A Certain Slant of Certain Light Written by Laura Whitcomb is a highly intense story of a ghostly relationship. And by ghostly, I mean the story revolves around two ghosts! Whitcomb tells us a little about the book and what is to come!
Tay: How did you come up with the plot for A Certain Slant of Light?
Laura: I was cleaning my apartment one day while listening to an Anne Rice Book-on-Tape. I liked the way her narrator was speaking in an antiquated way but commenting on contemporary life. I thought it would be fun to do that, but you don’t have to use a vampire – a ghost can also hang around for years, even centuries, past her decade of origin. I thought, what would be the strangest thing that could happen to a ghost who has been hovering about unseen for 130 years? Having someone look her in the eyes? So I had my ghost clinging to a High School English teacher when one of his eleventh grade students sees her. The next question was, why could he see her when no one else has been able to? Could it be because he is also a ghost? Maybe he found a way to borrow a body. So, I asked myself, what would they think of each other? When I decided that they would fall in love, the next problem was that he had a physical form and she did not. How would they get her a body? Unfortunately, the families they borrowed into were incompatible. And soon they realized that they would need to give back the bodies of the two teenagers. Only they didn’t know how. Ultimately the ghosts needed to figure out why they were haunting the earth rather than having been invited into heaven. So the short answer to the question is that I came up with the plot by asking myself a series of questions and then answering them with imagination.
Tay: Are you working on a new book?
Laura: Yes, but I’m superstitious when it comes to talking about my stories before they’re finished. All I’ll say is that like A Certain Slant of Light the next novel has a supernatural element and centers on a relationship.
Tay: Do you plan on doing any book signings? If so, where?
Laura: I will be at the Barnes and Noble book store in Beaverton, Oregon on Saturday 1/7/06 at 2:00 p.m. I’ll also appear at the Lake Oswego, Oregon public library 3/21/06 at 7:00 p.m.
Tay: Describe the main characters of the story.
Laura: The first person narrator, Helen, died shortly after the Civil War and has been clinging to one human host after another ever since. She can’t remember her life as a human, but fears she did something terrible – she must have or God would have sent her to heaven. Every time she wanders too far from her host she falls back into her hell, a frightening and painful place full of dark icy water where she is trapped by rotting wooden planks. She has chosen a series of hosts that are connected to literature because she loves to read and over the shoulder of a human is the only way she can enjoy novels and poetry since she can’t pick up or turn the pages of a book. James died in World War I and has been haunting a certain park ever since. He doesn’t realize until later that this lot was where the house he grew up in once stood. He can’t remember how he died either, but after he discovers an “empty” teenage boy and enters the body, he begins to get glimpses of his past life.
Tay: What kind of audience are you targeting?
Laura: It’s a young adult book, for ages 12 to 18, but it seems to have good crossover potential. I made it onto the Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” display with a collection of adult literature. Also the Italian version will place me with adult suspense like Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark while the Chinese translation is for a publisher of literary fiction. I think I’ll especially appeal to the kind of women who join book groups.
Tay: Where did the title of the story come from?
Laura: It’s Emily Dickinson, a lovely poem of hers full of longing and her special kind of sweet spookiness. Helen’s first host is a Dickinson-like poet and my agent and I also liked the phrase because Helen uses the word “Light” for her out-of-body state. For her, instead of the Quick and the Dead, it’s the Quick and the Light.
Tay: Any other information you’d like the readers to know?
Laura: The film rights have been optioned by Plan B for Warner Brothers studio and there will also be a Listening Library recording in 2006.
