The Furious Spinner

Here is the second part of artist and writer Michaela Roessner's interview:

K.A.: You have incorporated your knowledge of cooking and food into your novels in a delicious way. Can you talk about that process? Which came first? The egg or the omelet? The novel idea or the food as part of the novel?

M.R.: Wow! This is a hard one! For me it's a holistic process where everything influences everything else. Food and cooking are a part of life, so for me writing without mention of food and cooking would feel flat, lack verisimilitude. That said, I write about food and cooking far more than is necessary just to give a "lifelike" feeling to a piece of writing. I think because of my interests, I'm drawn to subjects that include food as part of their general context. For example, I chose to write about Catherine de Medici for a number of reasons: she's fascinating politically, her family was involved in the occult, the Medicis vastly influenced the art world, but also she, in particular, was a major mover and shaker on the historical food scene. Therefore I was more attracted to writing about her than any of her illustrious relatives.

K.A.: I believe that most Americans have lost touch with food, cooking, and nourishment. Most cultures celebrate—feast—and understand where their food comes from and what it means to their culture and family. I don't think Americans do that—which may (or may not) account for the skyrocketing number of eating disorders. What do you think about our relationship to food and eating?

M.R.: I find, optimistically, that this is getting better. (And this is one of the few things that I am optimistic about.)

I read a statistic a few years ago that said that gardening is far and away the number one hobby in the U.S. Now, that includes people who are lawn fetishists and arborists, and those who do general landscaping and flower growing. But it also includes more and more vegetable gardening and cultivation of fruit and nut trees. People want to eat their own fresh produce at least part of the year (depends on what section of the country you live in, of course), and they want the enriching experience of the work one must do with the land to produce your own food.

Although this is an era where we have to worry about gassed, irradiated, genetically tweaked food, and rocket fuel irrigated crops, it's also an era where people are conscious about these issues, care about these issues, as never before. Genetic biodiversity is being threatened, and at the same time fabulous efforts are going in to finding and preserving "heritage" species, establishing seed banks, and offering gardeners the opportunity to become part of the salvation of plant biodiversity.

I have a European friend who lives in the Bay Area who said that when she originally moved there, ages ago, except for San Francisco sourdough bread, there was no bread worth eating in the entire area. Now she says that when she returns for her annual visit to Europe, the breads there—though still fabulous—often don't compare to what you can get in Berkeley. In the Pacific Northwest there's been a renaissance in restaurant food preparation, with an emphasis on using fresh, locally grown produce to make dishes with a global influence but strong regional stamp—something that's been happening in Berkeley ever since Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse. This is happening all over the country. It's happening in people's kitchens, too. The Food Channel is tremendously popular. Folks sign up for cooking classes in droves. Artisan-crafted regional beer, bread, chocolate, almost-anything-you-can-think-of businesses are surviving, often thriving, and being appreciated. Organic produce, though more expensive, is selling well. The area where I live supports a lot of orchards. The one orchard that is certified organic is always sold out.

People's consciousness about food is being raised and things are changing. I think we got so far down into the processed, preservative saturated food situation that there was nowhere to go but up! I wish that the whole world could be changing along the lines of the food revolution.

K.A.: If I'm remembering correctly, you are part Italian. Does this heritage inform your cooking? Your writing about cooking? Any part of your creativity?

M.R.: No, I'm not Italian at all, though the confusion is understandable—I feel like an adopted Italian, in the food sense. When I was a little kid, all I wanted to eat was white bread, baloney, fish sticks, canned cream of mushroom soup—that sort of thing. On the first trip to Europe, when I was around 9, we stopped in Rome for a while before going on to Spain. It was eating at the restaurants in Rome that I went through a culinary epiphany. It was as though my taste buds had been dormant all my life, then suddenly came to life. I love lots of kinds of food now, but will always love Italian cooking and owe it my heart.

K.A.: Your last two books The Stars Dispose and The Stars Compel are sensuous historical fantasies rich in detail and food. Did you have to do a great deal of research? Do you enjoy that part of novel writing?

M.R.: A great deal of research? You have no idea! Several bookcases full of studies on: Renaissance art, writing, etiquette, history, literature, food history, food etiquette, historical character studies, apparel, witchcraft, architecture, and stuff I can't even remember now. Plus non-Renaissance research into things like cat's cradles.

And yes, I do like that part of novel writing. Luckily, or I'd be doomed.

K.A.: Speaking of politics, how do you feel about what is happening politically in California right now? Those of us who don't live in California have been a bit perplexed by the entire process. Is it easier to accept and understand if one is actually living in California?

M.R.: No, not at all. To me the whole thing has been the March Hare and Mad Hatter's Tea Party. The way it turned out—I don't know if it's that a majority of California voters can't connect the dots, or if Diebold has hijacked another election.

K.A.: Most of the writers I talk with these days are having a terrible time either getting published or getting their published work noticed. The publishing world has certainly changed since we started out in 1980. Have you been faring well? Are you encouraged by any trends in publishing?

M.R.: I write so slowly that I'm not the best person in the world to ask about publishing trends. The impression I have is that publishing short fiction—at least in the speculative fiction genre—is alive and well. In spite of the rising cost of paper, postage, etc., a good deal of the print magazines have hung on, and there are now a fair amount of legitimate and decently paying online venues. And your writing will always at least get glanced at, even sending it in "over the transom."

