Interview With Erin Bartels

We are delighted to feature this interview with Erin Bartels!

• You have received rave reviews for your debut novel, We Hope for Better Things. How is your newest book, The Words between Us, different than your first work?

Unlike We Hope for Better Things, there is no historical element. The Words between Us all happens during the 21st century. It’s also not centered on a volatile social issue as We Hope for Better Things was. Instead, it’s a far more intimate look at one woman’s relationships with the people in her life.

• The Words between Us is a celebration of the written word. You have stated that books help us to form our own identity. Can you please expound upon this statement?

I think this is true on two levels—individually and as a culture. Individually, the books we read affect our views on history, ethics, bravery, love, family, friendship, war, sacrifice, and so much more. Every story I read is another layer of sediment laid down inside my psyche, building up the edifice that is me.

This also happens on the level of cultures. Our cultural identity is tied up in the works of art and entertainment we produce and consume—we write to convey some truth, and we believe that truth because of things we have already read, which someone else wrote for us. It’s a fascinating cycle, rolling slowly on into the future. Along the way, we discard what we no longer value and pick up new works that speak to us.

• What was the inspiration behind your newest novel?

I think it was a combination of things that were separated by many years. One: there was this little corner storefront in downtown Lansing where I live that had been a bookstore that closed not long before we moved here. It was so cute, and I was so disappointed to have missed it. Two: when I was teenager I had a very close friendship with an older guy in my school that ended because of something petty and when it did, I took everything that friend had ever given me and left it on a box at his doorstep (like I said, very petty). Three: I had a sudden thought one day of someone receiving a book, a token of a past they thought they’d buried. Four: I read a fascinating biography of Emily Dickinson called My Wars Are Laid Away in Books that just entranced me. These four things coalesced into the starting point for The Words between Us.

• The Words between Us explores all aspects of life including family, loss, love, coming-of-age, betrayal, regret, and forgiveness.  Is there one particular theme that you really focus on?

To me, this story is about friendship and coming-of-age—of maturing to the point that we stop looking for excuses and start taking responsibility for the things we’ve done that have hurt others. I think that’s a fundamental difference between an adult who behaves like an adult and one who behaves like an adolescent—a willingness to accept blame as readily as we accept praise. And then to move on from there with a humble and generous spirit.

• The Words between Us explores some of the classics.  How did you develop your love for the classics?  

I’m sure every writer claims to be a big reader. That’s nothing new. But when I was in school, I was truly insatiable. I skipped eighth grade English just by asking my school counselor if I could (because I’d been bored in seventh grade English). I took every English class available in my high school, including honors classes and AP English. I majored in English Language and Literature in college. So, as you can imagine, I read a lot of the classics. But even those I didn’t read as an assignment I have collected along the way and read. Though, to my chagrin, I’ve never read Dickens. (And truthfully, I have always been more attracted to the American literary tradition than the British.)

• You emphasize the importance of trusting the words and lessons found in the pages of the classics. How have the classics impacted your own life and what role do they play in The Words between Us?

I’m not sure I’d say people should model their lives or behaviors on their readings of the classics. I think you’ll find far more unlikeable, frustrating, selfish, and even despicable main characters in the classics than you’ll find in modern commercial fiction when there is so much pressure on authors to make their characters likeable, or at least relatable. I’m not even sure that reading the classics increases empathy like you hear of reading modern fiction.

In my own life, they made me fall in love with the written word and understand its power to elicit emotions in the reader, even if those emotions weren’t always positive. In The Words between Us they act as a bridge between two people, one of whom is open and honest while the other is lying about who she is and where she came from. But she can be honest when she’s talking about these books. And through their exchange of classic novels, these two young people are able to form a real friendship.

• What type of research was required for writing The Words between Us?

Not nearly as much research was required for The Words between Us as for my debut novel, though I did reread a number of classics, which was certainly no burden.

• What do you hope readers will gain from reading your book?

I really hope that some people will finish the book and feel compelled to call someone—a friend, an ex, a parent, a child—to apologize for something that drove a wedge between them. And I hope that some of them will pick up a book they were supposed to read in high school that they Cliff’s-Noted their way through and finally read it for real!

• What are you working on next?

I have two things currently in the works. The first is set in a private lake community in Northern Michigan and tells the story of a novelist dealing with the fallout from her first book, which was based on real people in her life (and was not flattering). The second is the story of two sisters who couldn’t be more different who are on a hiking trip gone wrong in the wilds of the Porcupine Mountains in the Western Upper Peninsula.

• How can readers connect with you?

I’m everywhere. I blog at www.erinbartels.com. My podcast, Your Face Is Crooked, can be found at www.erinbartels.podbean.com (and on iTunes). And of course I’m all over social media: Facebook (@erinbartelsauthor), Twitter (@ErinLBartels), and Instagram (@erinbartelswrites).

Erin Bartels is the author of We Hope for Better Things and has been a publishing professional for 17 years. A freelance writer and editor, she is a member of Capital City Writers and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and is former features editor of WFWA’s Write On! magazine. She grew up in the Bay City, Michigan, area and has spent much of her life waiting on drawbridges for freighters and sailboats. She lives in Lansing, Michigan, with her husband, Zachary, and their son. Find her online at www.erinbartels.com.

About THE WORDS BETWEEN US

One bookseller is about to learn the true power of words…

Robin Windsor has spent most of her life under an assumed name, running from her family’s ignominious past. She thought she’d finally found sanctuary in her rather unremarkable used bookstore just up the street from the marina in River City, Michigan. But the store is struggling and the past is hot on her heels.

When she receives an eerily familiar book in the mail on the morning of her father’s scheduled execution, Robin is thrown back to the long-lost summer she met Peter Flynt, the perfect boy who ruined everything. That book—a first edition Catcher in the Rye—is soon followed by the other books she shared with Peter nearly twenty years ago, with one arriving in the mail each day. But why would Peter be making contact after all these years? And why does she have a sinking feeling that she’s about to be exposed all over again?

With evocative prose that recalls the classic novels we love, Erin Bartels pens a story that shows that words—the ones we say, the ones we read, and the ones we write—have more power than we imagine.

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews