Interview with Deborah Noyes with giveaway

Can you tell us what inspired you to write Captivity?

From the moment I first read about the real Maggie and Kate Fox, two ordinary farm girls who gripped their community by claiming to be able to communicate with the dead, I was hooked. Their “gift” eventually made them famous, the nineteenth-century equivalent of celebrities, and their story touches on science and spirit, class and gender, subversion and showmanship, family politics and bad romance. A lot here for a writer to love.

Maggie was always conflicted about her calling, and this conflict — not whether (or not) she and her sisters were frauds — interested me most. What drove her? Why did otherwise rational people buy what she had to sell? To what extent do we need to believe in the continuity of life, and why? To explore these questions, I needed a second protagonist, a counterpoint. 

Maggie’s friendship with a Clara Gill, a reclusive scientific artist and a skeptic, is unlikely — given the barriers of age and class — but Clara’s tragic past leaves her vulnerable. She’s held captive by grief, and that’s where Maggie comes in.

Do you match your characters face to real ones? If so, whom do you see as Maggie and Clara?

There are extant photos and drawings of Maggie, so I had those to work with (with an impish bit of Maggie Gyllenhaal thrown in?) The physical model for Will Cross was James Mcavoy. Artemus was Jeremy Irons. Sven would be some hulking, pony-tailed mountain-man take on Rutger Hauer. (Am I embarrassed yet? This is way too much fun.) I’m not casting my dream movie here so much as admitting I have a terrible memory;  if I don’t nutshell at least some of my characters, I’ll end up with conflicting or inconsistent descriptions, and not only are celebrities visually accessible, “casting” helps you think more cinematically as a novelist, which can’t be a bad thing for pacing. (Would it redeem me if I said my physical model for the character of Pratt was Gertrude Stein? It was!)

As for Clara, apart from her long pale hair, I have no ready image in mind. I was so concentrated on her inner life — her more than any other character in the book. Maggie describes her as “all watery absence,” and I think by the time Maggie meets her, Clara would look almost spectral for lack of light and exercise. By then she’d spent two decades in seclusion. But as a girl in London … a young Gwyneth Paltrow?? (Yes. I know. I’ll stop now.)

What book is currently on your nightstand?

I wish it were only one. I can say what’s at the top of the pile: Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town by Elyssa East, and two YA novels, Raven Summer, by David Almond, and The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I’m happy when I’m interesting at all…

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Be outside — hike, travel, explore with my daughter (my son’s seventeen, and my eyes light up when he deigns to say hello) — or listen to music, take pictures.

Are you currently working on another novel?

I’m just finishing up the draft of a young adult novel about a doppelganger and plague in 14^th century Florence.

Thanks so much Deborah for taking time to share with us today!

http://www.deborahnoyes.com/
http://hauntedplaylist.blogspot.com/

Want to win your own copy of Capitivity? Leave a comment with your email to enter.  You get an extra entry if you leave Deborah a question or comment.  

USA Only! Winner announced on June 15th.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED.