From her Q & A with Jacqueline Kolosov in Shenandoah:I came to your remarkable body of work through your third novel, Boleto; and so it is here that I’d like to begin. A Publishers Weekly review quotes you as saying: “‘This was not the planned book….I was working on another novel and sitting in a lecture and this book just came to me.’” Would you discuss both your composition process and the genesis and evolution of Boleto?The Page 69 Test: Boleto.
My teacher and mentor George Garrett used to say previous books never prepare you for future books, that each book has its own rules and demands and surprises. I wasn’t able to absorb that advice for years – partly because I couldn’t imagine writing enough books for it to matter. I like to plan projects. Planning gives me a false sense of control. It allows me to gear up and pretend the road ahead will be smooth and solid. This is one of the ways I fool myself into spending years (sometimes fruitless years) working on a book. In 2010, I was 150 pages into a novel I’d been planning for quite a while when Boleto struck me like the proverbial bolt of lightning. I was taking notes at a lecture given by a pair of archaeologists when it just came to me: the characters, the three settings, the rough arc of the story. I’d met the model for Will Testerman probably seven years earlier. I had a couple of small scratches in my notebook about that young horse trainer, but I do a lot of scratching. Most of it doesn’t lead to much. This deus ex machina arrival of a story was brand new to me. I vowed I wouldn’t waste the opportunity. I do my share of dumb things as a writer. But this time I was...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue