Bring out your dead!

[sleigh]

 Back on October 27^th, I posted about re-reading IMMORTAL MUSE, my 2014 novel from DAW. MUSE was a book that took me nearly four years to write and which remains perhaps my most ambitious novel… and one that required heavy revision to finally come together.

 

There were several nice comments on that post, one of which was by Seth Lindberg (aka S.E. Lindberg, one of the managing editors of the online magazine “Black Gate”), who reminded me that he’d done an interview with me after the book’s publication. I remembered that interview well, as said to him in the comments: “Seth, I honestly think that's one of the best interviews anyone's ever done with me: great questions that forced me to answer in depth. If anyone wants a glimpse into "how I write", your interview would be an excellent choice! Thanks for reminding me of it, and for giving everyone the link!”

 

But that wasn’t the end of the story. I kept thinking about Seth’s interview and IMMORTAL MUSE. You see, one of my greatest regrets during that process was the decision I made to excise the section of the book that sprung from the initial spark that inspired the book and was the very first part of the book I wrote: a long section looking at Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne. Cutting that was painful, since it represented months of work itself—but for the sake of the book, it had to go, which meant more months of re-arranging the text and finding new material to replace what I’d lost (I also ended up cutting three more sections of the draft.) 

 

Now, mind you, I’ve always told my students never to actually ‘throw away’ draft work but to retain it, because you never know when you might use some portion of it later. So I went back and re-read the old Modigliani/Hébuterne section, which in turn re-ignited the regret that it never saw the light of day. Then a new thought hit me...

 

I sent Seth an email, asking him if “Black Gate” might be interested in publishing an annotated version of the Modigliani/Hébuterne section with my commentary on what I was thinking at the time and why (eventually) the piece had to die. Seth said he’d certainly be interested in that, and that he’d re-run the initial interview as a companion to the annotated piece first. SO….

 

Seth’s put up the initial interview on “Black Gate” with additional ‘teaser’ material, and the annotated, unseen-by-anyone-except-my-first-readers-and-my-editor deleted Modigliani/Hébuterne section will go live in about 48 hours. Here the link to the interview (https://www.blackgate.com/2021/10/31/emimmortal-museemby-stephen-leigh-review-interview-and-prelude-to-a-secret-chapter/), and I’ll give you the link to the deleted Modigliani/Hébuterne material as soon as it’s uploaded. Thanks to Seth for agreeing to this, and I hope you enjoy it. 

 

If you’ve read IMMORTAL MUSE, consider this an ‘extra’ glimpse behind the curtain; if you haven’t, consider this an incentive to go and grab a copy!

Comments

[minnehaha]

Where is this post from 27 Oct?

K.