Houston author Chris Cander’s “Dispatches from Book Tour,” a multi-week blog series of reflections and updates along her 17-city U.S. book tour for her new novel 

February 21, 2019

Pamela Klinger-Horn is an angel among booksellers. She founded and has, for years, run something called Literature Lovers’ Night Out, a ticketed event that draws usually a hundred readers to hear 3-4 writers talk about their latest novels. She was a big fan of my last novel, Whisper Hollow, and offered early endorsement of The Weight of a Piano, and I was so delighted that she invited me to be part of her literary tradition.

Tonight’s reading was in Stillwater, a quaint little town on the Mississippi River, east of Minneapolis. I was there with the wonderful author Anissa Gray, whose debut The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls has captured the attention of reviewers and readers all over the country. Before the event began, Anissa and I shared fried Brussels sprouts and fish tacos at a great place called Lolo, and found in each other a kindred spirit. Two notable commonalities were that we’d both worked with the writer Alice McDermott when we were scholars at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference two years apart, and neither of us much enjoys the presence or smell of dogs. (Sorry dog lovers.)

After selling and signing many books, we, along with local mystery writer Allen Eskens, said our goodbyes, and headed off in separate directions to continue our respective tours. Tomorrow I’m going back to Houston for a few days, where I hear it’s raining, and it will be good to be home again, if only for a little while.

The post Dispatch 14: Chris Cander and The Weight of a Piano go to Stillwater, MN first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

Houston author Chris Cander’s “Dispatches from Book Tour,” a multi-week blog series of reflections and updates along her 17-city U.S. book tour for her new novel 

February 19, 2019 (Dispatch 12)

It was 0^oF in Minneapolis when I boarded my flight from Houston this morning. Fortunately, I have the constitution of a polar bear, so was delighted. My sister-friend Ellory, whom I met 14 years ago when my husband was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN to receive a kidney transplant, picked me up from the airport, and we got to spend some time together before tonight’s event.

It was cold enough to thin the herd of readers, but even with the weather, there were close to 20 in attendance at Magers & Quinn Bookstore. The small crowd made for an intimate gathering, and after I talked about and read from the book, my dear friend and fellow Knopf writer Peter Geye led a conversation about The Weight of a Piano. I was moved by a woman in the second row, who said that four years ago she’d chosen Whisper Hollow for discussion at the Minnesota chapter of the American Association of University Women, and had been awaiting the arrival of my next book. Her sincerity almost made me tear up. I’ve always known the transformative power books can have on people’s lives. But recognizing, perhaps for the first time, that my books might also was quite a special moment for me.

The post Dispatch 12: Chris Cander and The Weight of a Piano go to Minneapolis first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

Houston author Chris Cander’s “Dispatches from Book Tour,” a multi-week blog series of reflections and updates along her 17-city U.S. book tour for her new novel

Fellow writer and dear friend Caroline Leech panicked this morning when she found out I didn’t have what she thought was adequate outerwear to endure the Polar vortex that is bearing down on the US during this leg of the book tour. In full mama-mode, she quickly wrapped her own scarf around me and wished me and my friend Dina, who’s joining me for two days, luck as we headed off to IAH. The flight to Mobile, Alabama was easy and uneventful, as was the drive to the gorgeous little town of Fairhope, which sits on bluffs that overlook Mobile Bay.

We arrived in time to walk around the charming pedestrian-friendly shopping district filled with locally owned stores and eateries. We stopped in to R Bistro for a glass of wine, and made friends with the bartender, a well-read, gentle giant named Elmo. A true Southern gentleman, he even took an hour off his shift to attend my reading at Page & Palette.

Author Rick Bragg once wrote that “you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a serious-faced novelist [in Fairhope],” so naturally the local independent bookstore is seriously wonderful. The Page & Palette staff are dedicated and knowledgeable, and really know how to put on an event—in a back room with a bar. There was a full house relaxing in chairs and barstools. Based on their engagement and thoughtful questions, the readers in this town are just as serious as its writers.

When I was here four years ago on book tour for Whisper Hollow, Steph Crowe, the events manager, asked about my then-next project. She was an early and avid fan of The Weight of a Piano and one of the booksellers around the country who nominated the book for an Indie Next Pick, a distinction for which I’m very grateful.

I’m headed to Jackson, Mississippi today, and although the temperature continues to drop, I’ve got Caroline’s scarf and am ready to hit the road.

