C.J. Spataro is the author of the new novel More Strange Than True. She is also an educator, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications. She lives in Philadelphia.
Q: What inspired you to write More Strange Than True, and how did you create your character Jewell?
A: A few years ago, I was working on a short story collection. In this collection all of the stories had some kind of speculative element: horror, sci-fi, fantasy – something like that. They all also had central female characters and examined female relationships.
For some reason, I don’t even really remember why, but I was thinking back to my early days in Philadelphia. I was kind of lonely and depressed and I also had a dog that I loved a lot. He got me up on days when I otherwise probably would not have gotten out of bed.
I’m pretty sure on more than one occasion I kind of wished that I could find someone to love me as much as my dog did – or maybe just have my dog be my boyfriend.
Once I got this idea in my head, I started thinking, well, what if your dog could be your boyfriend, how would that work exactly? Who would turn him into a man? What kind of crazy things might happen?
The more I thought about it the more I knew it was too big of an idea to be a short story. I also talked to some friends and realized that I wasn’t the only person to have these thoughts about a pet!
I don’t know where Jewell’s name came from. It just popped into my head and I kind of liked it – it felt right. My sister is an environmental engineer, and so I was inspired by her and some of the stories she’s shared about her early days working as a consultant.
As for Jewell’s backstory, I needed to put her in a position where she might be feeling bad enough to make that wish.
It’s a weird thing for me. When I get an idea for a piece of fiction, whether it’s a short story or a novel (or something in between) the characters and the “story” (not necessarily the plot) kind of all come together.
That doesn’t mean things don’t change as I’m drafting and revising, but I kind of see a character in my imagination – sometimes I hear dialogue.
For me the whole thing is very visual. I know it’s not like that for a lot of writers, but for me it’s like a movie or pieces of a movie are coming into focus in my head as I’m thinking about a story and then later when I’m writing and revising.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title is a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Shakespeare play that inspired a lot of the book and from which I took many of the characters. The longer speech is an epigraph in the novel.
The working title was Complicated Magic, which I thought was too much like Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, plus I thought a quote from Shakespeare would be a good tie-in.
For me, “more strange than true” kind of puts me in Jewell’s head a bit. She goes through such a strange and emotional journey. I imagined that she might think something like this at the end of the novel – a way for her to process what happens.
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 knew how I wanted the book to end. I had no idea how I was going to get there or what was going to happen between Oberon turning into a man and my nebulous idea for an ending.
About three quarters of the way through I got very stuck. I was away at a writing retreat, determined to figure it out – I needed something big to happen, a turning point.
For some reason I started thinking about this German art song “Der Erlkönig.” The music is by Schubert and the text is a poem by Goethe. I don’t know, something just clicked. I listened to it over and over as I wrote this big revelation scene thinking this is either really going to work or it’s going to be terrible. Hopefully readers will think it worked out okay!
Q: The writer Gregory Frost said of the book, “A surprisingly bittersweet comic ‘romantasy,’ More Strange Than True deftly blends A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a contemporary narrative that even gives a nod to the tale of Persephone and Adonis.” What do you think of that description?
A: At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the novel being categorized as a “romantasy” to be honest. Not because I have any particular feelings about the genre (which seems to be everywhere and is very popular), but because I’m not sure that the story sticks close enough to the expected tropes of a romance to really fit.
As for the comparison to Persephone and Adonis, I wasn’t really thinking about that particular myth when I was writing the story, but I can see now how it lines up.
I’m always shooting for bittersweet and comedic – at least I’m almost always going to have comedic elements in my work. Some of my short stories are very intense, but More Strange is probably the breeziest thing I’ve ever written. At least it feels pretty breezy to me!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m putting the finishing touches on a new novel titled Kaiju Island, which is historical and non-linear. It’s told from multiple points of view and utilizes a lot of “formalistic” ideas – meaning forms borrowed from something else. In this case, journal entries, field notes, faux academic work, and footnotes.
It was very much inspired by classic Japanese kaiju films and American films like King Kong and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. It has a central love story, but it also has aliens and giant monsters. This might be the most ambitious thing I’ve ever written, but it was also a lot of fun.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I’m so grateful to have an opportunity to share this work with readers. Publishing can be a tough business and requires a certain amount of resiliency. I’m 61, which is pretty old for a debut novelist, but I’m going to continue to write for as long as I can, and hopefully publish more books and stories.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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