FAQ

  1. The Bare Bones
    • Who are you?
    • Where can I buy your books?
    • If I mail you my copy will you sign it for me?
    • When is your next book coming out?
    • Will you do book signings anytime soon?
    • Are you going to come to my town/state?
    • What are you working on right now?
    • Will you take a look at my Great American Novel/Epic Poem/Oscar-Worthy Screenplay?
    • How can I contact you?
  2. Process
    • What authors are your strongest influences?
    • Where do your ideas come from?
    • How many languages do you speak?
    • What environment do you require for writing or inspiration?
    • Do you listen to music, drink coffee, or drink massive amounts of wine, while writing, or is it different every time? Any rituals?
    • How many hours per day do you spend on writing, and do you do the majority of it in the morning or at night?
    • Do you allow yourself a "warm-up" time or are you able to jump right into "real" writing?
    • How do your stories and poems take shape?
  3. Nature of the Beast
    • How much of write you write is "autobiographical?"
    • Your work draws on a lot of mythic archetypes, what are some of the archetypes that you find yourself repeatedly using in your writing?
    • Which landscape is more important to your writing: the physical or the emotional?
    • Are there any tricks you have for getting yourself to put your butt in that chair and write? Do you do any writing exercises?
    • Do you enjoy giving readings, or would you prefer to just sit and write?
    • How do you manage the transition from writing poetry to writing prose?
  4. Media
    • What role has the internet played in promoting your work? How important do you think the internet is as a tool for promoting new writers?
    • Advice for new writers?

The Bare Bones

Who are you?

I'm Catherynne M. Valente. My name's all over this site. If CMV is easier for you to type, be my guest. I'm a writer -- I make novels, poetry, and occasionally I deconstruct Greek plays for fun and profit. I used to be a classicist, which means I have a super secret Latin decoder ring that can destroy the world. But I only use my powers for good.

Where can I buy your books?

The Orphan's Tales should be available anywhere you can buy books, at either brick and mortar or series of tubes sellers. My previous books can be found at any number of independent bookstores. However, your best bet is Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, Shocklines, Clarkesworld, or directly from the publisher. If your local bookstore doesn't carry it, ask them to order it.

If I mail you my copy will you sign it for me?

Yes, if you include return postage. Email me at and we'll work it out.

When is your next book coming out?

Palimpsest will be available on February 24, 2009. You can pre-order it now. Keep an eye on the site for news on these and other releases. Believe me, it won't be hard to figure out what I've got in the magic goodie bag for you.

Is there a website specifically for The Orphan's Tales?

Yes, at OrphansTales.com.

Will you do book signings anytime soon?

Watch the Appearances section for specific appearances on the East Coast, Midwest, and eventually, way out West.

Are you going to come to my town/state?

Are you going to let me sleep on your couch? I hardly shed at all. You're free to suggest venues in your area. Have Chevelle, will travel.

What are you working on right now?

See the works in progress portion of the novels/poetry/short fiction pages for a vague idea of what I'm writing. I have several projects going at the moment -- I'm writing two novels concurrently plus various short stories and poems. Don't be alarmed -- in my grandmother's day they wrote ten novels at once while walking uphill both ways to the widget factory where they worked 26 hours a day for a handful of Argentinian pesos. And they liked it.

Will you take a look at my Great American Novel/Epic Poem/Oscar-Worthy Screenplay?

See above. I'm pretty busy these days. Please do not send me material. However, if you are very nice and ask me first, I may be able to look at some short pieces or excerpts. Before you do so, I would highly suggest reading my novels and asking yourself whether you really want me to critique your work. Do we value the same things in writing? Do you have a thick skin? Broach the subject at your own risk.

I run a journal/website/zine. Would you like to contribute a short story/poem/novel excerpt?

Probably. I like to eat, after all. Contact me and we'll hash something out.

How can I contact you?

You can email me at:
If you are of the LiveJournal persuasion, you can find me there under the username yuki_onna.

Process

What authors are your strongest influences?

