{"id":18952,"date":"2013-05-30T00:01:52","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T04:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=18952"},"modified":"2013-05-29T21:07:21","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T01:07:21","slug":"ten-questions-about-the-year-of-the-storm-by-john-mantooth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2013\/05\/30\/ten-questions-about-the-year-of-the-storm-by-john-mantooth\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Questions About The Year Of The Storm, By John Mantooth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes you get a book that has some buzz with it, a book you really want to tear into soon as you get a chance — for me, this is one of them, because it sounds right in my narrative sweet spot. Here’s author John Mantooth talking about his newest, The Year Of The Storm:<\/em><\/p>\n

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m a southern boy, born in Georgia, raised in Alabama.\u00a0 I\u2019m a dad, a husband, a teacher, and a writer.\u00a0 In past lives I coached basketball, drove a school bus, played bass in a rock and roll band, and loafed with such effortless grace some observers called it sublime (others called it something else).<\/p>\n

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:<\/h2>\n

Nine months after Danny\u2019s mother and sister disappear in the woods behind his house, a tortured Vietnam vet shows up at his door claiming to know their whereabouts.<\/p>\n

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?<\/h2>\n

I think it comes from wanting to write a story that actually explains where missing people go.\u00a0 I mean, I think I know where they go.\u00a0 Logic tells us that a missing person has moved on with their life somewhere else, been abducted, or they\u2019ve been murdered.\u00a0 Illogically, I\u2019ve always wanted there to be another option.\u00a0 I wanted there to be a \u201cslip\u201d that people sometimes could stumble upon, and when they did, it would take them somewhere else, some \u201cother\u201d world.\u00a0 So, I suppose that\u2019s why I wrote the story.\u00a0 That, and I had an old painting that one of my grandmother\u2019s sisters had done years ago that captured my imagination.\u00a0 It was of a little cabin at dusk, sitting on the outskirts of what appeared to be a swamp.\u00a0 That painting influenced the book probably more than anything else.<\/p>\n

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD\u2019VE WRITTEN?<\/h2>\n

Oh that\u2019s a tough one.\u00a0 I suppose I\u2019d say it\u2019s southern, it\u2019s gritty, and it has a speculative element. \u00a0It also has a sort of hopefulness in the face of the hard (and inevitable) knowledge that the world can be a cruel and unforgiving place.\u00a0 I don\u2019t necessarily set out to get that in my stories, and I hesitate to call it a theme, but it\u2019s difficult to read any of my work without getting at least a whiff of it.\u00a0 I like to think of it as a sort of tough grace.<\/p>\n

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING THE YEAR OF THE STORM?<\/h2>\n

The ending.\u00a0 I must have rewritten it a dozen times, and when I say the ending, I mean the last fourth of the book.\u00a0 Endings are extremely difficult for me.\u00a0 It was important that the ending didn\u2019t just resolve the action of the story, but also resolved or at least attempted to resolve the over arching emotional concerns of the novel.\u00a0 This was especially challenging because this novel called for a touch of ambiguity to tie it all together.\u00a0 But yeah, the ending kicked my ass.<\/p>\n

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING THE YEAR OF THE STORM?<\/h2>\n

I learned that I can get it right.\u00a0 I think in the past when a novel got hard, I just quit and moved on to something else.\u00a0 I learned that this is a terrible mistake because whatever you move on to is going to be just as hard in time.\u00a0 You have to work through the difficulties.\u00a0 Take a small break if necessary, but don\u2019t abandon it.\u00a0 Others probably have different opinions on this, but for me, I\u2019ve got to push through and make it the story I envisioned.\u00a0 Starting another story isn\u2019t a solution.\u00a0 It\u2019s a delaying tactic.\u00a0 Every story is hard in its own way.<\/p>\n

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE STORM?<\/h2>\n

I love the narrative voice.\u00a0 It\u2019s told by an adult looking back on his childhood.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s a voice I do particularly well.\u00a0 It seems natural to me, easy to write.\u00a0 I also love the setting.\u00a0 It\u2019s no particular place except rural Alabama, but when I reread sections, I feel like I got it right, if not in specifics, at least in tone.<\/p>\n

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?<\/h2>\n

Write it faster.\u00a0 The book took me three years.\u00a0 Part of that was a result of teaching full time, having small kids, and getting my master\u2019s in library science.\u00a0 My kids are older now.\u00a0 The master\u2019s is done.\u00a0 The next one is going to be faster.<\/p>\n

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:<\/h2>\n

This takes place near the opening of the novel.\u00a0 Danny, the narrator, wonders if the strange man in his front yard might somehow be related to the legends he\u2019d grown up hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d been hearing the stories about these woods since I was a kid. Most of them were the generic campfire variety, the same urban legends reshuffled and personalized for different times, different settings, but one story was more than that. One story had the ring of authenticity. It was unique to these woods, and unlike the tales of hook hands and insane asylum escapees, it never seemed to fade away. Two girls, Tina and Rachel, lost in the woods behind our house. I grew up knowing their names just like I knew anything else. They were a part of the landscape, a part of the place where I lived. It didn\u2019t matter if I\u2019d never seen them or heard them speak or even gotten the whole story straight about their disappearances. I felt their presences intimately, and their loss settled on the woods like a heavy fog. When I walked through the darkest parts behind my house near dusk, sometimes I thought I saw them in the gloom, floating, transparent, made from spiders\u2019 webs and dying streaks of light mingled with shadow. Their sad visages slithering round tree trunks and drifting past blooming moonvines. I shuddered, thinking that the man responsible for these disappearances might be standing in my front yard.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

WHAT\u2019S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?<\/h2>\n

Working on the next novel.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to say what it\u2019s about because I\u2019m superstitious like that and don\u2019t want to jinx it.<\/p>\n

Thanks for the interview, Chuck!<\/p>\n

John Mantooth: Website<\/span><\/a> \/ @busfulloflosers<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Year Of The Storm: Amazon<\/span><\/a> \/ B&N<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you get a book that has some buzz with it, a book you really want to tear into soon as you get a chance — for me, this is one of them, because it sounds right in my narrative sweet spot. Here’s author John Mantooth talking about his newest, The Year Of The Storm: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-4VG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18952"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18954,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18952\/revisions\/18954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}