Author2Author: Joshilyn Jackson & Helen Ellis, pt. 2

Joshilyn Jackson: What scene or character began Eating the Cheshire Cat? The opening is a blend of black humor and horror that I find particularly compelling, but I always wondered if that was actually the first scene you wrote, or if you began with Bitty Jack, who is the heart of the book.

Helen Ellis: The first chapter of Eating the Cheshire Cat sprang from an awful first draft that mentioned the "pinky thing" in a one-liner. The earlier draft was being workshopped at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and Alice McDermott told me that the one- liner about Sarina peeked her interest. She said--and this was good advice--"Not all characters are one hundred percent good or one hundred percent bad." So I asked myself, What kind of girl would have her fingers broken to be perfect? And what kind of southern mother would do it? Then I wrote the chapter in two hours on a rainy afternoon in Tennessee. Bitty Jack, Nicole and other characters were already present, but they and their motivations changed over the three years it took to write book. Like you, I always knew I would be a novelist. I just had no idea how hard and time consuming it would be.