UNDRESS ME IN THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN: AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND BONUS ENTRIES!

UNDRESS ME IN THE
TEMPLE OF HEAVEN
BY SUSAN JANE GILMAN

If you missed the first post with my review and giveaway chances, you can go here for more about this wonderful book! You may post comments as entries under either of my posts and they will count.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW:

1. First, do you have a website or blog that has lots of information about you that readers could go to?

Sure. I’ve got a website www.susanjanegilman.com that will link you to my bio, author events, my blog “A View from A Broad” and more information than you probably need!

2. What is the next or current book/project you are working on?

My three published books are nonfiction. Now, frankly, I think I’ve had it with reality. It’s time to write a novel! I’ve started sketching out two -- one comic, one serious. I oscillate between the two depending on my mood: it’s probably manic-depression-as-applied-to-literature.

3. What gets you started on a new book? A character or story idea or….?

So far, what gets me started on a new book has always been outrage – outrage coupled with a story worth telling.

Every time I’ve sat down to try and write the Great American Novel (or, okay, the Mediocre American Novel), something in our culture has caught my attention, pissed me off, and compelled me to write a book.

About ten years ago, someone sent me a copy of the self-help besteller, “The Rules: Time Tested Tips for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right.” It’s really despicable. Essentially, the authors advise women to act like diet soda: be artificially sweet and bubbly for the rest of your life, and you can trick a man into marrying you.

I couldn’t stand it. “What about a book of rules for catching a life, not just a husband? Something smart and attitudinal and funny and progressive?” I cried to my friends. That’s how “Kiss My Tiara” was born.

My second book, “Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress,” was actually conceived out of the tragedy of September 11th.

For months after the attacks, I was a flat-out basket-case. All I wanted to read were funny, personal books. But when I looked at the humor and memoirs being written by women, it seemed that most of them were about either a) being single or b) going shopping. Oh pul-lease, I thought. There is so much more to our lives than that.

And so the idea for “Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress” began to take shape. I thought about all the different experiences in my life that were both unique yet universal – twirling in a tutu full of childish ambitions, getting bullied, chasing a rock star, heartbreak, first paychecks, divorce, confronting the viciousness of the world...

There was one major story from my life that I left out of “Hypocrite,” however. And this became the topic of my third book – also as a reaction to our culture.

In 1986, when I was fresh out of college, a classmate and I planned this epic journey around the globe based on a paper placemat from the International House of Pancakes. (“Hey,” we said drunkenly, “let’s eat pancakes of many nations in many nations!”) We wanted to be the female Odysseus, Bryon, and Huck Finn all-in-one and have “an adventure worthy of great literature.”

Since we wanted to go completely off the beaten track, we decided to kick off our trip in the People’s Republic of China. China, at that point, was a nation in lockdown that had only just opened up to backpackers. My friend and I spoke no Mandarin and knew nothing about Asia, but we figured we were bright, bold, and American – so how hard could it be?

Well, we found out. As soon as we arrived in China, we found ourselves in completely over our heads – wildly disoriented, homesick, hungry, and stripped of everything familiar in a Communist country. Quickly we began to unravel. We ended up having an adventure “worthy of great literature,” all right – except it was like “The Heart of Darkness,” not “Huckleberry Finn.”

Since it was a fairly harrowing, traumatic, and embarrassing story, I was reticent about ever writing it -- at least as nonfiction. But yet again, things began happening in our culture that compelled me to react.

In 2003, President Bush described our invasion of Iraq as “a cakewalk,” I turned to my husband and said, “’Cakewalk’? Is he kidding? That sounds like something stupid I would’ve said as a 21-year-old at the IHOP.” I also heard about the soldiers – 19, 20 years old – coming home with mental problems after being thrust into a completely alien environment.

On top of this, a spate of bestselling books began coming out with plots along the lines of

After my heartbreak, I decided to heal myself by renovating a villa in the Mediterranean. To recuperate from my divorce, I thought, why not eat a lot of pasta, then go to an ashram?

Whole nations and cultures seemed to be regarded as little more than venues for personal makeovers and American enrichment.

And so, that’s what drove me to write my latest memoir, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, in all its naked honesty.

I wanted to debunk our romantic myths of swaggering Americans who simply tromp into a foreign country and prevail. Being a stranger in a strange land can be achingly lonely, unnerving, and ridiculously difficult. I felt a responsibility to tell this other side of the story—that of the naïve, freaked-out Westerners like me -- who bungle into a place, have their egos handed to them on a platter, and are lucky to get out alive.

Funnily enough, I don’t think of myself as an outraged person. My intention when I write is to offer comfort and insight to people and to make them feel less alone. If they have a good laugh at my expense, so much the better. But the impetus behind much of my work, I realize, can probably be boiled down to one single, reactive sentence: “Are you f***ing kidding me?”

4. What is your best advice to anyone, including young people, who want to be writers?

Read well. Read voraciously. Keep copious notes. But when all is said and done, if you want to be a writer, you’ve got to do one thing above all else: get your butt in that chair. Don’t wait for the Muse or a lightening bolt of inspiration to hit. Get your butt in that chair every day and write, whether you feel inspired or not. It’s like any other discipline: practicing scales or repeatedly doing lay-ups. You’ve got to keep at it. And then be merciless with yourself. Edit, rewrite like a maniac, and seek out constructive criticism. Take writing classes and workshops. But don’t take feedback personally. View it as a diagnosis, not a judgment. It should be used to make your work better, not interpreted as a verdict on you as a person or your talent. Develop a thick skin. Criticism may always sting, but don’t let it devastate you. Be fearless and relentless.

BONUS
GIVEAWAY
ENTRIES

THANKS TO MIRIAM AND THE
HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, I HAVE
FIVE COPIES OF THIS WONDERFUL
MEMOIR/BOOK TO GIVEAWAY!


--U.S. AND CANADIAN RESIDENTS ONLY
--NO P. O. BOXES
---INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
IN CASE YOU WIN!
--ALL COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE TO
COUNT AS MORE THAN ONE!

HOW TO ENTER BONUS GIVEAWAY
ENTRIES:

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU ENJOYED OR FOUND INTERESTING IN SUSAN'S INTERVIEW

+1 MORE ENTRY: IF YOU COULD ASK AUTHOR SUSAN JANE GILMAN ONE QUESTION, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

+1 MORE ENTRY: BLOG ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND COME BACK AND LEAVE A LINK

+1 MORE ENTRY: TWEET ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND COME BACK AND LEAVE A LINK...YOU MAY DO THIS ONE TIME EACH DAY BUT MUST COMMENT EACH TIME YOU DO ONE. I WILL CHECK AND EACH TWEET OR RETWEET WILL COUNT AS AN ENTRY.

+1 MORE ENTRY: SHARE ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY ON FACEBOOK AND COME BACK AND LEAVE A LINK SO I CAN FOLLOW TO FIND IT. PLEASE DO THIS ONLY ONCE!

GIVEAWAY ENDS AT
6 PM, EST, MARCH 13