The child of two college professors, Skyler White grew up in an environment of scholarship and academic rigor, so naturally left high school to pursue a career in ballet. She’s been dancing around research and thinking through muscle cramps ever since. She has a master’s degree in theater and work experience in advertising, has won awards as a stage director and appeared on reality TV. She is mother to a tall red-headed athlete and a short blond Lego master, married to a Mohawk-wearing inventor, and lives in Texas.
Welcome to the Dark Phantom Review, Skyler! Why don’t you start by telling us a bit about your latest book, and what inspired you to write it?
and Falling, Fly is, at its core, a love story between Olivia, the fallen angel of desire, and Dominic, a self-medicating neuroscientist. Having realized everyone you don’t love tastes the same, Olivia goes home to Ireland, to the Hotel of the Damned, only to meet Dominic there. He’s a radical neuroscientist whose research is fueled by his attempts to cure secret, inexplicable flashbacks to things that never happened. He tries to enroll Olivia in his research study. She says medicine can’t cure mythology, and that his “seizures” are memories of past incarnations, which is completely unacceptable to him as a scientist – even if it would actually explain what he’s been experiencing.
I wrote and Falling, Fly because I needed to tangle with Desire – with what it means to want and not get, with what turns desire into craving or addiction, and what takes it away. Because I was interested in the difference between wanting and being wanted, Olivia can only feed on people who desire or fear her. Because, like most women, I struggle with body image, she’s a shape-shifter. Because she let me wrestle with these things through her, she is an angel – even if she’s still kicking my ass.
How long did it take you to write the book?
It took me a little over a year to write and Falling, Fly.
In order to willfully subject myself to the discomforts of writing, I have to be really curious about a question. For and Falling, Fly, the question was: What is the nature of a woman’s desires? How they are different from a man’s, and what happens when they aren’t (or are) satisfied? Of course, the problem with this method is that it forces you to answer your question in order to finish your book.
Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?
Not so much writer’s block, which is a nice, clean, hard-edged thing; as writer’s morass – a writer’s bog. I get mired sometimes, but the terrible truth is that I rather enjoy it. I like the struggle, and I’m actually happier in my writerly slough of despond than I am out in the nice, clean healthful air between projects.
What authors or type of books do you read for fun?
I am an avid reader and almost always have at least three different books going at a time. I’ll have a book of poetry I’m reading, and I usually start every reading session with a few pages from that. And then I have a current novel and non-fiction book. Depending where I am in my own process, I’ll move more quickly through one or the other— the non-fiction if I’m doing research before starting a new project, fiction if I’m currently writing. I read a really wide range of genre and non-genre fiction, and there’s nothing I won’t read except bad writing.
Do you think a critique group is essential for a writer?
I know there are writers out there who work without one, but I couldn’t do it. I have an online crit group, and an individual writing partner. My husband is always one of my first readers, too, because he has a great eye and can be more candid than anyone else.
Writing, for me, is a bit like navigating by Google Maps. You start with this global view, but you have to zoom in to get ‘driveable’ detail, and the screen can’t hold both scales of vision in view at one time. Then, once you start actually driving, the roads are different than the map, and you have to adjust or take the scenic detour. At that point, I can still refer to my printed, small-scale maps, and still remember the zoomed-out view, but writing isn’t just driving. It’s driving and leaving a ‘followable’ trail, and that’s where I completely lose the ability to monitor myself. I need outside eyes to tell me if the breadcrumbs are being eaten by birds. I need feedback to determine if the path I’ve taken is clearly marked enough, scenic enough, and fun enough to be worth inviting others to follow.
Everyone is an authority on their own experience. I can know with certainty that my book was fun for me, but to know how it is for others, I need others.
Do you have another novel on the works? Would you like to tell readers about your current or future projects?
My second novel for Berkley is coming out in December. It’s called In Dreams Begin, and I’m going to give you the first sneak peek at the back cover copy, because we’ve just ironed it out, and I’m rather pleased with it:
“Close your eyes tightly—tightly—and keep them closed . . .”
From a Victorian Ireland of magic, poetry and rebellion, Ida Jameson, an amateur occultist, reaches out for power, but captures Laura Armstrong, a modern-day graphic artist instead. Now, for the man or demon she loves, each woman must span a bridge through Hell and across history . . . or destroy it.
“Every passionate man is linked with another age, historical or imaginary,
where alone he finds images that rouse his energy.” W. B. Yeats
Anchored in fact on both sides of history, Laura and Ida, modern rationalist and fin de siècle occultist, are linked from the moment Ida channels Laura into the body of celebrated beauty and Irish freedom-fighter Maud Gonne. When Laura falls—from an ocean and a hundred years away—passionately, Victorianly in love with the young poet W. B. Yeats, their love affair entwines with Irish history and weaves through Yeats’s poetry until Ida discovers something she wants more than magic in the subterranean spaces in between.
With her Irish past threatening her orderly present and the man she loves in it, Laura and Yeats—the practical materialist and the poet magus—must find a way to make love last over time, in changing bodies, through modern damnation, and into the mythic past to link their pilgrim souls . . . or lose them forever.
Do you have a website/blog where readers may learn more about you and your work?
Absolutely! http://www.SkylerWhite.com
I’d encourage anyone with questions about and Falling, Fly or comments on it to get in touch with me. A novel is one half of a conversation, and I’m looking forward to listening.
Is there anything else you’d like to tell my readers?
Just that I’m so pleased they’re here. My earliest and most intense reading experiences came before the internet, and although you can’t really miss something that never existed, I missed the communion the Internet has allowed writers and readers to share. I’ll be here throughout the day to answer any questions.
Purchase links:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0425232344
Barnes & Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/And-Falling-Fly/Skyler-White/e/9780425232347/
Borders: http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0425232344
IndieBound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780425232347
Watch the trailer!
