"I Had the Full Heart of the Question In My Hand."

It’s very rare for me to demand that the readers of my #AmReading substack pre-order something. And the bar to be my “Just One Book” is high. But here we go:

The book is The Fountain—debut speculative fiction from Casey Scieszka—and you’ll want to read it, but even more, you’ll want to hear us talk about what it took to pull this big, beautiful novel from her Tuck-Everlasting-loving soul.

And here’s the question her agent asked her that is now stuck on a post-it on my computer and may be my next tattoo:

How can you reveal these things in action?

Casey is reading:

Open Throat by Henry Hoke (“It’s funny and deeply tender and unlike anything I’ve ever read.”

Follow Casey on Instagram and Substack: Spruceton Inn.

Transcript Below!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell’Antonia

This is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. I am KJ Dell’Antonia, and today we’re talking with Casey Scieszka. And I meant to ask Casey how to pronounce her last name before we started. How’d I do?

Casey Scieszka

I think you did great. Especially over in Poland, we say “SHESH-kah” over here, but I’ve been corrected many times. I think it’s supposed to be more like what you said. So… bravo!

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay… SHESH-skah… SHESH-kah… all right, off we go. Y’all, you’re going to want to know how to spell it, because you’re going to want to order Casey’s debut novel, The Fountain, and it is spelled S-C-I-E-S-Z-K-A. But to carry on with my introduction, Casey is a ridiculously well-traveled innkeeper in upstate New York, and we are just going to let that fantasy sit there for a minute without talking about the amount of snow she’s going to be shoveling tomorrow, because we’re recording this in January and are talking about the fact that I can see her and she is wearing a full-on puffer. So… romance, Hallmark, innkeeper, debut novel—all the things—and also a puffer and snow shovels and pipes and, yeah. You will hear this episode just as Casey’s first book, The Fountain,, comes out, and that is what we’re here to talk about, because I happened to have gotten an advanced copy of it, and I happen to actually have read it—which does not always happen—and even more relevantly, loved it. Therefore, here we are. And Casey, welcome to Hashtag AmWriting.

Casey Scieszka

Thank you so much. I am so thrilled. I’m like really just beyond that you enjoyed it so much.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Ah, I’m so—I’m, I really did. I will be encouraging everyone to pick it up. It’s mind-boggling that it’s not… and it is your debut. So I’m going to go ahead and—is it, is it really? Like, I mean, I know it’s your debut, but like, is it the first book you’ve written? Oh no, you’ve, you’ve got a kind of a memoirs situation out, right?

Casey Scieszka

I wrote like a young adult travelogue with my now husband that he illustrated about when we lived like in China and West Africa and wound up literally out in Timbuktu. So I had some experience that way, but that was nonfiction and for a totally different audience. All that said, this novel is my first published one, but you better believe I have a bin in the drawer.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s what I meant.

Casey Scieszka

Drawer. (laughing)

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah. Yeah. So, The Fountain, is—just as briefly as possible—it’s the story of an immortal woman who really would like to die, for excellent reasons, because immortality is a weight that is really, really heavy, and you convey that beautifully and wonderfully in this book. And so I want to just start right off—I maybe should let you describe the book—and then I’ll just warn you that my next question is going to be, “Man, how did you have the guts to swing for the fences like this?”

