All Lit Up: Tell us about your newest book. What can readers expect?
Angie Ellis: A Snake and a Feathered Bird is my first novel, a coming-of-age story about an adopted boy named Ben. Set in the late 1800s on Vancouver Island, and at times told through the perspectives of different characters, readers can expect a fairly gritty historical novel that slowly pieces together Ben’s mysterious past.
ALU: What do you hope readers take away from your book?
AE: This novel deals a lot with misunderstanding—sometimes unintentional, and sometimes willful. It can be comforting to latch onto a particularly negative or judgmental view of another person or group of people, but one of the things I try to deal with in this novel is our commonality beneath it all.
ALU: Where do you find inspiration for your characters?
AE: Inspiration for my characters always starts small—some tiny detail, like something they collect, their manner of speaking, or the fact that they sleepwalk. From there, my process is quite disorganized, as I try to get to know who they are at their core. But that process is informed, in an indirect way, by the books I read, podcasts I listen to, and documentaries I watch about interesting people. All that stuff kind of knocks around my subconscious and turns up in really unexpected ways as I write my character. Interestingly, one thing that doesn’t work for me is basing a character on someone I know. It’s too personal and too real. I like to be surprised!
ALU: What books have you read lately that you can’t stop thinking about?
AE: Greenlanders by Jane Smiley. I loved this book and was so inspired by the writing, which is unusual and sparse—reflective of old Norse sagas. It’s a beautiful, troubling, bleak story, and I couldn’t put it down.
ALU: How do you overcome creative blocks when they arise?
AE: I step away. Sometimes for a month or more, but usually a couple of days does the trick. I use that time to do other things I love. This often includes going down research rabbit holes I don’t normally have time to go down, which helps to jumpstart my creativity and boost my curiosity, which is so essential to fiction writing. Also the fact that it really helps to turn a story off for a while and come back to it fresh!
***
Angie Ellis lives on Vancouver Island, where she is working on a linked short story collection, leaning more towards the magical and gothic. You can find her past work in the Narrative, Grain, The Fiddlehead, The Cincinnati Review, and others. Her story, “The Sisters”, won the Masters Review Short Story Award and she is very grateful to have received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council. www.angieellisauthor.com
Order A Snake and a Feathered Bird here on All Lit Up, or from your local bookseller.
For more Writer’s Block, click here.
