We had the pleasure to speak with Joan! What a wonderful person. We chatted about her new book. Check out the interview below.
Hi, Joan! Thank you for speaking with us about your new book. Tell us what inspired you to write the trilogy.
I work as a freelance writer, doing all sorts of assignments for private and corporate clients. One of my assignments was to speed read several backlist books and write descriptions of each of them for the website of the company that published them. One of the books was a very short diary of a rubber tapper working in the South American rainforest in the early 20th century. It may be the only nonfiction book ever written by a rubber tapper from that time period. The information in this little book was fascinating to me. It inspired me to make two trips to the South American rainforest myself, and to read multiple books about rubber tapping, the flora and fauna of the rainforests, indigenous tribes, and so on. My plan was to write a novel, but it kept getting longer, and now I have a trilogy. The first book in the trilogy is called Before We Died, and it comes out in September. I’m currently completing the other two books.
How did you come up with the storyline?
After making the two trips, to rainforests in Ecuador and Brazil, and reading everything I could get my hands on about rainforests, I had myself a solid setting. At that point, I pretty much knew the characters I wanted to work with too. I wrote the first draft and realized I had put too much emphasis on the setting and the historical moment, so I wrote a second draft and focused more on the characters and their relationships, and then I wrote a third draft to focus on the plot… and so on. I wrote a lot of drafts, and the storyline evolved in the process. I wanted a good dramatic story with a good balance between the various elements that go into historical fiction.
The backdrop for your novel is the rubber boom in the South American rainforests in 1908. Why did you choose this backdrop?
In order to do a proper job of writing about rubber tappers, I needed to know about the rubber boom itself. The South American rubber boom was a truly fascinating historical event. It was short-lived because an English guy by the name of Henry Wickham saw the potential for rubber in the world’s future and stole some 70,000 rubber seeds from Brazil and brought them back to England in 1876. It took a long time for botanists to figure out that these rubber seeds (and their progeny) could be grown into trees on plantations in territories in India. In the meantime, the jungles of South America continued to meet the world’s demand for rubber.
Lots of money was being made by the people at the top of the industry hierarchy. But at the bottom, people were dying left and right, because going into the deep jungle to tap for rubber was exceedingly dangerous. And whereas rubber didn’t have that many uses initially, as automobiles became more and more popular, the demand for rubber increased dramatically. In their effort to keep up with demand, some rubber barons began to see the benefits of enslaving indigenous peoples and getting them to tap for rubber. Horrible things began to happen in the jungles of South America. And then, all of a sudden, the Indian plantations began to produce and it was over.
That’s the larger picture. My characters find themselves in the Brazilian rainforests at the peak of the boom and are impacted by its many particulars.
How did you develop your characters? Did you have any influences?
With most of the other books I’ve written in the past, I started with characters and built outward. As noted above, I started this book with the setting and worked my way in My characters grew out of my need to be faithful to the setting. I needed characters who would have had known about the big money people were making in the South American rainforests and who would have been adventurous enough, or desperate enough financially, to throw their hats into the ring. That meant, for starters, my protagonists would have to be men, preferably young men from poor families. And as it would help if they were living near a port that would have ships going back and forth between the U.S. and South America, I decided to have them hail from Hoboken, NJ (not far from where I grew up). When I researched Hoboken, I learned that the three main populations living there in the early 20th century were German, Italian and Irish. My two rubber tappers became Irish American dockworkers, brothers, the sons of immigrants. I added in a mother, a father, a love interest, a fortune teller, some people in South America, and so on.
You have begun your writing career in the 90s. What advice can you give to aspiring writers?
Publishing was totally different in the pre-digital age. If you wrote a good book, you could usually find a good publisher to produce, market and distribute your book, at no expense to you. And you could go back to writing. Now, because technology has made it so easy and relatively inexpensive to put together a book, you can write a bad book and get it published just as easily as you can write a good one and have it published. But unless your book is exactly what the handful of big publishers are looking for—”what’s trending,” so to speak—you are likely to find yourself either self-publishing or publishing with a small or hybrid press. In either scenario, you will need to oversee the marketing and distribution of your book yourself. And the competition will be fierce because of the number of writers doing the same thing. You can wind up wearing many hats, some of which you may not like.
All that said, if you love to write, there is no downside. Even if you can’t make a living with your books, being engaged in any activity you truly love will provide you with the opportunity to live for periods of time in a state of passion. While researching for the third book in my trilogy, I came across Robert Henri, a well-known figure in the Ashcan school of art in the early 1900s. In his book The Art Spirit he says, “The object of all art is intense living, fulfillment and great happiness in creation.” In a world driven by the desire to make great sums of money, it’s a quote worth remembering.
What should readers expect from your book?
Before We Died is, I think, a “something for everybody” novel. Readers who like historical fiction will love learning about the rubber boom. There’s enough adventure to satisfy readers who seek out adventure fiction. The jungle setting is inherently compelling: I discovered plants and animals I didn’t know existed in my research, and I was able to weave some of them into the story. But at its heart, Before We Died is a story about relationships and the ways in which various challenges can alter them. It’s a roller-coaster adventure story, yes, but it is also a story that explores the adventures of the heart.
Where can our readers purchase your book?
The book comes out in September. It will be available on Amazon, but stores (both online and bricks and mortar) and libraries will have access to it.
What can readers expect from the next installment?
The second book in the trilogy, which doesn’t have a title yet, includes events in the rainforest, but more of it takes place back in Hoboken. Nora, the young woman who was engaged to one of the brothers in Book One, is the narrator of Book Two. She is a socialist, a suffragette, and a bit of a troublemaker.
Is there a project you’re working on that we haven’t mentioned?
When the three books in the trilogy are completed and published, I’m going to write a book of essays about my younger sister, who died recently—and who happened to be one of the most interesting people I have ever known. I’m sure she was one of the most interesting people anyone who knew her had ever known. In addition to idiosyncrasies too numerous to mention here, she was a poet. I plan to separate each of my essay chapters about her with one of her poems, which I think will have the effect of describing our relationship beautifully.
Thank you for speaking with us!
It was my great pleasure. Thank you!
Editor’s Note: You can purchase the book.
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