Casey Scieszka

Well, I think it probably began when I read Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting as a fifth grader in English class, which is about a family that—or a little girl who comes across a magical spring that an immortal family is guarding, and then she has to decide, ultimately, throughout the book, what she’s going to do with this information and this knowledge while other people are hunting it down as well. And those questions just haunted and delighted me for decades, and I kept returning to them, and at some point I was working on a novel, had a whole manuscript going, was deeply frustrated, and I started a little something on the side where I was like, this will just be a short story. We’ll see where this goes. This is nothing, and I think, because… I don’t know, maybe you’ve experienced this before too, where if you’re not looking it directly in the eye, sometimes it can just take off, and it all of a sudden had a life of its own. Essentially, this grown-up version of Tuck Everlasting, where it’s about a woman who has come back to her small hometown in the Catskill Mountains, where she was born in the 1800s, 214 years later, to figure out what did this to her so she can reverse it and finally be released.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Wow, you really have the… the short pitch. What’s your book about? Down! Congratulations! That’s a tough one. Yeah, you, you nailed it. That is what it is about. And I will say that it took—one of the things that I loved about it, and that I like in a book—is that not only was I not sure at some points what the protagonist wanted for herself, I was not sure what I wanted for her. All I knew was that I wanted “something” for her. And that makes for a really interesting reading experience. Because normally, you know, you find yourself sitting there going, well, just, you know, just tell the person, or just, you know, kiss them or accept your reality, or you’d normally—you know what you want—like, take the ring, Frodo, or whatever. Or don’t take the ring, Frodo. And now there’s no book. But, and in this one, we didn’t. How hard was—was that for you to write—sort of, I don’t know… did you know what you wanted the protagonist—or what you wanted the reader to want for her? Or…?

Casey Scieszka

Yes and no.

KJ Dell’Antonia

How did you feel about that?

Casey Scieszka

Right. Yes and no, and yes and no. I think when you’re writing, ultimately, later on in draft, you have to be very clear about what your character wants. But in the early process, I had no idea. The whole thing, like I said, began as a short story, and that’s really just the first chapter or two, and then I was essentially hunting with her. When I was writing that first draft, I was like, what are we looking for? What has happened in the past 200 years in your life that would make you feel one way or another? And then every time I had a different little angel or devil on my shoulder, whatever you will, who was the—well, what about this point of view? What if? Wouldn’t this type of—wouldn’t someone say, well, living forever would be amazing, because you could share that type of science with other people, and you could, you know, have these wonderful medical advances or, you know, things like that? I could then have other characters essentially embody those, those other points of view as well. Although, I’m really glad that you say that in your reading experience, you still weren’t quite sure what she wanted, because I definitely didn’t want, you know—I mean, no, no author wants characters to just be symbols for points of view.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh yeah, no, absolutely not. And I should say that I know that she wants to reverse this. That’s never in question. But this sort of—there—you’re always aware of the question of what does she really want? Because that’s kind of only part of it to want…

Casey Scieszka

Right.

KJ Dell’Antonia

An end to this pain, but, but why and what other alternatives there are. And then, of course, I just—I did not know how you were going to end it. I could not imagine how you were going to land that plane. It must have been a tough one. Did you always know where you were going? We will not in any way spoil this.

Casey Scieszka

Right. No spoilers.

KJ Dell’Antonia

No, no spoilers.

Casey Scieszka

I’d say that about halfway through my first draft, I just saw the ending. I was like, “Oh, this is…”

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s amazing.

Casey Scieszka

This is like that very last moment. I was like, this is where I need to get. And those handful of chapters before the penultimate one, whoa, boy, those were the ones that are like I wrote, like seven different books, you know?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh yeah.

Casey Scieszka

Completely different versions to actually get there.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So what was your… what’s your hope for the reader experience of this book? Besides, you know vast entertainment and pressing it into the hands of their friends.

Casey Scieszka

Right. Naturally.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah…

Casey Scieszka

Beyond that…

KJ Dell’Antonia

We love that.

Casey Scieszka

Um, I mean, I love books that essentially look at what it means to be human and what makes a life worth living. And those are the type of questions that I hope someone would then linger on in their own life after putting down the book. Even in between chapters, you know? That you would be able to reflect on the choices that each character is making and think, like, oh, I would do this. I wouldn’t do that. Or, you know, to kind of just bring that back into your own life that way. Because… I don’t know. Time is perspective, like ever—what is—what does it mean to live forever? What is a long life? Is it? You know, when you’re when you’re little, a summer lasts an eternity. I guess what I’m saying is like our perspective of time is always bendy, and that was an interesting challenge in trying to write a 214 year old woman, where it was very tempting to just turn her into a superhero, where I’d be like, “Oh, well, she’d know 10 language.”

