The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster

by Scott Wilbanks

  9. The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster is, at its heart, a novel about five misfits, exploring the concept of marginalization through their experience. What do you think were the qualities or circumstances that led to each of the protagonists’ marginalization?

  10. Edmond says, “It’s not sin, what’s inside you. I promise you, it’s not.” His comment addresses one of today’s hot-button topics—homosexuality as a sin. Is it?

  11. Do you think homosexuality is a choice? Does the fact that LGBT youth are four times as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual counterparts (eight times as likely if they’ve experienced rejection from their family) affect your determination as to whether or not homosexuality is a choice?

  12. Does our concept of what constitutes sin evolve over time as we gain a better understanding of the forces behind it? (Example: slavery).

  13. In the novel,the author toys with the concept of fate as a physical force of the universe, not unlike gravity. Just to make things complicated (he loves complications), he stirred in two other powerful forces—love and time—binding the three together. Which of these three forces—love, time, or fate—played the greatest role in uniting Annie and El? Which of these forces played the greatest role in uniting our other protagonists?

  14. Danyer is a figment of Mr. Culler’s imagination that allows him to do evil without feeling the weight of guilt or the need to take personal responsibility for his actions. Basically, Mr. Culler blames Danyer for his own bad behavior. What are some common scenarios in which people blame others in order to deny personal responsibility today?

  15. Courage and sacrifice often go hand in hand. Annie begs Christian to find his courage and be true to himself, and he does, but he has to sacrifice everything he was taught to do so. What other acts of courage did you find in the book, and what sacrifices did they require?

  A Conversation with the Author

  Is “lemoncholy” even a word?

  Well, sort of. I’d been browsing through an online dictionary of Victorian slang (I can go to extreme lengths to avoid actual writing) and discovered that it was used as a synonym for “melancholy” back in the day. The word was too perfect for my purposes, and I decided to give it new meaning by combining the phrase “If life gives you lemons…” with the word “melancholy” to characterize the state in which someone makes the best of a bad situation.

  Did you base any of the characters in the manuscript off people in your life?

  My best friend, Steve, is an acquired taste. He’s a loner with a wicked tongue, a cantankerous and, on the odd occasion, tactless eccentric who will, if you give him half a chance, win you over with his loyalty, tender heart, and generous nature. All I had to do was imagine him in a cabin surrounded by a sea of wheat to breathe life into Elsbeth.

  Edmond was drawn almost entirely from another friend. Let’s call him “Sam” for anonymity’s sake. Aside from his extraordinary charisma, his fascination with dream catchers, and his unique ability to like absolutely everyone, Sam had a demon—drug addiction. He’d rise and fall over and over, but always in good cheer.

  I received an email from his sister last year, not four weeks after Sam and I spent an hour on the phone planning his first international trip to visit me in New Zealand. He’d died of an accidental overdose, she wrote. What can I say? There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss him.

  And finally there’s Christian. I’ll keep that one short. I’m him and he’s me, only without the debilitating stutter. Mine’s pretty mild by comparison.

  What did you want to accomplish by writing The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster?

  More than anything, I hope to give the person reading my book something of the same experience my favorite authors give me. I love to be charmed by a story—not just by its premise, but also by the words within it. If I can evoke the wonder of A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood in any way, or the magic of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, gifting someone with a smile as they read, then I feel I’ve accomplished something meaningful.

  What was the seed of inspiration behind The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster?

  A botched first date—I kid you not.

  I thought everything was going fine until my date proclaimed, “I think we’re destined to be great friends.” Not the response I had in mind, let me tell you.

  Behind every failed date lies an opportunity, I always say (just made that up, actually), and I concocted a pair of characters while driving home with my tail tucked between my legs—Annabelle Aster

  (her last name was Biddleton at the time) and Elsbeth Grundy, pen-pals who write one another between contemporary San Francisco and Victorian Kansas, depositing their letters in a brass letter box that stands in some magical common ground between the two. When I got home, I whipped up a letter from Annie to Elsbeth in which she asked for advice regarding her love-struck friend—me— and emailed it to my date.

  Within a couple hours, I received a call. Apparently my email had done the rounds at my date’s office and was a bit of a hit. More were demanded. I responded, “Sadly, I cannot, at least not until Elsbeth writes back.” Within the hour, there was an email in my inbox with Elsbeth’s name in the subject line. And thus began what I dubbed the

  “Annie El” letters.

