Interview with Quinn Dalton

Yesterday, I reviewed Quinn Dalton's new collection of short stories, Bulletproof Girl, which, in this its first week of release, is doing well at Amazon. Today, I've got an interview with the author herself.

SE: Quinn, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. I really enjoyed the book, and I'm glad for the opportunity to ask you some questions about it.

QD: Thank you too, Scott, very much.

SE: First off, I've got to ask about the title. As someone who has been rightly chastised for using "girl" where I should have said "woman," I'd like to know why you went with "girl" in the title?

QD: I don't know if you've been rightly chastised--it depends on context, who you're talking to. I wanted the title to reflect the qualities of toughness and vulnerability that I see in all of the narrators. In this society, we respect toughness, and there's nothing weaker than being a girl--nothing worse than throwing like a girl, crying like a girl, being a pussy. I wanted that range in the title, because it's in the stories.

SE: To grossly summarize, a lot of bad stuff happens to the women in your stories. There's a definite darkness to the stories, but I don't think I'd call any of them morbid. There's always something, large or small, that made me feel okay by story's end. Was it important to you to not cross the line from dark to morbid?

QD: I wrote about the most important stretch of time in each of these character's lives. Usually that involves great change, sometimes disaster. I wasn't trying to give any story a happy ending or trying to avoid being too dark--those weren't really concerns for me as I was writing. I wanted to believe the stories, however they ended up.

SE: Well, I think the sincerity does show throughout you book, even in your story "Graceland," which stands out in my mind. It's very short, only 5 pages. It's the story of a woman who kills her husband's boss, and it features a protagoninst who, by comparison to your other women, is almost a superhero. Did you mean for this story to be taken realistically, or was this maybe a vision of a fantasy some of your other protagonists had?

QD: I get asked about this story a lot. I remember reading an article from a lit magazine editor who said, in giving advice about what to submit, "Please no more kill-your-boss fantasy stories." That's the way this started, though. Then I wondered how a person might think if she actually carried out the fantasy we've all had (admit it!) at least once. The narrator is physically very tough, and unremorseful, but she's not a winner, even though she gets away with murder. She doesn't have the love of her husband and child. They fear and tolerate her. In turn she feels contempt for them. She is denied intimacy.

SE: Continuing on "Graceland" for a moment, your protagonist pretty much does whatever she pleases. This is very divergent from your other protagonists, who often second-guess themselves into inertia. I'm reminded of one of your characters from "Bulletproof Girl," who, by contrast, gave herself just one transgression for her entire life. These are polar opposties, but which end of the scale do you think more accurately describes women?

QD: Yikes--"second guess themselves into inertia?" Don't give away the plot! OK, it's hard to generalize what women are like, or what behaviors characterize them. In "Graceland" and the title story, both women suffer. One woman is more aware of it than the other. I'd avoid saying that either are representative, but I hope that both feel authentic, fully human.

SE: There was a lot in your stories that I thought was very female, that felt very authentic. Frankly, I haven't seen this depth of thought from many men I've read who have written women characters. What are your feelings on authors writing about the other gender, and do you think that each does a good or bad job of writing the other?

QD: Thank you for the compliment about the depth of these characters' sensibilities. I don't know if writers have an innate advantage in writing within their own gender. Just as being a woman doesn't guarantee that I'll write great female characters, I don't believe it consigns me to writing less well from the male point of view. It's hard to create a convincing person. You have to be convinced by each character's voice and go from there.

SE: Switching gears, a couple of the stories in this collection are quite long (35-40 pages), and I know that one of the longer ones appeared in a literary journal. I also know that many journals don't like to go above, say, 5,000 words (about 20-25 pages). Did you have trouble getting the longer pieces published, and would you like to see more long short stories in journals?