Because of my love of language, many of my influences are poets: Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Federico Garcia Lorca, Sappho, Neruda, Diane Wakoski, Anna Ahkmatova, Christopher Logue, Karl Shapiro, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Walt Whitman, and Anne Sexton. In fiction there is Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Clarice Lispector, Milorad Pavic, Italo Calvino, Jeanette Winterson, Jeff Vandermeer, Theodora Goss, A.S. Byatt, Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, Lewis Carroll, Jack Kerouac, Sonya Taaffe, Paul Verhelst, and Virginia Woolf. And of course there are the great classics, more like attendant saints than influences-Homer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dante, Chaucer, Euripides, Sophocles, Blake.

Film-makers and painters whose visual style has influenced me include: Dali, Magritte, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Hieronymous Bosch, Peter Greenaway, Julie Taymor, Jim Henson, David Lynch, and A.R. Menne.

Where do your ideas come from?

Seriously? It takes some balls to ask that question since every writer in history in on record saying "Shut up." They come from electrical impulses in my brain-meats.

How many languages do you speak?

Otherwise phrased as "Dude, lay off the Latin."

I "speak" Latin, Ancient Greek, and I dabble in a little English. Even Middle English if I need some extra fiber in my diet. Classical languages are not really spoken tongues anymore, so it is more accurate to say I read them. Yes, they show up in my novels. No, you don't have to learn them just to please me. But they're like spinach: they taste a little funny but they're good for you. And they make you grow huge muscles, attract bookish women, and say things like "ayuck yuck yuck."

What environment do you require for writing or inspiration?

I wish I didn't, but I need a clean house. Which often requires me to clean my house. Beyond that, give me something to type on and I'm happy. I make notes in a Moleskine notebook with a Parker Comfort Grip pen (I love the smoothness of the ink and the size of the pen -- I like a pen with heft, like a club or a hammer), but when it comes to the actual composition, it's just too slow. I type very fast, and sometimes even that lags behind my brain. I have a very sleek black and silver HP Pavilion named Genevra and an antique sewing desk next to a wide picture window. I like to have icons around my work area: Ganesha, Kwan-Yin, the TARDIS. Your average panoply of modern gods.

My yellow dog makes an excellent footwarmer. The black one just won't lie still, though.

Do you listen to music, drink coffee, or drink massive amounts of wine, while writing, or is it different every time? Any rituals?

I have a rather large Mp3 collection that is usually set on shuffle while I work, turned down somewhat so that it doesn't compete with my head for soundtrack rights. I pour endless cups of coffee, but once I get going I forget to drink them and down the sink they go, cold and forlorn. I stopped pouring glasses of wine as that got a little expensive.

Before beginning a novel, I have a cigarette -- I'm not brand loyal, once in awhile I even enjoy menthol. When I finish the novel, I have another one. I'm not a smoker, but novel-writing occupies a kind of "otherspace" for me, so the ethereal aesthetic of a cigarette and an unusual act helps me get into that space.

How many hours per day do you spend on writing, and do you do the majority of it in the morning or at night?

Sometimes 12-15. Sometimes 0. Some days I tear through pages, sometimes I'm lucky to get one out. I tend to write in spurts: I will produce a huge amount of material in a short time, then soak up like a camel until the next rush comes. I often challenge myself with a kind of marathon, to write a novel or a series of poems in a very short time -- obviously during those times the per diem soars.

Do you allow yourself a "warm-up" time or are you able to jump right into "real" writing?

Nope. I'm a head-first into the pool kind of woman. Arms overhead, cranium cracking on the cement floor.

How do your stories and poems take shape?

It depends entirely on the story or poem itself. Sometimes I write stream-of-consciousness, from the hip, and shape it into a more or less formal structure later. Sometimes it comes out more or less structured. I'm not a huge revision-hound; I believe in the first rush of creation. Revision tends to be tweaking, trimming, blowing curls of quartz aside. I'm a pretty intuitive writer -- I don't have a system, per se. I go with what's working for me at the time.

Nature of the Beast

How much of write you write is "autobiographical?"

