An Interview With R.B. Shifman
Thank you so much for sharing your book with me and agreeing to do a Q&A for my readers.
My pleasure, Sarah. Thank you for allowing me to answer your questions.
Give us a quick summary of Everyone Leaves This Place!
“Everyone Leaves This Place” is about an eighteen-year-old young woman, Evee Salazar, who undergoes an out-of-body experience. In her senior year, Evee butts heads with her mom and wavers between two guys, one of whom she thinks might be stalking her. To slow her down, her mom sends Evee to sit with her Gramma Cynthia at assisted living on Friday nights. To teach her granddaughter some gratitude, Gramma, who’s descended from Pilgrims/witches, decides to switch bodies with Evee temporarily. Mayhem ensues, and worse, a mysterious figure steals Gramma Cynthia’s spell book and threatens to ruin Evee’s life forever.
The story starts off sort of light and fun, ‘Freaky Friday’-ish, if you will. However, I pleasantly surprised myself at how meaningful the last third of the book and the ending turned out. There are a couple of important themes about the hidden battles people fight and the importance of cherishing our loved ones while they’re with us.
People seem to think it’s funny too; I feel like I ‘let loose’ on my humor a lot more than I usually do, with a good result.
What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome in completing your book?
I wrote the first draft of “Everyone Leaves This Place” in the beginning of 2019. It went from my mind to ‘paper’ easily. However, from 2003 to 2018, I was laser focused on writing and querying a four-volume series, called “Seams Along the Near World,” for which I had high hopes. However, it wasn’t getting any traction. In starting my debut published novel, I had to give myself permission to move on and create something different and fresh. I had to recognize that I had learned a lot about writing in the past year and pour that energy and skill into the novel in question.
The great thing about fantasy novels, is how an author can create their own magic and rules. What makes the magic in your novel unique?
There are, I think, some intriguing elements of the magical world I’ve created. One element of specific interest is that magic, both good and bad, is inherited and passed down through family, to some degree. Another intriguing point is that there is this secret world just beneath our noses, filled with witches and sorcerers, but there are only five dark-magic families in America (think points on a pentagram, which is why the number five). However, the truly bizarre, unique aspects of the magical world I’ve built come to life in Book 2—so I don’t want to give that away, but that’s a good teaser for those who have read Book 1.
An interesting aspect of your book is the main character's connection to a family that came over on the Mayflower. What inspired the historical elements of your story?
So, this is an interesting story about the story. I recalled somebody I know personally who mentioned they were descended from a Mayflower family, and it seemed like such a point of pride for this person. And I thought up the scene at the beginning of the novel, where my MC, Evee, is taking pride in being, in-part, descended from a Mayflower family named Bradford, which she notes is not the same Bradford as William Bradford, the first governor of the colonies. (as a side note, I also wanted Evee to be multi-ethnic, because growing up in South Florida, I had many Cuban American friends, and I always envisioned going more into Evee’s Cuban heritage in Book 2, which I do.)
Anyway, back to the Mayflower. It made me think of the Salem Witch trials about seventy years later, where, sadly, the people accused/killed were innocent. I got to thinking, what if the real witches were a much tighter clan of five families, all headed by men, who got away. So that made me think of creating that magical backstory, including the “cut-scene” chapter in 1692.
But here’s the extraordinary thing. After the book launched, a fraternity brother of mine from college in Miami (not the same person who I mentioned above) read the book, and he told me that he actually was descended from the real Bradford family (William Bradford, first governor). My friend told me that his middle name was Bradford, which I didn’t know. He loved the story, and I think he got a kick out of what I’d done with the magical, alt-reality narrative.
What is your writing Kryptonite?
I do my best writing in the early morning, from 6:30AM to about 10:30AM. When I’m contract working, sometimes I don’t get to write in this timeframe. When that happens, I usually try to write on weekend mornings too. Finding the time and energy is Kryptonite.
How long did it take you to get this book published, from its initial conception to the release date?
I wrote the book and conducted two first edits from mid-January 2019 to early March 2019. I submitted the novel in March 2019 and April 2019. During that time a publisher suggested I edit for crutch words and filters, which I did (I learned a lot doing that—very helpful to the process). In May 2019 and June 2019, I received contract offers from three independent publishers. On July 4th, 2019, I signed a contract for Solstice Publishing to acquire the novel. We edited and proofed it over the summer, and it was published September 17, 2019.
Your main character, Evee, deals with many real-world issues that teenage girls face, like drugs, sex, college stress and pressure to overachieve. What sort of research and work did you do to create a teenage girl that readers can relate to?
It wasn’t difficult to imagine Evee, because, at the time, my daughter was a senior in high school, and my son had graduated high school a couple of years before. While my kids don’t deal with the exact same issues Evee does, I do see the pressure in the suburban setting for kids to achieve and sort of ‘figure it all out.’ I paid attention to the struggles I saw amongst them and their friends. I also coached youth wrestling a while back, and I would see this same pressure to achieve among high schoolers twenty years ago. As for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the presence of these issues seems constant over generations, although the nature of the ‘beast’ shifts (e.g., the rise of vaping, which as we now know is quite dangerous, and which I note in Book 2). I noticed among teens nowadays there is this sort of “naïve maturity” (I know that’s an oxymoron) related to their easy access to mature online material, chat groups, Snapchat, etc., coupled with their not knowing what they don’t know and/or not having experienced a lot of things themselves. I tried to build that into the story.
