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QUESTIONS FROM READERS

C. from Newark, DE: What is your creative process for a novel such as this one? How much of your own life informs the writing? Do you have any projects in the works?

Gayle Brandeis: This novel started out as a National Novel Writing Month novel; I wrote the first draft in a crazy rush during November 2004. (National Novel Writing Month is like a writing marathon, where you try to write 50,000 words in 30 days.) When I sat down that November 1st, I had no idea where the novel was going to go --- I just knew that it was going to be set in the world of self storage auctions. (I had found out about the auctions during a conversation on a plane ride a few months before --- a plane ride I wasn't originally scheduled to be on.) When I write, I love watching stories unfold; I love following my characters where they want to go; they always take me to surprising places. That was certainly the case with SELF STORAGE; it took me on quite a journey.

SELF STORAGE isn't autobiographical, but aspects of my own life definitely informed it --- I lived in family student housing at UCR, where Flan and her family live, for four years when my kids were little. (I have a boy and a girl, just like Flan, although my kids aren't models for Noodle and Nori, other than the fact that Nori has my daughter's former curly blond toddler hair.) And some of my frustrations about life after 9/11 spilled onto the page, as well.

The first draft written that November was a big mess, but it gave me something to work with, play with, hone over the next year or so. I love writing fast first drafts (although usually not quite that fast) just because it forces me to keep moving forward, to silence the inner critic, the inner editor, and just let the words flow. The book went through several drafts --- one of them written with Flan directly addressing Whitman throughout the book --- before it found its final form.

I just finished a very messy first draft of a novel tentatively titled MY LIFE WITH THE LINCOLNS. It's due out Summer 2008. My main character is a 12-year-old girl who thinks her family is the Lincoln family reincarnated, and it's her job to save them from their fate.

It's set during the 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement, which has been very gratifying to explore. I grew up in Chicago but didn't know about the movement until I started writing this book; I knew I wanted to set it in Chicago, and wanted it to address some civil rights issues, so when I did a Google search on "Chicago" and "civil rights" I learned that Martin Luther King, Jr. had come to Chicago in 1966 to lead a movement demanding open and equal housing. It's been great to learn about that aspect of my hometown's history. As for my own history, I thought my dad was Lincoln reincarnated when I was little, but that's pretty much the only autobiographical part of the story!



Cathy from Livermore, CA: I was sort of curious about the cover illustration of the book. How did that come about? I found it very intriguing.

Gayle Brandeis: I absolutely adore the cover. It's so unlike anything I had envisioned (I was picturing a sign at a self storage place in my mind.) The art department at Random House sent three potential cover images to my editor and she passed them along to me for consultation (one of the covers featured a jar with grass and a flower inside, the other looked like the label on either a box or a drawer). The red bra jar was definitely everyone's favorite of the three --- it's so wonderfully weird and compelling. It's an image that I think forces you to look closer, to imagine the story behind it. Plus it really seems to capture the sense of a self stored, a self bottled up. I still don't know where the image itself came from --- if it's a stock photo, maybe, or something they put together in the art department --- but I love it.

Elizabeth from Tallapoosa, GA: I am 72 years old, and in my growing years, money was tight but love and protection were given daily to all five of my brothers and sisters. Tell me you did not grow up in that type of family. Thank you for making me see that my family is the glue keeping me together.

Gayle Brandeis: I'm glad that my book helped you appreciate your family, Elizabeth. I grew up in a very loving household, as well. I was given a lot of freedom to roam and explore, but always felt the protective bubble of my family's love wherever I went. I know Flan wanted to be able to provide her kids with that same protective bubble in the novel. Most of the time she was able to do so, but life can get so complicated (and people can be so complicated!) and I think she discovered that we're all so much more vulnerable (and so much stronger) than we often realize. I think she also learned that our families can give us the support --- the glue, as you so beautifully called it --- we need to survive. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.

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