Bits of String too Small to Save Character Interview
Bits of String too Small to Save character interview
Ruby Peru’s Bits of String too Small to Save catalogues the adventures of ten-year-old ElizabethAnn and Grandma along with a cast of wacky characters bent on saving the forested dystopia of Bumblegreen from certain demise. This rollicking adventure-quest is a coming of age story for two little girls with very different agendas, a search for meaning for animals too intelligent to be happy, and a quest for vengeance, too, involving technology, black magic, subterfuge, and talking animals that maybe ought to just zip it. Hot-rod-driving Grandma, however is the one who knows the secrets of this land and pushes little ElizabethAnn to become the heroine she was born to be. We met up with Grandma mid-adventure…
Grandma, it’s great to catch up with you now, especially since you’re so busy trying to save Bumblegreen from your location in the sub-basement of an experimental lab. Do you have time to tell us about your mission?
Barely! Listen, I’ve got to figure out how this contraption works. The only way I can communicate with ElizabethAnn is by turning this dial to “swampy lowlands” or “royal palanquin” or wherever she happens to be at—the kid gets around—and talking into this nozzle. She only hears my voice as a dream-whisper. It’s very frustrating, and the damn thing keeps going on the fritz!
I hate to belabor the obvious, but why don’t you just find the lost wizards and save Bumblegreen yourself? Why put the job in the hands of a persnickety, proper, and overly circumspect ten-year-old?
Ah! Watch it! We don’t say “wizards” anymore. We said “witches” for a while, but now it’s “magicians.” Grammar never sleeps! They’re in hiding, anyway, but one must be polite. They’re hundreds of years old. They’re blind. They live off cobwebs or something—nobody knows. They barely have any powers. You can’t tick them off, though, is what I’m saying. We need them to restore the magic, so don’t go ticking these people off.
My apologies. But about ElizabethAnn…
And don’t go doubting my granddaughter, either! I groomed her for this! I’ve been at it for years. She knows how to save this world. She does. She doesn’t know she knows, but she knows, and now all I can do is hide out down here and see if the kid realizes it in time. Me, I don’t get involved. I’m stuck down here with Zade Fandey and his overly intelligent talking monkeys and no, there’s no romance between us. Quit asking.
I wasn’t asking…
I heard it in your tone. If I leave the lab, I’m wanted by the police. They’ll find me and throw me into a salted pit filled with swimming hungry sharks. You know they don’t use the guillotine anymore?
But who are you hiding from here in Bumblegreen?
I broke the universal portal compact! International law! I dove through a portal from No Oaks into Bumblegree, brought ElizabethAnn with me, and our shaggy sheep dog Jackson along for the ride. I mean it’s a trifecta of portal-jumping illegality! If it’s not sharks, it’ll be a pit of angry sting rays that gets me! Or a thing full of poisoned cactus spines! I brought the kid here and that’s all I can do. Zade is protecting me. For now! Time is of the essence. I’m pacing this place like a zoo animal. It’s maddening.
That’s awfully nice of him. Do you and Zade go way back?
Way back! Way way back to when we were both imported to Bumblegreen as young scientists meant to discover the cause of the kingdom’s deadly blight. I did, you know. I learned the cause but nobody believed me. Now, I have to let ElizabethAnn finish the job I started: uncovering the truth! I can’t go back to No Oaks, after all. Calling me eccentric, the bums! Want to put me in a home. I wouldn’t be able to bring my International Scout, my Corvair, my souped-up muscle cars. The parking in those institutions is atrocious.
I see. So to cure Bumblegreen of a deadly blight, you brought ElizabethAnn, who has to find the hidden magicians, convince them to do something-or-other to rescue Bumblegreen, meanwhile convincing the kingdom’s powers-that-be that you’re innocent so they don’t execute you for your efforts to save them from themselves. Is that right?
Don’t be a dunce. You’ve completely forgotten about the monkey coup that’s inevitable when we stop supplying these scientifically enhanced simians with human babies to raise as their own. Plus the fact that the kingdom is now run by a thirteen-year-old girl and a cadre of regents who make all her decisions for her. How’s she going to stand up to them? The duchess tries to undermine the poor kid at every turn; meanwhile, the queen sits around consulting a magic eight-ball for answers. Then, you know, there’s Zade Fandey’s disease, which throws a wrench in the works, to say the least.
Wait. Zade Fandey is a disease?
Zade is a person. They named a disease named after him. Which I don’t think was very nice.
But he’s your friend?
Stop it. We’re just friends. I’ve got work to do. And I’m an old woman. Old! I’ve got cars to restore, hot-rods to race, and a grandchild to raise. Like I have time for romance? Don’t be ridiculous.
I didn’t… I wasn’t…
Subtext. I hear the subtext, kiddo. You think you can get anything past Grandma? I’ve got your number and I’m calling an end to this interrogation! Now where’s that contraption? Turn the dial, lift the lever, position the nozzle… which end do I speak into?…
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A sloppy workaholic and independent operator, Ruby Peru drives a beat-up pickup truck and restores old houses. Named a 2021 “Indie Author to Watch” by Kirkus Reviews, Peru previously won the 1999 Bronx New Writers Award for fiction. She has also co authored Untamed Justice, Business Cards and Shoe Leather, and Money Isn’t Everything–Everything is Money. In addition to her novels, she ghostwrites memoirs and thought leadership books for clients from all walks of life.
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BITS OF STRING TOO SMALL TO SAVE
The long-awaited release of the audio format for the book won the 2022 Deanna Tulley Multimedia Prize. Narrated by the author herself and voiced by a wide cast, this full-cast recording brings the novel’s colorful, imaginative characters to life in fresh new ways –sure to delight dark fantasy readers of all ages.
Ruby Peru’s, Bits of String Too Small to Save is a witty, classically illustrated fantasy for adults that asks: What’s the difference between animals and people? Magic and technology? A true home and a place to live? In 2021, Bits of String Too Small to Save was a New York City Big Book Award distinguished favorite. In the novel (now a dramatized, full-cast audiobook) innocent ElizabethAnn, her criminal genius Grandma, and their loyal sheepdog Jackson dive out of the postmodern police state of No Oaks, through a hidden portal, into the forested dystopia of Bumblegreen. There, ElizabethAnn must rescue this world from a terrible blight—or be executed as the cause of it. In the process, she investigates the disappearance of an ancient genderless magician, befriends a reluctant teenage queen, and rides a scheming talking monkey … all in order to restore Grandma’s scientific reputation and make this troubled land their new, true home.
BUY HERE
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Ruby Peru is a sloppy workaholic and independent operator with weird sleep habits and limited knowledge of pop culture. She drives a beat up pickup truck, and some opine she’s a little bit of a badass.
Studying under Kurt Vonnegut in the eighties and David Foster Wallace in the nineties, made her want to never be a writer – instead be a person who surfs, climbs, and looks cool on a motorcycle. She isn’t and doesn’t. Instead, Ruby is ready when you are to write ever more meaningful things to ponder between the covers of a book. The first novel in her own name (Bits of String too Small to Save) is available wherever you buy books. Her most recent co-release is Business Cards and Shoe Leather, with Larry Vaughn. Ruby Peru has ghostwritten and co-written many memoirs for clients.
Category: Interviews, On Writing
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