C.J. Spataro is an award-winning short fiction writer whose work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Taboos & Transgressions, Iron Horse Literary Review, december, Sequestrum, and Exacting Clam. She directs the MFA in Creative Writing and the MA in Publishing programs at Rosemont College and was a founding partner of Philadelphia Stories. Her debut novel, More Strange Than True, will be published by Sagging Meniscus Press in June, 2024. She will be 61 when the book is released.
Curtis Smith: Congratulations on More Strange Than True. Can you tell us about the book’s journey? I’ve enjoyed the work Sagging Meniscus has put out—how did you hook up with them? What’s the experience been like?
C.J. Spataro: I’ve been working on this novel for a while now. I thought I would try to get an agent, and I came heartbreakingly close several times, but ultimately, they all said no—one actually ghosted me after asking for a revision.
In the meantime, a good friend, the author Charles Holdefer, had been encouraging me to send the book to his press, Sagging Meniscus. They had published a short story of mine in their literary magazine, Exacting Clam, and featured the story on their podcast. So, I sent them the book and they decided to publish it. The experience has been wonderful. Jacob Smullyan and the whole team have been really great.
C.S.: I think many folks envision publication—but perhaps not so much what comes after. Writing is such a solitary pursuit, and then suddenly one is thrust into a more public stance, and has to navigate the world of getting the word out to the public (especially with an indie press where much of the promoting is on the author). How are you gearing up for this? What have you learned so far about promoting an indie title?
C.J.S.: Yes! There is so much about publication that has nothing to do with writing. Publishers depend on their authors to do a lot of marketing and promotion, unless you’re someone like Stephen King. My friends all told me not to because they had not had good experiences, but I went ahead and hired a publicist. I have been working with someone recommended to me by my publisher, and she’s been fantastic.
I think you just have to decide how much time you have, and how much money you can budget to pay someone to help you. It’s not cheap. Because this is all happening for me pretty late in the game, I thought it would be worth it for me to spend the money and build as big a platform as possible. I knew I couldn’t do it by myself. I’m also in a position where I’ve inherited a little money; if not for that, I would not have been able to afford it.
C.S.: I won’t be giving too much away when I say the book uses William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream as a kind of template. I enjoy this strategy—the parallel stories that take the familiar and update them with a modern twist. What was your history with A Midsummer’s Night Dream? What were the elements of it you found rich and still relevant?
C.J.S.: I am a big fan of adaptation in all its forms. I wouldn’t say Midsummer is a template so much, as I don’t really incorporate any of the plot elements from the play, except for one. The truth is, I had come up with this concept for a book that required a world with faeries in it. I did some research on traditional Celtic faeries, which didn’t really feel right for this book, or at least not entirely. Then I thought about A Midsummer’s Night Dream and its ready-made world of faeries and that was it! I decided to use Ondine and Iolanthe, both water faeries (or nymphs) from mythology, as Titania’s sisters. Also, there is this ridiculous Gilbert and Sullivan operetta called Iolanthe, which I thought would be fun as a backstory. Once I got going, I just decided to go all in.
C.S.: Was it hard to make that jump into the new, magical world while also inhabiting a present-day reality? Did the parameters of this fantasy world come to you with its inception—or did you discover it scene by scene? Was creating this balance between these two worlds difficult?
C.J.S.: I didn’t really find it difficult to jump back and forth. Contemporary Philadelphia is my home, and I used lots of real locations like Rittenhouse Square, the dog park at the Schuylkill River Park, and businesses like A Garland of Letters. I wanted people from Philly to be able to see the city.
As for the Realm—that was more of a challenge. I had some images in my head, but I wanted to push things beyond what I might normally do. In that sense I did discover it scene by scene. Other aspects changed as I revised. The bulk of the story takes place in Philadelphia, but I did want to show aspects of where the faeries (and other magical creatures) are from.
C.S.: A Midsummer’s Night Dream was set in Athens, but your book takes us to present-day Philly. I know you have deep roots in Philly—and I was wondering what about this setting provided a nice transition from the source material—and what elements provided a pleasing contrast?
C.J.S.: At one point in the novel, one of the faerie characters says, “…We’re drawn to it [Philadelphia] because it’s old and there are people here who still believe in magic.” I think that’s true about Philly. I’ve lived here for over 30 years and there is something very special about this city and the people who live here. It seemed like a great setting for a book like this.
