Interview with Tosca Lee by Karri Compton
Tosca M. Lee is a sought-after speaker, consultant, and writer. She received her BA in English and international relations from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, with special studies at Oxford University. She holds the titles of Mrs. Nebraska-America '96, Mrs. Nebraska-United States '98, and first runner-up to Mrs. United States. As a titleholder and community spokesperson, Tosca has appeared on radio and television throughout the state to promote women's charities, health, and family causes.Q: When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up and why?
A ballerina! It probably had something to do with getting to wear a tutu. And I did dance semi-professionally as a teen. My feet were so ugly from the rigors of pointe shoes. I didn't wear sandals for a long time after that.
Q: Did you know when you majored in English that writing would be a major part of your life?
I was really trying for it to be. I wrote my first novel, (hiding away at this very moment like a warty little monster in my closet), during my freshman and sophomore years about the Stonehenge people of Salisbury Plain, England. I'm afraid to even go back and look at that thing at this point.
Q: On your website you explain how you got the idea for Demon: a Memoir. Please tell us that story and did that come as a total surprise to you, or were you thinking about writing a novel?
I had been working on an epic (that I affectionately called The Book That Will Kill Me) for several years when the idea for Demon came my way. I was driving home to my acreage, just outside of town. I was a member of an online collaborative story-writing group at that time, and was trying to think of a new character to write about. I started wondering what it would be like be like to be a fallen angel. Would I go around tempting people to smoke? To steal petty change from the register? And it occurred to me that Satan and his minions have been basically comic book-ized in our culture-made into caricatures depicting nothing close to the truth of what they're really like.
Suddenly, I realized that being angelic and fallen was probably very similar to being human and fallen-except for one major difference: the provision of a messiah.
I wondered what it must be like to be irrevocably damned-and worse, to watch humans receive and take for granted the grace made available to them from a loving God. And I thought: why wouldn't an angelic creation resent a human recipient of God's grace? And why wouldn't a demon want to prove that creature unworthy again and again as a result?
Now I knew what it must feel like to be an angelic outsider looking in with jealous eyes and razored heart.
But I didn't want to work on the story just then. I wanted to conquer The Book That Will Kill Me. It wasn't until a series of events basically cleared off my desk (including the unexplained fizzling of my computer's motherboard) of all other concerns and left me with nothing but a pen and notebook that I decided to take a stab at this demon story. I felt as though God was saying, "Now is the time. Put the other one aside and write this." I had 16 pages in 40 minutes and a manuscript in three months.
And then that manuscript sat in pre-sale limbo for five years.
Q: What is your favorite and least favorite part of writing?
I really hate writing ugly, ungainly and deformed first-drafts. My sentences come out stunted and twisted and lumber around on the page like Quasimoto, winking at me.
My favorite part is when, every so often, a little pixie of a beauty springs onto the page amidst the monsters.
My other, newest favorite part is getting to talk to readers (I have readers!) who are excited about the book and connect with the characters and ideas in it. When someone says, "You know, this really made me think. It made me reconsider my life, my spiritual life, what's important." Those are awesome moments where I remember that isn't just about me and my Writerly Life. And I think, "Holy crow, God really knew what he was doing."
Imagine that.
Q: What motivates you to write, in general and specifically? How do you get the creative juices flowing?
I'm embarrassed to say this, but it's like a nervous tic. Like one of those little twitchy things that happens with an eye or the corner of a lip. I find myself jotting down little orphaned ideas on sticky notes, edges of envelopes, receipts. I log my trips and travels. I write to process life events and chase serenity.
I've always wanted to shape some of those ideas together into cohesive stories. To offer back fun and trippy rides like water slides in return for the slippery rides many authors have given me. But by golly, it takes a lot to make a story come together. It's bone-grinding work-for me, anyway. The sticky notes are so much easier. I don't know how super-prolific writers like James Patterson do it. Cleary, they're freaks.
To get the juices flowing, I get outside of my routine. A lot of good ideas happen while traveling. While people-watching. While reading a newspaper (I don't usually read the paper except when I travel). While going to the movies. Anything that stirs pathos, that begs the question "What if?" that makes me gasp, is something that agitates creativity for me.
That, and espresso.
Q: Has writing Demon: a Memoir brought you a greater awareness of or interest in the spiritual realm?
Not especially, but it did expand my learning and help me to refine my thoughts in order to communicate them.
Q: Readers may not only sympathize with Clay, but with Lucian as well. Did you intend this?
Not directly. I can understand this sentiment, though. I feel anxiety toward the thought of irrevocable acts. So much that we do in life today we can fix or undo.
Yes, I've thought that it must be a tough road for angels, having one chance to get it right and no messiah to come fix and undo. Perhaps it seems even a bit unfair. But we have to remember that angelic beings are not bound by the same flesh we are. They witnessed God first-hand. In my mind, they're better motivated and equipped to get it right.
At the end of the day, God is righteous. That may not be congruent with our sense of human fairness, but our logic is linear and impossibly finite compared to God's. We have to trust that he knows what he's doing.
Q: What do you hope the reader comes away with after reading Demon: a Memoir?
New eyes. I want them to see the temporal world crumbling away as Clay does in the book. I want them to see through the ploys of the world, of religion itself. I want them to question what they know, and where they've been staking their claim in life.
I also want them to come away wanting to read my next book.
Q: Tell a little about your next book, Havah the Story of Eve. How is it similar to or unlike your first book?
It's very different. Havah is the story of Eve, told first-person. Adam has died and Eve is an old woman, and she is now going back and telling her story. The narrative is feminine, the language is closer to the imagery-rich voice I employed for Lucian in Demon. I've had just a couple readers with less of a preference for that richer kind of prose, so if you want quick and snappy dialogue and fast-moving suspense, this will not be the book for you. (But I have a third book coming out after Havah, so stay tuned…) If you loved the flow and flavor of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, then I think you will enjoy Havah.
Q: Do you have any other projects in the works?
That third book, whatever it is. It's hanging over my head like a faceless little specter and I just have no clue what it's going to be yet. (If you have a request, send it my way!)
Thank you Tosca for the interview.
Books By Tosca
| Demon: A
Memoir Click title to read excerpt or buy from CBD.com By Tosca Lee / Nav Press 
Book editor Clayton has been hired to author a once-in-a-lifetime memoir of Lucian, a fallen angel. When the demon shares his tales of bliss and rebellion, creation and salvation, and God's relentless pursuit of mankind, Clay realizes he's writing his own life's story. Will the choice he's forced to make be redemptive---or destructive? 272 pages, softcover from NavPress. |
| Havah: The
Story of Eve Click title to read excerpt or buy from CBD.com By Tosca Lee / NAV Press No description available at this time. Check back to see if the publisher provides one. |
©2006-09
Susan Sleeman
Susan Sleeman
is the author of Nipped in the Bud, available May of 2009 from Heartsong Presents: Mysteries, an imprint of Barbour Publishing.
