OTHER WATERS
by Eleni N. Gage
Women's Fiction
St. Martin's Press
www.EleniGage.com
5 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, March 2, 2012!
About the Book:
Maya is an accomplished psychiatry resident with a terrific boyfriend, loving family, and bustling New York social life. When her grandmother dies in India, a family squabble over property results in a curse that drifts across continents and threatens Maya's life. Or so her father says-- Maya (being a modern woman, an American, and a doctor) doesn't believe in curses, Brahman, or otherwise. But when her father suffers a heart attack, her sister miscarries, and her career and relationship both start to falter, Maya starts to worry. A trip back to India with her best friend Heidi, Maya reasons, will be just what's needed to remove the curse, save her family, and to put her own life back in order. Thus begins a journey into Maya's parallel world-- an India filled with loving and annoying relatives, vivid colors, and superstitious customs--a cross-cultural, transcontinental search to for a chance to find real love.
Check out our Exclusive Extended Interview with the Author!
1) Your characters seem so alive and real...what's your secret?
Thank you! Once you’ve been writing about the same characters for a while, they start to seem like real people to you, too, as if they’re living out their lives independently of you. I remember jogging around the reservoir once—I hate to jog so I had to distract myself—and thinking about Maya, my protagonist, and wondering what she was going to do next. That afternoon, I asked a writer friend, “What do people who aren’t writing novels think about when they jog or are stuck on the subway?” She looked at me funny and said, “they think about their own lives,” which made me feel mine must be fairly boring.
But to answer your question, one thing that I think helps in terms of writing realistic, fully formed characters is reading what you’ve written out loud so that you can hear how it sounds. I did that with every draft of Other Waters, and would often catch phrases or even words that didn’t sound like they would really come out of that character’s mouth. For example, Seema, Maya’s mother, has a British-sounding Indian accent; she learned English formally, it’s not her first language, so she doesn’t really use contractions like don’t, can’t and the like. Each time I read the manuscript aloud I’d be changing her words to “do not,” “will not”, and so on.
2) If Oprah invited you onto her show to talk about your book, what would the theme of the show be?
The theme would be cross-cultural conflict: how do you build one identity when two very different cultures are pulling you apart? I think a lot of “hyphenated Americans”, from Greek-Americans like me to Indian-Americans like Maya, could relate.
And then maybe in the second half hour (because of course I’d be booked for the whole show—I’m in charge of this fantasy, right?) she’d bring on other authors who have written about cultures which aren’t their own, such as Arthur Golden, who wrote Memoirs of a Geisha, which I loved.
3) This would make a great film. Any talks of turning your book into a movie?
Not that I know of, although I would love to see the final scene on screen—just think of the costumes! I do fantasize about this become a Bollywood-meets-Hollywood film, along the lines of Monsoon Wedding. Actually, while researching Other Waters, I ended up being an extra in a Kollywood movie that was being filmed in Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, while I was staying there. (Kollywood is the Tamil-language film industry based in Chennai.) I woke up on New Year’s Day, 2007, and wandered down to the riverside where a crowd had assembled around a surprisingly handsome saddhu—the wandering ascetics who flock to the holy city. Eventually a man came up, explained that they were making a movie, and asked my Indian friend if she and I would like to be in the scene. He had us walk across the dock and then let us watch the playback; we had to do the scene twice because some of the other extras kept looking at the camera, but we were consummate professionals, of course. It made for a pretty unusual way to start the new year. It’s called Naan Kadavul, or “I am God.” Shockingly, my scene did not make the trailer.
4) No matter how many books you write, I’m sure each one has it’s own challenges. How was this book more challenging to write than your others? How was it easier?
My first book, North of Ithaka, was a travel memoir about the year I spent living in the village in Greece where my father was born and my grandmother was murdered, overseeing the rebuilding of my grandparents’ house, which had fallen into ruin after the Greek Civil War. I thought writing fiction would be so much easier, because it would eliminate all that pesky research, and go so much faster; you didn’t have to wait for things to happen, or worry about accuracy. I imagined you just sat there with a laptop in hand, wearing a cute outfit and making things up, sort of Jane-Austen-meets-Carrie-Bradshaw.
I was so wrong. So. Very. Wrong. While working on Other Waters, I actually found fiction much harder to write because nonfiction is about considering the facts, and deciding what among them is relevant to your story. With fiction, first you have to make up all the facts—the character’s pasts, the world they live in—and then you have to decide what’s relevant and throw most of what you’ve written out. Maybe it’s because I work as a journalist that nonfiction came much easier to me. But even though fiction took much greater effort on my part, I really enjoyed it. I loved inhabiting a world that wasn’t my own. And, while I think I’ll probably continue to write both, my next project is fiction, so I guess I’m hooked.
5) What kind of research did you have to do to bring this story to life on the page?
