Q&A with Wendy J. Fox

  

 

 

Wendy J. Fox is the author of the new novel The Last Supper. Her other books include the story collection What If We Were Somewhere Else. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Last Supper, and how did you create your character Amanda?

 

A: This actually started as a character sketch and a 2013 NaNoWriMo project—which I quickly abandoned five or six days in—but how I was attempting to manage the page count goals for NaNoWriMo was to structure each chapter as a single day.

 

I was participating in it to challenge myself; I’m typically a very slow writer and more of a 150-word-a-day person than a 1,200-word-a-day.

 

Ultimately, I used very few of the sentences that were just about word count, but I ended up keeping that basic structure of each chapter being a single day. Over the time it took for the manuscript to cohere as a novel, how I conceptualized what a day meant changed.

 

The Amanda character also evolved, but her genesis came from thinking a lot about how we live our lives and the choices we make with our time.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I notoriously struggle with titles! My first book, The Seven Stages of Anger, some readers confused for a self-help in the vein of the five stages of grief. It was a play on that, but the book is literary short stories.

 

Authors will say that writing a pitch letter and the synopsis is harder than writing the book. I agree those industry requirements are difficult. But titles! Way harder (for me) than a pitch letter.

 

The title was actually a suggestion from a beta reader, who noted that Amanda’s style of worship is to the oracle of Google. So, it’s not a nod to Jesus and the apostles, but rather the reliance we have on the search engines in our pockets. It also references a critical scene. As my beta reader pointed out: in our modern lives, sometimes it is the internet that is holy.

Q: How would you describe Amanda's relationship with her husband, Kyle?

 

A: Amanda and Kyle have conflict, but their conflict is pretty ordinary. Who among us has not, in a long-term relationship, felt deeply annoyed, frustrated, angered, or even hurt by our partner?

 

Amanda is not unique. She is carrying the mental load and the caregiving load in her household, and that’s not a new story nor a new scenario for women.

 

Kyle is actually not a terrible guy, he’s just somewhat checked out; Amanda has a pressurized feeling because she needs more in her life than what she has. Kyle, to be fair, has the same feelings, but the novel is not focused on his stakes.

 

It’s a thing that happens in marriage or long partnerships: you take one another for granted, you stop remembering why you fell in love. Amanda and Kyle are so average in this way. I think of them as a warning against complacency rather than a case study.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I almost never know how a project will end—I am usually writing to discover. I start with characters, a basic sense of plot, but then it is figuring out how the people fit into the action. It’s never the other way around for me. I don’t try to figure out how the action fits the people.

 

To be more direct about the question: I made many changes. A lot of it is coming to a deeper understanding of the characters. Plots necessarily change as the characters develop.

 

What would have made sense for 2013 Amanda, emerging on random pages, is not what made sense for her as the novel came together. When I was ready to pitch in 2023, she was much more formed, and her story followed.

 

A novel or a short story is a door that opens the reader into a world, but the door has to hang on some kind of hinge. That might be action. It might be character. I think both are fine, as long as it’s all working in confluence.

 

However, what changes to the ending really came down to was recognizing Amanda’s search for both economic and creative agency.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Right now I am working on a series of novellas. I’m interested in this form because I love both long short stories and short novels. That said, a novella is neither of those things, but it’s that space where I can spread out more than a short story (my first writing love), but also not go into the consuming world of writing a novel.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I would like to acknowledge how hard it is for creatives. I feel very privileged to have publishing partnerships with SFWP, Press 53, and Underground Voices. My next milestone birthday is 50, so I’m without question on the back half of my life. For writers who are a lot (or even a little) younger than me, please keep going. Keep writing. It really does matter.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Wendy J. Fox.