KJ Dell’Antonia

She’d know things, yeah.

Casey Scieszka

And she’d be like, amazing at all these things. And I had to be like, Casey, you have a lot of time on your hands as well. Like, you’re, you know, you’re 40 years old. And do you know 10 languages? Do you know five languages? Like, what are, like what are we talking about here?

KJ Dell’Antonia

On that ratio you should at least know two. (laughing) Uh, maybe three. If we’re going to say 200 is 10… you know you got, yeah, you should have at least two.

Casey Scieszka

Exactly. So just kind of examining, like, why would I—why would I have expectation, different expectations for someone simply because they’ve lived longer, and, you know, those types of things?

KJ Dell’Antonia

So you mentioned that you had a bunch of books in a drawer. So what’s bigger about this project than maybe the thing that you put aside to focus on it? Is it bigger?

Casey Scieszka

I don’t know if it’s bigger. I think I just had, I had better tools in my toolbox at this point. Like I might return to that other one, but I didn’t have the full heart of the question I was getting at there. I think I had more of a premise, or something like that. Whereas this one, when I was writing, I felt like the problem was I had own—like in the writing was like I had too much meat, I had so many questions, I had so much I was wrestling with. And then it also really helped that, I mean, it’s, its set in a small town in the Catskills, and, spoiler alert, that’s the type of place that I now live.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Right.

Casey Scieszka

And knew. People always tell you like, write what you know. I am, I am not, secretly, 214 years old. I know you can’t see me on camera, guys.

Multiple Speakers

(both laughing)

Casey Scieszka

My skin’s not that great for a… you know? But, but I do know what small-town life is in the Catskills. I do—there are some characters who are opening up a business. I know what it’s like to open a business. Like, it was really fun for me. I felt like I had this endless well of inspiration to keep pulling from that way. And that was something I couldn’t have written 10 years before. You know?

KJ Dell’Antonia

You also handled the depth of the questions that you’re dealing with remarkably tightly. Did you have to clear away a lot of like… asking for a friend…(laughing). Did you have to clear away a lot of mulling over these questions by people or? I guess what I’m getting at is these are really deep and big questions, like you said, but I don’t feel—you did not Atlas Shrugged these. You know, there’s not like a 20-page dissertation by John Galt in the middle of it. How hard was it to keep that from happening? Or did it come a little more easily for you?

Casey Scieszka

I think, nothing, nothing, none of it comes easily. We know this.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Casey Scieszka

I mean, sometimes you reach the flow state, you know? And it is funny to even think back on these things, because I have a, like, a willful blindness, almost in the same way that, like, I have given birth to two children, and, like, I can’t believe I did it a second time, you know? But it’s by, you know, it’s by design, some—perhaps similar with writing. Once you know how the sausage is made, sometimes it can be hard to do again. But anyway, all of this is to go back and actually answer your question. I was very wary of doing the… this is how I feel about something info dump. And one of the things that my agent as an editor has been helpful with from early drafts was, how can you reveal these things in action? So anytime I was tempted to just start explaining things, I was like, Casey, is this happening in action? Like, is this a character actually finding something out? Like from another character in a natural way. So that…

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s a great question.Casey Scieszka

Right. That really, that really helped me. And then also sometimes with the writing I did, just let myself write a whole bunch, you know, because sometimes, especially if you know it’s the beginning of your writing day, maybe it’s, it’s that equivalent of the throat clearing—you’re just or the dog who’s doing circles before they sit down, like you’re, you’re getting around to the thing that you actually want to say. And then when you re read it, you’re like, “Oh, well, those first four paragraphs can go, and here’s where I actually start to say…”KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, here’s what i meant to say.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah. Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Take this. Put it up at the front— delayed all this. Yeah. No. I get it. So how long did this take you?

