Copyright 2006 - 2007 Susan Sleeman
Christian Suspense
To Die For
         |
Interview with Jeffrey Overstreet by Karri Compton
Jeffrey Overstreet lives in two worlds. By day, he writes about movies at LookingCloser.org and in notable publications like Christianity Today, Paste, and Image Journal. His adventures in cinema are chronicled in his book Through a Screen Darkly. By night, he composes new stories found in fictional worlds of his own. Living in Shoreline, Washington, with his wife, Anne, a poet, he is a senior staff writer for Response Magazine at Seattle Pacific University. Auralia's Colors is his first novel.
Q. You began writing at a young age. Do you have any previously completed novels that you think may be published one day?
There are three more books in The Auralia Thread on the way. Auralia's Colors is "The Red Strand," and the next book is "The Blue Strand."
Beyond that, there are several other stories, altogether different from the world of Auralia's Colors, that I hope I can someday mark "Open to the Public." One of my favorites is an adventure series for young readers, and it's a sort of "thank you" to the writers of The Wind in the Willows, The Rescuers, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. You might call it "Indiana Jones meets Finding Nemo."
I'm also slow-roasting a couple of fantasy-horror stories. Autobiographical, of course.
Q. What are the most important things you have learned so far in your writing journey?
I think it's crucial to find a community of discerning readers and critical thinkers, and learn to covet their criticism. Even the best writer in the world will benefit from other perspectives. We need friends who aren't afraid of telling us the truth, so long as they know how to tell the truth in a gracious, loving manner. Take their responses very seriously. Develop a voracious appetite for good criticism, but learn to tell the difference between sound criticism and matters of taste and opinion.
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien taught me to write the kinds of books I want to read. And I fell in love with musical prose early on. An author might have a suspenseful story to tell, but if I'm not swept up in the music of the language, I'll probably lose interest. For Auralia's Colors, I've written with a lavish, descriptive style very deliberately, hoping it will be read aloud. That'll please some readers and annoy others. I admire writers like Cormac McCarthy who craft potent, sparse, efficient writing, and I read more poetry than prose - but I also love to be immersed in a richly detailed world, like those created by Mervyn Peake or Patricia McKillip - so long as the description is meaningful and not just a bunch of gratuitous adjectives.
Q. If you could make a living at anything besides being an author, what would that occupation be?
A photographer. I love any kind of discipline that trains me to look closer and appreciate the detail, beauty, and personality of the world around me. And I'm always having memorable experiences that lead me to say, "Oh, man, I wish you could have seen that!"
Also, I love the discipline of putting a frame around something, and then looking closer at the mysterious relationships between elements within that space. I firmly believe that things mean things, and I can't get enough opportunities to concentrate and contemplate the implications of the world around me… especially the natural world, which has so much to say to us.
Q. What is the hardest part of writing for you?
Saying, "It's finished." I could tinker with a story for a lifetime, constantly revising and improving it. Submitting a finished manuscript is like sending your son or daughter off to college - you close the book and surrender it to the publisher, and you try not to ask, "What might I have done differently if I'd had six more weeks?"
Q. How does your faith relate to and show through your writing?
Storytelling is, by nature, an act of faith. C.S. Lewis described storytelling as casting a net to catch something that could not be captured any other way. Often, even the storyteller is surprised at what he catches. And the audience sometimes understands even more than the author. We don't invent meaning - we apprehend it, often after the story is told.
I don't write a story to teach a lesson. I write a story as a way of posing questions and thinking them through. I write to discover. And I learn a great deal about choices and consequences, order and design, good and evil. What I learn changes me, and reinforces my faith that the world around me is full of meaning. An encounter with truth, through the revelation of art, is always a humbling experience, even for the author.
I do hope that Auralia's Colors will give readers some meaningful experiences of their own. Writing it was certainly a journey of growth and discovery for me. Auralia is an artist who suspects that the beauty of the world around her is haunted with meaning. She captures that beauty in her mysterious art, and reflects it to others, which begins to awaken them to a knowledge they've forgotten or overlooked. Her work reminds me that beauty has a power that can heal what we have broken. Beauty means something. It speaks. That leads me to ask… what does it mean? And who, pray tell, is speaking through it? My characters are chasing similar questions.
Q. When and how did you dream up the idea for the Auralia Thread series?
My friend Anne and I went hiking near Montana's Flathead Lake in 1996. It's an extraordinarily beautiful place. We were just getting to know each other, comparing notes about our favorite storytellers, like George MacDonald, J.R.R. Tolkien, Patricia McKillip, Robin McKinley, and Guy Gavriel Kay. Anne said, "Isn't it strange how most people reach a certain age where they fold up their imaginations and put them away forever?"
That's how the spark was struck. I started playing with that combustible question -"What if?" I imagined a society that outlawed creative and colorful expressions. And then, an artist named Auralia wandered into this colorless kingdom, on a mission to remind them of the glory and power they'd buried and forgotten. I began to realize that she was about to suffer as so many artists have suffered, but she would also unleash an enchantment that would spread throughout the land.
And then, I married Anne. And I wrote Auralia's Colors. Beauty is a dangerous, magical thing. It'll change your life if you're not careful.
Q. Is Auralia's Colors an allegory? If so, of what?
I'm not fond of allegories. They bore me.
