Please
tell us about your current release.
Patience
launches my sexy quintet of novels, TABOU, a saga that spans 100
years on four continents and recounts the erotic Odyssey of Jocelyn
Russet, the 27-year old brewing heiress born in London and raised in
the Virginia countryside.
In
each book, Jocelyn meets her destiny on one big night, when her fate
turns on secret histories and forbidden encounters with a different
woman every time. The novels interlock, as in The Alexandria Quartet
by Lawrence Durrell, and they can be read in any order, thanks to the
Prologues that open each novel and the indexes that help readers keep
track of the cast of characters. The whole project hearkens to the
heyday of the 19th century novel, where readers could
immerse themselves in detailed worlds peopled by dozens of
characters. Edgy, modern action and full-spectrum erotic writing
updates the series to give it a “classic modern” feel.
Book
One is a double love story that is part rollicking adventure, part
sexy romp through the glittering 1980s and 1990s, set in London and
Los Angeles. It’s the tale of two British-born heiresses of
different generations, Jocelyn Russet and Patience Herrick, both
coming of age at the same time. Are they made in heaven, or
star-crossed? What forgotten memories do they share, what secret
legacies must they uncover and take charge of, and why are their
families being targeted for terror?
Can
you tell us about the journey that led you to write your book?
TABOU
began as an unproduced Hollywood screenplay that focused on Jocelyn
and Sylvie Russet and Jocelyn’s climbing partner, Zander Duffield.
It fulfilled the basic requirements of good drama: three act
structure and a compelling narrative with a love interest and an
antagonist. I dreamed of Catherine Deneuve in the role of the
45-year-old Cognac heiress, Sylvie Russet, in the vein of INDOCHINE,
the blockbuster epic Deneuve had just starred in so magnificently,
but the movie project fell through.
My
characters had really come to life, and now they wouldn’t let me
go. Early on, I realized that there were deeper stories I wanted to
tell about how love and Eros, business and spy craft, run in families
just like other heritable traits. Telling stories that spanned four
generations or more required a format more ambitious than film, or
even a single novel. It took years for me to find the right “glue”
that would bind nine families together on four continents over four
generations. The day I realized Patience Herrick was an epic heroine
strong enough to parry Jocelyn and Sylvie, with her own family
business story that could carry a quintet, I knew I had a series on
my hands. Aurore de Fillery and Valerie Drummond, Countess of Tiffin
and Ross, sprung out of that seed. And soon I could see the organic
whole taking shape.
So
Book One of TABOU is a love letter to the real Patience. She is one
of only two characters in TABOU modeled closely after a single
person; the rest are truly composites.
TABOU
is not autobiographical fiction, but it does draw deeply from my
experience, and it is fair to say that as a mountaineer,
motorcyclist, screenwriter, field medic and family business
specialist based in the Virginia countryside, I truly live what I
write about in TABOU.
I
worked feverishly on the first draft of TABOU six days a week while
still nursing my baby daughter, completing it in about seven months.
Then I took a break and re-read a lot of period biographies, along
with two great novel cycles from the late 1950s that compliment one
another and balance the stylistic influences of TABOU.
First
I re-read The Alexandria Quartet, a literary masterpiece by Lawrence
Durrell, whose artistic aim was to explore the four dimensions of
love in an era when Einstein had just discovered time as the fourth
dimension of space. I followed that with another run-through of the
Peter and Charlie Trilogy by Gordon Merrick, published after
Merrick’s death from 1959-1961. This was a serious work of literary
erotica by a successful author of gay “potboilers,” his explicit,
homoerotic romances that critics had ghettoized. Merrick was a major
talent. But as E.M. Forster had done with Maurice, he refused
to publish the Peter and Charlie books during his lifetime. The
subject matter was too taboo.