All of it. None of it. At some level all writing begins in experience -- but I tend to go so far from that base that it's hard to pinpoint after the fact what originates in my external life and what has roots in my internal world. It's hard enough for me to separate the two off the page. In surrealism, or any non-realist writing, it's an even more peculiar alchemy. I don't generally believe in the biographical approach to literature -- it's called a fallacy for a reason. If writing didn't go beyond life there would be no need for it: we would simply live and die without commentary. All of this comes with the proviso that if you know me personally, and find something in my work which you think is based on you, please kindly assume it's not, and keep walking. Nothing to see here.

Your work draws on a lot of mythic archetypes, what are some of the archetypes that you find yourself repeatedly using in your writing?

I do so love my witches and wicked queens. I find myself drawn to feminine archetypes that previous generations have found threatening or dangerous: crones, oracles, madwomen, Amazons, virgins who aren't helpless, bad mothers. I love to give the vagina dentata voice. It so rarely gets to speak for itself.

Which landscape is more important to your writing: the physical or the emotional?

I don't think there is so much difference between them. That's part of the joy of literature -- the physical and the emotional are unified in a way that life doesn't always provide. If I were forced to choose I would say the physical -- I live in a body, so do you. Experience begins in the flesh, and so does art -- in the chthonic, under-skin places we don't talk about.

Are there any tricks you have for getting yourself to put your butt in that chair and write? Do you do any writing exercises?

The marathons give me structure and discipline -- I need that deadline. I'm best under pressure. It's the grad student in me; that's our natural state. Beyond that I just hope every morning that my higher instincts override my lower ones, i.e. my desire to write versus my desire to eat pizza and watch Angel reruns.

Do you enjoy giving readings, or would you prefer to just sit and write?

I love giving readings, and will certainly be doing so more often now that I have returned to the US. That said, I always feel like vomiting up my spleen beforehand and when I'm up there I thank my lucky stars that all those years as an actress gave me a voice which can cover up panic and terror and sound intelligent when I am, in fact, a gooey puddle of fear. Also known as the ability to lie like a dog.

How do you manage the transition from writing poetry to writing prose?

I don't think there has to be such a strong divide between the genres as we are told. My prose contains a lot of poetic devices and retains the richness of language that poetry has -- so much so that people seem a little accusatory when they tell me that it's "not fiction, really, it's prose-poetry," as though I somehow tricked them into reading poetry and must now be shot. But that's not really the case -- poetry is more concentrated, more pure, more intimate, and more fleeting. It does not require the long-term planning of a novel, and a novel requires a narrative in a way a poem can avoid. They are distinct forms, but can be combined to great effect. As Salman Rushdie said, novels could have the same intensity and concern for language as poems if novelists cared enough to weigh each word with the attention of a poet. The difference not between a cyclist and a diver, but between a marathon runner and a sprinter.

But it is sometimes good to take a few days between writing heavily in one or the other to cleanse the palate.

Media

What role has the internet played in promoting your work? How important do you think the internet is as a tool for promoting new writers?

Like it or not, we live in a world dominated by the internet. To ask how the internet has helped my work is like asking how the printing press helped authors in the past. It has allowed me to develop an audience and form connections all over the world -- in that it has been invaluable. I do believe it is a vital tool for writers, both emerging and established. In the end, it is a conduit through which literature can reach even more minds -- and that is always a great thing, possibly the greatest thing the internet does.

Advice for new writers?

Just write. And read. Read often and in as many styles, genres, and periods as you can. And remember that while the publication thing is nice, it is not the be all and end all of your life as a literary person. If you have talent, if you are driven, sooner or later it will happen for you. There are plenty of people more than willing to tell you all about query letters, agents, foreign rights, advances, and how we never get paid as much as we deserve. Listen to them, learn what you can, because it is a very tough business and it isn't for everyone. But in the end, the writing is all that matters. Write well, write every day, and write passionately. If you aren't passionate about it, why should anyone else be?

© 2005-2009 Catherynne M. Valente