As far as books go, though, the news doesn't seem to be good. In our genre, advances for first-time and mid-list authors have stayed the same, or are even less, then advances being paid out decades ago. Then, when you calculate in rising cost-of-living factors over the years, it means they're worth less than even that! To add insult to injury . . . no, make that add injury to injury, if they don't pay you a sizable advance in the first place then they do almost none of the publicity which will help your book do well enough so that a) they'll make more money on it, and b) you can get a bigger advance on the next book and maybe even earn out your initial advance and get royalties. I think it's pretty much the same throughout the rest of the book industry.

With more and more publishing companies being taken over by huge media corporations (or other types of corporations), writers find themselves in the position of the ant who had to carry the camel. Before, money earned out from a book went to support publishing concerns like the publishing house physical plant, the editors, proof-readers, printers, binders, distributors, etc., etc. Now a good chunk of the money has to also go to an über corporation's worth of infrastructure and executives who may not be involved in publishing at all. Add on top of that that in merging most companies get rid of a sizable chunk of the merged-in employees, so that those who are left have to do twice as much forthe same wages and in the same time frame, and that results in editors who can no longer take time to edit, and so on and so forth. Writers end up getting treated like cannon fodder. It's very grim.

From what I've heard, we're in the initial stages of a writer's revolution. What this means, I have no idea.

As for me, I always took Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm's advice to heart: don't quit your day job. I'm happy that I get published. I'm happy that most of the people who read my work seem to like it.

K.A.: Being an artist (and I include writers in this category) these days and trying to make a living is extremely difficult. Have you been able to make a living as an artist?

M.R.: No, though it has always brought in some money, and at times I've pulled in enough to count as a decent yearly income. (By "it" I'm lumping my arts together—I make money with my visual arts too.) Keep in mind, however, that as an artist I'm used to surviving fairly well on an income that falls below the poverty line for most Americans.

K.A.: Is it easier to get people to pay for visual art as opposed to getting people to buy a novel?

M.R.: Hmm, that's sort of an apples vs. oranges kind of question. I'd have to figure out how to take the process of selling a book and getting an advance and then getting or not getting eventual royalties, and then equate that with making visual artwork and having pieces in exhibits, selling or not selling there, then non-sold art work sits around, then a collector buys it eventually, but you don't have a chance to "resell" it the way you do with writing where you can sell reprint and foreign rights. The same is even more true with selling short fiction, where you have even more venues (editors) to approach, and even more of a chance of selling reprint and foreign rights.

K.A.: You get a different view of the artistic world than most writers do since you are an all-around artist! In Catherine de Medici's time (if I'm remembering right) artists had patrons who helped pay their way. Is this an avenue artists should be exploring these days?

M.R.: Visual artists do cultivate patrons, and always have. I think the differences between now and the Renaissance are a) nowadays patrons just act as collectors, instead of at times bringing artists into their homes and putting them up as they did in days of yore, and b) there are now public commercial entities called art galleries that allow individuals to be collectors without having to interact with an artist personally.

Back in the Renaissance there were no commercial art galleries—at least not in the sense that we know them today—though there were art agents. If anyone out there wants to know what the art scene was like in Renaissance times, I urge them to read a couple of fascinating books that were written at that time and that are still in print today: Giorgio Vasari's Lives of Artists, and The Autobiography of Benevenuto Cellini. Not surprisingly, both Vasari and that scalawag Cellini are characters in my "Catherine" books.

K.A.: What are you working on now? What are you excited by?

M.R.: Writing-wise, a bunch of stuff. I've never "multi-tasked" this much before. I recently finished up a novellette which has a lot to do with a quantum mechanics miniature golf course. It's being looked at right now, so I'm crossing my fingers. I'm about halfway finished with a new novel of my own, trying something rather different for me. And I'm involved with Sage Walker, Daniel Abraham, and Walter Jon Williams in turning the novella we wrote together a few years ago—"Tauromaquia"—into a Big Fat Novel. I'm also in the process of editing and retyping a book my aforementioned grandfather, Elmer, wrote about growing up in the Bay Area just after the turn of the 20th century. He was born in 1900, and the manuscript covers 1906 and 1907, including the '06 earthquake. Each project is different, andI'm excited about them all.

K.A.: Can you tell us about Brazen Hussies?

M.R.: The Brazen Hussies are myself, Pat Murphy, and Lisa Goldstein, although we believe that any benignly uppity woman can be a Brazen Hussy. We banded together a few years back to brazenly promote our writing, which is where the name comes from. We've done booksignings and other promotional events together, and maintain a conjoined website. We found it a lot easier and a lot more fun to do necessary but often humiliating publicity scutwork with like-minded friends whose work you love and admire. To check it out (it includes our manifesto), go to the Brazen Hussies website. You can also link to our individual websites from there.

K.A.: Where can people find your artwork and your novels?

M.R.: People can find out about my artwork and writing at my individual website.

The artwork that's currently on the site is from a mask exhibit at the Bakersfield Barnes and Noble store last fall, which I put up in conjuction with a book signing there. It was a nice opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

The next artwork I'm posting will be from a series of two-dimensional pieces I've been working on from what I've been calling the "Landscape as Architecture" series. When I'm going to have an exhibit I post an announcement on my website a few months in advance.

As far as finding my writing, making a request at one's local bookstore is always a good idea, and it can also be found at Amazon.com and Powell's.

K.A.: I can't wait to savor more of your writing and feast my eyes on more of your art. Good luck with all your projects. It sounds like you're in the creative flow. And thanks for your words!

0 comments

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.