Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Right up until I wrote White Monkey Chronicles, I was a playwright. Sitting in the audience at the premiere of my play, “The Early Education of Conrad Eppler,” I found myself wishing that I could make the world of the play more magical, bring in more characters, fill in the backstory. Some stray muse whispered in my ear: write a novel. There was a rapid-fire reconfiguration in my brain that took five years to work out on paper.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Unconsciously, I had been marinating the ingredients for my novel, White Monkey Chronicles, ever since my seven-year-old self began to unravel the puzzle of the Catholic nuns I loved in a school that still stands on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. That girl had a roving imagination, free to romp with gods and angels alike. She never could reconcile her imagined spiritual world with the orthodox beliefs of the Church. The novel, White Monkey Chronicles, was born of that failed reconciliation.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I love 3:00 a.m. The house is asleep. The telephone doesn’t ring. And once I am on the scent of the story, and my fingers are taping at the keyboard, the world goes away.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
At some point in grade school, I decided to check out books from the adult side of the library. Don Quixote had a huge impact. I remember shocked laughter and a sense of disbelief at the shenanigans. The other standout was an autobiography of the surrealist painter, Salvador Dali. By the time I was in high school, I fell in love with every literature teacher and every book I read.
What are you working on now?
My focus is on marketing. I spent five years producing my novel, and I plan to spend at least year seeding it in the world. I was told by a marketing expert that literary novels were the hardest sell. It’s a bit terrifying–the notion that my work might sink into the ocean of oblivion. To stave off that terror, I do one marketing activity every day. I keep a list. Every now and then, when I get a sinking feeling, I climb onto my list of accomplishments as if it were a life raft and I float on the river of dreams.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Right now I am getting a lot of mileage out of GoodReads: www.goodreads.com. I’ve started writing reviews, and I’m working up to a blog. I’ve hosted two giveaways. And I am slowly garnering reviews. Some of them cracking good!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Put the same unquantifiable energy into marketing your book that you put into writing it. Everyday do one thing to promote your book. I scurry all over the net searching for marketing outlets and opportunities. That how I landed here. Everyday I discover new places in book world where I can leave a footprint.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Have the courage of your own creation.” This was said to me in a large and very popular philosophy class at the University of California. I had slipped an anonymous poem into the professor’s box and he called me out.
What are you reading now?
I just finished the new Robert Lowell biography (Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character) with its mind-altering analysis of creativity and the manic depressive cycle. It was written by Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. I believe all of us creatives are challenged by our interior mental weathers. There’s a book for someone to write: How to Survive Your Own Creativity.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I am a artful dodger. There’s a long queue of contenders for my attention. I won’t know who will advance to the front of the line until I am writing.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
I’d bring my own book, for sure. White Monkey Chronicles is brimful of incredible memories. And I suppose I’d bring my book of poems, Getting Dangerously Close to Myself, for the same reason. I am aware that I sound like a total narcissist. But what would I have but a beachcomber mind, going over my past, looking for shells and bits of glass, to keep me going, to warm me in the dying light.
After that, a big fat Oxford English Dictionary. I find words endlessly entertaining. Lastly, to focus my mind, a text book that would teach me ancient Greek, something with lots of primary sources to translate.
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Isabella Ides Website
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