Brunonia Barry

About Brunonia Barry

Brunonia Barry studied literature and creative writing at Green Mountain college in Vermont and at the University of New Hampshire, and was one of the founding members of the Portland Stage Company. She's the first American Writer to win the Woman’s International Fiction Festival’s Baccante Award. Her first novel, The Lace Reader, a New York Times and international bestseller, was translated into more than 30 languages. Her second novel, The Map of True Places released in May, 2010.

Writing What Scares Us: Awakening the Monster Inside

October 31, 2018 By Brunonia Barry 23 Comments

A few months before The Fifth Petal came out, my agent remarked that she hadn’t been able to read the manuscript before bed because of the nightmares it invariably provoked.

Her statement shocked me, as I didn’t consider it a very scary book. It was definitely dark, but all my novels are dark. Part history, part mystery, each has been set in Salem, MA, and there’s no way the dark history of place hasn’t informed every narrative. But my home city doesn’t scare me, rather it takes on a cautionary role in each story, a dark reminder of the errors in judgement we humans often make as well as the consequences of our mistakes.

Along with being shocked by her statement, I was insulted. “If I’d wanted to scare you, I wouldn’t have written that book,” I declared, knowing that nothing I’d yet set down on the page could match the dark recesses of fear I believed I could conjure at will. Unable to let it go, I went on to brag: “If I let my imagination run wild, I could scare the hell out of you.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. I could feel her smiling as she voiced the challenge that would inspire my next book. “Do it!”

My mother always warned me not to temp the imps. To that sage advice, I’ll add a bit of my own. “Don’t temp your agent.”

The challenge she threw down seemed easy enough at the time. It was Halloween of 2016. I was confident I understood the world, as well as the deepest fears most of us harbored. I knew myself, too, knew what I was most afraid of and was pretty sure I could express it.

But that was then.

Two years later, our world has changed so radically I sometimes wonder if I’m living inside a nightmare. And with it, my fears have changed just as much, morphing into something far darker than I ever imagined. [Read more…]

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Creating Your Book Talk

January 23, 2017 By Brunonia Barry

With my third book, The Fifth Petal, coming out tomorrow, I’ve finally put the finishing touches on my elevator pitch. I come from a marketing background, so you’d think it would have been the first thing I’d do, but, for each of my books, there could have been at least 5 different quick pitches: some seemingly contradicting others, some so vastly different that you wouldn’t have thought they were for the same book. The one I settled on was this: With modern Salem now home to thousands of neo-witches, could the hysteria happen again? What would a modern day witch-hunt look like in Salem?

I’m not a big fan of elevator pitches, but I understand that they’re a necessary compromise. If you have just a moment to speak, and someone asks what your new novel is about, you’d better have some polished verbiage ready. If you don’t, you’ll have lost a valuable opportunity to spread the word. Not that it does the story justice, there’s always so much more to tell, but a concise pitch can offer a potential reader an invitation to a broader, deeper conversation.

But what do you do when you need to tell them more? As I set out on my book tour, something I haven’t done since 2012, I find myself trying to see the bigger picture. I have one hour at each location to tell my story, do a reading, and conduct a Q&A with the attendees. That all sounds good, but to really talk about the book would take days. So what parts should I reveal, and what should I leave for the reader to discover? What will motivate audience members to read the book for themselves?

Let’s start with a dose of truth. This book took five years to write, and it’s not a simple story. It contains three mysteries, winding through three time periods that move all the way back to Salem’s witch-trials of 1692. The subject matter touched on is vast as well: colonial and European history, witchcraft, murder, music therapy, alcoholism, sound healing, tree lore, biblical references, Norse and Celtic mythology, banshees, non-linear time, psychology, and complex trauma. Even PBS would need a month of nightly specials to cover the same territory.

So how do you include those subjects in your talk without confusing a potential reader? When is less actually more? The elements I listed above weave in and out of the story, providing imagery and building texture, but they in no way describe the narrative. If I tried to speak about them all in my presentation, potential readers would probably run screaming from the building. So how do you find a balance between discussing the broad scope of the novel and getting lost in the weeds?

I’ve learned some of the answers through trial and error. Hopefully, I can make the process easier for you. At least I can let you know what works for me. I’ll share a few dos and don’ts and, wherever possible, I’ll give examples that tie-in to my new novel. [Read more…]

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Writing for Love or Money

November 27, 2015 By Brunonia Barry

Many of these posts are dedicated to writing and publishing a first novel, and I have to say there is nothing better. It is magic when you receive that first ARC, hold it in your hands, and see your name on the cover.

