by Averil Dean
Alice spent a major part of her childhood in foster care. Have you, or anyone you’ve known, been in the foster system? Can you relate to any of the experiences or relationships that Alice had while moving from home to home?
What was your initial reaction to Jack’s character? Did your impression of him change as the novel progressed?
Discuss the intersection of pain and pleasure throughout the novel, both in the physical and emotional sense. How do these two conflicting sensations play off each other throughout the story? How do they work against each other?
If Jack had caught Alice before she got on the ferry, what do you think would have happened between them? What do you suppose Jack meant to do when he followed her there?
Where do you think Alice will go when the ferry lands in Seattle? What do you think the future holds for her? Do you think leaving silently was the right decision, or should she have stayed to confront Jack or report him?
Q&A with Averil Dean
What was your inspiration for Alice Close Your Eyes? Did the story end up the way you first imagined it or did it evolve along the way?
When I was brainstorming ideas for this book, I happened upon a low-budget neo-noir film called Following, directed by Christopher Nolan. In the film, two men break into a London flat for no particular reason other than curiosity, a voyeurism of objects. This idea hooked me immediately, and I began to imagine the erotic possibilities and play with some ideas for how to incorporate this strange habit into a psychological thriller.
In some ways, though eccentric, this seemed like a playful, relatively innocuous activity. But as I revised, the story got progressively darker, more claustrophobic, and the break-ins began to take on a sinister significance even as they moved slightly off-center from the main story line. Instead of being instigated by Alice, as I had planned, they became Jack’s idea—a clue more to his character than Alice’s. This change shifted the balance of power in their relationship, and infused the story with a sense of danger and deviance beyond what I originally envisioned.
Can you describe your writing process? Do you create an outline or dive right in? Do you write consecutively or jump around? Do you let anyone read early drafts or do you keep the story private until it’s finished?
Most stories begin for me with other works of fiction. When I’m starting work on a new story, I spend a good amount of time watching movies, reading and listening to music. I’m looking for something that generates a particular reaction in me, something that evokes a mood or sparks an interesting line of thought.
From there, I decide where the story begins and jot down some ideas for where it might go. It’s all rather nebulous at this point, and utterly disorganized. I actually prefer it that way. Writing can be intimidating, so when I’m starting a new project, I make a concerted effort to take the pressure off. I write the raw stuff longhand, with a cheap pen in a fat spiral notebook. My handwriting is awful, and the pages are covered with angry scratch-outs and incomprehensible notes up the margins, but beginning this way keeps me from having to face a blank computer screen unarmed.
My thought processes are equally messy. I hop from scene to scene, trying not to deny myself any wild idea at this stage, whether or not I understand how it relates to the story. I carry on this way until I’ve assembled quite a scrapalanche—maybe 30,000-40,000 words. Then I go through the scenes one by one and organize them into a new document, using only the ones that seem to matter to the story.
Beyond this point, it’s rare for me to write anything extraneous. I’ve figured out what the story is about and have developed an understanding of the characters. All that remains is to keep adding material until the book is complete.
I don’t share my work until it’s as good as I can get it—and even then, only with one or two people I really trust. I’m terribly suggestible, and would head off on any number of tangents if too many people were involved in the revision process.
Alice’s dark and damaged life clearly shaped her adult personality and the relationships she becomes involved in. How do you develop your characters and what is it like to write about people with such intense, painful stories?
I think characters come to life through a process of refinement, especially refinement of their outlook—the things they notice in the world around them, their reaction to what they see. Alice is essentially a beautiful soul repeatedly confronted by ugliness. She has a wistful outlook, which shows itself particularly in her interactions with children and in some of her early encounters with Jack. Her dialogue serves as counterpoint to this outlook and underlines the dichotomy between her inner life and the distance she maintains between herself and the other characters.
Though I’ll admit the story took a bit of a toll, I’m not sure a writer has much choice when it comes to subject matter. Joyce Carol Oates has said that we tend to write what surprises us. I think that’s true. I prefer to write about people and situations I don’t understand very well, because those are the stories that hold my interest during the long and sometimes tedious process of writing a book. Emotional pain can be overcome. Boredom, for me, cannot.
What kind of research, if any, went in to the writing of Alice Close Your Eyes?
I’m not big into research. I probably should spend more time at it than I do. But I’ve found that concrete knowledge tends to dim the mental images I form about the setting or situation, and often creates problems I would much prefer to avoid. For instance, I discovered that the ferry schedule to and from Vashon Island does not include night runs. But I needed them! It was painful to ignore that bit of knowledge, so for a time I gave Vashon a fictional name and considered the problem solved. It was my editor who convinced me that readers would probably forgive my lapses in verisimilitude as long as the flavor of the place was intact.
I hope she’s right about that.
