Author Interview: JM Frey
By Angela Roberts
April 20, 2011
JM Frey is a woman of many talents. She’s an author, an actor, and an academic with her own domain – fanthropology. She launched her first novel, Triptych, at the Ad Astra science fiction convention in Toronto this month, and the novel has already risen highly on the Amazon sales charts. No surprise there; Frey’s novel is a tightly plotted, original character-driven work of science fiction that blends time travel, aliens, and issues of love, acceptance, family dynamics, gender performance, prejudice, and much more without ever sounding preachy. I had the opportunity to speak with this eloquent author at the convention and what follows is an awesome discussion about fandom, writing, and the artistic process. I had so much to ask her that I divided the interview into sections!
Section 1: Favourites
Fave Book: Peter and Wendy by JM Barrie
Fave Writer: Neil Gaiman
Fave Manga and/or Anime: Either Inu Yasha or Hana Yori Dango.
Fave NA comics: Fables
Fave TV show: Still Forever Knight, after all these years. I still have a big stupid crush on Geraint Wyn Davies.
Fave movie: How to Train Your Dragon
Fave Doctor: Ten, he’s so adorable!
Section 2: JM
Angela: What is fanthropology?
JM Frey: Ah, everyone asks that one!
A: You put it up; we have to ask.
JM: Fanthropology is a portmanteau of fandom and anthropology, so it is the anthropological study of fans and fandom, but it’s an ethno-anthropological study. It’s not from the outside looking in, it’s from the inside looking in. It’s not othering or…
A: But you are basically studying the sub-culture.
JM: Yes, I’m studying the anthropological notions of the sub-culture, so its sociology, culture, art, legalities, policy, communications, psychology, all of that stuff; all at once, with fans. That is my research ground.
A: What made you decide to write a novel?
JM: I honestly think that if I didn’t write, I’d die. My brain would split open and things would crawl out of my skull. I’ve always been a writer, but I’ve never taken it seriously. It was always something I was doing when I wasn’t acting; it was just something to keep me busy when I wasn’t on the stage and my homework was done. And then, I guess about ten years ago, I realized that people pay you for this stuff, which was a big surprise. I wrote a lot of fan fiction. I’ve probably written over three to four thousand pages worth of stories and things for fan fiction. The longest story was four hundred pages when I put it all together. And then I started getting all these great ideas that were original and I started writing those, and they were short stories and I sold a couple of those, and there were novellas, and I sold those, and then I thought, “OK, on to the next…” I mean, a novel wasn’t scary because I’d written a four hundred page fanfic already. So, I never said I’d write a novel, only that I’d write. And the stories choose their own length.
A: How do you find writing fiction different from your other projects, for example, your academic works, screenwriting, etc.?
JM: It’s a different side of your brain. Stories have to be structured in different ways depending on the different mediums. If you’re doing a comic, you have to leave a lot of room for visual and you have to get as much information across as possible in as little writing as possible. For screenplays, you have to be really aware of the conceit of the medium. So you know that you can have a dragon swooping in, but you know that production studios might replace it with a trained cat, because it might be too expensive. Or vice versa, a trained cat might be more expensive than putting CG in. You [also] have to structure [a screenplay] in three acts. Novels are different again because you have to live inside a character’s head, and academic is different again because you’re still telling a story, you still have to entice the reader to come along with you, but you have to give proofs and examples and it’s a lot of telling and no showing, and fiction is all showing and no telling. I mean, they’re not different; you just have to be aware of the conceits of each medium.
A: How long did it take to sell your novel and what was your experience?
JM: Triptych was the fourth novel I wrote, and I actually wrote it as a novella first. It took me about a year to sell the novella; pretty much exactly a year because I started it in January 2007 and I sold it January 2008, and it was published March 2008. I basically wrote the novel right after the novella was published. I started that because I got a lot of fan mail saying, And then? And then what happened? And I never really thought there was an And Then with the story, but apparently there was. So I finished that around August 2008, and I queried that until April 2009. In April 2009, I was at Ad Astra at a room party, complaining to my friend Stephanie, and I said, “This book is the impossible book to sell! Nobody wants it! It’s driving me crazy! Nobody wants this book!” This woman came over, and she says, “I’m sorry, but what do you mean you have this impossible book to sell?” And I said, “Well, it’s this and that.” And she said, “Well, pitch the book to me.” And I was like, OK strange lady person, and I pitched the book to her, and she said, “OK, I’m intrigued. Longer pitch.” So I gave her the longer pitch. And she said, “OK, give me more.” And I said, “You know what…” because I had all my paperwork with me about the book. And she said, “Oh, you have all your pitches written out.” And I said, “Of course I do. I’m at a literary science fiction convention, I’m not stupid.” And she said, “That’s good. I’d like it on my desk on Monday.” And I said, “I’m sorry, who are you?” And she was Gabrielle Harbowy, the acquisitions editor for Dragon Moon Press. That wasn’t the sale, though. She turned it down, said there were some major problems with it, and has later admitted that she honestly didn’t think I could fix them. So for the next eight months, I queried a little bit, but I didn’t actively try to sell it elsewhere because she had said she wanted to see it again. So I guess around October or November of 2009, I made all of the changes and sent it back to her, and she said that Dragon Moon would pick it up. April 2010, we announced it officially at Ad Astra, and now we’re doing the launch. So, from when I started the novella in 2007, almost four years to the day.