Casey Scieszka

Well, I started the short story in 2021 and then it comes out now. I will say we had, like; everything was in the can, if you will, at least, like a year and a half ago, just kind of waiting for this springtime pub date. But, yeah, it’s a journey. That’s a—I feel, you know, like another thing you don’t want to hear when you’re like, 25 and are like, I’m going to write a book, and you hear an interview with someone who’s like, it took me 10 years, and I was like, my god. And I’m like, well, girl.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I can do it faster than that.

Casey Scieszka

This one is five years. But…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, yeah, no, it takes, it takes a long time, and it’s hard, and it takes a lot of painful thinking, and yeah, all of those things are true. So now, now that you can look back at this project with hopefully a little bit of distance, and you’re about to be talking about it a lot, I suspect. What do you love most about it?

Casey Scieszka

Ooh. I love most that these characters feel so real to me still that I sometimes catch myself wondering, like, what they’re doing. You know?

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s amazing.

Casey Scieszka

Like I lived with them, and I just, I’m so excited that I actually, like made—was able to make that for, you know, not just myself, though, that I surely entertained myself in the process. But it is such a humbling dream that this story is now existing in other people’s brains, that these are characters who have felt real to other people as well.

KJ Dell’Antonia

What, as you look back, what would you say was the hardest part of the process?

Casey Scieszka

Aside from all of the waiting?!

KJ Dell’Antonia

All of it! Aside from all of it.

Casey Scieszka

Which felt like…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah I was going to say aside from…

Casey Scieszka

It felt eternal.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah. Yeah.

Multiple Speakers

(both laughing)

Casey Scieszka

I think the very hardest part is early on, when you don’t know—well, the earliest, earliest is delightful, because you’re in just your little creative cocoon, and you’re having these wonderful ideas, and you don’t have to solve any of the plot problems yet, or things like that. You know, you’re just like being your own little creative genius for yourself. But then it’s I feel like that, that first real revision phase when you don’t know fully if this is actually going to become a book where you’re—and time, you know, to talk about time again, is precious, like I, you know, I run this other hotel. It’s open half the year. But when I began it, it was open seven days a week, all year long; I had two children under the age of four at the time. Like, time was precious. I was writing during nap time, like things were being sacrificed in order for me to do this. And it is. It just feels audacious and possibly insane to be doing it when you’re in it, and when you’re on the other side, you’re like, oh, but the road was always pointing here, and you just, you just don’t know that when you’re in it.

KJ Dell’Antonia

No.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

You could easily have, really think, you know, you could easily still be sitting on this going, well, I’m going to finish this…

Casey Scieszka

Exactly. And, you know…

KJ Dell’Antonia

When the kids are… you know… or whatever.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah, exactly I have these other, you know, unfinished or manuscripts that haven’t seen the light of day. But, at this point, I tell myself, and I 99.9999% believe it that those were necessary to write in order to write this.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, I sure hope so.

Multiple Speakers

(both laughing)

Casey Scieszka

There’s just that other point 0.0001 that’s like—

KJ Dell’Antonia

What?!

Casey Scieszka

Yeah, it’s like, no, no, it really was necessary.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, no, you have to. You have to do it. Well, I hate to be, you know, not trying to raise the bar here, but, but what is next after, you know, a topic like this and a big book like, like this? Do you know yet? Are you, are you thinking about it? Where are you in your process?

Casey Scieszka

I have been working on something else which is fun. And I definitely have, like, you know, while as much as I know how, how wild it is with how the sausage is made and what I’m, you know, the many revisions and things I’m looking down the barrel at, I also have another level of excitement, because I know, like, wow, I have an agent this time who’s actually excited to read it, and I have a working relationship with an editor. Like, I’m trying to appreciate that…

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, because it’s what you wanted before.