The post Dispatch 4: Houston author Chris Cander and The Weight of a Piano go to Fairhope, Alabama first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

Houston author Chris Cander’s latest novel The Weight of a Piano comes out on January 22nd, published by Knopf, one of the most prestigious publishers of literary fiction. Knopf is the publisher of Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, Tommy Orange’s There There, Valeria Luiselli’s upcoming Lost Children Archive, and many other fiction giants. To say Chris is in good company is an understatement! There is something so special about seeing one of our own fellow Houstonians receive such national acclaim. We couldn’t be more excited for Chris and her new novel.

An active Houstonian, Chris graduated from the Honors College at the University of Houston. She is a writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools, and lucky for us, she serves on the Inprint Advisory Board, as well as stewarding several Little Free Libraries in our community. Chris’ first novel, 11 Stories, won the Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Popular Fiction, and her most recent, Whisper Hollow, was long-listed for the Great Santini Fiction Prize by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. She is also the author of The Word Burglar, which won the 2014 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award (silver).

The Weight of a Piano is receiving starred reviews. Library Journal describes it as “impossible to put down and impossible to forget,” and Publishers Weekly says “Cander brilliantly and convincingly expresses music and visual art in her writing, capturing both within a near-alien but surprisingly stunning landscape.”

On Tuesday, January 22, 7 pm, at Christ Church Cathedral with Brazos Bookstore, she begins the U.S. book tour for The Weight of a Piano, free and open to the public. We caught up with Chris last week to talk about her launch event and the novel.

Inprint: Congratulations Chris! How does it feel to be finished with the novel and ready to share it with the world?

Chris Cander: I’m utterly thrilled. For so long—years!—these characters have lived with me in my imagination, and I can’t wait to introduce them to new friends.

Inprint: Can you tell us a little bit about the The Weight of a Piano and what inspired it?

Chris: It’s the story of two women, one a pianist in Soviet Russia and the other a modern-day auto mechanic in California, and their relationship to the same upright Blüthner piano. For the former, the piano is her prized possession, and the latter, a symbol of her lost childhood and an albatross. Not long after I lost both my grandmothers, I overheard a woman talking about finally letting go of a piano her father had given her when she was a child. She’d been taking lessons for a few months when he suddenly died, and afterward, it became a symbol of her grief—and also of him. She didn’t play it, but also couldn’t get rid of it. It struck me how heavy certain possessions with provenance can be, and I knew then that I wanted to unpack that idea in a novel.

It struck me how heavy certain possessions with provenance can be, and I knew then that I wanted to unpack that idea in a novel.

Inprint: Yes, the novel’s main characters are these two fascinating women, a concert pianist and a mechanic. Do you play the piano? Do you have training as a mechanic? How did you do your research for this novel?

Chris: I’m neither a musician nor a mechanic. Because my musical talent ends at my ability to appreciate it, I relied heavily on the love others have for the piano and for classical music. I spoke with professional musicians, piano tuners, composers, and movers to learn the myriad aspects of piano playing and ownership. My stepfather built from scrap the first car I ever drove, and he (though he doesn’t know this) was the inspiration for Clara’s uncle Jack. But for the detailed information about her profession, I interviewed the auto mechanics and friends who’ve worked on my car for years. For this and all my novels, I draw on the passions others have for their professions—mechanics and photographers, plumbers and nuns, coal miners and musicians—to inform my work. I’ve been fortunate to connect with so many generous people throughout my writing career.

Inprint: On Tuesday, January 22, your book tour kicks off here in Houston. Can you tell us a little bit about the launch event and how it will be different from a traditional book reading?

Chris: Because music is so integral to this novel, and because it spans cultural and geographic divides, it felt like a multi-media experience as I was writing it. I wanted to introduce the novel to readers that way, to perform it rather than simply read from it. To do so, I wrote a brief stage play based on three key scenes from the novel and engaged an incredibly talented artistic team to bring it to life for a special, one-time event. Whether one’s interest is music, photography, the stage, the craft of writing, or a combination, I wanted this evening to celebrate the ways art and music—as they do in The Weight of a Piano—impact our lives.

Because music is so integral to this novel, and because it spans cultural and geographic divides, it felt like a multi-media experience as I was writing it.

————–

For more information on the reading click here.