No
longer! What really gripped me about the Peter and Charlie books,
besides the first class erotic writing, was the family saga. What
other gay epic gave the heroic lovers children—and the struggles of
parenthood pitted against Eros? Merrick was taking Durrell’s
“fourth dimension” (the enduring powers—both creative and
destructive--of love over time) to the next level. Literary giants
like Forster, Lawrence, Woolf, Sackville-West and others had dreamed
about it—but never accomplished it. I wanted all that sexy
continuity for TABOU…and more.
For
readers around the world, generations of their own family histories
have been lost because of taboos that forbid truth telling about the
wide range and variety of sexual desire and experience, not to
mention its power to transform history. Helen’s face launched 1,000
ships, remember? Bosie’s charms landed Oscar Wilde in prison. Who
paid the price? Who inherited the spoils?
Historians
and biographers have become franker in writing colorful and
meaningful gay, lesbian and bisexual lives. Recent biographies of
Alan Turing and Walt Whitman vie with my personal favorite by
Victoria Glendinning, Vita, in the pantheon.
But
the living legacies of these lives remain unclaimed by their heirs,
or else squandered. Who knows the adventures of her great-great gay
uncle, or the heroic deeds of his three-greats lesbian aunt? Greta
Garbo’s niece threatens legal action against those who pry too
deeply into Garbo’s life story, as if their consanguinity is still
a threat. For those of us who crave connection and continuity across
generations, James Joyce made much of the difference between
spiritual paternity and actual paternity in Ulysses, but does
anybody remember? Dolly Wilde told anyone who would listen, in Paris
between the wars, that she was more like her uncle Oscar Wilde than
he was like himself. But when she died, that continuity appeared to
have vanished…until, out of the blue, Jamie O’Neill wrote a
brilliant novel called At Swim, Two Boys, which revealed him
as the spawn of the gay Wilde and the hetero Joyce. Why have so few
talented writers addressed this huge gap in consanguinity and
continuity between us and our queer forebears?
This
is the great question that spurred me on through many drafts to
finish and publish TABOU now. My mission: to mind the gap. Then to
bridge it, one erotic fiction at a time, since we have lost the links
in the real human daisy chain over the last century.
I
bring an unusual perspective to TABOU. As a descendant of John Hart,
who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and as a
fifth-generation owner of the international Stroh’s brewing
business that had been in my family since 1848 in America, then back
to 1509 in the Palatinate (Germany), it seemed like nowhere was this
yawning gap more visible than in my own milieu. So I built the
mythology of TABOU around the world I was born into and raised in and
now pass down to my daughter: the world of political dynasties and
business families that bears some resemblance to the Olympian
heights. Here on Earth, with the help of the “chattering classes,”
it’s a world that has taken such painstaking care to trace its own
history from generation to generation for centuries. But it’s a
history that has left out the biggest change agent of all: the
wide variety of sexual experience that perennially inspires us,
nourishes our souls, enlivens our art, and strengthens our
connections between love and Eros in every generation.
I
don’t want to spoil it for you, but one of my beta readers
summarized what I’d accomplished like this: “At first I was
like, ‘who are these people?’ And then I got it! They’re
dripping rich and saving the world!”
Can
you tell us about the story behind your book cover?
Great
question. I’m very proud of this.
I
worked with a very talented young designer, Andrea Kuchinski, on the
cover design. We’ve been collaborating creatively for a decade,
ever since Andrea was a teenage apprentice at the design firm that
won a Hermes award for my web site, suzannestroh.com.
For
this project, we needed to incorporate several key elements. We had a
series title, and there are five books in the series. So we needed a
family of covers, not just one cover. The series title, TABOU, is
incomplete without the mysterious mirror reflection of currency
symbols, £$F€£, used throughout the series as section dividers. I
can’t explain the meaning of this, or else I’d be ruining the
climax of Book Five, Valerie. So trust me: the title and the
series of currency symbols are inseparable. We also had to
incorporate the tree of life, with its nine withered branches
representing the nine dynastic families of TABOU, and with its
entangled root system. And finally, we wanted to express the
eroticism and good taste that sets TABOU apart from contemporary
trends in literary fiction.
