FAQs

If I had to point to one secret to my success in publishing my first novel, it was my patience. I didn’t even consider sending query letters to agents until I’d already published five or six short stories in literary journals and had a completed manuscript I was proud of. I probably went through four or five MAJOR edits of the novel on my own, and all told, probably read and edited the whole thing 100 times before I allowed anyone else to see it. No, that wasn’t hyperbole–literally 100 times.

All told, from the time I started sending out stories, it took me about ten years to have a book in hand.

For fiction, the process is to send short stories (or self-contained chapters) to literary journals with a small circulation (500 or so, or these days, online), and then build your resume until you work is being published in
larger journals.

I highly recommend subscribing to Poets and Writers magazine to immerse yourself in the world of writing and publishing, as well as the Writer’s Digest series: it’s how I found the literary magazines I submitted to, and how I ultimately found my agent (and now friend) Wendy Sherman. If you want to read more,
 Here‘s an interview with the Jet Fuel Review where I talk about publishing (among other things.)

Have faith, and good luck!

Kino Mikro:  plays international, independent and forgotten films

Galleria Plakatu (Poster Gallery):  the poster is the quintessential Polish art form.  My favorite artist is Gorowski; my brother’s is Stasys.  Unfortunately, he can’t collect any more because they are scaring the children.

Golebia 3 (Pigeon 3 Café):  This place has been magic for my writing.  Four years ago, I was sitting there, trying to start a new novel set in Chicago, when all of a sudden the story of the Pigeon came to me.  I banged out what became the first three chapters in an afternoon.

Nowa Prowincja: Another great cafe; in the summer, you can recognize it by the Polish school desks outside.

Bunkier:  A modern art gallery inside, a cafe outside with the intimacy of a living room under a roof that, I guess, would be bunker-like if it weren’t made of glass.

Chimera:  If you’re in Poland, wondering where all the vegetables went, they’re here.  There is a Chimera restaurant next door, but I prefer the salad bar under the arch.  After struggling with Polish for a few days, you can go here and be rewarded for all your pointing with great food and a beautiful, ivy-lidded courtyard.

And of course, you can’t go to Poland without eating in a ”bar mleczny” (milk bar).  These are the formerly subsidized lunch places where you can get your fill of pierogi and kotlet schabowy.   I used to go to Bar Zak a lot (pronounced “Bar Jaques”) on Ulica Krolewska in Krakow, but there is a good one right in the center on Grodzka.  No link because, of course, if they have a web site, it’s not a real bar mleczny.

There is a glossary and pronunciation guide in the “For Readers” section of this web site for those of you who are daunted by all the Polish…and an award for those of you who decide to fly blindly into the headwind of consonants.

The Italian book will be easier, I promise.

For the answer to this question, see my quick interview on “The Lost Entwife” book blog (and then look up the word “entwife”!)

Yes; in fact, one of my colleagues, Joe Scotese, has read the book with his world literature classes for the past two years.  His students created “illuminated texts” (flash animation) from the text.  This one is about the character of Jakub, but there are many other amazing ones.

Yes!  Thanks to The Book Cellar in Chicago, a great little independent bookstore, you can order a signed or personalized book here.  Just include the particulars and give us a little turnaround time.  Here’s a photo of the reading I did there for their local author night back in August 2009.

Thanks, Suzy!

The illustration was done by an amazing freelance illustrator, Christopher Silas Neal.  His web site is here.  The book design is by Melissa Lotfy at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and the photos of me by Chicago photographer, Matthew Gilson.  His web site is here.

About five or six years is the short answer.  If you want the long answer, keep reading.

I came back from Poland in the summer of 1995, and for a year, I’d had no e-mail, not enough money to make international phone calls, and, due two crazy landladies (one of whom became Pani Bożena in the story) a few different addresses, so even my letter correspondence with my friends and family was a little sketchy.  As a result, I’d been saving up everything that I’d seen and heard and experienced for about a year, and when people were naïve enough to ask me, “How was Poland?” they would get a torrent in response.  For a while I started every sentence with “When I was in Poland” (or as my best friend and her husband say now when I start to talk about Poland or Russia, “When I was in band camp…”)  After a while, I was even starting to annoy myself. 