But what happens after that is something we don’t often talk about. Especially when what happens isn’t magic.

I don’t often discuss my route to publication, partly because I was asked not to by my first publisher, who had never before bought a previously self-published book and wanted to hide the fact that they had just done so, and partly because I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon with those selling the dream. I know the odds. I know it’s easier to self-publish than ever before. But I also know what a huge issue discoverability can be. What I do say when asked about publishing my first book is a well rehearsed answer: “Emboldened by our ignorance, my husband and I decided to self-publish.”

We started a small imprint, intending to publish the fiction of local writers. As software publishers who had won awards for our products, we were accustomed to selling into the retail channel and had successfully negotiated licensing and distribution deals with major companies, an accomplishment we hoped to duplicate in the world of letters. “How hard could it be?” we asked ourselves. I’m glad now that I didn’t know the odds.

The truth is, it can be amazingly difficult, not just to have your book noticed, but to get reviews, find a distributor for a one book company, and to acquire shelf-space that is more than one copy, spine-out as opposed to the front-of-store displays larger publishers negotiate. This was back in 2007, but, even now, finding an e-book marketing hook for fiction is very challenging. That is not said to discourage, but because it is true. Unless you’re incredibly lucky. We did our homework, though, and decided to proceed. We hired an editor, a PR company, and a printer. Then we held our breaths, wishing for the kind of magic all first time writers need.

I was one of the lucky ones. A starred review from Publisher’s Weekly led to a publishing deal with one of the big five, one that would allow both myself and my husband to leave our day jobs and pursue our long suppressed artistic yearnings full-time. If I said I wasn’t eternally grateful, I would be lying.

But—and this is a big but—my publishing deal came with a contract for a second book, then a third and fourth. My two-week book tour turned into almost six months on the road. Thirty foreign translations (with translators’ questions) came and went, along with interviews and blog posts and all the other promotional details of the writer’s life. I made the deadline for the second book by only 45 minutes. Still, I did make it, and my editor liked the book. I’m on my way now, I thought, still trying to dismiss the impostor syndrome I’d been harboring since self-publishing. I began to relax. My first book had become a New York Times and international best seller. My second book was about to come out. My wildest dreams had come true.

And then, I missed the deadline for my third book by almost two years. [Read more…]

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Writing Truth in Reverse

February 12, 2015 By Brunonia Barry

Photo credit: Pierre at theunicyclist.com

Writing the truth has always been a challenge for me. In college, I started out as a journalism major, but it was strongly suggested that I transfer into the fiction department as quickly as possible. Let’s just say I have a tendency to embellish that wiser minds quickly realized would make journalism a poor career choice.

So I became a fiction writer, and I’ve never been happier. But recently I was asked by friends to write a nonfiction piece describing an incident that reflects the emotional impact of a tragedy I’ve tried hard to erase from memory. Just the thought of the project made me sweat.

Several of us are writers, with various memories of that time. Our stories will be as different as our emotional responses were, which is exactly what they wanted. The assignment seemed simple enough: Detail the times, the event, and a random memory that is somehow connected. Something true.

They had me until those last two words: something true.

I had great ambivalence about the project. Simultaneous and contradictory emotions pulled in equal and opposite directions and kept me up at night. But, because the cause was a good one, and since it would put me back in touch with old friends, I reluctantly said yes. And then I had a full-on panic attack.

The more I tried to begin, the more ambivalence I felt about the subject matter. For me, it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. In the end, the truth was some place in between, in the seemingly random and mundane details of memory, which were the only memories I was able to summon.

My notes are skeletal at best, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

It was the ‘80s, and I was living in LA’s Laurel Canyon. Nightlife was just down the hill on Sunset: The Whiskey, the Roxy. It was the proverbial “sex and drugs and rock and roll” lifestyle. Anything was possible. By day, I worked at a sound-stage facility where anything possible was actually happening: from MTV videos, features, sitcoms, to porn and cartoons. Every Monday night I met with Bob McKee and nine other writers in his development group to workshop our screenplays.

