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SusanTepper.com
Susan Tepper grew up on Long Island. Her
previous books What May
Have Been: Letters of Jackson Pollock & Dori G and
Deer
& Other Stories are set on or tied to Long Island.
Before settling down to study writing, Tepper was an actor, flight
attendant, marketing manager, tour guide, singer, television producer,
interior decorator, rescue worker and more.
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Interview
with Susan Tepper (2012)
The
Short Review:
How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?
Susan Tepper: Starting
around April of last year, I wrote the first flash-fiction. It got
published pretty quickly. That prompted me to write the same
characters in another story, shortly after, and that was published
quickly too. So then I was hooked on these two characters and
began to write one flash a day. There are 48 in total. So
counting a little lag time with the first two stories being published,
it took me about 2 months to write this book.
TSR:
Did you
have a collection in mind when you were writing them?
ST: Honestly,
no. Not until the first two were published and then the characters
seemed to be calling to me. I kind of fell in love with
them. With their dilemma, and their passion for each other, and
what matters most to them in life. It is a love story (albeit a
very quirky one).
TSR:
How did
you choose which stories to include and in what order?
ST: In
this book they are all based around the same two characters, M and
Kitty Kat. I used the order in which I wrote the stories, day by
day. I've been told that I'm an intuitive writer, so I let my
intuition take over, and the sequence flowed in the correct
order. I'm happy with the sequence which tells their complete
story.
TSR:
What
does the word "story"
mean to you?
ST:
Story to me is always a mystical and mysterious form that comes
together in order to convey something to both the writer and hopefully
the reader. To open a door that was previously closed, to send in
some light to the dark corners, to illuminate a world that particular
writer sees -- that writer's world view.
TSR:
Do you have a reader in mind when you write stories?
ST:
Never the reader. In fact, I don't have much of "anything" in mind
when I write. I let it flow out of my unconscious and onto the
page. My best writing teacher was the writer Jamie Cat Callan who
taught us how to write from "the right side of the brain." Jamie
really cracked me open as a writer and a poet. A lot of what I am
able to do came out of what I gained from her workshops.
TSR: Is
there
anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your collection,
anything at all?
ST: Did you empathize with the characters?
TSR:
How does
it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
ST: It feels heavenly.
TSR:
What are you working on now?
ST: Right
now I'm working on another collection of linked-flash-fiction, but this
one is set in the South of France during one week in August. It's
also about a relationship, but quite different in tone and sensibility
than this current book.
TSR:
What are
the three most recent short story collections you've read?
ST: God Bless America by Steve Almond, Domestic Apparition by Meg Tuite and Wild Life by Kathy Fish.
Interview
with Susan Tepper (2010)
The
Short Review:
How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?
Susan Tepper: The stories in Deer were written over a span of
about fifteen years. In another interview I claimed a decade to
write them, but then I did some research into the stories and saw I
had one that was written in 1994 (Blue Skies) though it didn't get
published until Green Mountains Review picked it up for their Summer
2000 issue.
And that was after they had held it a couple
of
years, sent it back rejected, only to phone me about two years
after that to say they wanted it to publish! It was a
cold, early winter evening during solstice, around dinner
time. I was basically stunned. Just stood there holding
the phone and quivering in the dim light of my kitchen, hardly
could
believe what I was hearing. That is the history of my first
published story.
TSR:
Did you
have a collection in mind when you were writing them?
ST: I never have a sense of a "future" on any of the
work I
do, be it stories, poems or novels. I just sit down at my
computer
and work cold. No preconceived idea of whether it will be
fiction or poetry that will come out during a particular writing
time. What started as a story grew into a novel in
two instances, simply because I fell so in love with the
characters and
plot that I couldn't bear it to end. I find all
my longer works (4 novels) have been written in winter when I'm
less
distracted by the beauty of the warmer months. So, to answer your
question, it was never a plan, just a bunch of stories that kept
coming
out with deer in some form or context.
TSR:
How did
you choose which stories to include and in what order?
ST: Well these were all stories that were written
containing deer: be it real deer, imagined, plastic lawn deer, a
wire
stage prop, etc. It was only when my publisher decided to do this
collection that I realized I had so many deer invading my
stories. So we cherry-picked through a lot of my work and used
the ones containing deer-- thus the title.
As for the story order, I chose Deer as the
first
piece since it's part of the title. It also got a lot of
publicity. It was first published in American Letters &
Commentary, then got nominated for National Public Radio Selected
Shorts
Series, and then was staged as a theatre piece by Inter/ACT
Theatre
Company in Philadelphia. The rest of the stories I just
picked kind of randomly, and my publisher liked the order so we
took it
from there.
TSR:
What
does the word "story"
mean to you?
ST: Story is another realm to me, a place to go where I've
never been or imagined being, where reality is suspended for a
time,
in place of another reality which is story.
TSR:
Do you have a reader in mind when you write stories?
ST: God forbid. That's a sure way of
killing off inspiration. I don't want anyone to even know what
I'm
writing, and I never have anyone read the work before
it's published.
I trust my own instincts and revise
continually until I
get it to a place where there is nothing left to do with it. Then
I
send it around. If it gets rejected a lot, then I will go back
into
it and take a look. Sometimes I will tweak it, or add or
subtract parts, but I never pay any attention to what the
rejection slip
says. As an editor, myself, I wouldn't dream of imposing my views
on
another writer's story. Writers have to trust only
themselves. I've heard of agents and editors at
some publishing houses who have been known to ruin good work with
bad
input. It's a tricky tightrope the writer must
walk.
TSR: Is
there
anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your collection, anything at all?
ST: Did it move you in some way?
TSR: How does
it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
ST: It feels interesting. And nice. I
hope they get the same rush reading the stories that I got while
writing them.
TSR:
What are you working on now?
ST: I have recently completed a novel
co-authored with Gary Percesepe. It's being published this
summer by Cervena Barva Press. It's sexy. I wrote the
male part and Gary wrote the female. It was an intense
experience co-writing in this way. You see, Gary and I have
never met. We also never spoke on the phone till the book was
completed. We "know" each other through the online writing
collective FICTIONAUT, and have admired each other's work posted
on that
site. Somehow, in an email exchange, we got the idea for this
novel. We wrote back and forth, every day, until we
finished the book. Right now we're keeping the theme kind of
secret,
but I will say that it's a project that is very close to my
heart. Both our hearts. And because of that, the
chemistry worked well for this
writing.
TSR:
What are
the three most recent short story collections you've read?
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