We bet you thought we weren't coming back didn't ya? Well didn't ya? The Writer always had faith but Jaye, you know Jaye the cynic. And on it goes. The short and the long of it, well no, just the short of it is that we've had this hiatus of upwards of six months in order to have time to spend with the plethora of doctors who passed the time scratching their heads and looking at us with those calm impersonal eyes while suggesting the most outlandish of possible problems. Ie Multiple Sclerosis. The next time a good old boy in a white jacket suggests MS and then has you wait six months with those words hanging over your head before you see the next white jacket, shoot us an email and we can commiserate.
So we're back and ready to rock and roll. As the fates would have it, the lovely Addison James (http://addisonjwriter.com/ ) has tagged us in a self-interview which sounds like the perfect way to get back into the cyber conversation and reach our dangling threads of thoughts into your lovely eyeballs. As we're desperately out of touch, Jaye has voted not to tag anyone in this post. But if you are a writer and want to answer these questions, please do tag us back so we can visit!
What is your working title of your book?
The title is Face Control. It came via the title of a Handsome Furs album which they named from a Russian phrase having to do with only the most beautiful and successful people getting into clubs. The vetting of clubbers is called face control.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The Writer is reluctant to admit this, but the initial idea came from a Sims 3 computer game in which a career fashion designer got married and kept having boys when she wanted girls. She even ditched a husband thinking he could only make boys. After giving up hope and saying ‘five boys is enough’ she adopted a girl only to become pregnant and give birth to twin girls.
What genre does your book fall under?
Face Control is a contemporary family saga.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
There are several main characters but for the career mother I often consider Meryl Streep. For her twin daughters I like Audrey Tautou and Juliette Binoche.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
The youngest daughter of a powerful east coast family must come to terms with her own identity while facing the deception that made her family wealthy.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
We are not currently considering this project for any kind of publication. There is still a lot to do and we’re enjoying it far too much.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Four months after the Writer dragged herself away from the Sims 3. She had five pages of notes from her computer game drama to work into a plot.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
The first book that comes to mind is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Family saga published nowadays tend to be immigrant stories. The mother character in our story comes from Italian parents that struggled to adapt, but their daughter is determined that no one in her adult life know that she was every born into that background.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The points of inspiration are endless with this novel which has been a truly astronomical undertaking as far as complexity and influences. Jaye has read countless books looking for style and technique ideas, ways to cheat problem children such as spacing and time passage. I, the lazy one, have watched films, and shows, noticing the nervous twitches of certain actors or kinds of actors. This project has been rather a rich experience of all types of cultural and literary textures. We can only hope that when the work is finally done that those colours shine through for the reader.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
This book, of all the projects we have worked on, really has something for everyone. There is a storyline in Hollywood with two characters involved in making movies. One son lives in Nebraska and lives a good old Midwestern life entirely alien to the rest of his family living on both coasts. There is a romance and the guise of a romance that becomes something even better with understanding. If Jaye may borrow an expression often used by her brother. It is an ‘epic’ story.
