Up from the Blue

Sometimes I get lucky. Such was the case, when Susan Henderson emailed me, wondering if I wanted to discuss her 2010 novel, Up From the Blue (the story of “a 1970s bi-polar housewife who goes missing and her daughter who won’t give up the search for her”). As described at her site: “Susan Henderson is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award, and her work has — twice — been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, UP FROM THE BLUE, was published by HarperCollins in 2010 and is now in its fourth printing. Rights have been sold to five other countries, and it’s currently being translated into Norwegian and Dutch. UP FROM THE BLUE has been selected as a Great Group Reads pick (by the Women’s National Book Association), an outstanding softcover release (by NPR), a Best Bets Pick (by BookReporter), Editor’s Pick (by BookMovement), Editor’s Choice (by BookBrowse), a Prime Reads pick (by HarperCollins New Zealand), and a Top 10 of 2010 (by Robert Gray of Shelf Awareness). She blogs at LitPark.com and The Nervous Breakdown. Her husband is a costume designer, filmmaker, and tenured drama professor. They live in NY with their two boys.” (In one of those happy coincidences, this interview is my 500th post for the blog. Seeing as I started the blog [back in late 2007] as an outlet for my pop culture/interview interests, I think it apt that the 500th post would to be an interview.) My thanks to Henderson for her time. Please be sure to read to the very end, as Henderson’s detailing the roads taken by first-time novelists is eye opening.

Tim O’Shea: How challenging is it emotionally/psychologically/physically to write a novel that delves on some level with depression?

Susan Henderson: You know, it’s funny. It’s not hard for me to write emotional material. I find that freeing. And it’s a little backwards from my real life, where I’m fairly guarded. The things that are challenging for me on paper have to do with plot, with trying to take my kind of circular way of seeing the world and make it into something linear, or trying to take intuitions and philosophies and translate them into characters’ actions.

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