QD: None of these stories were accepted on the first try. The most marketable one (in my opinion), "How to Clean Your Apartment," took seven years to publish. I wasn't sending it out every week, but still, I was surprised, because it is funny and short. I tend to send longer stories to fewer places, and I've even called editors to ask if they would consider looking at a longer story than what their word limit allows. Most say yes. I think a long story is held to a higher standard just by virtue of costing more to publish--and not just in actual real estate, but in what you can't publish to accommodate it. I love economy, and tend to read the shorter stories in a journal first. So it's hard for me to say I wish there were more long stories in journals.

SE: It seems that one of the things everyone likes to call a great irony is that we all claim to lead busier lives than ever, but short stories, which one would think are perfectly suited to a busy life, are losing ground to novels. Do you think the logic underwriting this "irony" is sound?

QD: I wrote an article recently for mediabistro about the squeeze on the commercial market for short stories. The Atlantic Monthly surveyed readers before removing fiction from monthly issues. While 25% said they always read fiction, far more said they always read non-fiction. That's a pretty literary audience, but most want news/commentary more than fiction. I'm in the 25%. I flip to the story first. I want that brief, intense escape. You can immerse yourself in a novel, but a short story can cling to you for days. Have you heard the statistic that less than 50% of adults buy more than one book per year? Don't know if I have that right. If it's true, they're buying for vacations or business trips. You don't find short story collections in airports. It's maybe a failure of marketing, but it's also a reflection of what readers seem to want.

SE: Sticking with short stories and novels, something I've always enjoyed in novels is a feeling of uncertainty, that some piece doesn't quite fit. I think a lot of short stories don't necessarily do that, instead coming together in a loose-string-clearing epiphany. To a certain extent, it seems unavoidable; it can be difficult to make a short story feel satisfying without that epiphany. With that said, I thought many of the stories in Bulletproof Girl were satisfying, without relying on the epiphany moment. Was that something you were trying to achieve?

QD: I read an article in Poets & Writers in which someone was complaining about the "epiphany-driven story." I'd not heard about this before, and had already finished the collection. So I wasn't consciously trying to avoid it, but if it's a bad thing, I'm glad I did.

SE: I wouldn't say it's bad all the time, only in too much abundance. I'd like to ask, how do you know when a story is "done," when it has the right impact? I would imagine that after you've gone through numerous revisions, it's tough to rely on yourself as a good judge of that.

QD: I give stories a lot of time to get "cold" again between revisions, because there's no other way for me to regain some kind of perspective. Also, I have great readers. My husband and my friends Julie Funderburk and Julianna Baggott are among the best. With my husband I generally wait until we have a long car ride, then I make him drive and listen to me read, poor man. Often he gets the earliest drafts.

SE: I know you've been very active regarding publicity. On Beatrice, you wrote about hiring your own indy publicist. How has that been working out for you regarding promo for Bulletproof Girl?

QD: I knew basically nothing about the blogosphere, as I've heard it termed, before working with Lauren and before reading Dan Wickett's EWN interviews with bloggers, so I've been introduced to a lot of new territory lately. Bulletproof Girl made # 80-something in Top-Selling Fiction and Literature on Amazon today. So I'm pretty pleased.

SE: I'm glad you made the leap. Since we're talking blogs, I'd like to ask your opinion of lit blogs. What's been your experiences with them? Do you think blog publicity is going to help Bulletproof Girl?

QD: I'm overwhelmed by them. I don't know how people maintain them so well. Yes, I do think blog publicity has already helped Bulletproof Girl. People have been emailing me, saying "I saw you on . . ." that wasn't happening with my novel last time around.

SE: Well, it's nice to finally have tangible evidence that people are paying attention to what gets said on blogs. In closing, I'd just like to ask what you are working on right now.

QD: I finished another collection and am working on a novel.

SE: I'll be looking forward to them. Thanks for taking time to do the interview Quinn. Again, I really enjoyed the book, and I hope it goes on to strong sales.

QD: Scott, thanks again for reading the book and for the great questions.

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

Great interview Scott! Very good questions, it helps when you obviously have read the author's work closely. And, of course, great responses by Quinn - a very thoughtful writer, one who pays attention to her craft.

Enjoy,