I Like Big Books & I Cannot Lie

There's a nice interview with Elizabeth Kostova over at Powell's (along with many other great author interviews, check 'em out), in which she talks about her first novel, The Historian, and like some other writers lately, feels the need to clarify for everyone that yes, she is literary. She shouldn't have to, but then a $2 million dollar advance seems to raise the same eyebrows that the nouveau riche did. Go figure. Anyways, what was really interesting to me was her talk about Dickens, the great, fat, archetectonic novel, and if it can be 'exciting':

For one thing, I wanted to see if it would be possible to blend suspense with that sense of We have all the time in the world for story.

My last book (EPIC TRILOGY ALERT) is such an experiment. It's got a lot of story between its pages, but hopefully it's as dramatic and inducive to page-turning as any good book. Oh, and it's literary, by the way. Although the writing of the third book is a ways off, I did go out and buy a foresty green binder and some paper today, as the notes will pick up more now, and I like to have a binder for every book I write. Doesn't always work out that way (I have as many ATM slips with notes on them as pieces of loose leaf) but we'll give it a go.

I wrote five fast pages on the new short story tonight, after going back and revising what I'd written the other day to reflect a third-person subjective POV. My hero John Gardner may have had it in for this particular style, but I think it lends itself well, in its limits, to Millie's situation. Ah, Millie. She's quickly becoming one of my favorite characters.

Somebody didn't like that Harry and Ginny got it on.

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