“Have to” is not exactly the right term because the research was by far the most exciting part of the experience of writing Other Waters for me. I traveled to India three times, attended three different weddings, visited astrologers and forts and marketplaces, and lived with local families. And I also took a class on Hinduism at Barnard. For someone like me—who studied Folklore and Mythology in college—getting to take a class like that is a total party. It was the class that inspired me to visit Benares, the holy city on the Ganges, which the setting for a major turning point in Other Waters.
6) If you weren’t a writer, what job would you love to try out?
When I was a kid I actually made a list of jobs I wanted to have when I grew up. It included teaching, which I’ve done and would love to do again; working in a bookstore, which I’ve never done but still fantasize about; a job I called “shoe shopper”—I’m not quite sure what that would entail but it still sounds pretty great to me; and being the person who names lipsticks and nail polishes. I was a beauty editor for several years (at Elle, InStyle, and People magazines), so in a way I got to do that last job, too.
7) What was your first story about?
My first story, which I wrote and illustrated with the help of a babysitter when I was six, was a birthday present for my mother. It was called “Nitsa, Detective” and was about me solving a case (back then my family called me Elenitsa, which is a Greek nickname meaning “little Eleni”). The dramatic turning point in the narrative occurs when I throw a sponge covered in Nivea face cream at a criminal, causing him to slip so I can catch him. Even back then I was putting beauty products to good use!
8) What's up next for you?
I’ve just started working on my next novel so I can’t say too much or I’ll jinx it—I’m just as secretly superstitious as Maya is. Actually, no, I’m openly superstitious. All I can say right now is it’s a family saga involving three generations of women, and it’s set in New Orleans and Nicaragua. So I’m still exploring the themes that fascinate me—cultural and generational conflict—but in yet another setting. I love to travel and explore new cultures; if I’m not physically on a trip I have to take one in my work.
About the Author:
Eleni N. Gage writes regularly for InStyle, Real Simple, Travel+Leisure, and Elle, among others, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, and Parade. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University’s MFA Program, Eleni now lives in Miami, Florida with her husband. Visit the author online at: www.EleniGage.com or on Facebook.
**Please enter to win using the form on the left side bar of our website. Comments left on the post are not used as entry.
Women's Fiction
St. Martin's Press
www.EleniGage.com
5 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, March 2, 2012!
About the Book:
Maya is an accomplished psychiatry resident with a terrific boyfriend, loving family, and bustling New York social life. When her grandmother dies in India, a family squabble over property results in a curse that drifts across continents and threatens Maya's life. Or so her father says-- Maya (being a modern woman, an American, and a doctor) doesn't believe in curses, Brahman, or otherwise. But when her father suffers a heart attack, her sister miscarries, and her career and relationship both start to falter, Maya starts to worry. A trip back to India with her best friend Heidi, Maya reasons, will be just what's needed to remove the curse, save her family, and to put her own life back in order. Thus begins a journey into Maya's parallel world-- an India filled with loving and annoying relatives, vivid colors, and superstitious customs--a cross-cultural, transcontinental search to for a chance to find real love.
Check out our Exclusive Extended Interview with the Author!
1) Your characters seem so alive and real...what's your secret?
Thank you! Once you’ve been writing about the same characters for a while, they start to seem like real people to you, too, as if they’re living out their lives independently of you. I remember jogging around the reservoir once—I hate to jog so I had to distract myself—and thinking about Maya, my protagonist, and wondering what she was going to do next. That afternoon, I asked a writer friend, “What do people who aren’t writing novels think about when they jog or are stuck on the subway?” She looked at me funny and said, “they think about their own lives,” which made me feel mine must be fairly boring.
But to answer your question, one thing that I think helps in terms of writing realistic, fully formed characters is reading what you’ve written out loud so that you can hear how it sounds. I did that with every draft of Other Waters, and would often catch phrases or even words that didn’t sound like they would really come out of that character’s mouth. For example, Seema, Maya’s mother, has a British-sounding Indian accent; she learned English formally, it’s not her first language, so she doesn’t really use contractions like don’t, can’t and the like. Each time I read the manuscript aloud I’d be changing her words to “do not,” “will not”, and so on.
2) If Oprah invited you onto her show to talk about your book, what would the theme of the show be?
The theme would be cross-cultural conflict: how do you build one identity when two very different cultures are pulling you apart? I think a lot of “hyphenated Americans”, from Greek-Americans like me to Indian-Americans like Maya, could relate.
And then maybe in the second half hour (because of course I’d be booked for the whole show—I’m in charge of this fantasy, right?) she’d bring on other authors who have written about cultures which aren’t their own, such as Arthur Golden, who wrote Memoirs of a Geisha, which I loved.
3) This would make a great film. Any talks of turning your book into a movie?
