Let’s welcome someone new to the Scribbler.
Alison has kindly accepted our
invitation to be our guest this week and share the news of her debut novel.
Read on, my friends.
Alison
Taylor (they/them) is a writer, editor, and filmmaker based in Fredericton.
Taylor’s short stories have appeared in various journals, and their debut novel
Aftershock, published by HarperCollins Canada, received the John
and Margaret Savage First Book Award (Fiction), and was shortlisted for the Rakuten
Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. They received the 2024 David Adams Richards Prize
for Fiction for their work-in-progress, Confessions of a Binge Drinker (working
title). As a video editor, they cut a hundred-plus hours of television and many
award-winning short films and music videos, and their own experimental films
have screened at festivals internationally. They currently work in the communications
field for the Government of New Brunswick, and freelance as a video editor and
as an editor of books.
Title: Aftershock
Synopsis:
Shame and nightmares still haunt Chloe thirteen years after her baby
sister died. Her mother, Jules, has lost herself in her tech career; she has a
long history of chronic pain—and little time for Chloe. Aftershock follows their parallel journeys: When Chloe drops out of
university to travel for a year, Jules’s Oxy dependency quickly escalates.
Jules struggles to regain control of her life while Chloe, after a rocky visit
with her estranged father in New Zealand, takes herself offline and off the
map. When Jules suddenly can’t find her, the feeling is all too familiar. Mother
and daughter will need to address old secrets and the emotional impact they
have wrought before they can reconcile with each other, with the past, and with
themselves.
The Story Behind the Story:
Aftershock, my first novel, began as a story I wrote for a short
story masterclass I took through Continuing Studies at U of T. The class was
amazing — a sixteen-week workshop, where every participant emerged with four
stories that had been intensely critiqued by the whole class. Terrifying, but amazing. One of the stories
I wrote for this class was called “dead baby.” Someone had once told me to
“write about what scares you,” and what scared me then, and still does to some
extent, is my own family history, my own upbringing, my own life.
I had a sister who died from SIDS before I was born, and there was always this shadow presence in the house, because both my parents and my oldest sister had been through this horrible thing together, and they still carried within themselves that shock and that grief. It filled the air in the house like a charge. It ran under the surface of their relationships with each other.
So I wrote this story, wanting to imagine what that was like for them,
and how it shaped them, and ultimately, how it shaped me. And of course it’s
all imaginary: these characters are not my mother and sister — at all. If
anything, I would say both the mother and the daughter are different versions
of me. In order to figure out a character and build empathy for them, both in
myself and in the reader, I imagine myself into that character’s situation and
explore how I would feel and react.
“dead baby.,” then, is told from the alternating perspectives of
Jules, the mother, and Chloe, her six-year old daughter. It starts with Jules
getting a call from the babysitter, saying the baby isn’t breathing, and we go
through the next few hours with them: Jules, in shock, going through the
motions, going to the hospital, coming home, trying to be a mother to Chloe
while she drinks a bottle of whiskey; and Chloe, trying to stay out of sight,
watching the paramedics come, watching her mother unravel, and thinking about
how she’d been playing with her sister, but then her sister had started crying,
and Chloe just wanted her to be quiet because the babysitter was busy with her
boyfriend, and she could be really mean, so Chloe had tried to get the baby to
suck on a stuffed animal… the story ends with Chloe crawling into bed with her mother,
who’s half-passed out, and whispering that she’s sorry, because she’s pretty
sure she killed the baby.
As a story, it’s not very successful. It was undoubtedly
underdeveloped, and at least one guy in the class couldn’t stomach that a
mother would act the way Jules acted. Also, alternating perspectives in a short
form is tricky, because you only have so much time to invest in each character,
and to get readers invested in each character. So the general comments from
this workshop about “dead baby” were that there was some great writing in it,
but they weren’t completely sold.
I still felt like there was something there. And the comment from that
guy about it not being a plausible depiction of motherhood really got to
me. For two reasons: one, because patriarchy. Two, because while the story was
definitely fiction, the aspects of the characters that my classmate was
reacting to were definitely real.
But then, as one has to do with all feedback, I had to find the value
in it, and examine what made him say that. What was I doing or not doing, and what
did I need to do to make it work? Another classmate, one whose sparse, cutting
writing I admired, said she really wanted to know what happened next. She felt
the story ended just when it really began. Finally, I had done a great deal of writing
about the world, the backstories, and the inner workings of the characters. I
wasn’t done with it.
Fast-forward a couple of years, and I was applying to the Humber
School for Writers’ 30-week correspondence program. Intended for people working
on book-length projects, they pair you with an author-mentor who will give you
feedback on up to 300 pages. And because you have to send ten pages a week, it
really encourages momentum.
I remember the night I was completing my application. For my project
proposal, I had this idea that I would do a short-story collection, because it
seemed less daunting, and maybe a good place to start. But as I was filling out
the application, I remember thinking, why am I forcing myself to do that step,
when I know I just want to write a novel?
