Sue Hollister Barr - A Wicked Sense of Humor

Posted on 26th of February, 2019 by Naomi Bolton

Sue Hollister Barr was born in New York City, but raised in Connecticut as the daughter of a professor at Yale, until her family drove across country to settle in Berkeley, California. As she came of age in a time and place where all the radicalism of the 1960s was also coming of age, she found her soul in a counter-culture consciousness she's never lost despite a broad range of experience from working in the grittiest bars to blending in seamlessly with the 1% on Wall Street. She's been published in The New York Times, had a novel conventionally published in the 1990s that's still selling today, spent 10 years as senior editor for a literary agency, taught creative writing with the blessings of New York State, and is now trying her hand at the indie publishing that gives her complete freedom to do things her way. Coming around full circle to the city of her birth, she currently lives in New York City. As our Author of the Day, she tells us all about her book, Ships.

Please give us a short introduction to what Ships is about.

A fun read with a wicked sense of humor. Gorgeous, and born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, Veronica Hamilton has never had to interrupt her dreamy sentimentality to question her cultural snobbery or even whether or not that diagnosis of Asperger's was accurate. But that was before her fabulously wealthy CEO husband framed her for the murders he committed. Now she's fleeing across "fly-over" America with the pedal to the metal of her burgundy-upholstered Rolls.

Meanwhile, barreling toward Earth, Histus is suffering from extreme sensory deprivation because he no longer has a body. But his gas-giant planet has been annihilated, and the only way to survive was to upload his consciousness into his crippled ship.

What could these two possibly have in common? What does each desperately need to learn from the other? Oh, and incidentally, will they save the planet Earth? (Including what turn out to be the quite-worthy occupants of "fly-over" America?)

What inspired you to write about a trophy wife who flees in her Rolls across "fly-over" America?

Ala Zen in the Art of Archery (aim away from your target), I try to show the value of "fly-over" America through the eyes of someone who, initially, has no appreciation for it at all. Also, mine is the kind of rebellious nature that...if everyone else is writing stories about marginalized members of society...prompts me to write a story starring just the opposite. Please don't get me wrong: I completely support all marginalized members of society and am thoroughly delighted to see things like men holding hands on the street and stories starring people with disabilities. As an active member of SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America), I was reduced to tears when I witnessed Charlie Jane Anders winning the Nebula Award for All the Birds in the Sky. But when, as part of the acceptance speech, this author who's presumably had to fight against being marginalized got chocked up saying how strongly she feels that everyone deserves a voice...I took that to mean everyone, including a trophy wife who flees in her Rolls across "fly-over" America.

Tell us more about Veronica. What makes her tick?

Veronica, in her own way, is as much of an alien to the planet Earth as my story's true alien, Histus, who really is from another planet. Even as a child, she hid from her parents' constant bickering in a mansion large enough for her to escape into its deserted wings. Her playmates were all imaginary, crafted from the idealized country folk she found in the pastoral wallpaper or the long-dead ancestors whose paintings lined the empty halls. As an adult she still wanders off whenever possible, far preferring to commune with pictures of people long-dead than converse with the living. Her only passion, what she lives for, is to find beauty, such as a night sky filled with stars that promise worlds beyond her own.

Your writing contains a lot of dark humor. Why do you take this approach?

Whatever depth may (or may not) be embedded in it, my writing is meant to be, first and foremost, as much fun and as easy to read as possible. For decades I struggled between working the ridiculously long hours required, for instance, to put my children through college when my dead-beat ex withheld support payments, and the desire to have some quality time to myself...even if it was only 15 minutes a day. The problem was, by the time I got to those 15 minutes, I was all but brain-dead and incapable of absorbing anything remotely demanding. Still, I couldn't stomach trashy reading that committed the...for me...unpardonable crime of taking itself seriously. Hence my ambition to be what I presume to call myself on my website, "a literary-grade genre writer." But perhaps I err by not actually answering the question? Why is my humor dark? Because I love dark humor and hope my readers will too. (I once made the near-fatal mistake of taking a bite to eat before seeing Roberto Benigni's stunning performance in the Rome sequence of Jim Jarmusch's film, Night on Earth. I almost choked to death laughing.)

Why did you include aliens in this story?

Short answer? Because my main character was so alienated from the world around her that it took a true alien to snap her out of it. But to babble on a bit more in response to your very good question, this brings me to the whole question of genre. Technically, Ships is science fiction. (I mean, after all, it does have aliens in it, doesn't it?) But really, since so much of the story is set in our current world without anything science fiction about it, it's "slipstream," a cross between science fiction and mainstream. Still more than that, I personally rebel against specific genre assignments, striving to write books that are equally enjoyable and accessible to all...whether they are, for instance, avid sci fi readers or have never read a science fiction story in their lives. A good, well-written book, at least in my not-so-humble opinion, can not only embrace any genre but simultaneously transcend them all.

ships

You sometimes write things that can be seen as politically incorrect. Why?

This brings me back to aiming away from the target and to a new point: When Donald Trump was elected President, you could have knocked the politically correct liberals inhabiting the coasts that surround "fly-over" America over with the proverbial feather. They didn't, along with the news media they followed, see it coming. Why? Because they were so immersed in their particular world of political correct-ness that they managed to completely lose sight of what the people occupying most of the land mass of the supposedly United States were really thinking and feeling. I won't debate the rights or wrongs of Donald Trump's presidency, but the point is that, when you refuse to allow anything outside your own, personal, narrow scope of what's right and what's wrong to be said, you become blind.

Readers report that this book is a page turner. How did you pull this off?

As you should be able to tell by now, I'm as capable of babbling on as the next person. But when it comes to telling a story, I'm a staunch believer in less is more, tight plotting, continual suspense, and plenty of surprises and unexpected twists. Personally, a great challenge in my life has been dealing with how very easily I get bored. The last thing I want to do...especially when people are paying to listen to me!...is to bore my readers.

Tell us more about the cover and how it came about.

I was trying to do something different, since I get bored with all the photoshopped book covers out there that somehow all look about the same to my eye. And I got into ink splatters because I adore Ralph Steadman, who did covers for the likes of Hunter S. Thompson but was way too expensive for the likes of me. Still, I may have erred on two counts: 1) Though I like the look of my white covers and minimalist line art well enough when I see my books in paperback, they don't stand out enough and get lost against white backgrounds online. 2) Much as I may personally rebel against stereotypical type casting, not only readers but even book store employees tend to expect that one glance at the cover art should tell them exactly what kind of book it is. (I once watched a book store employee move another book of mine, this one decidedly/purely science fiction and described as such all over the cover, from the science fiction to the mainstream section.)

What did you have the most fun with when writing this book?

All of it...the soft, the saucy, the irreverent. I really love to write!

What are you working on right now?

Currently I'm working on Tales of the Storage Space, an action-packed story told in short blog posts in which one of the point-of-view characters is the building itself.