My housemate, Russell, had just come out of the closet and was enjoying his equivalent of the same wild and happy life. I was renting the downstairs of his canyon home, with its hazy view of the distant downtown skyline, the smell of eucalyptus, and the night howls of coyotes. We shared a kitchen and a deck. It was during that time that I met the man I would marry. Eventually, Gary and I moved to a bungalow in the hills of Los Feliz. It was indeed the best of times.

And then something happened. [Read more…]

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Happy Halloween! Love, Salem

October 31, 2014 By Brunonia Barry

Since many of you will be joining us for the WU Un-conference in Salem this next week, and because I’ll be co-teaching a seminar called “Place as Character” with Liz Michalski, I thought I’d share the character chart for Salem that I created for my upcoming novel.

Salem, where I’m fortunate enough to live, has been a major character in all three of my novels, but the city’s character chart has changed from book to book. The first chart bears little resemblance to this new one. Either I’ve gotten to know the place better in the almost twenty years I’ve been back, or it has grown and changed as any character should. In a city where history casts such a long shadow, it’s refreshing to see change. I’ve watched Salem grow from aging historical/industrial, to tourist mecca, to real estate goldmine for escaping young Bostonians.

Before I begin a new novel, I write detailed biographies for my main characters, sometimes up to 30 pages. But in my first book, beyond mentioning that one character had red hair, the physical descriptions of characters were almost non- existent. This was due, in part, to the first person POV, the protagonist was so deeply burdened by her past that she barely noticed the world around her and spent little time interacting with other people, much less noticing how they looked. For that book, evading physical descriptions made sense. What was interesting in retrospect was that my readers weren’t aware of the omission. I visited a number of book clubs with that first book, and, since everyone knew that the film rights had been optioned, the clubs always got around to casting the movie. Arguments ensued, with physical descriptions that were so wildly opposing that it was difficult to believe the club members were all reading the same book. This repeated experience taught me a great deal about the collaborative process between writer and reader, and just how big a role the imagination of the reader can play.

For this third book, which takes place in three distinct time periods, not only was backstory extremely important, but so was physical description. My editor helped me put together a new chart, which, as you can see, still has some blank spaces I haven’t been able to fill. Most of the details in the chart do not appear in the novel, but they are still important for me to understand. The three most important questions are the final ones. I’ve asked them of each book, and, though I am writing about the same place, they always elicit different answers. This surprises me every time, but it shouldn’t. If place really is character, then that character should change and arc the same way any other would.

For those of you coming to Salem next week, let this serve as a quirky travel guide. For the rest, here’s my introduction to:

SALEM AS CHARACTER [Read more…]

10 Tips about Process

March 31, 2014 By Brunonia Barry

So recently, when guest speaking at a college creative writing class, I was asked for ten writing tips I’d like to pass along to students. My first impulse was to run screaming from the building, but, when I thought more about it, I realized that the one sure thing I’ve gained in knowledge is an understanding of my own writing process, something I didn’t have a clue about while working on my first two novels.

Today, I thought I’d pass those tips along. I’m not suggesting you adopt them, just telling you what works for me. After you read, I hope you’ll share some tips of your own.

1. Ask the question, but don’t necessarily answer it: “What if?” is almost always the question that inspires my stories. As I work, I usually find that this initial, situational question leads to a deeper, more philosophical one, which becomes the theme of the novel. I don’t try to answer that deeper question. I don’t presume that I could. I hate to see the ego of the writer in a story, and I’m not fond of stories that tie things up too neatly. Certainly plot must be resolved and characters must arc, but I believe that writing and reading are collaborative, and I leave the larger question for my readers to answer for themselves.

2. Write a mess of a first draft and never show it to anyone: The initial pages I write are almost always discarded, but somewhere among them, I discover the beginning of my story. The first draft is where I begin to hear the voice of the main character and allow myself to follow her for a while, never knowing where she might lead. If I thought I had to show those pages to anyone, I’d probably stop writing. I think first drafts should be messy, like finger painting. When I finally finish the book, I burn them. [Read more…]

Why Do You Write?

May 29, 2013 By Brunonia Barry

Surreal writer — © Yulia Popkova (iStockPhoto)

I turned in my third novel on April 12th after a six-month extension that required nights, weekends, and workdays that often began at 4AM. To say I was burned out would be putting it mildly. Fried, torched, or incinerated were better words for my condition. This one got me, on every level and to my core. The morning after I turned in the manuscript, I stood at the mirror brushing my teeth and barely recognizing the exhausted woman who stared back at me.

