Vera Nazarian 2009 Interview
Vera Nazarian is nominated for her novella “The Duke in His Castle.”
Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. Let’s first talk about The Duke in His Castle. What made you decide that the length would be that of a novella, as opposed to a novel?
Good question. Would you believe (to quote Maxwell Smart) that this work originally started out as a short story? I think all ideas start out as pre-inflated rubber balloons. Depending on their potential scope they grow as big and blimpy as a multi-book series or stay as tiny condom-sized condiments of flash fiction.
In this case, I think I did have a story, or at most a novelette in mind—just two characters interacting, Rossian and Izelle, yin-yang in a nutshell. But then all the introspection and the compounded thickness of the mental state of the characters forced me to switch gears. First, I broke the single story into scenes. Then something else happened, and the scope of the story shifted, expanded. I believe the Castle itself became a character and added all the baroque hoary atmosphere, and the servants, and the ancient history. . . .
I did consider briefly padding it out further into a novel but that was really not the story’s natural length. As is, I think it is just right. When Tanith Lee read the novella, she told me that she thought it would make a stage play, with the kind of insular stage-level intensity between characters, the one-on-one riffing off dramatic dialogue, etc. Indeed, a play makes better sense to me than a novel.
What was the most difficult part in writing it and getting it published?
As I mentioned elsewhere, this is a work of twenty years. I’ve always been an ambitious kid, and unfortunately my college-age aspirations had overshot my abilities by several decades. (Fortunately, these days my ambition works in Benjamin Button-reverse mode, and the older I get the less I think of my “razmakh”—a great Russian word that doesn’t exactly translate but means “the swinging wide of one’s arms” in the metaphoric sense.)
The difficulty in writing and rewriting The Duke in His Castle was that I knew long in advance this was supposed to be somehow an intense, “important” work, but the first short drafts were inadequate in every sense. I had to really learn to write first, before I could write it. And part of the learning meant I had to immerse myself in the claustrophobic mindset over time. As for the language—the thick, long sentences—it is the Castle speaking. It did not start out in such a dense style but evolved layers, like lichen growing over old moldy granite walls.
As a result, the characters are a little insane. Rossian, the young Duke, is not particularly likeable, and at times he is demonic. At others, he is a lonely little boy.
Now, most writers realize that novellas don’t have venues and there are very few places you can sell one. Although, these days I must say the situation has improved vastly, with places like PS Publishing and a number of other fine small presses that specialize in novellas. But it used to be you could only serialize them in the digests. So not many people intentionally start out with the intention of creating a novella unless they have a specific market in mind.
Erzebet YellowBoy was kind enough to take The Duke for her micro-press Papaveria Press, in order to do a marvelous hand-made art edition; that got delayed due to her moving to the UK, and other things came up, and in the meantime, my father died and I basically felt I really needed to bring this work out myself before a mass audience. I and it could no longer wait. And so I did the book through Norilana—in many ways to do a personal tribute to the strange cycle of death and life and death and life and….
Any update on its proposed hand-bound edition?
Not at this point. I’ve been extremely busy running Norilana Books and dealing with the dire economic stuff and Life (TM) and I am not sure Erzebet’s situation is right now. I do hope eventually we can do the Papaveria Press hand-bound edition and use my interior illustration and her gorgeous cloth covers and exquisite hand-sewn pages and gold foil…
What made you decide to tackle the setting in a moody castle?
I think it wasn’t so much my own decision as it was it that tackled me. And by “it” I don’t mean the castle, but the dark claustrophobic mindset, the strange powerless stagnation that underlies everything—a state of mind that came to overtake the story.
How do you manage to juggle your publishing duties at Norilana with your writing duties?
Right now I am not writing. And that truly sucks. I grieve. I started just one story last year, and it’s about 6,000 words, still unfinished, and I’ve had bare minutes to work on it, here and there. Let me repeat, I grieve. After all these months and years without a proper writing outlet I am now an overflowing vessel of Liquid Story, lidded up and bursting without an outlet.
That’s because I am working on Norilana book production non-stop, often 24/7 (yeah, I’ve gone without sleep for days straight, so this is not much of an exaggeration). Mostly the insane schedule is so that I can get an income steam going that will allow me to pay the bills and keep the house, and take care of mom. And this means I have to keep adding books into the system, and do all else that goes with it. Norilana Books is growing and I am almost there.
These days I wistfully see other people post their writing progress and talk about writers block and other vagaries and so-called writerly woes, and I want to take a two-by-four and slam them upside the head for being lucky enough to have a life and to have 15 minutes to write, or to wail about not writing. Seriously, I would love to have some of your problems, people.
On the other hand, I then take that same virtual two-by-four and slam myself upside the head to remind me that I am fortunate to be doing the other thing that I love instead of being stuck in a soul-killing office day job and taking hundreds of tech support calls a day as I used to.
