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The Big Idea: Mary Baader Kaley

Posted on January 13, 2023    Posted by Athena Scalzi      5 Comments

Real life experiences from authors’ lives often inform their fiction. In the case of Mary Baader Kaley, her life experience, and the life experience of someone she loves, lives at the heart of her novel Burrowed. What is that experience? Read on to discover.

MARY BAADER KALEY:

My husband and I belong to an exclusive club we never meant to join. We are the parents of a special-needs child who will be fully dependent on us for the rest of our lives, because our youngest of three children was born with a brain malformation. Based on the parts of the brain involved, doctors surmised something impacted his development around my eighth week of pregnancy when I was very sick and hospitalized. Looking at him, you can’t see the malformation, but you can’t miss his secondary diagnosis: autism.

He’s fifteen now.

The seed of what would become Burrowed began to take root when he was three—after he began to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time and the fog of sleep deprivation began to lift. I wondered what it would look like if everyone had some sort of disability, and an entire world grew from there. Some people in this world must live underground because they’re too sickly and weak to be exposed to the general population. Everyone else is healthy enough to live above ground but suffer from debilitating conditions of their minds. I wanted to explore how people with various disabilities are treated. Is it possible to see a person for his or her strengths rather than isolate them for their defining difference?

And to bring this back to the real world, another question arises—how can non-disabled people make a difference for someone with a disability? The answer couldn’t be simpler. We can have that person’s back.

After our son was born, neurologists were keenly interested in his malformation—not to treat it but rather to diagnose exactly what type of congenital disorder it might be. A Dandy Walker variant? A strange presentation of Chiari IV? Different doctors had different opinions. Frankly, it didn’t matter.

We were sent to geneticists. The specialist summarized all the different panels of DNA analysis they could run, the costs of each, and the types of mutations that could be found. I stopped her, asking, “Will knowing any of these mutations help my son?” I didn’t mean to be rude, but my child had been prodded and poked so many times already. She replied it wouldn’t help him. From that point on, we made sure any further testing or medical appointments for our son would have one goal in mind: to help him with his actual medical issues or his development in reaching his full potential. Period.

We had bigger questions, like would he ever walk? Talk? Ride a bike? Dress himself? Well, yes, he eventually did these things on his own timetable—he can walk, skip, and run. He can ride a bike with training wheels, and he can dress himself (albeit in dial-up internet speed). And after a lot of help from wonderful teachers and therapists, he can speak. No one would mistake him for an effective communicator, but he can get his point across when he wants something (usually his iPad or a snack). And he can recite every word of his favorite shows by memory, in the voices of each character. In truth, he makes us laugh every day.

Social boundaries will always be an issue though. One day when he was about six, we were standing in line at a fast-food counter and the person in front of us just received his tray of food, turned around to find a seat, and my son grabbed a few French fries from this man’s tray faster than I could react. No sooner were the fries in my son’s mouth when he reached for more, and I had to hold onto each of his wrists to stop him. The man’s eyes opened wide with a what-just-happened expression. I apologized profusely, stammering something about autism.

Thankfully, the man was understanding, nodded, asked me not to apologize, and walked off joking, “I shouldn’t have these fries anyway.” Honestly, I fought tears—not from embarrassment but from the fact that this man was so cool about everything. Not everyone was. Other people threw us side-glances as if I couldn’t control my own child. Yet the guy with a few less French fries than he paid for? He had our back.

Hands down, my biggest fear for my son relates to the distant future when both my husband and I are gone—who will have his back then? We’ve made plans for him, drawn up legal documents, etc., but no one can guarantee these things will work out. It’s hopefully a long way off, but this fear is an icy whisper that sneaks up on me every so often.

Even now, though, there are times we’re not with our son to fend for him. He goes to school, he goes out with sitters or with other family members. What happens if he snatches someone’s food and the person isn’t as cool as that guy with the fries? What if someone doesn’t like the behaviors he exhibits as an autistic person? He’s got zero ability to spout off a clever retort or defend himself against the blandest of bullies. In short, if someone wanted to hurt him, they could. And make no mistake: my son absolutely knows when he’s being teased or bullied.

Every flavor of disability exists in this world—and for the most part just like anyone else, these people chug along within their daily routines with their families and friends who look out for them. Sometimes though, they could use a little help. Small kindnesses. Maybe a few fries.

I have to trust that other people will be there for my son when I’m not around—from his underpaid teachers, school aides, and therapists—who we adore. And still, there are unnamed others, people I won’t meet but he will come across who, like French fry guy, decide to have my son’s back.

From the deepest depths of my soul, I thank each and every one of them.

Burrowed: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Visit the author’s website. Follow her on Twitter.

The Big Idea: Jen Comfort

Posted on January 11, 2023    Posted by Athena Scalzi      11 Comments

While it’s true that Phantom of the Opera is leaving Broadway, author Jen Comfort is here to bring a modern, gender-reversed version of it to your reading list with her newest rom-com novel, Midnight Duet.

