This week, we’re welcoming historical fiction author Debra Brenegan, whose title SHAME THE DEVIL explores the history of writer Fanny Fern in the early 19th century. Debra is here to talk about the novel and offer a copy to a lucky winner. Please leave your comment with an email address for a chance to win. Here's the blurb:
**Q&A with Debra Brenegan**
Can
you tell us a little about yourself and how long you’ve been writing?
I was a journalist for years before
starting my first novel. I soon realized
I had no idea what I was doing, so enrolled in a M.A. creative writing program
to learn how to go from being a journalist to a novelist. I loved graduate school so much that I kept
going and got my Ph.D. I did finish that
first novel, but it still isn’t published (although I haven’t given up on
it). Besides my many journalistic
articles, I’ve published poems, short stories, and now, my novel Shame the Devil.
Can
you tell us briefly what your book is about?
Shame the Devil tells the remarkable and true story of
Fanny Fern (the pen name of Sara Payson Willis), one of the most successful,
influential, and popular writers of the nineteenth century. A novelist,
journalist, and feminist, Fern (1811-1872) outsold Harriet Beecher Stowe, won
the respect of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and served as literary mentor to Walt
Whitman. Scrabbling in the depths of poverty before her meteoric rise to fame
and fortune, she was widowed, escaped an abusive second marriage, penned one of
the country's first prenuptial agreements, married a man eleven years her
junior, and served as a nineteenth-century Oprah to her hundreds of thousands
of fans. Her weekly editorials in the pages of the New York Ledger over
a period of about twenty years chronicled the myriad controversies of her era
and demonstrated her firm belief in the motto, "Speak the truth, and shame
the devil." Through the story of Fern and her contemporaries, including
Walt Whitman, Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, and
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shame the Devil brings the intellectual and social
ferment of mid-nineteenth-century America to life.
Who
is your intended audience? Have you been
able to cross over into other audiences as well?
The cool thing about this book, I
think, is that it appeals to a lot of audiences. The book is historical fiction, certainly,
and women’s fiction, but will also appeal to people who like nineteenth-century
literature and/or who are interested in early American media and the rise of
the celebrity. Like the film Midnight in Paris, the book is peppered
with real American writers like Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe and
Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is fun to see
how they interacted with one another. I
just visited with an all-male book group who adored the book. We sat and chatted about it for two hours!
Why
did you choose your particular genre?
I wrote this book as my Ph.D.
dissertation project. I had been doing a
lot of research about Fanny Fern and was writing a lot of papers about her and
her work. I wanted to combine my
interest in American Literature (specifically, Fern), Women’s Studies and
creative writing to write a historical novel that would entertain and inform.
Where
do you write? Do you have a favorite
place?
I like to write at home, in complete
silence, preferably with nobody else around.
If my husband is home and he walks by and sees me writing, he knows to
just keep going. When my kids were home,
I’d shut the door to my office when I was writing and they knew not to disturb
me unless there was blood.
What
kind of research did you have to do during the writing process?
I spent about two years reading
everything I could find about Fanny Fern.
I read her original writings and the work that other scholars had
written about her. I visited the Fern
archives at Smith College in Massachusetts and spent many days combing through
everything there. I took pages of notes
and made many copies. I also researched
the era I was writing about – the mid 1800s – and visited museums, read books
and watched films about those times. I
made a few trips to New York City to better envision Fern’s world and even got
to go into her former house. For
nit-picky details, I’d search the Internet to try to understand the era’s
currency or to see when exactly people could buy ice cream from a Boston street
vendor. I’m sure I’ve got at least a few
things wrong and am counting on eagle-eyed readers to let me know all about
those errors. ;)
Who
is your publisher and how did you get accepted by them? Did you pitch your book yourself or go
through an agent?
My publisher is SUNY Press, Excelsior
Editions. I pitched the book myself, at
a writer’s convention, directly to the acquisition editor. He graciously listened to me, more graciously
consented to reading the manuscript. It
took a little while, but eventually, he and the rest of his editorial board
decided to take on the book. SUNY has
been wonderful to work with from day one.
I’m extremely grateful to have found the perfect publisher for this
book.
What’s
next for you?
I just finished the draft of another novel, a
contemporary fiction work tentatively titled Motherless. This book is
about an edgy college student who tries to hide her pregnancy while interacting
with a group of dysfunctional characters in a town far away from her
roots. I hope to find an agent/publisher
for this work soon. I also have a short
story collection, Standing Heat: Stories by Debra Brenegan, currently
circulating among publishers.Thank you, Debra, and best of luck with Shame the Devil.
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