An allegory suggests that the characters are just symbols, and that the story represents something outside of itself. It's like a code waiting to be broken. I grew up reading a lot of Christian allegories. There was always a "Christ figure," a stand-in for God the Father, and somebody who represented Judas or Satan. These stories were mildly diverting for a while, but once I figured out what they represented, the spell was broken and I quit caring about the characters. Allegories have "solutions," like mathematical equations, and where's the fun in that?
Art can be so much more than allegory. When I read a novel, I like having the sense that the author was enthralled with the story. A good story suggests meaning incrementally. Art teases us into contemplation; it does not suddenly reveal "the meaning behind the story," springing it on us like a jack-in-the-box. Emily Dickinson said, "The truth must dazzle gradually." Pure storytelling is more mysterious and powerful, revealing layer upon layer of meaning to discerning readers.
So, sure, Auralia's Colors is about a lot of things. But no, the Keeper in Auralia's Colors isn't God, just like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings isn't Jesus. I don't mind if characters remind me of somebody else, the way Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia certainly behaves in a Christ-like way. But a story should exist on its own, irreducible to a solution or a lesson. Otherwise, what's the point?
Q. Tell us what you want the reader to come away with after reading Auralia's Colors.
I want them to come away wanting to read the sequels! There is much, much more to the story. Auralia's colorful artwork still has a lot of transforming work to do throughout the Expanse, revealing things that many people would rather not discover.
But I also hope it stokes the fires of curiosity in readers, and revives their appreciation of the wonder in the world all around them, which is so easily forgotten in this busy fast-paced culture. Writing Auralia's Colors trained me to pay closer attention to the detail in the world around me, and I'm beginning to discover, and remember, just how rich life can be.
Q. Who was your favorite character to write in Auralia's Colors?
I love following Auralia around.
Her irrepressible creativity is inspired by some of my favorite people. My wife Anne writes poetry, and she has a way of revealing small wonders in what seems to be mundane. She is inspired by so many artists who have taught me to see the sacred everywhere I turn - artists like the extraordinary poet Scott Cairns; Margaret D. Smith, a poet and a glass artist; Mike Demkowicz and Fritz Liedtke, photographers who astonish me every time; and my favorite band, Over the Rhine.
But I've grown attached to all of my characters. I'm not satisfied with any of them until I've investigated them enough to find something to love. I could write a whole library of stories about those creeps and crooks called the Gatherers. They're so strange, twisted, and flawed. Growing up, I was fascinated with villains, and Maugam the jailer was inspired by characters like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now and Gollum in The Lord of the Rings-monsters who make you wonder if they might be rescued from the abyss.
Q. Can you tell us a bit about the next book in the series, Cyndere's Midnight?
"The Blue Strand" of The Auralia Thread is called Cyndere's Midnight. We'll rejoin the ale boy as he watches Auralia's colors continue to change things across the Expanse.
But we'll focus on two new characters: Cyndere, the heiress of House Bel Amica, and a ferocious beastman. Cyndere's Midnight is my take on "Beauty and the Beast." I've always loved "Beauty and the Beast" - I prefer the Jean Cocteau film to the Disney movie, but they're both delightful. In my version, there are two beauties, and a whole bunch of beasts.
Q. What are some of your dreams for the future?
My friends keep asking me when they'll see Auralia's Colors: The Movie arrives. And I keep saying, "Probably not for a long, long time." It will take the right kind of screenwriter, the right kind of picture-painter. I'd be more interested in giving Auralia to an intuitive storyteller like John Sayles than to some kind of blockbuster action man.
But frankly, my dream is to have the privilege of writing stories full-time. Currently, I have a full-time job as an editor, and I would love to have the chance to spend all week developing a novel. Auralia's Colors was written during coffee breaks, bus rides, and during hours when I should have been sleeping.
Books By Jeffrey
| Auralia's
Colors, The Auralia Thread Series #1 Click title to read excerpt or buy from CBD.com By Jeffrey Overstreet / Waterbrook Press 
A stunning new fantasy for all ages! Raised by thieves who found her as an abandoned child in the woods, Auralia is growing up in an exiled community of convicted criminals. When she develops an extraordinary---and forbidden---talent for transforming simple things into amazing manifestations of color, will it free her . . . or lead to disaster? 336 pages, softcover from Waterbrook. |
| Cyndere's
Midnight: A Novel Click title to read excerpt or buy from CBD.com By Jeffrey Overstreet / WaterBrook Press In Cyndere's Midnight, the power of Auralia's colors brings together a bloodthirsty beastman and a compassionate widow in a most unlikely relationship. Jordam is one of four ferocious brothers from the clan of cursed "beastmen." But he is unique -- the glory of Auralia's colors,revealed in the book by the same title, has enchanted him, slowing his vicious appetite and awakening his conscience. When Jordam finds a woman weeping in the woods, his healing continues. Beside a mysterious well, seemingly the source of some of Auralia's colors, this beast and beauty form a cautious bond. Cyndere, heiress to one of the great houses, has always hoped to help the violent Cent Regus beastmen. To honor her husband, who shared that hope, she risks her life and reputation to reach out to Jordam. Jordam, too, will be tested. He will either be overcome by the dark impulse of the "beastmen curse", or he will stand against his brothers to defend House Abascar's survivors from a deadly assault. The novel picks up where Auralia's Colors left off and reveals more of the history and culture of the entire Expanse, a land which branched off into four kingdoms centuries before. |
