The Fifteen Wonders of Daniel Green
Page 29
Finish this sentence: One time I was so engrossed in a book that I…
…started crying in the middle of a restaurant! When I was younger, I read everywhere: walking down stairs, sitting in a pool, and, yes, under the table when my family was out to dinner (sorry, Mom and Dad). That time, I was reading My Friend Flicka, and there’s a scene in the book where the main character tries to save his horse from drowning. I’ve always had a soft spot for animal characters, and I just started full-on bawling, unable to tell my poor parents what was wrong.
Oh, and there was also the time I tried to finish reading a book during class in high school and got caught. Because I was sitting in the front row. In English class. Sorry, Mr. Potts.
What do you do when you’re not putting pen to paper?
I just love making things. That “crafting” side of my desk has a huge pegboard mounted above it with all my supplies hanging from it—my husband and father-in-law built it for me after several years of dealing with fabric, pins, and punched-out bits of paper on every available surface in our apartment. I do a fair bit of sewing, but also love calligraphy and hand-lettering, cross-stitching, and occasionally knitting, though the results are usually disastrous. I’m also very lucky in that our yard has room for gardening, so every summer, I spend a fair bit of time outside planting flowers in the front and veggies in the back, fighting a constant losing battle against the neighborhood rabbits. I think the long and short of it is that I like being able to hold something in my hands and know that I made it, even if the end result isn’t the prettiest.
As a debut author, what was the most surprising discovery you found on your journey to becoming published?
The whole process has been completely surreal! I’ve dreamed about writing a book since I was a kid, and even when I finally got up the guts to actually sit down and finish a novel, it was still something that mostly lived in my head. To have other people read it and hopefully connect with the characters that I’d been thinking about for so long…it’s been a dream, seriously.
What piece of advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Don’t give up, but also have patience with yourself. If I’d written an entire manuscript back when I wrote the first few chapters of this book nine years ago, it would’ve been a very, very different book—and, I suspect, not a very good one. I think you have to be disciplined to get the words down on the page, but there’s also something to be said for letting things simmer in your head for a while and, in the meantime, going out and making your living however you can, collecting experiences and people and feelings that you can funnel into your characters when the time comes.
If there’s one thing you’d like readers to take away from The Fifteen Wonders of Daniel Green, what would it be?
Your “legacy” can consist of any number of things. You can leave an impact on your job, your community, your family. And you can leave a legacy more than once: at the end of your life, at the end of your career, or even just at the end of a particular phase of your life. But no matter where or when you leave it, your legacy should not be one of intolerance.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, thank you to my family—both the one I was born into and the one I married into—for their steadfast, unwavering support. When I nervously told you all I was trying to write a book, you didn’t even blink, and that made all the difference.
Thank you to Eric Smith, the most amazing and enthusiastic and genuine agent a writer could ever hope for. Your belief in this book made all my childhood dreams come true! And, of course, to #TeamRocks, the best writing support group I could ask for—especially Mike Chen, whose advice was invaluable at so many points along the way.
And Grace Menary-Winefield, a true rock-star dynamo of an editor: thank you for your excitement and support, and for many lengthy email chains on the ins and outs of fictional family dynamics! Thanks also to the entire team at Sourcebooks, who constantly overwhelmed me with their love of this book.
Thank you to Karisa Langlo and Allia Benner for reading crappy early drafts and helping me make them less crappy. And to my local writing communities, Writers’ Loft (especially Dave Pasquantonio) and GrubStreet (especially Molly Howes), for holding my hand at various times throughout this surreal process.
Thank you to Lyn Des Marais of Des Marais Farm in Brandon, VT; Bill Rowell of Green Mountain Dairy; and John Lundberg, whose generosity with their expertise on Vermont farming and crop circle making, respectively, helped shape this book. And to Nora Kenny, who helped me look presentable, and to Paul Parker and Kelly Wachowicz, who were with me all the way.
Thank you to my English teachers, from my mom to Mrs. Lombardo to Mr. Potts, whose encouragement and thoughtfulness made me a writer.
And always, every day, thank you to Chris. Who saw this coming when we were seventeen. Who always checked to see if I was writing before stepping foot into our home office. Who is (maybe, possibly) even more excited than I am to see this on the shelves. Partners in crime and biggest fans forever.
About the Author
Photo © Nora Kenny
A native New Englander, Erica Boyce is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School and an associate fiction editor at Pangyrus. She lives outside Boston with her husband and their dog, a corgi named Finn who has way more Instagram followers than she does. This is her first novel. She enjoys speaking to book clubs, and you can find her online at ericaboyce.com or @boycebabbles on Instagram, Twitter, and Goodreads.
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