A: What do you find is different or unique about being a girl in fandom? The advantages or disadvantages?
JM: If you’ll notice the name on the cover [of Triptych], there’s no indication of gender, and you actually have no idea of my gender until you flip to the About the Author because my picture isn’t on the back either, and that was sort of a purposeful decision, and sort of the way that the layout worked. Girls can’t write science fiction, that’s the prejudice, right? I’ve watched fanboys debate picking up a book because of the author’s gender, and it’s like, you’ve gotta be kidding me, a good book is a good book. And so I find that really frustrating. Girls can write fantasy, that’s fine, we can write about princesses and horses, but we can’t write about aliens and lasers. So that’s a bit frustrating but that’s falling away quickly.
Almost all of my experiences in fandom have been very positive, and I’ve got lots of friends. Pretty much everyone I know, I met in fandom. I do get sick of the “Oh my God, you’re a geek and you’re female. Obviously you must want to go on a date with me and obviously you must be easy.” I get that a lot. And I get a lot of guys who want to rescue me, because, you know, I’m a princess and I’m a girl and I’m in fandom, so I’m like the alien warrior princess or the Princess Peach character, and I’m like, “Gee thanks. No, I can save myself.” I get a lot of that attitude. But you can’t blame the guys because look at the way that women are set up in fandom; aside from Xena and Starbuck and Colonel Carter, name a female character that isn’t a prize to be won or something to be rescued. So they’re only behaving in the way that science fiction and fantasy has taught them women should be treated, and most of them are gentlemen, but at the same time, it’s like, I am not an object, I am not a prize to be won, I am not the princess in the castle; I don’t need you to rescue me. I need you to sit there and have an intelligent conversation with me.
But otherwise, I find that fandom is very inclusive. Skin colour, race, sex, orientation, none of that matters because fans and fandom are so ostracized from the mainstream that we all realize that there’s no point in doing it to each other. And generally speaking, science fiction and fantasy fans were picked on in school or were the social outcast or might have mental illnesses that make it difficult for them to socialize, so fandom is the safe space for us. Science fiction is one place where everybody, whether you have a bumpy forehead or you’re blue, is accepted. It’s nice. There’s very little bullying. There’s drama. There’s drama everywhere you go.
A: What do you find is different about being a Canadian writer? A female Canadian writer? Do you ever feel pressure, even writing speculative fiction, to make your works reflect national ideas?
JM: I don’t write for anyone but me, so if there’s pressure on me to write a good Canadian novel, I don’t feel it. On the other hand, I strongly feel the need for books that are set in the country. The first third of Triptych is set in rural Ontario. I crash a UFO into my great-aunt’s strawberry patch. I don’t feel pressure to set things in Canada. I feel the desire to set things in Canada. The problem I find with Canadian art is that people try to make it Canadian instead of trying to make it good. I find this with our television, I find this with our movies, and I find this with our books. Everybody is so preoccupied about making it Canadian that nobody’s making it good. And while I enjoy Flashpoint, Winging It, Ruby Skye: PI, Corner Gas, and Forever Knight, for every one of those shows that’s a good show that happens to be set in Canada, there’re five bazillion things that are just so Canadiana; it’s all beavers and maple syrup and it’s not about the characters.
Now I feel that’s a double-edged sword because you get a government grant to write a Canadian book but what’s a Canadian book? We’re such a multi-cultural nation [that] there is literally no Canadian national identity. We have a Canadian national identity of absence. We define ourselves by what we are not. I am not Scottish, I am not American, I am not Muslim, I am not straight, I am not. So how do you write a book about something that does not exist? Until then, you just have to write a book and include some aspect of Canada in it. So, as a female Canadian writer, no, I feel no pressure to write a Canadian female science fiction book. Would I feel that pressure if I got a government grant to write? Yes, maybe, but I’d kind of do it anyway. Do I feel there could be a definitive Canadian science fiction voice? I think we’re struggling towards it. I think Robert Sawyer has been very helpful in, not defining the Canadian voice, but in making other nations pay attention to the Canadian voice. But there is so much more to the Canadian science fiction and fantasy world than Robert J. Sawyer. He’s the big name, but there’s so much else out there and I think that in another hundred years, the Canadian identity will get off this wibbly-wobbly “Well, what are we? We’re not quite sure but we don’t dare declare what we are!” It’ll oscillate itself into a kind of steady thing and we’ll know what the Canadian identity is and probably around that time we’ll know what Canadian SF is. If you think of Canadian science fiction, you think of aliens in the wheat fields, and that’s not reflective of the entire nation. But that’s the problem; Canada’s not really one nation. Canada’s twelve countries jammed together with the same currency.