I also wanted Evee to be sympathetic on an emotional level, which is where her relationship comes in with her parents, and the pain she feels about her parents’ divorce and her father leaving. I didn’t do research on this, but I went with my instincts. And I understood this would be relatable to teens.
Pop culture movies and music play a big role in your character’s lives and how they interact with each other, making the story feel very grounded in modern day. Many authors try to keep the time their novel takes place more vague to create a “timeless” effect. What influenced your decision to do the opposite and make your story very “time-specific” instead?
I made a conscious decision to ground my story in a specific timeframe for a couple of reasons. A big reason is that I leverage song titles to convey messages, themes and moods within a story; this is my signature and something I just do—it’s who I am as a writer. To do that, I’m almost are required to be rooted in a specific timeframe. I also felt like I know more about teens in 2018-2019-2020, and I wanted teens who read this now to relate to the characters and situations. I also believe that although time-specific stories can become outdated in some respects, they are still interesting from a historical perspective. When I was a kid, I read stories about kids in various other time periods, and I loved them. So, I’m not afraid of this issue, and I embrace the possibilities of some teen, twenty years from now, relating to the universal aspects of the novel but also being captivated by the songs and vernacular of the time. I think kids now know a lot about older movies and songs too because of online behavior. Most of my daughter’s friends knew Winona Ryder was in Heathers, for example.
What is the first book that made you cry?
Maybe Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. I remember it was my favorite book when I was little.
Many of my readers are trying to decide which avenue of publishing to pursue for their books. Since your book is published through a small press, could you share with us what you’ve enjoyed about this process?
There’s a certain intimacy you feel with a small press. It has a sort of family feel to it. I really like the people at Solstice, from the editors to the EIC and owner to the authors. We support each other as authors, and I like that. I don’t know how to compare it to anything else. I like having the support at Solstice.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers looking to publish their first novel?
I would say, don’t try to publish anything until you’ve gone on Twitter, connected with writers there (there are tens of thousands), and/OR checked out resources on writing and querying. You really do need to be polished before you submit your work. And you need to have disciplined yourself to not only write with a certain elegance, but to avoid using too much passive voice, filters, adverbs, dialogue tags, etc. (and if you don’t know what that all means, you’re not ready). I feel like I did an intensive course online, learning a lot of this stuff in 2017 and 2018.
You also need to have beta readers, and you’ll make those connections online too. You need other professionals to read your work.
Finally, you need to learn how to write a razor-sharp query email, because agents and publishers are receiving thousands of these letters, so you need to stand out for your professionalism.
Writing short stories is a good way to start, getting published in small, online journals and making a name for yourself. That’s how I started, with a short story in The Eunoia review.
Connect with me on Twitter, @rshifman, and I can point you in the right direction to some source material.
What other books and authors inspire you?
One of my favorite fantasy novels is “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” by Neil Gaiman. Something about the mystical quality and sadness in that short novel really hits me. I read a lot of C.S. Lewis, the Narnia books especially, growing up, and they really influenced me, as did E. Nesbit and L’Engle. These are fantastic authors who conveyed timeless messages.
What is your favorite book to recommend to others?
Recently, it’s been “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour. It’s a YA novel that’s beautiful and poignant. It made me cry. I’ve read it twice.
Everyone Leaves This Place is already out and available for purchase. And the sequel, Love’s Heavy Spell came out just recently. What can fans expect in this new book?
Like I said, Book 2 will continue the story from Book 1. It will be heavier and more mystical in tone, and with many of the same characters, including Evee Salazar. And the truly bizarre, idiosyncratic nature of my magic world building comes out in this story; people should really like where I take the story, though it’s not where they would expect it to go.
Part of Book 2 is set in Miami and, to some extent the narrative delves into Evee’s Latina (Cuban) heritage on her father’s side. I worked with a good friend of mine, Teresa Garcia, to get the Spanish right and the proper characterization of the Cuban American culture in South Florida (for those who don’t speak Spanish, I wrote the book in a way that everything is understandable and/or explained; also, any issues in the book, I must say, are my fault, not Teresa’s)
My wife said Book 2 is even better than Book 1, so I must believe her (ha ha). Early reviews have been quite favorable. People have been reading Book 2 in one sitting, so I know it’s not boring, that’s for sure. You will laugh and, quite possibly, cry reading this story.
What are you working on next?
I’m working on Book 3 in the Savage Spells series. I’m delighted with the way it’s turning out. The narrative is gripping and so interesting (my opinion). I also introduce a character who is sort of Evee’s frenemy in this book, and it makes for super chemistry, dialogue, and action. You’ll see! I’m a good portion of the way through the first draft. I want people to finish Book 3 and say: ’Wow! This story just took me from here to there!”—a sort of insular, suburban, girl-to-witch-body-switch story to something even richer and more fascinating, beyond what was expected.