I am publishing books—mine or other people’s—so it’s all good. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I am blissfully swimming in the sea of all of you—the industry—of all of us who love Language and Story and Adventure, and Thought and Dreams and True Wonder.
Can you tell us something about your publishing company, Norilana? Why is it named Norilana Books?
Okay, the dirty little secret is about to come out. What is Norilana? There is possibly one other person in the world who knows or remembers the word, and that’s my childhood friend Cathy who was there when I first came up with it in junior high. “Norilana” is a made-up word, a personal mantra of sorts. Get ready . . . it is the name of a mighty sorceress of the night in my first unfinished epic fantasy novel, titled (to shamelessly ape Terry Brooks) “The Sword of Norilana.” So now you get the tongue-in-cheek audacity, since that’s also the name of the upcoming high fantasy imprint of Norilana Books. My dreams live on in publishing, though not exactly as I’d originally envisioned them.
As far as Norilana Books the small press, I am proud to say that since I started this business in 2006, we now have over 230 books in print, and that’s a mix of classics of world literature, genre reprints and originals. In the imprints, YA Angst continues to bring out excellent YA fantasy by Sherwood Smith. Leda is the home of romantic fantasy and the Lace and Blade anthology series (volume one includes this year’s Nebula Award Nominee in the novelette category, “Night Wind” by Mary Rosenblum) edited by Deborah J. Ross. Curiosities, the imprint of poetry and unclassifiable delights, showcases Catherynne M. Valente, Mike Allen, and JoSelle Vanderhooft, and the there are various fantasy, SF, and women’s fiction titles by many other amazing authors under the general imprints.
Coming later this year is TaLeKa, the unique imprint dedicated to the works of Tanith Lee and the art of John Kaiine. Then, there’s Spirit, the imprint of the soul in search of meaning, where I plan to release several unusual fiction anthologies that mix history, philosophy, the arts, and inspiration. Finally, there’s the previously mentioned The Sword of Norilana and a very exciting announcement related to it coming soon, in conjunction with the debut of a stellar new author and a monumental epic fantasy series in 2010. In short, there are so many exciting things to come that I can hardly keep talking about it here. Stay tuned!
Do you consider yourself more of a short story writer or a novel writer?
Personally I see myself as a novelist, the writer of very long and possibly blabby and complicated yarns. It’s never an issue of expanding but cutting down, with me. Which in turn is likely the result of having grown up reading Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, and other old verbose classics—complex stories of introspection and very slow pacing. That’s what comes naturally.
On the other hand, I had to teach myself to write short stories, and even there I tend to put in a lot of effort into very intricate, possibly excessive worldbuilding for each short piece, so that they are potentially settings for novels.
Currently, what’s the most difficult aspects when it comes to writing? When it comes to publishing?
I would say, these days it is time and resources. When it comes to publishing there’s never enough time to get things done, and I am always doing the Red Queen trick just to stay in place and on schedule. I would also love to have more finances so that I could expand the business faster and add employees.
With writing, time and focus has also been an issue. As a writer I used to get easily distracted and tended to work in intense bursts, and not on a daily basis—that’s just how I roll. This made it difficult to produce creatively when under constant severe stress (as has been my experience for the last several years). Now I’ve gotten much better at managing to write when under emotional duress, and deadlines are always a good thing and act as a catalyst. But when there’s simply no time to write, there is little anyone can do.
As a writer I see myself as a precarious syringe-needle of intensity, cutting into a single initial point from which begins the injection of a story. To maintain the story, the focus must always be sharp and precise, else I lose the fine thread of creation. An odd metaphor, I know, but it’s how I visualize my process. It is never a blunt random outpouring. It’s very calculated and linear; one sentence follows another in a logical chain of succession. I may not know where exactly I am going—since I write organically without an outline, with only a vague idea of completion of a theme—but I always know how to end the immediate thought.
What are the projects you’re currently working on?
Oh, if only I could set all things aside for several months and just worry about nothing, and simply write! My first thing would very likely be the sequel to LORDS OF RAINBOW, already written in my head and to be titled LADY OF MONCHROME. Otherwise there’s a number of other novels and fantastic otherworlds in progress, including a second book in the Compass Rose milieu, GODS OF THE COMPASS ROSE, and COBWEB BRIDE, and AIREALM, and even that short story I started some time last year. . . .
But I am dreaming. Right now, it’s back to publishing work.
VERA NAZARIAN immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages. She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose
Charles A. Tan is the co-editor of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler and his fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has conducted interviews for The Nebula Awards and The Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as for online magazines such as SF Crowsnest and SFScope. He is a regular contributor to sites like SFF Audio and Game Cryer. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, where he posts book reviews, interviews, and essays.