Section 3: Triptych
A: Where did the idea for Triptych come from? Is there a specific impulse that you can point to where the idea came from?
JM: The plot bunny?
A: Yes.
JM: The idea… My mom will be so sick of me telling this story. I was living in Japan; it was my mom’s fiftieth birthday. It was the middle of January and it was freezing in my apartment because I had no heating. It’s normal in Japanese apartment buildings; there’s no forced air, no central heating, just you and the kotatsu and that’s it. And it wasn’t enough that night and I was like, “Screw this! I’m going to the onsen.” I went up to the public baths, and it’s like sitting in your hot tub only there’re a hundred naked people around you and you have no clothes on too. I’m sitting there and I was getting warm, and I was looking at the clock and I thought, “Oh my God, my mother’s fifty. Oh my God, I’m twenty-five. I’m half my mother’s age, meaning that when my mother was twenty-five, I was born. She had me. Weird.” And I started thinking about it. Twenty-five-year-old Mom, what was she like? What was she doing? She was married, she had a kid, she was doing this, she was doing that, and then I looked at all the naked people around me and thought, “I am not living my mother’s life. This is weird. I wonder what twenty-five-year-old me and twenty-five-year-old Mom would think of one another if we met.” And I thought we’d probably get along. But there’s nothing interesting in that, there’s no plot, no story. So all the way back, all I was thinking was what if I wrote a story about a mother and daughter who met each other at the same age and the mother hated her child, did not like what her child became at all? And that was the story of the original novella; there was just the time travel. Then when I got the idea to do the novel, I thought there had to be some impetus, there has to be something more disgusting about the daughter, and I thought having sex with an alien is pretty disgusting to some people. Some people already freak out when their children come out, how much further can I push that reaction: the parent who disowns their child simply because they’re gay. So I pushed it into xenophobia, and as much xenophobia as you can get because they’re not even from the planet. And that’s where the idea came from.
A: Triptych is described as “a science fiction novel with literary fiction aspirations”. Why did you decide to take the novel in this direction and what sort of response have you received?
JM: I just write, I don’t write like a science fiction author, or a fantasy author, or an upscale commercial author, I just write. But everyone says to me, the way that I construct my sentences and use words, I sound like a literary writer. And generally speaking, literary books are very close, very domestic, very concerned with a particular character’s emotions and emotional arc, and their story. And I prefer that; I prefer sticking with one character and really living minute by minute with them. Except that they’re aliens, so it’s not really commercial fiction because it’s time travel and aliens. It’s default science fiction but it doesn’t sound like a lot of science fiction. It doesn’t go on a grand scale, it’s not space opera, it’s not any of that stuff. I really do feel that if Kalp was human, it would read like another Jonathan Franzen sort of really close domestic drama, but there’s an alien.
A: Triptych is structured in three parts with a prologue and epilogue, each part with its own focalizer. Why did you choose to structure it this way?
JM: I didn’t. It just happened.
A: We all make choices, right? As writers.
JM: Right. The original short story was told from Evvie’s point-of-view, and before I decided to make a novel, I decided to make a series of short stories; the idea being there was going to be one story from Evvie’s point-of-view, one from Mark’s, one from Gwen’s, one from Basil’s, one from Kalp’s. Because I thought, five characters, five point-of-views. I started writing the second story, which was Kalp’s, and I started writing in his voice, and a friend of mine, whom I was writing with at the time, ended up writing a page of stuff based on my short story. She wrote it from Kalp’s point-of-view, and I loved her voice so much that I kind of went, “Can I have that?” And she was like, “Yeah, OK.” So that page of stuff, there are sentences here and there throughout Kalp’s section that are hers. Everything around is mine, but she set the tone for Kalp’s voice. I loved it so much that I ran with it, so that entire section was in that voice. It’s been tweaked, it’s different now. It’s in present tense, and it was in past tense before. I did pick present tense because it’s the most uncomfortable way of writing I could find. It’s the tense that makes people put down a book. I wanted a really uncomfortable narrator.
