Tara Bray Smith

Tara Bray Smith was born and raised in Hawaii. She now lives in New York City and Dusseldorf, Germany. BETWIXT is her debut novel for young adults

 

www.tarabraysmith.com

 

An Interview with Tara Bray Smith

 

How did you first come up with the idea for Betwixt?

 

My favorite books when I was a kid took place not really in this world, and not in a total fantasy world, as in Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings, but in a place that is somewhere in between — like Narnia or Oz. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe told the story of real children, transported to a magical place that was just on the other side of that strange closet. In Oz, Dorothy really lives in Kansas. I liked the idea of there being an alternate current that hums and crackles just at the edge of our visible world. Now I realize it is a metaphor for the sometimes confused and ill-at-ease way we feel in our (often humdrum) lives; but as a child I thought of it more realistically: if you enter that forest, you’ll go somewhere else. Somewhere exciting. I liked that. Perhaps immediately transported back in time, as was the case in a book by one of my favorite authors, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, who wrote about ESP, possessed cats named Worm, and in a book I remember vaguely, a holler somewhere in Appalachia, where children would immediately be taken to a Native American village of long ago. I can’t remember the plot exactly, but I remember the tone: eerie. Not scary exactly, but definitely strange. Witch of Blackbird Pond had that feeling too. So we have a place, a not-here not-there world somewhere in between, and the kinds of characters who would most easily move in and out of that world were changelings, another fascination of mine held over from childhood. Changelings were fairy creatures traded at birth with real children, with odd powers and a seeming lack of human empathy. So in one of these tales you’d have a friend who was sort of strange, had weird eyes and talked differently than your other friends and you could imagine she or he was a changeling. I thought this was an interesting character problem: what if you were one of these creatures? And how could the mythology be adapted to explore and understand some of the concerns of our contemporary world?

 

 

What inspired you to write the complex interwoven realities of the humans and the fey in the novel?

 

I started writing about a group of real kids in a place I like, Portland, Oregon, and realized that I couldn’t just replay old fairy mythology in a contemporary setting — that has been done so many times, and I am more drawn to stories that are somewhat far out: if you’ve read the Oz books, that’s what I mean. Tik-Tok? That was a weird character, straight from the particular imagination of Frank L. Baum. So as the story started getting more and more complex, and the reasons and realities of these kids began showing themselves independently from any standard “fairy tale” plot structures, the more I started plunging into the mysteries of what I actually wonder about. I grew up in a place where I was surrounded by the natural world: stars, ocean, forests, plants. I think about these things–what is out there? Are we it? What is body … what is mind? And I know I’ve been thinking of these things since I was a kid, so other kids must be thinking about them too.

 

 

Betwixt combines elements of suspense, fantasy, and romance. Did you begin the novel with all of these overlapping themes in mind, or did one element start out stronger than others?

 

I started the book with the premise that I was writing about a group of kids — friends, enemies, lovers — who “feel different.” It’s a classic adolescent and young adult trope, because you are different then: a creature neither adult nor child, with all the freedom of being older but with a different level of responsibility. It is a chilling, beautiful, important time, and it gets lumped in with this whole idea of being “a teenager,” which I always found to be a lifeless and enforced category. Alexander the Great died when he was in his twenties; most of human history, our romances and our tragedies, are about people who aren’t much older, and sometimes younger (as in the case of Romeo and Juliet) than the characters in this book. So Ondine, Morgan, Nix, and Moth were people who were trying to understand who they were, and what the world was, not a very different task than any person who is growing up. The difference is that they are on an edge: they are straddling worlds. So all the genres: fantasy, romance, suspense, come out of this teetering position — the place from which most drama springs.

 

 

The narrative jumps back and forth between several characters. Was it difficult to keep track of everything as you were writing, or did you always have a clear idea of the plot’s progression?

 

I decided to write from several limited third person points of view because this is a group tale: no one character dominates. Somehow I felt this was in keeping with the tone of the book; this is not a traditional hero’s journey, where one person stands in as Everyman. Betwixt is more the story of a group: each character has his or her own path, and those paths I hope delineate some of the various experiences young people have today. If I had a clear idea of the plot’s progression I would probably stop writing. How boring! I had an outline, but you also want to surprise yourself, as a writer. Ondine and Nix, Morgan, Moth, K.A. — I had characters, and some of the problems of the book I pulled in because I wanted to wrestle with a few of the structures of old-fashioned fairy tales and fay mythology. But their questions, and their quests, come from them, from people I know, from history, and imagination, and from me, all mixed together to create something new.

 

 

Did the developments of the plot/characters in Betwixt take you by surprise, or did you know where the story was going as soon as you started writing?

 

They most definitely took me by surprise. I knew I wanted some standard mythological structure to the book: so the names of the characters and some of the character arcs are based on fay lore. But as I wrote, and as the world started to unfold with its own complications and desires, the lineaments of the plot had to deepen and expand also. That’s where some of the science fiction elements of the story come in.

 

 

Why did you choose Portland as the setting? The story has such a strong sense of place that it seems you must know the city very well.

 

I lived in Portland fifteen years ago, when I first graduated from college. I was really in love with the city. I was young and curious and so my boyfriend at the time and I roamed a lot: hiking and driving and camping and walking. We were poor, we were “youths.” I took buses everywhere; I explored. The light in that place is very peculiar — almost green in the summer. It’s a beautiful place, the Pacific Northwest. Part of me wishes I could have stayed there; that’s probably why I revisited it in fiction.

 

 

You were born and raised in Hawaii and currently live in Germany. How did these experiences in different cultures/locations influence your writing?

 

The difference between where I was born and where I’ve lived since has been so acute that it provides an interesting problem for my writing. People immigrate all over the globe, as they’ve done in the past, but now it can be done at speeds that bring with them a sense of immediate displacement. On Friday this week, I woke up in Düsseldorf. On Saturday, I was in Honolulu. We take these kinds of movements for granted, but it does mess with your head, and tends to make physical reality seem somehow less solid, more “virtual,” to use an overused word. I’m exploring those emotions — of displacement, of location, of movement in and out — in Betwixt.

 

 

At the end of the novel it seems that there’s definitely room for the story to continue. Do you plan on writing a sequel?

 

Yes. The story has just started.