Cool news from the MFA Thesis Novel front: this month Vine Leaves Press and I released the MFA Thesis Novel Book Club Guide, which includes an author interview with yours truly and discussion questions for the novel. It’s free for download from the link above, and starting this month, it’s included with the eBook version of the novel as a bonus.
Here’s a quick snippet:
Q: What inspired you to write MFA Thesis Novel?
A: As the novel itself hints, MFA Thesis Novel sprang from my experience in graduate school at the University of Nebraska, though my program was technically an MA. I was workshopping a novel based on my time working in Japan, but the subject matter and the style I was writing in were so foreign that people around me couldn’t relate to the book. At the same time, the program seemed to be pushing us to build up longer and more impressive CVs rather than improve our writing, which I found disconcerting. Like Flip, it took me a long time to realize which parts of the program were helpful and which parts weren’t conducive to the career path I was looking for.
Read the rest of the interview here.
Thanks to Amie McCracken of Vine Leaves Press for doing the layout and Melanie Faith for providing her expert edits, as well as to Glynis Hart of the Wilmot NH Library for inviting me at their book group in March and Anastasia Glavas and Katharine Nevins for having me at the Main Street BookEnds Book Group earlier this month. We had great discussions at both, and it was really cool hearing which parts of the novel resonated with people.
The project came about because I always like seeing author interviews and other bonuses at the end of novels, and thought readers might appreciate something similar with MFA Thesis Novel. Plus, I also feel like I have more perspective on the novel and its creation two years after its release and more than eight years (!) after starting it, so I felt more prepared to write something like this now. I also want to help readers think more about the novel, academia, and the difficulties faced by creative people, and hope the guide can serve as a jumping-off point for more discussion.
Other Reflections
Other than that, I’m at a point when I’m working to reorganize some life priorities, schedule more author events, start a brand-new novel project (!!!), and prep for the release of Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers in Summer 2025. There’s a TON of work to be done before then, and I’ve been thinking more about what sort of life setup is most conducive to the author life (or the life in general) that I want to be living.
These are big questions that I’ve been reflecting on in this blog for a loooooooong time now, and what worked in the past may not necessarily be working now—or, is it just that I don’t quite have the same control over life scheduling that I did in earlier years? This is a sobering thought that I’m trying really hard to remedy.
Watch for updates…not soon, per se, but probably in a few months after I sort some things out. Rest assured, though, that I’m definitely not going anywhere!