write in class whenever I give journal prompts to my students and make them write. Tons of good ideas and good projects have come to me in those periods of writing in class with my students. I would recommend it for any writing teacher. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to do that. It’s free writing time! Sadly, due to Covid-19, I could not meet my classes in person for the whole of the 20-21 school year. I simply posted prompts to the web sites of my classes and expected the students to do it on their own. As a result, I ended up not writing with my classes for all of last school year. I really missed it.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I really and truly do not think this is interesting, but I actually don’t think I can write without holding on to a mug of some kind. Typically, that mug is filled with strong coffee. If I can’t stand to drink any more coffee—and I drink a lot—I heat up hot water in the mug. I really like it to be hot, whatever I am drinking. I find that just the act of bringing a mug to my lips and sipping gets the writing wheels churning. Now, what I really and truly don’t understand are those writers who like to, or need to, write with a beer in hand or a glass of wine. Uh-uh. Not me. I don’t want anything that is going to dull my imaginative edge. If anything, I want the edge to be edgier! My son claims I am addicted to coffee. I don’t think so. I think I just appreciate it the way it is supposed to be appreciated!

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I remember “trying on” a few different possibilities. One thing I used to say is that I wanted to be a sportswriter. (My family was nuts about sports growing up, and we always fought over the Washington Post sports page.). I also talked about being an actor (due to being involved in community theatre as a child). The most curious career I ever talked about was being a tv cameraman. I don’t even watch that much tv, although I guess I did as a kid. I think this career idea came to me one day when my dad brought home from work an early version of the home video camera, and I had a ball filming my brothers as they battled through a tenacious game of living room rug football. I especially liked being able to provide the color commentary as I filmed. I guess that means I’m a ham at heart.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
If I had anything to tell the readers, I would say to please don’t stress about a writing project while it is being drafted. Stress all you want after it is put down. But give yourself the mental space for now to just create and enjoy it. Don’t fuss. Don’t edit. Don’t judge yourself. Just put stuff down. I’ve seen so many of my students get stymied over the years from nothing more than self-doubt. So they give up on things—good things—way too soon. They don’t give themselves or their stories a chance to really develop. There’s more than enough time in life for you to judge yourself and your writing—and God knows, other people will—so just enjoy the moment being a writer when you are writing an early draft. You’re lucky to have found this avocation! Other people haven’t and never will. Too bad for them.

The only other personal thing I might share is that if there is any activity I enjoy as much as writing, it is cooking. I cook all the time. I make dinners at our house six nights a week. But while I happily work in writing, both as a professional author and fiction writing teacher, I would never want to be a professional cook. Are you kidding? Sweating it out in a crowded restaurant kitchen? I don’t know how those people do it. I’m happy to do my cooking in my own home for my own family. That’s enough of an audience for me.

Links:
Website | Braddock Avenue Books | Facebook | Twitter | Blog

Thanks for being here today, John.