So basically, to keep my friends, I took it out on paper instead.  I decided to make a list of all the things I didn’t want to forget about that year.  When I was finished with the list, to my surprise, little vignettes and descriptions of places started to sprout from the items on the list, and then a narrative began to fill in the spaces between the vignettes.  I’d write here and there, whenever the urge struck.  I definitely didn’t consider myself a writer or think I’d end up writing a novel.

After a couple of years of messing around and writing garbage (trust me, it was), I had a little talk with myself that I was either going to commit to writing or drop it.  So on January 1^st, 1998, I made the resolution that I was going to write every day.  It’s the only resolution I’ve ever been able to keep. 

That was when I really began the novel, and I wrote what became the Baba Yaga section in about 2-1/2 years.  Most of that time, I was living and working in Italy and Russia, and when I came back and went to grad school, I started writing stories about Russia.  In 2004, I picked up the Baba Yaga story again and spent a year “finishing” it.  Throughout this time, I had continued to visit Poland during the summers, and on my trip to Poland that summer, I decided that it was time to start a new novel—this time about Chicago. 

For the first time in my writing life, I had writer’s block.

So I went to this café in Krakow called Pigeon 3.  I have a few magic cafés in Chicago and Krakow where I know I can go if I really need to crank out some pages and pick up some momentum.  Pigeon 3 is one of them.  I sat there drinking coffee, trying to think about the Chicago novel, but Baba Yaga and her grandmother (who already had a small mention in the story) started to elbow their way into my head.  I decided to write just a bit more backstory about the grandparents, and I knew if they lived through the war, the grandfather was going to be in a resistance cell and would need a fighting pseudonym.  You see these all the time on wartime plaques in Poland, and an inordinate number of them are names of animals. 

So I was looking around at the sculptures and the pictures of pigeons in the café.  I’ve always had an affinity for pigeons—since I was little, my family has called me Pigeon or Pidge because I was pigeon-toed and had to wear the Special Shoes…hey, it was the seventies, before seat belts and self-esteem.  Anyway, the character of the Pigeon was born.  I banged out the first couple of chapters that afternoon, and had several by the end of that vacation.  It took me almost another two years then to research it, finish writing it, integrate it with the Baba Yaga story and get it in shape to send it out.    

So about five or six years.  (Remember, you did voluntarily submit yourself to the long answer…)

In two days, I’m leaving for my umpteenth trip to Krakow to visit Anna and Anita (who are the real-life friends I loosely based Irena and Magda on).  I talked to my younger brother on the phone last night and he asked me if I’d packed already.  My sad answer was that I haven’t even started a pile yet.  Going to Krakow, I told my brother, is almost as easy as getting on a plane to visit him in North Carolina.  It hit me during that conversation how completely Krakow has become an integral part of my life over the past fifteen years.  It’s unbelievable even to me.  When I left after living there in 1994 and 1995, I remember standing on the train platform with Anna and Anita, crying my eyes out because Anna had asked me when I was coming back.  My answer at that time was a very snivelly, “I don’t know.”

Obviously, that question has been answered, as has another major question I asked myself throughout that decade, “Why do you insist on getting up to write instead of sleeping in?”  And in some ways, I look at my life as a long answer to the question, “Why not…?” (and I am eternally grateful to the people who initially posed that question.) So I have decided to construct this blog as my best stab at answers to questions.  I can’t tell you the origins of the universe, but I can at least tell you the origins of Baba Yaga’s and my universe.

So to begin with the most pressing one, after informally polling those who have read the book:

How the heck do you pronounce “Anielica”?

A fair question.  First off, you’d never meet anyone in Poland named Anielica (at least I never have.)  It’s more of a nickname or a term of endearment.  I did know a girl my age named Baba Yaga, who was a very gregarious girl and wore the name proudly.

Here are pronunciations for all the main characters in good old-fashioned Berlitz style (all rs are rolled):

Feel free to name your first-born Władysław Jagiełło (and see how many times he gets held up at passport control.)