And two questions came to mind: Do you really want to do this again? Why do you write?

I had no answers. Instead, I saw a fleeting image within the reflection, a glimpse of one of the characters from my just finished manuscript. Rose is a schizophrenic homeless woman who “sees” music. She isn’t my protagonist, but she is the character who has stayed with me, the one who has most touched my soul.

I often joke that I am a “method writer,” and that was truer with this book than with any other. To get into the head of my characters, I try to become them, to walk in their shoes, sometimes for many days at a time. A writer friend has called this “empathy taken to the extreme,” implying that it might not be an entirely healthy practice. In the case of Rose, I cannot disagree. But each writer has a process, and this is mine. Generally, I like becoming my characters. When a story is finished, I want them to remain. They have become friends.

To which even I would reply, “You really have to get out more, Brunonia.” True enough. And I’m trying to do just that. But when I go out into the world after finishing a book, at least at first, my characters go with me. Rose certainly did. I have found her to be one of the most compelling and authentic characters I’ve yet written, and I not only want to keep parts of her with me always, but I realize that it is inevitable that she will stay. Rose isn’t going anywhere. She has been internalized. The results have left me with the residual appearance of a woman who has seen too much of the street for people to be entirely comfortable around. [Read more…]

When It Absolutely, Positively Isn’t Ready

November 12, 2012 By Brunonia Barry

Posted on the file cabinet next to my desk is a refrigerator magnet someone bought me with a quote from Douglas Adams that reads: “I love deadlines. I love the wooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

I only wish that sentiment was mine. The fact is, I hate deadlines. Though I understand the benefits, they weigh upon my soul. The thought of NaNoWriMo fills me with dread. I wish the best of luck to all of you who are working so hard this month. I see the benefits, but I will probably never participate. For me, deadlines are the stuff of nightmares. Growing up, I was the kind of girl who couldn’t enjoy a bit of fun until all my homework was finished. That’s not to say that I always did my homework before going out, just that I could never really let go if I knew I had assignments waiting. I still have dreams that I had to relinquish my high school diploma because they found out I had not turned in a social studies paper in tenth grade. I know, some sort of therapy might help, but, most of the time, my obsessive nature works for me. Especially when it comes to deadlines.

Until recently, I have never missed a deadline, self-imposed or publisher mandated. That doesn’t mean I get things done early. I will hold a manuscript until the last minute, rereading and polishing until it is torn from my hands. I made the two-year deadline to my last book by only forty minutes.

But, on August 31^st, I missed a deadline. [Read more…]

Hearing Voices

October 13, 2011 By Brunonia Barry

The first time I had to speak in public was for the American Association of University Women’s annual Breakfast with the Authors at theGeorgetown,MAlibrary. I was the warm-up act for André Dubus III, who is one of the best speakers I’ve ever heard. I, on the other hand, was less than stellar.

I’d avoided public speaking all my life. When I finally became a writer, I was amazed and intimidated by the amount of speaking the job requires. But hey, you want something badly enough, you do it, right?

So I stood in front of the audience of over a hundred women, my knees knocking, voice shaking. First I read a short passage of my book. I got through it. Then I began to talk about process. Somewhere along the way, I announced that my characters talk to me. The room went silent. Since The Lace Reader was, in part, about mental illness, it occurred to me that this might not have been the best public revelation I could have made. Nervously, I looked around for André whom I had not yet met. “Do your characters talk to you?” I asked, hoping he would say something to rescue me. Without missing a beat, he yelled from the back of the room, “I think there’s a medication you can take for that.” [Read more…]

Keeping Lit Alive – The Salem Literature Festival

September 8, 2011 By Brunonia Barry

In an earlier post, you may have read my lamentation on the closing of Cornerstone, Salem’s local independent bookstore, which shut its doors last January. Though many of us got together to try to save the store, we lost the battle, leaving Salem dependent on neighboring community bookstores for our literary chats and recommendations. They tried hard to fill the gap left in a city that prides itself on being literary, even to the point of claiming to be the birthplace of the great American novel, a title attributed not to Salem per se but referring to the works of its native son, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Even so, the hole left by Cornerstone’s closing is a gaping one. Of course, we in Salem know that our beloved bookstore is not the only casualty. Still, both readers and writers feel a bit powerless and confused in the face of such huge changes in the book industry.