C.S.: I often talk to my students about how we access our material—be it through setting or mood or character or situation. Do you remember what your earliest door into this story was? How did those early fascinations morph as your writing went on?
C.J.S.: Stories come to me in all different ways. Sometimes it’s an image, sometimes a character, or even dialogue. With More Strange Than True it all started with a premise, a what if. Originally, I thought More Strange would be a short story. I was thinking back to when I was younger, living on my own, and pretty lonely. I distinctly recall at one point wishing that I could find a person who cared about me as much as my dog did. After admitting this to friends, I discovered I’m not the only person who’s had this thought. So that’s where it all started, the whole, okay, so if the dog could somehow become a man, how would that work? How would it happen? I realized before I even started writing the story that it was going to be a novel. It was just too big of an idea.
C.S.: So now that novel number one is done, what have you learned in the process that you’ll use on your next project? What were the aspects of the work that engaged you the most? And which were the most challenging?
C.J.S.: At least for me, I’ve found that each set of characters and story presents its own challenges and rewards. The one thing that stays constant is that I don’t plan a lot before I start and so I end up finding my way as I’m writing.
This novel was challenging in that I’d never written anything that could be characterized as fantasy before, and I was unsure of my world-building abilities. This was part of the attraction to adapting elements of Midsummer. The world of the faeries was already established and gave me a good jumping-off point.
About three-quarters of the way through writing the first draft, I was completely unsure how I was going to get to the conclusion. I was on a writing retreat, sitting in my cabin, staring at my computer thinking, “What am I going to do now?” I was listening to classical music, and I started thinking about this song that I sang as part of my graduate recital, “Der Erlkönig,” or “The Elf King,” a poem by Goethe set to music by Franz Schubert. I started doing some Googling, reread the poem, listened to a really famous recording of the song by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau about 900 times, and then the turning point of the book just presented itself to me. I thought, “This is either going to really work or be really terrible!” Hopefully readers will think it worked.
C.S.: Is having music in the background part of your process? If so, are there go-to artists or genres? Does the music depend on the project?
C.J.S.: I did listen to a lot of music depending on what part of the story I was working on. I’ve created two playlists to accompany the novel. That might be overkill, but the bulk of these playlists is the music I listened to when I was writing. I made a list of jazz for the Philadelphia chapters that featured music that was important to the main character’s father, including “Spain” by Chick Corea and “Unsquare Dance” by Dave Brubeck. I have a separate list of classical music for the faerie sections of the book. I listened to a lot of German Romantic music when I was writing those chapters—not all of that made it onto the list, but a lot of it did.
C.S.: We’ve known each other nearly twenty years—and in that time, you’ve worked on the publishing side of things (as publisher/editor/cofounder of the great Philadelphia Stories) and as a professor and the director of Rosemont College’s MFA program. How have these roles impacted your creative work? I imagine they take time away from it—but I also imagine they can be motivating and rewarding.
C.J.S.: I learned so much from my time at Philadelphia Stories. As the fiction editor and later editorial director, I read so many stories. I could really see what kinds of things worked and what didn’t, and how often authors end up writing the same kinds of stories.
Being the MFA program director (and now also the director of the MA in Publishing program) does take a lot of my time, but I find working with students to be so rewarding. My students inspire me to be brave and to try new things. They really are the best. We’ve created this really wonderful community of writers at Rosemont, and I get to be a part of it.
Finding time to write is challenging. I’ve become a “binge” writer. Three or four times a year I try to go on mini-retreats, either by myself or with women from my writer’s group. All of these words and ideas get stored up in my head and when I sit down to write, it can be like a geyser. I don’t mean to be hyperbolic, but I am able to really write a lot sometimes, as much as 20,000 words (60 pages) in three or four days. Then I might not have time to write again for weeks or even longer. I don’t really recommend this method to others, but it works for me. I look forward to retirement so that I can establish a more consistent writing practice.
C.S.: What’s next?
C.J.S.: I’ve finished a short story collection that I’m shopping around, and I’m 99.9% finished with a new novel titled Kaiju Island. It’s maybe the most ambitious thing I’ve ever attempted. In some ways it’s very literary and in others not so much—it has gigantic prehistoric monsters and extra-terrestrial aliens in it!
Curtis Smith’s most recent novel, The Lost and the Blind, is currently a finalist for Foreword Review‘s Indie book of the year award. His last novel, The Magpie’s Return, was named a top indie release of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews.
Bloom 