With two young daughters, a looming book deadline, and an attractive but complicated distraction named Adam complicating her situation even further, Joss has to decide what she wants for her family―and what family even means.
“During the hours she sat in Phil’s room,
she sometimes tried to fit together the pieces of her own parents’ marriage
while trying to create a map of some exotic place using the cracks in the ceiling
as an outline of this new world of fire and injury.”
This book is about four characters, Joss, Phil, Terpe and Adam and the
different ways that they connect, or disconnect after a devastating fire that
shakes the foundations of their lives. The fire takes place in the house of
Joss and Phil, who are married and Phil is badly injured by falling boards.
After spending weeks in a coma, Phil wakes up and his doctors soon work out
that he no longer recognizes his own wife. Joss feels many emotions course
through her upon finding this out, but mostly anger as she and Phil had been
near divorce before his injury and she now resents having to care for a man
that cheated on her.
The couple have two daughters, the oldest being Terpe who is a headstrong, surprisingly
intelligent child who takes it upon herself to discover how the fire in her
house started.
Meanwhile, Adam, a local electrician is
called upon to make repairs in the house. After meeting Joss, the two begin an
affair based on mutual longing for company.
Joss must decide how she wants to move forward, whether she wants to leave
Phil, be with Adam or something else entirely and all while finishing a book on
mythology that is due in mere months.
I really appreciated the realism of the relationships in this novel. Lenore H.
Gay perfectly writes the fraught situation between Joss and Phil, that, of
course, gets much worse after his head injury. This is a book that gives the
reader a bit of quiet contemplation and emotional attachment.
Hi Lenore, thank you so much for agreeing
to this interview!
I always enjoy looking at the
names that authors choose to give their characters. Where do you derive the
names of your characters? Are they based
on real people you knew or now know in real life? How do you create names for
your characters?
Yes, I do like to name characters based on
what seems to fit the character. I have a name book, it’s an unusual one my
father gave me in March, 2003. It’s Classic Baby Name Book, 2,000 Names from
the World’ Great Literature. By Grace Hamlin. The book is divided into girls’
and boys’ names. I read through the names, many you’d recognize, but perhaps
don’t know their origin. After the name, for instance Jessica, we find it’s a
Hebrew name meaning “he sees” and it’s from the Old Testament.
Phil was diagnosed with Capgras delusion.
Can you tell us more about that?
Brain research has revealed this syndrome
can be the result of a closed-head injury. The visual cortex relays information
through two routes. One route is the temporal lobe, which is linked to facial
recognition, and one to the limbic system, which registers emotional reaction.
With Capgras, the route from the visual cortex to the limbic system is damaged,
but the lobe is unharmed. For example, a person can look like “mother,”
“husband,” or “wife,” but the patient has no emotional response to the person,
hence the patient believes he/she is seeing an imposter.
Reading further I discovered the syndrome
usually appears in schizophrenia and dementia. However, a closed-head injury
can also cause the syndrome. I wondered how the syndrome might affect a family.
I made notes, jotted down ideas and developed the characters, then I wrote the
first draft and so on, until it became a manuscript.
Tell us about your cover. Did you design
it yourself?
I wish I had the talent to design book
covers. Alas, I don’t. The able artist at She Writes Press, my publisher,
developed the great cover. She sent me several possibilities and I chose this
one. It’s focus on fire certainly reflects what is in the novel. There are real
fires and at times the relationships are also fiery.
What writers have you drawn inspiration
from?
Here are some writers I’ve drawn
inspiration from over the years. It’s a mix of fiction, nonfiction and memoir.
I read daily and have since I was a young child. Peter Selgin, Gregory Orr,
Gretel Ehrlich, David Carr, Toi Derricote, Helen Macdonald, Caroline
Kettlewell, Andrew Dubus, Patti Smith, Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, Jack
McDermott, Tennessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, Peter Heller, Margaret Atwood,
Susan Choi, Haruki Murakami, T.C. Boyle, Michael Ondaatje, Charles Frazier,
Donna Tartt, Claire Vaye Watkins, Laura Van Den Berg, Eden Lupucki, Per
Petterson, Emily St. John Mandel.
What are you currently working on?
I have begun work on a sequel from my
first book, Shelter of Leaves. There were two characters in the book whom I
thought could work in another book. Sabine was the main character in Shelter of
Leaves. Sabine fled Washington, DC after the bombings began. She finally finds
shelter with a group of people in West Virginia, others who had also fled. One
of the characters at the West Virginia farm was Malcolm Sharp. While he was
interesting man, he wasn’t featured much in the book. Toward the end of writing
the Shelter I decided his character could carry the other main character in a
sequel. Then I wrote Other Fires mostly because I thought Capgras, a
misidentification syndrome, not a well-known medical challenge, could be interesting
to explore in fiction.
What kind of messages do you try to instill in your
writing?
I am a retired therapist. I began my career at age
20 working in a children’s inpatient psychiatric hospital while I earned
credentials. I have worked in outpatient and inpatient programs, often with
drug addicts and alcoholics who had dual diagnoses. For ten years I ran a
counseling practice, for my final three years of working, I worked at Virginia
Commonwealth University as Clinical Coordinator in the Rehabilitation
Counseling Program where I taught grad students.
My book characters are not based on former clients. I enjoy developing book characters. I think good characters development is one of the most important skills needed to write compelling fiction. While developing characters I’m watching the plot develop.
Her debut novel, Shelter of Leaves, was a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year award and a finalist for an INDEFAB award. For three years, Lenore has served on the Steering Committee of the RVALitCrawl, which has been featured in RVAMag, Richmond Family Magazine, and Richmond Magazine. She is an active member of James River Writers. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.
Website: https://lenoregay.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lenoregay.author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lenore_gay
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