A secondary casualty of Cornerstone’s closing might have been the Salem Literary Festival. For the last three years, Cornerstone has hosted a small but successful lit fest, one that catered to both readers and writers. Last year, I served as master of ceremonies, announcing the winner of our annual writing contest, and introducing Lily King as our special guest. We held a marathon reading of To Kill a Mockingbird in the center of town, an event that drew my editor, agent, and marketing execs from HarperCollins (the book’s publisher) as well as many readers and passersby. From 9AM to 7PM, Scout, Atticus, and Jem were alive and well in Salem’s Derby Square. It was a special day.

Everyone loved our lit fest. We all wanted to see it grow and prosper, but with Cornerstone gone, the festival was dead. Or so it seemed until I got a call from Beth Simpson, who had served as an event planner for the store, and had been largely responsible for the lit fest. “How do you feel about keeping the festival going?” she asked. She didn’t have to ask twice. I was in, and so were my husband, my assistant, and various friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

Salem, Massachusetts, our hometown, is the perfect place for a literary festival. We’re a small, beautiful, and very walkable city with some of the best historic architecture in the U.S. What we needed was for some of those historic buildings to open their doors to us, to offer themselves as venues for the festival. We’d had some success getting this to happen in past years, but this year we needed more. If we were going to do this, we had to scale it up. [Read more…]

The First Rewrite

August 11, 2011 By Brunonia Barry

Last week, I finished the first draft of a novel that is due next April. This week, I began my first rewrite, a process I enjoy far more.

I know that for many of you, rewriting is less exciting than writing that first draft. For you, there is nothing more thrilling than creating something from nothing. I don’t feel that way. I adore rewriting. It is not accompanied by the anxiety and uncertainty of the blank page. The basic story is already down on paper. The characters have grown and changed. Until the first draft is finished, there’s a huge element of blind faith involved in the process, something I have come to trust, but just barely.

Of course, having something down on paper does not mean that it’s good. Usually there are some huge mistakes. The characters behave inconsistently or don’t change enough. The pacing is wrong. The first rewrite is where I catch those mistakes. Because the story remains fairly skeletal at this point, errors are much easier to spot. I don’t flesh out the characters too much in my first draft, because I don’t want to risk falling in love with them and being unable to make necessary changes.

While I usually share many pages with trusted readers by the time I finish the first draft, this time I have chosen not to ask for opinions. No one (and by that I mean not even my husband) has read anything beyond the first chapter. This is a story I’m holding close. There’s no way I’m showing it to anyone until I’m certain that I’ve done my best with it, that it includes all of the elements I’ve intended. At this point, suggestions from anyone else would just confuse me. Eventually, I will give the manuscript to my husband, assistant, agent, and writing group as well as a few other trusted readers from my favorite book clubs. That will be the time for notes and suggestions, but first I have to get it right for me. [Read more…]

Adventures in Self-Publishing

July 13, 2011 By Brunonia Barry

When someone who knows my story asks me if I would recommend self-publishing, I say no, which always surprises them. The Lace Reader’s success story is so often mentioned in self-publishing seminars that it shocks writers to hear that, knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn’t do it again. Don’t get me wrong. I am thrilled with the results. It’s just that there was so much luck involved in the process that I can’t, in good conscience, tell other writers that they should do the same.

Why didn’t I go the traditional route to publishing? Well, I almost did. After an early draft, I sent query letters to a few agents who then wanted to see the book. Both thought it still needed a lot of work, which it did. The problem was, the first agent took almost six months to respond, and the second took almost a year. It didn’t matter that much, because I was rewriting the entire time, but when the book was finally finished, I wasn’t too keen on waiting around for another year to get it published. So we decided to do it ourselves.

My husband and I started a small press to publish local books, both fiction and non-fiction. The first book would be The Lace Reader. The idea was a simple one. We would publish and market the books, and if one of them became a hit in our local area, we would then try to sell it to a larger publisher. The sales numbers would prove marketability.

This wasn’t a new idea. For ten years, we had run an entertainment software publishing company that created brainteaser puzzles. Our products became best sellers and won awards. Eventually, we were picked up by Hasbro.

So the business model was familiar to us. We were already publishers. How hard could it be to publish books? We like to say that we were “emboldened by our ignorance.” We were also incredibly lucky. [Read more…]

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