It’s a Book

by John Milliken Thompson |

Authors support independent booksellers: http://youtu.be/FzRKd2y1nXY

WTJU radio interview

by John Milliken Thompson |

Soundboard, 9/21/13, about 10 minutes in: http://wtju.net/vault

On the Road

by John Milliken Thompson |

I just got back from a nine-day book tour covering six North Carolina stores and the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance conference in New Orleans. I was at Bull’s Head, Regulator, McIntyre’s, Flyleaf, Country Bookshop, and Park Road; then at SIBA I was on a panel with four other writers. It’s always a pleasure and a privilege to go out and talk up what you’ve been working on for the past couple of years. Even more of a treat is that rare chance to connect face-to-face with readers and other writers. At SIBA Susan Gregg Gilmore and I read paragraphs on camera from each other’s books. Later on, after a mass signing event, I went out for drinks and dinner with other admired fellow writers—Michael Parker, Drew Perry, and Jamie Poissant.
Hanging out with writers is the icing; the cake is the chance to meet booksellers and readers and to talk about everything from work habits to research to my sheriff grandmother. What I especially like is the Q&A time, when I get to hear what my readers and potential readers are interested in. I love the back-and-forth that often comes from a question, whether it’s one I’ve entertained many times or something completely new.
As a writer with a background in journalism, I’ve had to adjust to talking about my work instead of asking questions. But the wonderful thing about book audiences is that we all share a love of reading. So before they even come up to have their book signed I know we are members of the same club, because I know that for us few experiences can compare with spending a dozen or so hours alone in a great story.
I’ll be going out again in a couple of weeks, hitting eight more cities and two festivals. By the end I’ll be looking forward to getting back to my writing routine—it’s a common feeling among writers on tour. But I also know that the time away is a good refresher in itself, and book tour in particular is invaluable for those connections, those reminders that we’re not writing for ourselves but for all kinds of people, all of us on the lookout for another good book.

Writing about Family

by John Milliken Thompson |

     A writer who wants to write about family goes up against many of the same problems as any writer of historical fiction. Of course, sometimes the two overlap, as in Love and Lament, a historical novel with origins in family lore. The question in either case is how much do we draw from real life and how much do we invent. There’s no simple formula; every writer makes his or her own way through the story. What is specific, though, to family-based fiction is that nagging doubt about creating characters and scenes that are either uncomfortably close to reality or might be judged “inaccurate.” Fiction about historical figures can run the same risk, only the critics are not generally family members.

     So, at what point do we say that the demands of art, for some particular story, require that we move on through that intersection of nonfiction and fiction, feeling all the while like grave robbers, indecent, but still obsessed with unearthing something from the past that no one but us could ever find, something beautiful and true that we can brush off and give to the world (or at least a few readers) and say, here, take a look at this—isn’t it amazing?

     I wish I had an answer. I think we have to trust that when we’re on to something rich in the fictional world, when we’re mining a vein, then it’s not only okay, it’s required of us as serious writers that we at least pursue it where it leads us and see if we can find in it something good and true, something worth giving to other people. If we’re only gossiping or presenting lurid details simply to shock and scandalize—in other words, to call attention to ourselves—we might reconsider our material. But if we’re using the material with care, trying to create characters with the dignity and depth they deserve, then we should be grateful for what we’ve been given.

The Fountain

by John Milliken Thompson |

I launched my second novel, Love and Lament, yesterday at Richmond’s Fountain Bookstore, the same place I launched my debut effort two years ago. Or, rather, Fountain did the launching, and I was the lucky beneficiary. In the past two years it has become more and more clear to me what a risky, labor-of-love adventure running an independent bookstore is. And what an act of defiance, against the odds, against trends. Proprietor Kelly Justice and her staff have created a cultural hub, the flowering, literary center of Virginia’s capital. It seems to me that every indie bookstore has its own character: Fountain has a funky, Shockoe Bottom charm, and Kelly is one of the sweetest, coolest booksellers I know. I’ve told her I could easily imagine local writers from times past stopping by on a regular basis. Edgar Allan Poe would’ve lurked outside, finally making up his mind to come in (after arguing brilliantly with himself, and perhaps saucy blogger Rebecca Schinsky going out and hooking her arm in his). Once inside, he’d mainly want to know how his own sales were going, and he’d leave with an armload of books that he could skewer in the pages of the Southern Literary Messenger. Thomas Nelson Page would drop by in some dapper outfit, removing his hat with a gallant bow to the ladies. And Ellen Glasgow would share the latest gossip about the neighbors.
We need these bookstores, because they’re more than quaint giftshops. Books give meaning and shape to our lives; they entertain and educate us like nothing else. And bookshops, with their experts and events and local individuality, create a community of committed book-lovers. It’s wonderfully heartening to know that there has been a recent uptick in indie business.
Inspired by true events, my new novel is an old-fashioned Southern family drama with lots of Sturm und Drang. It’s quite different from my first, a historical crime story, but in both cases, Kelly and Fountain were among the earliest, most vocal champions, and I’ll always be thankful.