JEN COMFORT:

“You know how the 2019 theatrical release of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats was a visual, conceptual, and financial travesty of colossal purr-portions? Hear me out…”

It’s late 2020. My debut book hasn’t even hit shelves yet, and here I am–unreviewed by critics, untested by audiences, absolutely zero clout to my name–throwing utterly ridiculous book ideas at my editor with the outsized ambition of 2015’s Pizza Rat (may he rest in piz.. za).

“What if I did that with Phantom of the Opera, except the Phantom is a woman, the ingenue is a German hair metal frontman, and it’s a contemporary rom-com novel set in Vegas?”

Context is key: in late 2020, I’d been unemployed from my restaurant serving job for seven months, the world was burning down in figurative and literal senses, and I’d spent a great deal of time with only my imagination and my cats for company. I wouldn’t say I was going insane, per se, because that does a terrible disservice to people with real mental health problems, and they’ve already gotten enough disservice from our country’s abysmal healthcare system. I’m simply suggesting if I lived in the basement catacombs of an opera house and had dedicated my life to ensuring the establishment’s musical and theatrical success, and then that opera house were purchased by two ding-dongs and a rich muppet who wouldn’t know performance art if it accidentally landed on them like a one-ton chandelier, and then the love of my life abandoned me for said muppet and the ding-dongs ruined my theater in the way (insert director of your choice) ruined Star Wars… well, under those circumstances, the Phantom’s melodramatic rampage of terror isn’t entirely unrelatable, is it? Whomst among us, etcetera, etcetera. 

I didn’t expect my editor to say yes. 

Many times, while I was writing Midnight Duet, I wished she hadn’t. Because at the end of the day, I was tasked with writing a contemporary romance novel, which is a genre with a strictly regulated plot structure and tone. A rom-com should be voice-y and funny, full of delightful secondary characters, and host a plot laden with zany mishaps yet bound the confines of modern reality.

And then there’s The Phantom of the Opera–a musical set in 1870s Paris, about a mask-wearing, cape-swirling, possibly-magic-wielding anti-hero who lurks in an underground chamber with a pipe organ (how did it get down there? No one knows and no one cares) and an inexplicably endless supply of candelabras. There’s murder, fire, mystical mirror seduction, and a heroine who doesn’t see a problem with any of this, because her purpose in life is to be hot and good at singing, and good for her. 

And as ridiculous as it all sounds, this is exactly what POTO fans love about Phantom of the Opera–the extra-ness, the over-the-top melodrama, the more-is-more approach to costumes, set decor, and song composition. 

There’s nothing I despise more than a remake that’s worse than the original. It’s downright disrespectful. If I was going to write a true homage to this masterpiece–and that’s exactly what my inner, 14-year-old goth girl aspired to do–I had to construct it in a way that did justice to the sheer vibes.

Problem: Where in Pizza Rat’s unholy name am I getting Phantom of the Opera vibes in our contemporary world?

Answer: Vegas. Duh.

Problem: Why is Erika–our female phantom–so goddamn melodramatic?

Answer: She’s a theater major, a former Broadway star, and a diva of Mariah Carey proportions. And like a proper anti-heroine, no one in Manhattan actually liked her, which is why, after a face-scarring accident (naturally), we find our disgraced diva wallowing in self-pity in the Nevada desert, where she’s tasked with saving her family’s Gold Rush-era legacy from a familiar rich muppet. She needs money, so she rents her opera house to Christof and his band, Nachtmusik. (If you’re wondering whether that’s an on-the-nose reference to Music of the Night–of course, it is. ALW doesn’t believe in subtlety, and neither do I.)

Problem: Christof–our up-and-coming vocalist–is a modern musician. Why on Earth would he–Answer: Glam rock. Look, I love the Scorpions, and if there’s any musical style that fits with the words “dramatic” and “extra,” it’s glam rock. We’re making this whole thing work, Spinal Tap style. 

There’s no way* to replicate the “anything is possible!” creative energy of 1986, when The Phantom of the Opera was conceived for Broadway. (*In this economy? No one can afford that much cocaine.) But I did re-write approximately 80% of this book in the final weeks before my deadline in what I remember being a sleep-deprived marathon of chocolate-covered pretzels, coffee, and desperation fueled by a terrible sense of having dug my own literary grave. And by all that was unholy: if I had to be buried in that grave, my coffin would be bedazzled in black sequins.

When I describe this book now, I call it a “loose collection of atmospheric goth vibes and horniness,” and I believe it is that. 

It is also, I hope, a fitting tribute to the musical, which will finally close in April after 35 years of atmospheric goth vibes and horniness.