Our
process at the beginning of each new project is to talk things
through over a coffee. Sometimes Andrea will record our conversation,
but at this stage in our collaboration, we can pretty much read one
another’s aesthetic. I leave her to work freely and come up with a
concept.
As
you can see from the Facebook page, Andrea’s first prototype was a
family of covers that evokes the South Pacific imagery where Sylvie
Russet grew up on Hiva Oa, near Tahiti. Dominated by the tree, the
covers were whimsical, blocky, colorful and fun—but not edgy. We
agreed we wanted to go for something deeper, bolder, starker and more
profound, more beautiful.
To
me, an art history major in college, nothing is more beautiful than
the human body. I started looking for nude photographs that would
hint at the mysteries of TABOU, showing the variety of sexual
experience (and more critically, the powerful union of sex and love)
that is central to my theme.
Meanwhile,
Andrea had a breakthrough. She noticed that our tree of life
contained elements in the root system which, if lifted out of
context, resembled beautiful, flowing tattoos. By overlaying the root
system on the nudes, we began to get some really extraordinary
imagery that still evoked the South Pacific. We knew we had what we
wanted, stylistically. What remained was layout.
Andrea
drives this part of the iterative process, which usually goes very
fast. It’s a back-and-forth exchange where we home in on color,
typeface and layout until we feel that we’ve reached the full
expression of our concept. Very soon we’d built a unified family of
covers. Et voilà.
We
were both completely shocked when the iBookstore judged the cover of
Book One too “explicit” and asked for a redesign—or else they
would refuse to sell the book. I wasn’t happy, but agreed to the
redesign. I love the aesthetics of Apple devices, and I myself am
totally “Macked-out.” But the idea of censorship by Apple still
sticks in my craw.
Since
before the Renaissance, the highest measure of artistic greatness (in
painting, sculpture and modern media) has always been depicting the
nude--the magnificent form and structure of the human body. I
disagree profoundly with the conventional American notion that
expressing nudity, especially artistic nudity, is “obscene,” when
expressing graphic violence is not. Censorship is not just a problem
for authors. It limits filmmakers as well, as I know from my work as
a screenwriter and film producer, driving the marketplace through the
Hollywood rating system, which determines what movies our children
can see—or cannot see.
I
shouldn’t have been surprised when the iBookstore rejected the
cover of Book Two. But I am still disappointed. As with Book One, I
have redesigned the cover of Jocelyn for iPad readers. You can
see the original artwork on my Facebook page.
What
approaches have you taken to marketing your book?
This
is an all-eBook publicity campaign organized through my publisher,
Publish Green. To let readers know about TABOU, I am building
momentum through word of mouth and Facebook advertising. With my
Facebook page, Tabou by Suzanne Stroh, and my web site,
www.workwithstroh.com, I am forging the authentic, personalized,
one-to-one connection that readers crave from authors in a world of
McMedia.
I’m
also organizing a blog tour, and I’m available to support the book
through interviews and personal appearances on blogs and web sites
like yours.
What
book on the market does yours compare to? How is your book different?
TABOU
is a literary reader’s Fifty Shades of Grey, without the
BDSM. It has great sex writing, like Fifty Shades of Grey,
but it is neither mommy porn nor genre fiction built on the formula
for stock erotica. The gaps between the sex scenes are much longer,
and those gaps are filled with more intriguing plots that involve
many more characters. It also presents all kinds of couples in love:
gay, straight, bisexual, single and partnered, young and old,
able-bodied and disabled, faithful and unfaithful to their spouses.
Like
the novel series by Edward St. Aubyn, TABOU is set in a glittering
world of bluebloods and elites. But these elites are not your typical
“1%.” Unlike St. Aubyn’s abusive elites, TABOU’s
international elites are productive, not destructive. They are on a
mission led by a moral code, a reason for being—a higher purpose
that is revealed progressively as characters accept hidden legacies
and face life-threatening challenges after discovering secret
histories.
What
would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?
