#51
February 20, 2004
From: Rob Field

Re: Cover of the Solitaire trade paperback.
It is striking and hits the right emotional chord for the book. (Although oddly as I sit and consider it now, it does not seem to relate much to the story itself.)

Re: Solitaire
I really enjoyed the novel. It really struck an emotional chord with me. A couple of things that I found interesting:

* The virtual confinement environment was in many ways similar to the peaceful environment that I try to visualize when meditating.

* It took me a lot of thinking, a little therapy, and a lot of 12 step meetings before I found that for myself anyway there was tremendous personal growth in the process that Jackal succinctly summarizes as "I turned over every single rock inside myself and found all the worms. And then I ate them". I'm curious if you saw the effects of Jackal's experience in VC as positive or negative. I thought the novel was somewhat ambiguous on that point. I saw a lot of emotional growth, a refined sense of self, a better personal boundaries come out of the experience even though the way she came by that growth left its own emotional scars. (Doesn't it always seem to work like that!)

* Reading your website I noticed that you mentioned that you had gotten some feedback that your male characters were weak. I did notice all seem to be very secondary characters and a lot of them, while not evil in any sense, seem to betray someone in some fashion. I cannot decide if in the end this gave the book an unbalanced feel or not, certainly it was not grossly out of balance evidenced by the fact I cannot make up my mind.

Just a completely random thought that popped into my head, was there every any discussion of marketing Solitaire as a young adult novel? I only ask because I noticed it has many of the characteristics of some of the better ones.

Sorry to ramble on so long and probably quite disjointedly. I really enjoyed your novel and will be keeping my eye open for both your past and your future work. Keep writing.

All the best.
Rob

It's always nice to know when someone enjoys Solitaire enough to want to read something else I've written. If you've poked around on the site, you know that my published stories and essay are available, but there's no harm reminding people.

I agree with you about the cover, and I think an emotional connection is more important than a factual/textual one. I suppose that's because for me the heart of any story is emotional. I am pleased to have had two covers that do this, rather than simply sending a pure "marketing" signal—like, for example, all those courtroom thrillers with gavels or jury boxes on the cover, or chick lit in pastel colors with the titles in curly writing. When a reader sees Solitaire in the bookstore, she may know what it isn't (chick lit, for sure), but she won't know exactly what it is—and curiosity is a powerful force.

No one ever discussed marketing Solitaire as a young adult novel, at least not with me. I'm curious to know what you think the YA characteristics are (that's a real question, not a defensive one—I have great admiration for good YA fiction).

As far as I can tell, the only person in the book who doesn't betray someone on some level is Snow, and that may only be because there was no practical reason. Snow's quite pragmatic.

If by ambiguous you mean that the book doesn't tell the reader how to feel about a particular experience, then Solitaire is ambiguous in many (perhaps most) respects. That's deliberate. I think very few important experiences are purely positive or negative in the long term, partly because there are very few (well, I can't think of any) experiences that aren't susceptible to the influence of joy or love or fear. These are the "big three" world-shapers in my pantheon; the way they jostle and recombine in particular situations is something that interests me in life and work. I think the jostling is where the scars come from, as well as the strokes and thumps we all give each other in the everyday world. And yep, I agree with you that's how growth works in the human world, although I do believe it's possible to grow without fear if, well, if we weren't so afraid to. There goes that snake, eating its tail again.

Cheers, and thanks for these interesting comments.

#50
February 20, 2004
From: Mary

Hi Kelley

I discovered Solitaire to be a fascinating story and a memorable reading experience. What inspired you to write the book? Good success with your future writings and endeavors. Have a marvelous week.

Best,
Mary

I've talked some about this recently, although ideas and inspiration are not always the same thing. Ideas are easy, and inspiration is unreliable. Art and craft are hard. I suppose for me it comes down to sheer stubbornness. There are feelings or dynamics or states of being that I want to explore, and so I bash my head against the word wall until I find the story (the people, the situations, the choices and consequences) that seems the best vehicle. That's such a long and iterative process that I can't really pinpoint when it gelled for Solitaire.

Sadly, I'm not going to have a much better answer to this question for the next book (current shorthand for which is the Kansas book). It's been mulching in my head for over a year now, and is the same in essence, and different in detail, than what I began with. Where did it come from? Nicola says it comes from my fascination with notions of rebirth (and you thought it was just about Kansas, grin).

Now the book after the Kansas book (the mountain book), well, hah! I know exactly where that one came from. Nicola and I took a short but lovely trip here last fall, and several different moments rubbed up against each other in my brain and conspired to give me the whole package at once, character and story and feelings, like a present in a pretty blue bow. This has never happened to me before, and strikes me as a rare and precious thing.

I hope you have a good week too.

Hello Ms. Eskridge (not Mrs.!),

As you could probably guess, I just read Solitaire the other day, and thought it was excellent. The central section, where Jackal deals with VC, was harrowing, and I appreciated the unusualness of a SF novel about business management. I wouldn't have thought that subject could hold my interest, but it did. (Of course the book was about other things too.)

My only question about the book is: What exactly is a web? At first I thought it was a group of age-mates, all the people on the island who were born in the same year, or something like that. But then at one point someone tells Jackal that her web was lucky to have the cool house that they did, and it seemed like a web must be smaller than I'd thought. Is it just a randomly-selected subset of Jackal's age-mates?

Thanks for writing such a good book, and I look forward to reading more of your novels.

You're right about the web—they are roughly the same age, probably in a 4 or 5 year spread just so they have a spectrum of experience among themselves. I think the part you're referring to is that Jackal's parents had a nice house, "a special growing-up place for the special child of Ko."

It's interesting to me how many readers comment on the business aspect of the book. I've always found it wacky to extrapolate a future without business (not to mention housework, utility bills, dentistry, volunteerism, menstruation....). Seems to me these things will always be with us.

I'm glad you enjoyed the book.