And then when I had these two bits, the next bit was going to be Basil, so I really had to find an individual voice for him because I had two really individual voices here. So I really had to develop that. Originally the prologue was written from Gwen’s point-of-view and the epilogue from Mark’s point-of-view, but I got the idea that the story is about Gwen, Gwen is the central character, the defining character, but I didn’t want Gwen to speak for herself. Because all of the mysteries that I set up in the other three parts, the way that people look at her and don’t know what she’s thinking, if I made her speak, I would lose that intrigue. I would lose that desire to know her better, to try to understand her. So I switched the prologue and epilogue, and it felt weird to have Mark at the end when Basil’s the chatty one. Basil’s the one who’d be narrating it internally. Mark would be like, “They showed up, stuff happened, the end.” That would be his entire chapter. So, it made sense to put the last two chapters firmly in Basil’s POV.
A: You deal with several social issues in the novel, but a notable issue is that of gender performance and family dynamics, especially in the device of “Aglunates”. Why did you choose to deal with these themes? Why do you think science fiction is a good (or bad or unused) genre for exploring these themes?
JM: Well, the nice thing about science fiction is that we can talk about now by setting it then, talk about us by talking about them. And Gene Roddenberry, while blunt, did a great job of that with Star Trek. And by blunt, I mean those half-black/half-white people, that was just smash over your head, but it worked. I even found Avatar blunt, but my Dad liked it. Science fiction is more about the human condition than anything else, and the best ways to understand ourselves is to “other” our behavior and study it from a distance. And the best way to do that is to imbue our traits and issues into something else. So I didn’t set out to make it an issue book. After I‘d done about the tenth draft, I was like, “OK, I’m talking about this. I should just say what it is, call it gender performance, move it up a layer.” So I did an edit where I went through and made all the social issues float up to the top a little more, because I thought if I was going to talk about them, I might as well talk about them. But I guess I’m sort of a secret activist. All my own beliefs and biases are represented in the book. So, the line that Kalp says, “It’s about people, not plumbing” is something I’ve been saying for fifteen years. So, all of my personal “aah” with society made it into the book, and when I realized it was there, I pushed it. I didn’t set out to write an issue book, I set out to write a book, but to be able to talk about this family, it’s unrealistic to have happy duckies and rainbows and puppy dogs, because no relationship, no matter the orientation of the people involved, the race or the planet, there’s no perfect relationship. There’s always strife. I come from a really small town, and I’ve seen the interracial dating, and the frowns on people, and it’s like, “It’s 2011, come on!” You can’t have a book about a relationship, especially a threesome relationship, in North American society, between two humans and an alien, without there being issues. There would be issues. So all I was trying to do was write a realistic story. And when I realized that I was talking a lot about the intolerance and the racism, I pushed that all up. The gender performance, that’s just left over from being a theatre major. I’m keenly aware of gender performance and I find it very fascinating, especially in fandom. I love sitting on a sofa and watching everyone go by. It’s brilliant research. And I thought that because I’m so fascinated with gender performance, Kalp would have to be too. But again, going realistically, he comes from a place where what you like to do and what you like to wear has no reflection on your body, on your personality. So the fact that he’s like, “OK, I’ve chosen to be male and I have to like football? I have no choice? I must drink beer? But I like cooking. I’m not allowed to cook anymore simply because of my genitalia?” These would be genuinely puzzling things for an alien. So again, I was just trying to write a real book.
A: Final Question: Can you tell us anything about your next projects?
JM: I have a lot of amazing, holy-crap-amazing stuff happening. I have a huge gag order. I’m so sorry.
A: OK, well, you have the anthology coming out, right?
JM: Yes. I’ve got a story, “The Once and Now-ish King”. I don’t think that I can write comedy, but then I write a comedy and people laugh, so I guess I can write comedy. It’s a funny little story coming out in When The Hero Comes Home, an anthology edited by Ed Greenwood and Gabrielle Harbowy, and it’s about the return of the hero after the war, the battle, the book is over, and what happens when the book ends. It’s a story about the rebirth of King Arthur, but he’s entirely conscious and vocal from the minute he’s born, so you can understand how startled his poor mother is. So there’s that. In October, I’ve got my essay “Whose Doctor?” which is about Doctor Who and Canadian co-production, and that’s coming out in a McFarland Press book, Doctor Who in Time and Space, which is a new textbook about locality, nationality, and temporal issues in Doctor Who. And then near Christmas, if things go well, I should get out a chapbook with Sky Castle Press, and it’s going to be all comedically morbid Christmas poems with illustrations. I’m querying a couple other novels - I’ve still got those other three novels that are still on the back burner. I’ve got… No, that’s all I can say. I’ve got other things in the works, but I can’t talk about them yet.
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