I’d
start with the sex writing. Very little literary fiction published
today has truly great sex writing in it that explores the full range
of sexual experience. And almost no erotica delivers the deep
satisfaction of a good literary novel. My work bridges this gap. You
won’t find hot sex every 30 pages, as in genre fiction. But you’ll
keep every volume of TABOU by your bedside, no matter whom you share
your bed with!
My
writing is a personal blend of deep artistic influences in several
genres, including biography, giving rise to some unconventional
quirks. One of my goals has been to counteract the predictability of
so much contemporary fiction, in part by re-inventing the experience
of really getting lost in a juicy 19th century saga
peopled with dozens of fascinating characters, each with his or her
own vivid storyline. To make it easier for readers to follow all the
characters, I’ve provided character indexes, the way a biographer
would index a biography.
Technically,
TABOU requires commitment from the reader, in the way that the music
of Kanye West is challenging—but worth it. It’s not a breezy
read; nor is it a slim volume. It takes at least 100 pages to “get
into” a novel cycle this big, but then you’re hooked, if you’re
like 50% of my beta readers who became addicted! TABOU’s pleasures
are deeper. They grow on you.
For
instance, TABOU is ambitious in throwing out the conventional linear
narrative in favor of the pleasures of being able to peek into the
future and to jump back into the past instantaneously. A benefit of
blending the past, the present and the future together in every book
is that you can read the books in any order. It’s kind of like
enjoying the possibility of multiple endings in a computer game. You
will have a unique experience of TABOU, depending on how you choose
to read it. The dual narratives begin, in Book One, on the same March
day in 1993 and 2003, each progressing from there. You know you’re
in a flashback, recalling past events, when you see dialog ‘in
single quotes like this.’ Dialog in the main story “looks like
this.” And future events are written in bold italics. You
won’t get confused because all this is explained in the Author’s
Note that appears in the end matter of every TABOU eBook.
Readers
will also notice lots of interior dialog, reflecting multiple points
of view, along with lots of verb phrases in my books. Screenwriting
has taught me to craft edgy sentences that begin with verb phrases.
It’s a screenwriters’ convention that energizes the pace and adds
immediacy to the narrative.
Open
your book to a random page and tell us what’s happening.
It’s
4:00 p.m. in Los Angeles in 1993 at the height of the “British
invasion” of Hollywood. Patience Herrick, daughter of the
three-time American ambassador to Great Britain, pretty much rules
the city’s social calendar. Tonight she needs to get out of
throwing a dinner party in Bel Air for a French champagne princess,
where the Hollywood elite will mingle with the US Vice President—all
so she can celebrate her tenth anniversary with Jocelyn Russet, the
love of her life, the brewing heiress Patience seduced in a London
ballroom. So tonight is a date made in heaven—that Patience
completely forgot about.
She
calls her best friend Calandra Seacord for help. Calandra can
definitely host the party in her place; she’s Greek and gorgeous,
an Arianna Huffington double, married to the man running for Governor
of California. Calandra and Patience grew up together in London.
Patience knows her well and loves her like a sister.
But
Patience doesn’t know everything. Calandra is a secret agent
working for the champagne princess, hunting down unprosecuted Nazi
war criminals, kidnapping them, and bringing them to mock trials in
order to recover stolen assets. Calandra can’t risk being seen
socially with the princess, so she has to make up a plausible reason
why she can’t do this important favor tonight for Patience.
There’s
another problem: Patience is a world-class judge of character.
Nothing slips past her. Calandra can’t let Patience on to her
secret. So in order to distract Patience, Calandra reveals the
biggest secret of Patience’s life. And when she does, Patience
begins a journey of recalling lost memories that will change her life
forever….starting with her anniversary date tonight….
Do
you plan any subsequent books?
Book
Two, Jocelyn, is now available. Book Three, Sylvie,
will go on sale in time for the 2012 holiday season. The cycle will
conclude with Books Four and Five in 2013. Each TABOU book features a
sneak preview of the next book.
Tell
us what you’re reading at the moment and what you think of it.