So then I had to come up with something pretty quickly, because the
deadline was probably that night, knowing me. And then it all just came
together in my brain. I would write a novel about the characters from “dead
baby,” but set it 10 or 15 years later: how had those events affected them, and
where were they now? I already had this meaty, traumatic backstory to build it
around, and some deeply troubled characters to explore. So that’s what I did. I
applied with that idea, got accepted, worked with David Bergen as my mentor,
and wrote my first draft.
Website: Please go HERE.
A question before you go, Alison:
Alison: The first book I remember loving was Judy Blume’s Superfudge. I read it in one sitting, seven hours on the couch, when I was about eight. But the book that sticks in my mind, that I would have read when I was about 14, and that I actually tracked down a few years ago because it’s haunted me ever since, is The Missing Persons League, by Frank Bonham (Scholastic, 1986). Dystopian YA at its best: a dying world, a missing family, a mysterious ring. And an ending you won’t see coming. It’s out of print, but worth it if you ever get the chance.
© 2020 by Alison Taylor. Reproduced by permission of the author.
When a
kid invites you to see their room, it’s like being invited into their mind: you
have to pay it the reverence it’s due. And you can’t say no. Unless you hate
the kid. Which I apparently didn’t.
As
Char took my hand and led me through the house to her room, Amanda called out
that I shouldn’t judge her by its state because she tidied it every evening but
then Char happened every morning. I heard Lance telling her she should just
blame it on the earthquakes.
The
room was a mess, but I’d seen worse. I thought it was probably genetic.
Stuffed
animals crawled over piles of books and blankets, and the dog I’d met earlier
(Spot) sat at a toy piano. A princess castle dominated one corner, which made
my lip curl a little, but the whole centre of the room was cleared to make room
for a pad of paper as long as Char when she lay down beside it.
Sit
down here, Chlo. She pointed to a spot beside her. I moved to sit close by. No,
not there. Here.
Okay,
I laughed. I’ll do what I’m told.
Yes,
she said. Here, you can draw with this colour. She handed me a blue crayon.
Over there, she said, pointing to one corner of the paper.
Okay,
I said. Not really knowing how to act around kids, I found her instructions
quite helpful. What should I draw?
Char
looked up at me for a few seconds, thinking. Can you draw . . . a dog?
I
think so. What kind of dog?
Um .
. . the kind that rescues people.
I
looked at her, remembering the torn-apart buildings of this city she lived in.
That’s bleak, kid.
She
nodded.
Okay.
And what are you going to draw?
She
looked down at the paper and started sketching a shape in purple. I’m going to
draw our spaceship, she said.
Our
spaceship?
Yes.
We’re going to go to Neptune.
I
froze, watching her, a whorl of forces scrapping it out in my brain, my chest,
my stomach. Love, kinship, jealousy, resentment, fear. At Char’s age I had a
favourite game, invented by me and my father. He would smooth out the sand in
the sandbox in our backyard and draw a rocket ship in it, big enough for us to
sit inside its outline, me in between his legs, and Lizzie, a few months old,
propped up between mine. He’d already taught me the names of all the planets,
we’d paint them together, uneven splotches of colour across a page in the order
of their distance from the sun. Neptune was our favourite destination, the
beautiful purple-blue jewel that called to us, invited us to go as far as we
could, and then farther. David would make some sound effects while I narrated
our trip through the galaxy and Lizzie giggled and gurgled in my arms. I knew
he would look after us, and we would both look after her, and we would
adventure together every minute we could before he went away again for work.
And then it would just be me, keeping my sister safe.
Char
looked up from the very not-aerodynamic shape she’d drawn, saw my blank corner
of the page. You’re not drawing, she said. Draw! But I couldn’t.
I
left her there looking confused, and I felt even worse. But I wasn’t about to
get too attached.
The
pressure from Amanda didn’t help.
I
knew she was just trying to make me feel welcome, but her approach was all
wrong. First there was the conversation where she asked me if I would babysit
while she ran errands.
I
don’t babysit, I told her, thinking of Mo-mo and how that turned out.
But
she’s your sister.
I
barely know her. I’m not good with kids.
Well,
you’ll have to learn sometime.
Why?
Don’t
you want kids of your own?
No.
You’ll
change your mind.
I
don’t like kids, I finally said.
But
she’s your sister.
And
maybe I would have caved, just to be nice. The truth was, I found it hard not
to like Char. But then Amanda called her in from the backyard, where she was
terraforming with her mini-bulldozer, to the kitchen where I sat reading at the
table.
Wouldn’t
you like Chlo to stay and play with you while Mummy goes out for a little
while? As she talked, she bent over, wrapped her arms around her daughter and
nuzzled her face into her curls.
Char’s
face lit up. I closed my book.
I
wish I could, I lied. But I’m still so jet-lagged. And I went to the guest room
and shut the door, trying not to hear my half-sister crying in the kitchen.
I felt bad, but I hate being manipulated.
Thank you for being our guest this week, Alison. WE wish you
continued success with your writing.
Thank you to all our visitors and readers.
Feel free to leave a
comment below.
We’d love to hear
from you.
.jfif)