Holly Goddard Jones

Holly Goddard Jones's new novel is The Next Time You See Me.

Form her Q & A at the Mourning Goats blog:

Your first book was a short story book, back in 2009; in February, your first novel, The Next Time You See Me will be published, how was writing and publishing the books different?

I was a grad student when I was working on the stories in Girl Trouble, and the book went through a few different incarnations. I took away a story, completely rewrote one, and heavily revised the others. But there was never, during all of this rewriting, the panicked sense that one move could unravel the whole project. There were plenty of other kinds of panic, but I never doubted that I was making a collection that would eventually hold together.

The novel, on the other hand—75 percent of the writing experience was believing I would never finish it, that I didn’t have the skill or the wherewithal necessary to pull it off. I can admit this now only because I did finish it. At the time, though, it was years of feeling like I was playing pretend. It wasn’t until I got to about the 250-page mark of the rough draft, and went back and did a structural overhaul of those first pages, that I saw the way the rest of the book would go and started to feel some confidence.

As for the differences in the publishing experiences, I’ll probably be able to better answer that a few months. This book will be out in hardcover, whereas Girl Trouble was a straight-to-paper release, and that feels significant in an entirely superficial way. If there’s a negative, I guess it’s that I probably no longer have the automatic goodwill that comes to a young person publishing a first book, especially a less commercial project like a book of stories. The pressures are...[read on]

Visit Holly Goddard Jones' website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Holly Goddard Jones & Bishop and Martha.

--Marshal Zeringue