THE WRITE PATH with Elizabeth Fountain

Elizabeth Fountain

In my series The Write Path, my guests talk to me about their books. Today I welcome author Elizabeth Fountain, who will be discussing You, Jane with me.

So let me hand over my mic. The next voice you’ll hear will be Elizabeth’s.

1. What is your book about?

You, Jane is about a lot of things: the power of storytelling, the importance of facing your demons, of making conscious choices, and of knowing how to accept love when it’s offered. I think ultimately it’s about how we all have the power to write our own happy endings, if we are fearless enough to use it.

2. What do you think attracts readers to your main characters?

Jane is funny, smart, talented, and deeply flawed. She’s facing the end of her 30’s with questions like “is there anyone out there for me?” and “can I find what I’m supposed to do?” and “will I fulfill my purpose in life?” and “did I feed my cat already?” In other words, she’s all of us. She has a special power – the stories she writes in a trance come true, in ways she can’t control. But we all have special powers that get the best of us at times, don’t we? Jane is at a crossroads in her life: she’ll either take charge of it, or drink herself into oblivion. She’s not completely sure which is the best path, but she’s fully engaged in the dilemma.

3. What message do you hope the reader takes away from your book?

A recent review on Long and Short Reviews called You, Jane a book that makes you think. I loved that, because those are the books I like to read. I love stories that show me something different, puzzling, intriguing, and ultimately, perhaps, unanswerable.

4. What do you think was it about your book that attracted your editor?

When I first submitted the manuscript of You, Jane to my editor for consideration, I truly thought it had a 50/50 shot of becoming a workable story. It was still a bit of a mess, but it held something that kept me from giving up on it. So, I thought “why not?” If she’d said no, it wouldn’t have shocked me. After the “yes” came several rounds of substantial revisions, each version made better by my editor’s honest and thoughtful input. Editorial comments are routine; editorial compliments still thrill me, because if the person who sees all my mistakes still loves the book, that’s saying something. And my editor for You, Jane paid me a terrific compliment: she asked eagerly for my next manuscript.

5. Comparing the ideas you had before writing the book with the finished product, would you change anything if you could travel back in time?

There are some mechanical things I would fix – tightening up some time sequences, for example. But the funny thing is, I didn’t really know what this story was about until it came time to write up the marketing stuff. That’s when the theme of writing your own happy ending came to me, and as I re-read You, Jane, I realized that’s what it was about all along. My fear of time travel would be that if I went back in time “knowing” the theme, I’d somehow muck it up. You know, like those Star Trek episodes when the crew had to be very, very careful not to change even a detail of the past, because it would change the future, but of course just the crew being in the past had already changed it, so they might wink out of existence at any moment. But then, if they didn’t exist, they wouldn’t have gone back to the past and changed it, and… well, you get the idea.

So no, no time travel for me.

~*~
Website: http://lizfountain.wordpress.com
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethFountainAuthor
You, Jane on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/You-Jane-Elizabeth-Fountain-ebook/dp/B00KPLKNKG/
You, Jane from the publisher, BURST! – http://champagnebooks.com/store/index.php?id_product=330&controller=product

Bio:
Elizabeth Fountain left a demanding job as a university administrator in Seattle to move to the small town of Ellensburg, Washington, and pursue her dream of writing novels. She started writing in grade school; fortunately, most of her tortured high school poetry and song lyrics are lost to posterity. Her first book, An Alien’s Guide to World Domination, is a tale of people, aliens, and dogs who face the impossible, and do it anyway. You, Jane is her second novel, a tale of magical romance and the power of storytelling, published by Champagne Book Group in June, 2014. Liz takes breaks from writing to teach university courses, spend time with family and friends, and take long walks while leaning into the diabolical Kittitas Valley wind. Liz strives to live according to a line from British singer-songwriter Chris Rea: “Every day, good luck comes in the strangest of ways.”