You’ve written erotic fiction before, and this novel also incorporates erotic elements in a complex and crucial way. Can you talk about how erotic scenes can be used in service to the larger story?
I’m fascinated by the psychological dynamic between sexual partners. Most people hold their fantasies and predilections secret, often with some element of shame attached to the secrecy. But in a sexual relationship, one either comes to trust another person with those secrets, or—more interestingly from a story point of view—is driven by need to reveal them to an untrustworthy partner.
These psychological plums are too juicy to resist. I love to find out what will happen between the characters when they’re alone in the bedroom: what kind of power struggle will ensue, how each person will decide which secrets to reveal and which to withhold, how the characters’ insecurities will manifest physically during the scene. A person’s sexuality exposes his or her character in a unique way, from a different angle as it were. It adds another layer to the story.
This is the first time I’ve tried to incorporate fully developed sex scenes into a novel of a different genre. As I wrote, I began to think of the erotic elements as character development; I wanted the reader to be right there with Alice as she experiences first the pleasure, then the intoxicating pain and fear that lead her to realize what kind of man she’s dealing with. Hopefully, each scene provides a new insight into one or both of the characters.
The novel is set mostly on Vashon Isl
and in Puget Sound. What made you choose a small, rural setting for this story? How do you feel the setting enhances the story?
First, let me apologize to anyone who lives on Vashon Island. I wrote this story from my home in Las Vegas, and though I did my best to understand the geography, I’m sure there are plenty of discrepancies. To some extent, the setting is fictionalized—a desert rat’s romantic notion of what the Pacific Northwest would be like for the residents. I was looking for a dark, slightly claustrophobic setting, definitely rural, in which Alice’s isolation would be literal. An island in Puget Sound seemed like the perfect choice.
What drew me to Vashon particularly was the little Red Ranger bike in the tree. I loved the strangeness of that image and thought it was something young Alice would be drawn to. It wasn’t until much later in the revision process that I understood the metaphor and was able to work it into the story.
What was your greatest challenge writing Alice Close Your Eyes? Your greatest pleasure?
At the beginning of every new piece of work, I go through an extended period of what feels like shyness, as at the start of a new romance, or the first hour of a party where you don’t know any of the guests. This is a tough thing to power through. The temptation is to leave this awful situation and go back to daydreaming quietly in an armchair. I haven’t found a way to make the beginnings easier. It seems to be a matter of perseverance and caffeine-fueled jags of free writing. Anything to get something on the page.
My happiest moment came at the end of the first draft. I have a writing mentor whose opinion I respect more than anyone I know. He had offered to read my manuscript. I was terrified to send it, and avoided it for a few weeks—moving the mashed potatoes around on the plate, as he would say. Eventually, with the help of a couple of strong margaritas, I worked up the courage.
His response was almost immediate. He said he’d read it in one sitting, at the computer, and he was so warm and generous in his praise that I sank to the floor next to my bed and cried for an hour. Big, ugly, messy sobs, followed by an outbreak of joyful hives. It was a hideous, wonderful night.
How did you know you wanted to be a writer? Can you describe your first piece of writing and the journey to publishing your first print book?
I started writing on my father’s birthday in 2010. He had always talked about how much he wanted to write, but he passed away without ever having given it a try. I found myself in a similar state of inertia. I have always been an avid reader, a collector of words and phrases. I enjoy the beauty of language. But writing a novel—or even a short story, for that matter—was something that had never occurred to me. I’m a high school dropout, and that fact has always been a source of shame for me, and a barrier to my aspirations.
However, a story idea had been tugging at my mind, and on that day I remembered my dad and decided to write a paragraph. Just to get it out of my system, really. I liked the paragraph, so I wrote a page. The page expanded to a scene, then a chapter, then a book. Followed by a second book. I sold those novels for the princely sum of $100 apiece to an independent e-publisher.
They did not earn out.
By this time, I had become involved with an online circle of writer-friends, most of whom were blogging or commenting on writing blogs. They encouraged me to start a new book and keep at it, and when I’d finished Alice Close Your Eyes, they gave me practical advice on things like pitch lines and query letters. The quick response I received from Jeff Kleinman, the wonderful man who would become my agent, is due almost entirely to the help they gave me. I wouldn’t be writing without them.
Can you tell us something about your next novel?
My next book is a psychological suspense novel called Blackbird. It’s the story of a triple murder told in reverse, beginning with the crime and working back through the characters’ tangled relationships to discover where it all went wrong. Like Alice Close Your Eyes, it’s sexy and intense and very dark.
“Hunted is a terrific, gripping, page-turning debut by a talented new voice in suspense.
A great read!”
—New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan
If you loved Alice Close Your Eyes by Averil Dean, be sure to catch the thriller Hunted by Elizabeth Heiter.
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ISBN-13: 9781460323748
ALICE CLOSE YOUR EYES
Copyright © 2014 by Averil Dean
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