  The date? Who was the date, you ask? It was Sam, the man who inspired my character Edmond.

  You mentioned New Zealand earlier. What gives?

  Mike, that’s what. He’s a Kiwi. (That’s what New Zealanders call themselves.) We met eight years ago and said our vows before family and friends in the rotunda of San Francisco’s City Hall on October 8, 2013.

  The path to our happy union was a little bumpy, to say the least. When we made the decision to share our lives, I was unable to sponsor Mike for U.S. residency due to the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited same-sex unions until it was declared unconstitutional last year. New Zealand, however, was a different story, and I moved here when Mike sponsored me for residency five years ago.

  Today, we own a lovely 1920s bungalow in Auckland, with a huge backyard that I’m not allowed to mow. Apparently, I don’t do it right. (It may or may not be true that I cultivated this deficiency intentionally.)

  If you could travel back in time, when and where would you go? Middle-earth. That’s kind of cheating, but I’m sticking to my answer. I’ve read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy at least fifteen times—the first when I was thirteen.

  Keep this little secret under your hat. When I was a kid, there were ten members in the Fellowship of the Ring, not nine. Take a stab at who the tag-along was. If you’re still not sure, I’ll help. I even memorized the elfin poetry, not that I suggest you request a recitation. You might get a tomato thrown at you. Regardless, it started me on a sci fi and fantasy binge that easily spanned a thousand books.

  If you cut your teeth on science fiction and fantasy, how did you come to write a commercial fiction novel?

  It all started with those Annie El letters I wrote, of course, but it was also fueled by a challenge. My mom hates fantasy and science fiction. I mean, she has a deep-down-in-the-bones loathing for it. I wanted to see if I could change her mind by wrapping a fantasy premise inside some good, old-fashioned commercial fiction.

  Did it work?

  Nope.

  How would you describe your writing process?

  It is said that there are two types of writers—“plotters” or “pantsers”—and never the twain shall meet.A plotter plans,researches, outlines. They’re methodical, flushing out their story before putting a single word on the page, and I hate them. ( Just kidding!) I fall firmly in the latter camp, sitting in front of my laptop waiting to be surprised by what I put down.

  Being a pantser (writing by the seat of your pants) is not a strategy for the faint of heart, I can tell you. On an average writing day, when not typing, I talk to the computer screen, fully expecting it to talk back. I fidget, I pace, I doodle. I stare outside and sigh at the futility of it
all an awful lot.

  Tell us something no one knows about you.

  Well, I’m pretty much an open book, but here’s something very few people know. I was a national title-holder in the sport of gymnastics. And, as the result of a gymnastics-related accident in which my left arm was, for lack of a simpler explanation, severed at the elbow—yep, you read that right—and reconstructed through surgery, it’s about an inch shorter than my right arm. Weird, eh?

  Anything else?

  I’ve eaten the same breakfast every day for the last seven years—steel-cut oats and a six-egg-white, one-yolk omelet. I am such a gym fanatic that I even work out while on vacation and can still do a standing back flip at the ripe old age of mumble, mumble. Oh, and I do a “morning dance” every day while making breakfast. Video confirmation is forthcoming.

  About the Author

  Author photo: Charles Thomas Rogers

  They say, “Write what you know.” Who “they” may be still remains a mystery, but I took the advice to heart when I wrote a book about five misfits who found themselves walking a path I trod daily, seeking understanding in an indifferent world—but more on that later.

  With my life constantly pushed and pulled by a pair of opposing bugaboos—ADD and drive—I surprised myself by graduating summa cum laude from the University of Oklahoma while also garnering a handful of titles in the sport of gymnastics.

  Life-changing accidents, lost loves, and an unremarkable career path followed, that is until a lawsuit and Mike changed everything. The lawsuit motivated me to step away from my career. Mike added the extra push, convincing me to take a leap of faith and move to the country of his birth, New Zealand, while also encouraging me to “see where this writing will take me.”

  Copyright © 2015 by Scott Wilbanks

  Cover and internal design © 2015 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design and illustrations © Connie Gabbert

  Cover image © Phish Photography/Shutterstock

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