The Naked Gardener (22 page)

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

Q: People often ask authors where they get their ideas. Where did this idea of a naked gardener come from?

A: At a certain point in my life, I knew three women who gardened naked. They all had different takes on why they did it but all of them felt it was really important to them. So I began to think about a woman who goes to her garden naked and what that might mean and in what ways it was liberating for her and important in her life.

Q: Was one of those women you?

A: Ha! Decidedly not. I’m allergic to bee stings and poison ivy and bug bites of all kinds.

Q: Do you have a garden?

A: Not a formal garden any longer, but I love to be outside planting and clipping and weeding and doing all those things that bring me closer to the earth. I love to nurture growing things, including plants and people. Plants always thrive for me. I plant to attract birds and butterflies and I raise orchids and bring them into my greenhouse in the winter so I have blooming plants all year long.

Q: How about living in a chicken coop. Have you done that?

A: Well, I did stay as a guest in one for a few days and I have to tell you it was really lovely and delightful.

Q: Where was that?

A: In Vermont. My friend and her (oh how I hate this descriptive phrase) significant other were living in a chicken coop at the time and there was another coop attached to a rundown old barn. They made that into the guest coop. I wasn’t the only person who stayed there. It was a prized treat to be invited.

Q: Your character Katelyn has real issues around marrying. Was that the main theme you were addressing in The Naked Gardener – ambivalence about marriage?

A: That was one theme. But the main thrust of the book is about how to be with someone else – for a woman – and still be who you are. Not necessarily who you were before you were with that person because we all change through relationship and through time and just through living. But how do you stay with someone – be married – and not lose yourself. I think a lot of women just become automated and one day wake up and ask: “Where did I go?”

Q: One of the other themes is the community of women. I was struck by the differences in their ages. In many books about a group of women they’re all pretty much the same age.

A: I think of each of these women as a person yet I also wanted them to symbolize what a woman at that age might be going through. There’s a huge spread between Hope, the youngest, and Mrs. Ward, the oldest. And they’re facing totally different life challenges and choices.

Q: And what about the river and the rocks?

A: When I was in Lamaze class our teacher, who was a nurse, talked about giving children roots and wings. I had never heard that before. The river represents the wings. It moves you forward. The rocks represent the roots. They’re in the earth. In the book, there are different kinds of rocks and stones. Some are fixed and some are always showing up anew. I think each of us is born to face a certain life challenge. That is fixed. Along the way we come up against many obstacles in our path. It’s up to us to deal with them. Katelyn faces the stones in her garden and she figures out how to move them out of her way so she can get closer to solving her own particular life puzzle.

Q: How did you start writing? I mean did you just sit down one day and begin a novel?

A: Oh no. It was a long process. I began as an artist. I actually did the cover drawing for The Naked Gardener. At some point I began to think in terms of stories. Words kept appearing in my paintings so I began to write small pieces. The first full book I wrote was a novella about the last gargoyle being carved by the last Italian stone carver for the world’s last Gothic cathedral. It’s about the gargoyle coming to life and escaping in Washington D.C. After that I wrote more and then attended writing workshops to learn craft and how to think about putting a book together. It’s taken me a long time. And of course I was working and raising a family so I didn’t have all that much time to devote to writing.

Q: How long did it take to write The Naked Gardener?

A: Oh about twenty years. Everything I’ve ever written – all the lessons I’ve learned – go into the book I’m working on now. But in real time, this book took about a year. I would say that’s average.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’ve begun making notes for a follow up book about saving the town that figures heavily in The Naked Gardener. The town called Trout River Falls. I’m thinking it may be told from the different women’s points of view. I also plan to publish a middle grade novel about a sensible girl who’s visited by a tooth fairy with an attitude.

Q: What do you hope readers will take away from The Naked Gardener?

A: Oh that’s such a highly personal experience – reading a book. For me, a book is a success if I lose myself while I’m within its pages. It’s a kind of magic. Different from a movie because it lasts longer and because it engages the reader on a deep level. If readers forget where they are and become immersed in Katelyn’s world, if they feel the river moving them along on the canoe trip, if they think how lovely it would be to go into their gardens naked, then I would feel the book has done what I set out to do.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L B Gschwandtner is married, the mother of three daughters, a writer, magazine editor, artist, and co-owner with her husband of an integrated media business.

Her short stories have been awarded prizes from two Writer’s Digest Writing Competitions, The Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, and one of her stories was short listed by the Tom Howard Short Story Contest. Her work has appeared in various journals including Del Sol Review.

She is the founder of TheNovelette.com, which runs no-fee, themed, short story contests for emerging writers.

She lives in a house on stilts overlooking a tidal creek in Virginia where she watches Bald eagles soar past her windows.