Casey Scieszka

And it can be so easy to just, you know, slip back into the like; you know, I don’t know, the chaos feelings. But, I will say, I’m not going to say much about the project, other than historically, for everything I’ve ever been drawn to, and including stuff I love to read. I always love when character, when there’s a character who knows like way too much or way too little, like in their situation.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s a very like tempting pitch without having anything you’d like to put your fingers in.

Casey Scieszka

Without…

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s good. That’s good, that’s clever.

Casey Scieszka

I told you nothing.

KJ Dell’Antonia

You told me nothing, and yet I’m like, ooh yeah, that does sound… that does sound interesting. Well, I as I’ve as I’ve said I wholeheartedly enjoyed this. It was twisty. You had me thinking things that were not what was so at many, many points of the book.

Casey Scieszka

I love to hear this. Love to hear.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah and when we are off, off recording, I’ll tell you some of them, because that is always kind of fun. I really feel like this book is such an achievement. For someone who’s just getting started, it’s great. I can’t wait to see what you do next. And I guess, on that note, what’s something you have read recently where you also felt like the writer was, was really big, really playing big. Is there anything that you would like to press on into people’s hands the way I want to press The Fountain, into their hands?

Casey Scieszka

I’ve loved this. Thank you again. One book I keep pressing into many people’s hands is Open Throat by Henry Hoke.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay.

Casey Scieszka

It’s very slim. You can read it in like a day, although I recommend taking a little bit longer, because you’ll want to enjoy it. It is told from the point of view of a mountain lion who lives under the Hollywood sign.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, I—I think I’ve heard the description, even if I don’t remember the—okay.

Casey Scieszka

It’s so funny and so deeply tender, like and just unlike anything I’ve read recently, and I just really felt like, like he was swinging for the fences with this, like it’s from the point of view of an animal, which should be ridiculous, but after…

KJ Dell’Antonia

And not just an animal, but an animal that lives under the Hollywood sign.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah, like that’s a mountain lion who’s—it open up or he’s overhearing like you know hikers discussing therapist, you know? It’s just, it’s so silly, but it’s also so deep and kind of truly experimental, but still so accessible and I just feel like it’s the type of thing that I don’t know. Maybe when he sat down to write it, he was like, this, someone’s going to tell me, I’m nuts, but I just connected with it so much.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I…yeah. Alright I love that then, and that is a great response to the question, because that really is somebody else swinging for the fences, and that’s what we’re just trying to talk about here for everyone. So where? Well, listeners can find you, obviously they can, they can buy The Fountain,, and they should. You’re inn is called?

Casey Scieszka

The Spruceton Inn, a Catskills Bed & Bar. We’re a little nine-room hotel.

KJ Dell’Antonia

(laughing) Bed and bar. That’s awesome.

Casey Scieszka

Yeah. I mean, I don’t, I don’t really mess with breakfast. I mean, you get very nice coffee and some pop tarts. I love a good highbrow, lowbrow, and we are five miles down a seven mile dead end road in the middle of the mountains.KJ Dell’Antonia

Okay, I love this for everyone. And is there any particular social media where you are fun and joyful?

Casey Scieszka

Yeah, you can find us on Instagram at sprucetoninn. That’s also like some writing stuff and same with Substack. Only other thing I’ll say about the inn is we also run an artist residency program, an annual one. So every August we open it up to folks, writers, 2D artists. Basically, if you can make it in a motel room without disturbing your neighbors, come on and make it with us, and you get, you get, like, a week-long stay. No cost, in the month of November.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That is so fun and so cool. And I bet you’re going to get a lot more applications than you can handle this time around. Alright, well, thank you so much for spending this time with me.

Casey Scieszka

Thank you so much for chatting.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And amazing best of luck with the book, which I loved. All right, kids, I’m signing this off with our new sign off. Until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled, Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

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