Not that I know of, although I would love to see the final scene on screen—just think of the costumes! I do fantasize about this become a Bollywood-meets-Hollywood film, along the lines of Monsoon Wedding. Actually, while researching Other Waters, I ended up being an extra in a Kollywood movie that was being filmed in Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, while I was staying there. (Kollywood is the Tamil-language film industry based in Chennai.) I woke up on New Year’s Day, 2007, and wandered down to the riverside where a crowd had assembled around a surprisingly handsome saddhu—the wandering ascetics who flock to the holy city. Eventually a man came up, explained that they were making a movie, and asked my Indian friend if she and I would like to be in the scene. He had us walk across the dock and then let us watch the playback; we had to do the scene twice because some of the other extras kept looking at the camera, but we were consummate professionals, of course. It made for a pretty unusual way to start the new year. It’s called Naan Kadavul, or “I am God.” Shockingly, my scene did not make the trailer.
4) No matter how many books you write, I’m sure each one has it’s own challenges. How was this book more challenging to write than your others? How was it easier?
My first book, North of Ithaka, was a travel memoir about the year I spent living in the village in Greece where my father was born and my grandmother was murdered, overseeing the rebuilding of my grandparents’ house, which had fallen into ruin after the Greek Civil War. I thought writing fiction would be so much easier, because it would eliminate all that pesky research, and go so much faster; you didn’t have to wait for things to happen, or worry about accuracy. I imagined you just sat there with a laptop in hand, wearing a cute outfit and making things up, sort of Jane-Austen-meets-Carrie-Bradshaw.
I was so wrong. So. Very. Wrong. While working on Other Waters, I actually found fiction much harder to write because nonfiction is about considering the facts, and deciding what among them is relevant to your story. With fiction, first you have to make up all the facts—the character’s pasts, the world they live in—and then you have to decide what’s relevant and throw most of what you’ve written out. Maybe it’s because I work as a journalist that nonfiction came much easier to me. But even though fiction took much greater effort on my part, I really enjoyed it. I loved inhabiting a world that wasn’t my own. And, while I think I’ll probably continue to write both, my next project is fiction, so I guess I’m hooked.
5) What kind of research did you have to do to bring this story to life on the page?
“Have to” is not exactly the right term because the research was by far the most exciting part of the experience of writing Other Waters for me. I traveled to India three times, attended three different weddings, visited astrologers and forts and marketplaces, and lived with local families. And I also took a class on Hinduism at Barnard. For someone like me—who studied Folklore and Mythology in college—getting to take a class like that is a total party. It was the class that inspired me to visit Benares, the holy city on the Ganges, which the setting for a major turning point in Other Waters.
6) If you weren’t a writer, what job would you love to try out?
When I was a kid I actually made a list of jobs I wanted to have when I grew up. It included teaching, which I’ve done and would love to do again; working in a bookstore, which I’ve never done but still fantasize about; a job I called “shoe shopper”—I’m not quite sure what that would entail but it still sounds pretty great to me; and being the person who names lipsticks and nail polishes. I was a beauty editor for several years (at Elle, InStyle, and People magazines), so in a way I got to do that last job, too.
7) What was your first story about?
My first story, which I wrote and illustrated with the help of a babysitter when I was six, was a birthday present for my mother. It was called “Nitsa, Detective” and was about me solving a case (back then my family called me Elenitsa, which is a Greek nickname meaning “little Eleni”). The dramatic turning point in the narrative occurs when I throw a sponge covered in Nivea face cream at a criminal, causing him to slip so I can catch him. Even back then I was putting beauty products to good use!
8) What's up next for you?
I’ve just started working on my next novel so I can’t say too much or I’ll jinx it—I’m just as secretly superstitious as Maya is. Actually, no, I’m openly superstitious. All I can say right now is it’s a family saga involving three generations of women, and it’s set in New Orleans and Nicaragua. So I’m still exploring the themes that fascinate me—cultural and generational conflict—but in yet another setting. I love to travel and explore new cultures; if I’m not physically on a trip I have to take one in my work.
About the Author:
Eleni N. Gage writes regularly for InStyle, Real Simple, Travel+Leisure, and Elle, among others, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, and Parade. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University’s MFA Program, Eleni now lives in Miami, Florida with her husband. Visit the author online at: www.EleniGage.com or on Facebook.
**Please enter to win using the form on the left side bar of our website. Comments left on the post are not used as entry.
5 comments:
This sounds so interesting. I'm fascinated with books that reveal different cultures. Educational and entertaining at the same time.
Thanks, C.E.! I hope you get a chance to read the book and that you enjoy it if you do!
This sounds like a winner. Would love to read. Have entered.
misskallie2000 at yahoo dot com
Thanks Miss Kallie! I hope oyu enjoy it!
Thanks for the chance!
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