Danielle Teller

Danielle Teller is in her second career, writing, which involves a lot more rejection than her first career, doctoring, but the hours are much better. She still misses Canada and academics, but life as a Californian empty-nester is also pretty great. She is the author of two novels, All the Ever Afters and Forged, and is also the author of a bunch of nonfiction, only about half of which describe unpronounceable molecules.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I tried to come up with a title that riffs on the word “gilded,” since Forged is set in the Gilded Age, and the story revolves around a Gatsby-like con artist, making the point that not all that glitters is gold. Everything I came up with was too clunky, and it was my husband who suggested the alternative we wound up using. “Forged” works well in all its connotations: The protagonist is herself a counterfeit, but she’s also self-invented; she has forged and formed herself in a harsh world. She uses forgery as a tool to make her millions, and she forges forward through adversity. Finally, Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate, plays a small but vital role in the story.

What's in a name?

At the beginning of my novel, the protagonist’s name is Fanny Bartlett, an unassuming name for a farm girl whose family emigrated from England to the Canadian wilderness in order to carve out some land. Over time, she morphs into the high society Catherine “Kitty” Warren. Warren is her married name, and she chooses Catherine for the character in Wuthering Heights, because Fanny longs to be wild and unruly like the girl she admires and loves. Kitty is one of those diminutive nicknames popular among East Coast socialites.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage self would approve of the rags-to-riches aspect of the story but would be surprised and disapproving of the focus on relationships. In my teens I was a science fiction fan; I liked that sci-fi books were all about plot and ideas, largely eschewing the messiness and potential ickiness of human relations. As an adult, I’m fascinated by humanity.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings seem more arbitrary than endings to me; I don’t tend to overthink them. Endings stay with readers and color the whole reading experience, so I fret over them a lot. Figuring out the ending for a con artist story was particularly tricky as I wanted to preserve moral ambiguity and some feeling of legerdemain; I’m interested but also nervous to hear what readers think of it!

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I can relate to some of the feelings my characters experience, but I have little in common with any of the characters in Forged, other than small things, like a love of reading. My personality is quiet and rule-following, so I’d make a really bad con artist or socialite.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

We are living through what has been called the second Gilded Age, with terrible wealth inequality, poor worker protection, eroding social welfare and reckless billionaires who seem to be motivated by nothing but greed and adulation. This got me interested in writing about the first Gilded Age, in part as a reminder that we’ve been here before and things can get better if we have a will to change.

Visit Danielle Teller's website.

Writers Read: Danielle Teller (May 2018).

The Page 69 Test: All the Ever Afters.

My Book, The Movie: All the Ever Afters.

--Marshal Zeringue