I’ve
always got a few books going at any given time. I love reading in
multiple genres. Do you?
In
erotic fiction, I’ve started Fifty Shades Darker by EL
James, and while it’s a fun, breezy read with the sex writing as
good as ever, I’m not surprised to find the thin plot growing even
thinner. I love to read great sex writing, but I like it in better
taste and more measured doses with deeper character development, more
going on with more characters, and exciting story lines. I much
preferred The Last Nude by Ellis Avery, which I devoured,
almost in one sitting. It’s about the cocaine-fueled obsession of
Modernist painter Tamara de Lempicka for her 17-year old model
Raphaela, whose portraits secured Lempicka’s rock star status in
Paris between the wars. I’m also reading Afterimage by Helen
Humphreys, the fictional account of another muse obsession, this time
by pioneer English photographer Julia Margaret Cameron for her
housemaid.
Two
graphic novels have captured my attention. I just finished really
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. It’s the first work by Bechdel
I can really connect with. It’s a very compelling, but heavy,
memoir by a Midwestern intellectual whose closeted father took his
own life when Alison came out as a lesbian. I’ve turned now to
Logicomix, the story of Bertrand Russell’s quest to lay a
unified foundation for mathematics, set in Edwardian England and
beyond. Apart from The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it may be the
most beautiful graphic novel I’ve ever read. It took four authors
and artists to make it: Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou,
Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna. What a cool collaboration.
Nonfiction
titles are always by the bedside and on my Kindle. By the bedside is
Marina Warner’s scholarly book about the Tales of the Arabian
Nights, Stranger Magic. It’s well researched and beautifully
published. Comprehensive. Kate Summerscale’s biography of Toughie
Carstairs, The Queen of Whale Cay, made me laugh out loud. She
was the very butch Standard Oil heiress who ran an ambulance unit in
World War I and then became “the fastest woman on the water”
racing hydroplanes between the wars. My father would have seen her
challenge the Harmsworth Cup on the St. Clair River in Detroit in
1929 and 1930. After she lost both races, Toughie retired to the
Bahamas, where she became the autocratic ruler of her own island.
I try
to read in French as much as I can. Right now I’m gripped by
Francesco Rappazzini’s biography of Elizabeth de Gramont, set in
Paris during the first half of the 20th century, which has
never been translated. The “red duchess” Lily de Gramont, from
one of France’s oldest families, was Proust’s fact-checker; she
was the best friend of the man Proust pined for; and she was the only
woman Natalie Barney could never control: they were lovers for 45
years. If you don’t read French, you can get an idea of “Natly’s”
escapades with Lily de Gramont in Diana Souhami’s wonderful and
hilarious book, Wild Girls.
***
Summary: Tabou:
Patience, Book 1
Jocelyn
Russet and Patience Herrick. Two powerful, British-born American
lesbians, fiery heiresses of different generations. Both coming of
age at the same time. Are they destined for one another—or
starcrossed? Follow their ten-year Odyssey in a sexy romp through the
rollicking 1980s and 1990s. Discover how their fate turns on secret
histories that bind the Russet and Herrick dynasties in business,
politics and espionage. Meet an international cast of supporting
characters who must all choose between love and duty in book one of
the TABOU quintet.
Suzanne
Stroh's Bio:
Suzanne
Stroh is a screenwriter and film producer, author of published case
studies on family business. She grew up in Michigan where her family
brewed Stroh’s beer for five generations. She studied art history
at Wellesley College and Newnham College, Cambridge then worked in
the New York art world before turning to writing. A mountaineer and
field medic, she lives with her family in the Virginia countryside.
TABOU is her first novel.
Suzanne
Stroh's web site:
Suzanne
Stroh's blog:
Suzanne
Stroh's Facebook:
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Buy Tabou: Patience today!
Price:
$2.50 ebook
Pages:
463
Publisher:
Publish Green
Release:
October 11, 2011
Amazon
Kindle buy link:
Barnes&Noble.com
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