Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be part of
The Summer That Melted Everything
Blog Tour
..."The heat came with the devil..."
Hi Tiffany - a very warm welcome to Jaffareadstoo and thank you for spending time with us today
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| Photo credit:Jennifer McDaniel 2016 |
Tell us a little about Tiffany McDaniel, author
I’m an Ohio poet and novelist who wishes I could ride the back of Moby Dick across the great Atlantic, make a web with Charlotte, and shoot the breeze (but no mockingbirds) with Atticus Finch.
How long have you been writing and what got you started?
As a child, writing was the first thing I remember doing without any external influence or direction. Writing is something I am drawn to do as naturally as I am drawn to take breath for life. Without writing, I am lost. I can’t find my way home to infinity. I’m let loose like a ghost out of flesh, raging against the land that will not have me. The skies that will not fly me. Writing is my safety on the other side of the fall. I don’t exist without it.
What inspired you to write The Summer That Melted Everything and what can you tell us about it that won’t give too much away?
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| Scribe 11 August 2016 |
The Summer that Melted Everything is about an eighty-four-year-old man named Fielding Bliss, who is looking back on his life during one summer in 1984 when he was thirteen-years-old and his father, Autopsy Bliss, invited the devil to their small town called Breathed, Ohio. Who answers the invitation ends up being a boy in overalls and bruises. This boy’s arrival comes the first day of a hell-hot heat-wave that carries through the entire course of the summer. This is not just a story about the heat, but a story of everything that melted in that heat. Family, friendships, innocence, and even lives. Puddles of all of these things melted down. That is what this story is. A man trying to survive ferrying these puddles, which to him have become oceans he must cross to once again find the bliss of his name.
Are you a plotter...or ...a start writing and see where it takes you sort of writer?
I never outline or pre-plan the story. For me, each new word I type and each new page I write evolves the story. I always say I’m even surprised as the author at what the story develops into. I meet the characters along the way. The story is not fully revealed to me until I type the last word of the last chapter. When you plan out a story too much, it almost becomes domesticated. I want a wild story I can take into the jungle with me.
What were the challenges you faced whilst writing this novel?
Writing for me is the easy part. I can’t say there were any challenges writing this novel, or writing in general. The thing that has been challenging is getting published. I wrote my first novel when I was eighteen-years-old. I wouldn’t get a publishing contract until I was twenty-nine. It’s a narrative many authors have. Years of struggling to get a foot in the publishing door. For me it was eleven years of rejection and fear I’d never be published. That was challenging. Finding the will to continue on. The hope that one day I would be a published author.
What do you hope that readers will take away from The Summer That Melted Everything?
To separate oneself from herd mentality and always preserve your individual thought. To not allow that thought to rot by ignorance or fear. To understand that we have to love and respect one another in this world if we are to have any peace. That we will never win the battle, if we are doing nothing more than stabbing each other to death with swords.
How can readers discover more about you and your work?
I’m not on social media, but readers can jump on to my website at www.tiffanymcdaniel.com
Readers can also connect with me directly through my website. That connection to readers is very important to me. As I’ve said, they’re the ones who determine an author’s entire career. How can I not give them some of my time, when they’ve given me some of their time reading my book?
An Ohio native, Tiffany McDaniel’s writing is inspired by the rolling hills and buckeye woods of the land she knows. She is also a poet, playwright, screenwriter, and artist. The Summer that Melted Everything is her first novel.
Find out more about Tiffany on her Website
Follow the Blog Tour on Twitter #DevilAutopsy
My thanks to Tiffany for her insightful answers to my questions about
and also to Sophie at Scribe for the invitation to be part of the tour.
Blog Tour runs 8th - 14th August so please visit the other stops for more exciting content.
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