Chris will be visiting other cities around the United States as well, check out the full schedule here and tell your friends:

Jan 23: BookPeople, Austin, TX
Jan 24: Interabang, Dallas, TX
Jan 29: Page & Palette, Fairhope, AL
Jan 30: Lemuria Books, Jackson, MS
Jan 31: Square Books, Oxford, MS
Feb 1: Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN
Feb 3: Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C.
Feb 5: Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, MA
Feb 7: McNally Jackson Books, New York, NY
Feb 13: Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, TX
Feb 19: Magers & Quinn, Minneapolis, MN
Feb 20: Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior, MN
Feb 21: Valley Bookseller, Stillwater, MN
Feb 27: Skylight Books, Los Angeles, CA
Mar 15: Women & Children First, Chicago, IL

For more information, visit her website here.

Finally, check AnOpenBookBlog.org again soon, Chris will be sharing stories from her book tour stops in a series “Dispatches from Book Tour.” We can’t wait to hear about her adventures!

The post Author Chris Cander launches U.S. book tour for The Weight of a Piano with special Houston celebration first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

A former fire-fighter, Chris was also a competitive bodybuilder and model before she brought her literary calling to the fore. Now, however, she knows she made the right choice.

“I can legitimately say that I am doing exactly what I want to be doing and I passionately love the way I get to spend my days. I’m incredibly lucky to be able to say that, I know, but now I really am doing my favorite thing.”

The publication of Whisper Hollow did not, however, happen overnight.

“It took a very long time to get this story to this point. I wrote it, and then I rewrote it, I think, four times from beginning to end. It’s four hundred pages long, and there are at least that many other pages that will never be read because they were rewritten and filed away somewhere.”

Whisper Hollow follows the lives of three women through the first half of the last century in the fictional coal mining town of Verra in West Virginia. Geographically remote and culturally diverse, Verra is full of immigrant families from Poland, Germany, Italy and other European countries.

“These people have a hard life,” Cander says, “literally scrabbling to carve out a life and a community for themselves and their families in this new country. I called the town Verra, based on the Latin root for truth, because the book is very much about the truths which these women and the people around them have, the truths that are revealed and the truths that they choose to bury. Those buried secrets drive much of what happens throughout the story.”

Though a Houston native, Chris Cander spent many childhood vacations with her mother’s family in West Virginia. Even so, she did not feel she knew the area well enough to recreate it in a novel.

“I didn’t have the knowledge I knew I needed. I didn’t know how to mine coal or play the organ, and I certainly didn’t know how to murder people. But one of my favorite things about being a writer is that I get to call people and ask them to share their knowledge with me. It’s incredible how forthcoming people can be. I rented a car and spent two days driving around the southern part of the state with an associate professor from the University of West Virginia. He’s an incredible historian who knew so much about the area – the economics, the geography, the cultural influences. In those two days, he gave me an intensive history lesson.”

“I also spent time in an exhibition coal mine with an 82-year-old retired miner who took me underground on a coal train. He showed me how to mine coal with a pick-axe, just like the men in my story who had to work for more than eight hours in the pitch dark, often in less than 48 inches of vertical space. For weeks after that, he and I emailed back and forth, devising a way to explode a mine, something which I certainly couldn’t have done without him.”

“All along the way there were wonderful opportunities. I talked to a prioress, a Carmelite nun, and a Jesuit priest who is an expert in canon law, and I watched as an organist played a Mass.  I hope that Whisper Hollow has done justice to their expertise, their time and their generosity, because so much of what they offered went into this book, and that means a lot to me.”

I hope that Whisper Hollow has done justice to their expertise, their time and their generosity, because so much of what they offered went into this book, and that means a lot to me.

Back in Houston, Chris Cander spends time offering her own experience and knowledge to others in the same way by teaching creative writing to elementary school students through Writers in the Schools.

“I love teaching those kids. I realized early on that my strength in teaching lay in encouraging young writers to be fearless when they write. So I created a mantra – ‘I am a fearless writer!’ – that we say at the beginning of every writing session throughout the whole year. I hope, if nothing else, that when they are confronted by a blank page, they’ll remember that mantra and be able to tap into that fearlessness.”

I created a mantra – ‘I am a fearless writer!’

As well as Whisper Hollow, Chris Cander’s other published work includes the award-winning novel 11 Stories (Rubber Tree Press) and her award-winning picture book, The Word Burglar (Bright Sky Press). She has also co-written the screenplay for Germs!, an animated feature film currently in pre-production, and she has written hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers on health and fitness and parenting. She lives in West University with her husband and two children.

For more information about Chris and her new novel, Whisper Hollow, visit her website at www.chriscander.com.

The post Houston novelist brings coal-mining to life in Whisper Hollow first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.