It’s too bad ALW never wrote a sequel. But like the Phantom’s love for Christine, my love for ridiculously over-the-top romances will never die. 

Midnight Duet: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|The Ripped Bodice 

Visit the author’s website. Follow her on Instagram. 

The Big Idea: Nancy Kress

Posted on January 10, 2023    Posted by Athena Scalzi      10 Comments

Science fiction is just that, a blend of the science we know, and the stories we wish to tell. The mixture of these two aspects was especially important to authors Nancy Kress and Robert Lanza, who co-authored their new novel, Observer. Read on to see how they wove science into story.

NANCY KRESS:

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK INSTEAD OF SOMETHING ELSE

You there, sitting in your chair reading this on your computer with your phone beside you in case something interesting turns up on social media—you believe that chair, computer, and phone all exist, right?  Are solid and stationary, at least until you chop them up or move them?  What if you’re wrong?  

Caroline Soames-Watkins also believed that the world around her existed, solidly and for a long time before she was born—until she learned different.  Caro, the protagonist of my novel co-written with Dr. Robert Lanza, thought she had the world figured out.  Not her personal world, which is in deep trouble due to a beloved sister in financial trouble, a predatory boss, and a vicious on-line attack that loses Caro the job she’d worked so hard for.  But Caro thinks that at least she understands how the material world works and how her consciousness operates within it.  Then, from desperation, she accepts a job at an off-shore research facility run by a Nobel Laureate great-uncle she has never met.  

The ideas behind Observer are Robert Lanza’s.  An eminent scientist who led teams that cloned the first endangered species and did ground-breaking stem-cell research, Bob Lanza has also formulated biocentrism, the belief that life and consciousness created the universe, not the other way around.  His non-fiction books put a foundation under that startling claim.  They start with hard science in “our” world, beginning with the famous two-slit experiments, in which the presence of an observer affects the path taken by a sub-atomic particle,  and move step-by-step into cutting-edge science about quantum entanglement, the multiverse, the paradoxes of time, and the nature of consciousness itself.  The universe did not spawn consciousness; consciousness created the universe.

When Bob approached me about embodying his ideas in a novel, I was intrigued.  Science fiction speculates on the intersections between humanity and everything else, and these ideas suggested very large-scale intersections.  And I had always been interested in the behavior of consciousness, my own and everybody else’s (in some circles, this is called gossip).  But in addition to being intrigued, I was also skeptical.  On the one hand, could science support the idea that consciousness creates the universe?  On the other hand, wasn’t this just recycled philosophy 101 according to Irish philosopher George Berkeley, among others?  On the third hand (SF allows as many hands as you wish), wasn’t the idea of multiple universes just a currently popular gimmick to allow a stalwart hero to frolic through fantasy settings?

In order: Yes.  No.  No.

The major obstacle, Bob and I agreed, was going to be how to present and pace the science without interrupting the story more than necessary.  Biocentrism is a complex theory and we didn’t want to oversimplify it.  It’s important, for instance, that readers grasp the current, on-going experiments in applying quantum-level physics to the macro-world.  But neither did we want to turn a novel into a thinly disguised scientific treatise.  A novel is, foremost, someone’s story.  Caro experiences loss, death, love, and the sometimes wonderful, sometimes painful intricacies of human connections.

Getting all this into a novel took many iterations.  I wrote a section; Bob and I discussed it for plot, pacing, and scientific accuracy; we decided where the book should go next; I rewrote.  This went on for two years.  It was important to both of us to explore the impact of biocentrism not only on Caro, but also on other characters of various temperaments, and on the larger society.  Some of those impacts are negative, because science inevitably leads to technology, and technology can be exploited and abused.  The day humanity learned to control fire, arson became a possibility.

An additional initial difficulty for me was that Caro is—or was well on her way to becoming before a certain night at a certain party—a neurosurgeon.  I am not a neurosurgeon.  I am not a doctor of any sort.   So before I even began writing, I read four memoirs by neurosurgeons, taking notes and absorbing this (to me) alien world.  I discovered what actual doctors think about the dangers and rewards of their profession. I discovered the range of neurosurgery, from the “easy” removal of a meningioma conveniently located outside the brain and away from major cerebral arteries and veins, to the long, risky operations battling multiple traumas or deep-seated glioblastomas.  I also discovered that some neurosurgeons write much better prose than others.

Observer is my first collaborative novel.  Writing it was exhilarating, frustrating, eye-opening, and when it was finished, my view of the universe had shifted.  Eminent physicists like Stephen Hawking, Max Planck, and Neils Bohr, to name just a few of many, have said that consciousness is intricately woven into the very fabric of the universe.  As Caro, an ambitious and practical woman, moves through her adventures in friendship, danger, love, and surgery, she experiences first-hand the truth that those physicists already knew.  

Observer: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|iBooks

Visit the authors’ websites (Nancy Kress and Robert Lanza).