Award winning novelist Caroline Leavitt is the author of seven novels including her latest, COMING BACK TO ME. She has written many essays that have appeared in magazines such as Parenting and McCalls and several short stories that have appeared in such anthologies as Father and Forever Sisters. Caroline lives in Hoboken, New Jersey with her husband, writer Jeff Tamarkin, and their four-year-old son Max.
I was recently given the opportunity to read Caroline's latest novel, COMING BACK TO ME and was able to catch up with her to ask her a few question about the novel and her writing career.

BB: Before we begin talking about COMING BACK TO ME, I'd like to ask you a few questions about you and your writing career. In 1978, you won First Prize in Redbook Magazine's Young Writers Contest for your short story "Meeting Rozzy Halfway" which eventually grew into a novel. You've obviously been writing for quite sometime. Can you tell us what first inspired you to begin writing and then to make a career out of it?

CL: I've always known I was going to be a writer. From the time I could hold a pen (and wield a keyboard) I wrote stories. I didn't get serious, though, until I had finished college when Richard Price, at age 24, published his fabulous first novel, THE WANDERERS, and I suddenly realized I wasn't working hard enough. I started writing everyday--and as obsessively as possible!

BB: Aside from writing your novels, you also teach an online course for the UCLA Extension Program called Writing The First Novel. How did you begin teaching this course?

CL: I actually saw an ad looking for online teachers, and since I had done manuscript consulting work, I thought it would be fun. What happened is I fell in love with it. I loved talking to other writers (albeit online), and I found that being able to look at someone's work and figure out what was and what wasn't working actually helped me a lot with my own work. I think online teaching is great. People are more apt to spill their souls because of the intimacy online affords. My last class created a real community--they posted photos!

BB: Your husband, Jeff Tamarkin, is a writer as well. Can you tell us what it's like having two writers in the family? A writer's lifestyle can often be very trying. Does it seem to help having a spouse who knows exactly what you have to go through? Do you ever find yourselves in competition with one another?

CL: Jeff writes nonfiction, and since we're each other's biggest supporters, I can't imagine being competitive. It's actually great. We have a three-story Victorian rowhouse, and the top floor is just offices--across a hallway from each other so we can wave. It helps with the solitude of writing knowing I can get up, walk across the hall, and go and talk to him. And it helps that he does understand. He says that when I start saying things like, "I hate this novel, it's not working," he knows I'm halfway through it, and when I say, "I have no talent," he figures the writing is going well!

BB: While your latest novel, COMING BACK TO ME is a fictional story about newlyweds Gary and Molly Breyer, the idea for the novel was derived from a life experience of your own in which you suddenly developed a rare and fatal blood disorder. Can you tell us more about this disorder and your recovery? How has it affected your life since diagnosed with this disorder?

CL: Three days after I gave birth to our son (after a dream pregnancy), I contracted a very rare, potentially fatal disorder called Factor VIII inhibitor. You blood stops clotting. I was so sick because they didn't know, at first, what it was that I had. I had five emergency operations in one week, and because the procedures were so awful, they put me in a comatose state and gave me memory blockers so I wouldn't remember anything. I had several near death episodes, and there was one point where they called my family in and told them I was going to die. But I didn't. I was in the hospital for about two months and I couldn't move--they were afraid any movement would make me bleed and they wouldn't be able to stop it. I was always surrounded by a ring of doctors because everyone thought this was such an interesting case!

Even when I came home, it was tough. I had to learn to walk again. I was on steroids. I had lost my hair from the medication. And I wasn't allowed to hold my baby for fear the stress would cause a bleed. So we had a hard time bonding to each other at first. Plus, there was the stress of having to go back to the hospital three times a week to see all my doctors because no one was certain I was getting well.

I'm fine now. At least I think I'm fine. I can't donate any organs, can't give blood, and can never have any more children. If I need surgery, it's a danger. As are repeated bouts of flu. But I get my blood levels checked every six months, and I've learned to live with that. I mean, anything unexpected can happen to anyone at any time. I know it's sort of a cliché, but I've learned to cherish the moment. Because really, that's all anyone really has.

BB: The writing of COMING BACK TO ME was as much a healing process for you as it was the creation of a wonderful inspirational story of family secrets, sisters, marriage, and most of all love. Can you tell us how this book helped heal you in your own life after such a traumatic experience? What made you decide to write it?

CL: When I was so sick, they gave me memory blockers because the procedures and the pain were so terrible. But the problem with that, is that to get over any trauma, you sort of need to remember so you can process it and move on. And I couldn't. And I kept having terrible, uneasy dreams. I turned to what I always turn to in great stress--writing--to try and make sense of what had happened, to give it shape. So I had to create memory where there was none, and I did that by talking to everyone in my life who had gone through this with me, and by writing fiction about it. It really helped to put the uneasiness to rest. I lived through the experience through my characters, at a nice safe distance, and I found myself feeling better. The dreams stopped.

BB: The characters you created in COMING BACK TO ME are so believable and realistic in the way they handle life's crisis that they are forced to face. Did you find it difficult to make them so true to life without basing them solely off yourself?

CL: Well, I didn't remember a lot of what happened, so I didn't feel as if I was basing the characters on myself. I used stories people told me, and then I tried to imagine what might happen. And I worked very hard to make the characters different from their true-life counterparts! My sister was very present, and she was terrifically helpful. She's as different from Suzanne as anyone can be! My husband and I weren't as isolated as my characters, and my mother was also very present. I always try to reach that point in writing where the characters start to breathe on the page, and then I really don't have any control over them!

BB: When Molly and Gary start out in a New Jersey community, their neighbors treat them like outsiders and keep their distance from them, yet it is these people who surprisingly become supportive when Molly falls ill. Did this happen to you as well? Did you find that the people who never seemed to be all that friendly ended up being true friends in the end?

CL: My husband and I moved to Hoboken, New Jersey from Manhattan. Hoboken, at that time, was a hardscrabble community, and the neighbors who had lived there for years and years and generations, were very suspicious. They didn't like it that we were changing our house, taking off the paint, putting up a fence and they weren't friendly at all. But they had good reason, because Hoboken was getting an influx of people who would come in, renovate the houses and then leave with a tidy profit in their pockets. These people didn't care about the community and the rents were being driven up, and the old-time Mom and Pop stores were being driven out of business because of the escalating rents. Once our neighbors saw I was pregnant, and that we were staying, they began to warm to us--and yes, they were incredible when I got sick. They brought meals over to Jeff, they baby-sat the baby so he could come to the hospital and visit me, and when I came home, they embraced me.

BB: Is there any advice you would like to give to those who may find themselves in a similar situation to what you went through in their lives?

CL: I hope no one ever is in such a situation! But I would say, "have faith in people." Unexpected people do come through for you. No one is ever really safe from harm, so grab for the moment.

BB: Do you currently have another book in the works? If so, can you tell us a bit about it?

CL: The book I'm writing now is about an open adoption gone wrong. I'm really superstitious so I can't say more than that.

BB: Is there anything you would like to say to the aspiring writer?

CL: Never give up. Try to write every day. But remember to take time off to live your life as fully as you can.

BB: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us, Caroline. It's been a pleasure.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright © BookBrowser, 2001.

Entry * Home * Bio * Novels * Essays & Stories* Links * Q & A * Girls In Trouble * Appearances* Contact