Amy Jo Burns, SHINER
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[1:08]yourself. Everybody needs a treat without a long spring. PageOneBooks.com. Welcome to day four of my
[1:15]July book blast. Today I'm going to be calling this thrilling Thursday, and there are a bunch of
[1:22]thrillers and suspenseful reads that I thought you'd really enjoy, and that would make great summer
[1:28]reads. A lot of these came out during the pandemic, and they're really worth your time. So I wanted
[1:33]to get them out. I hope you enjoy them. Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir, Cinderland,
[1:37]and Shiner, a novel which just came out this summer. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review,
[1:42]Tinhouse, Plowshares, Gay Magazine, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and The Anthology, Not That Bad.
[1:49]Welcome, Amy Jo. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:53]Oh, thank you so much for having me. So happy to be here. You have written not only
[1:58]Shiner and a memoir and so much else, but your personal essays we have to talk about because they are
[2:06]so good. I just like reading one after another. But I know that Shiner is your latest book. So let's
[2:12]talk about that first. Can you tell listeners please what Shiner is about? Absolutely. So
[2:18]Shiner is the story of a 15-year-old girl. Her name is Ren and she lives secluded in the
[2:24]mountains of West Virginia with her parents. And her dad became this local legend when he got
[2:29]struck by lightning when he was young and he became a snake handling preacher. And once some
[2:35]of Ren witnesses her father performed this really strange miracle that goes terribly wrong.
[2:40]And as a result of that all of her family secret that she had no idea about start to unravel.
[2:46]So the book is told from three different perspectives. One is hers of course. Another is
[2:51]a love-lorn moonshiner. And then the last is a reclusive housewife. And those voices all work together
[2:57]to tell the story that is the true story behind this mountain legend. Wow. And what inspired you
[3:04]to write it? So I mean, a lot of different things. I think that this story has been growing
[3:10]inside of me for such a long time. You know, I grew up in Northern Appalachia and the landscape has
[3:14]always been incredibly special to me and inspiring. But I think the actual roots of the story
[3:21]started and it really started to feel alive to me was after I finished publishing my memoir,
[3:27]which is called Cinderland. And it's a story about what it's like to be a young woman who has to
[3:32]keep a secret. And as a result of publishing it, I had so many people come forward and just share
[3:39]with me these stories that they had been keeping for decades. And it was such a moving experience
[3:45]that I realized that I wanted to tell the second half of the story, which is, you know,
[3:51]I wanted to talk about what it's like to be a woman who has a story that has gone unheard. But I
[3:56]also wanted to write about what a great act of compassion it is to bear witness to someone else's
[4:01]story. And so that's where the seeds of this story with all these different histories and
[4:07]winding trails came together for me was how you can find a bravery within yourself to tell
[4:13]that secret that you thought you never could. Wow. And now that I've read all your personal essays,
[4:19]I know I know your secrets. You do. They're all in there. Are you comfortable as to talking about
[4:26]some of the stuff from from your past that may have informed this book and everything? Absolutely
[4:32]So you wrote really honestly and beautifully about what happened when not even so much in the moment
[4:39]of what happened with the abuse of your piano teacher, but then how you kept it a secret and then
[4:45]your parents when it came out that you had not been the only one. Well, maybe I shouldn't tell
[4:48]your story, but when you were not the only one, then your parents, you know, confronted you about it,
[4:53]how you handled it and how that sort of experience impacted your life. Can you just talk a little
[4:59]about that and even your decision to share what happened with you? Yeah, sure. You know, I think
[5:04]so what happened when I was 10 was this really beloved piano teacher in my hometown was accused
[5:12]by started with one girl and then another and then another for basing assaulting them during their
[5:17]lessons and which and I like to use that word of salt because I think it it's something that
[5:22]only kind of came into play within the past few years and I'm really grateful to be able to use
[5:27]it because I feel like it's an accurate description, but basically a few girls started to come
[5:32]forward about what he'd done during their lessons and a lot of the people in the town chose to
[5:37]support the piano teacher instead of these young women. So I was somebody who saw all this happening
[5:44]in these these young girls. I mean, we were 10, 11, 12 years old. They were vilified by the town,
[5:50]accused of conspiracy and a bunch of other ridiculous things, not by everybody, but by a lot of
[5:55]people and what ended up happening after that is that it was put in this vault and nobody talked
[6:01]about it. So I grew up having this huge secret. I saw what had happened. I decided to lie about it
[6:06]to the police and I just held that secret and I didn't really remember it actually until I'd left
[6:14]home and was in college and it kind of I was out in the woods one day and it just sort of slammed
[6:20]me in the face and I thought, oh my gosh, like I it was like one of those moments you have where
[6:25]you just feel like everything changes in your life and I remembered and to sort of I guess tie it back
[6:32]to what I ended up writing about was I I realized that it wasn't only the event itself that it
[6:40]caused a lot of harm. It was the silence around it and the weight of keeping a secret. So I wanted to
[6:48]write about what it was like to hold it and the cost that came out only to me as a young woman but
[6:54]to this my whole hometown and also this generation of young women that felt like we couldn't talk about
[7:00]it. So that sort of was kind of the basis of the book and I did not see Cinderella and coming. I
[7:08]always had dreamed of myself as a novelist and but every time I sat down to write everything I
[7:15]wrote it was just not very good. I mean sure you know that's not what everybody's got a learning
[7:21]curve and things like that but I kind of came to a point personally where I realized if I didn't
[7:31]tell the truth about what it happened firstly to myself that I was going to be writing around it
[7:37]for the rest of my life and that everything I wrote was just going to have huge blind spots because
[7:42]there were a few things that I was really afraid to be honest about in my life because I thought
[7:46]it was going to cost me everything that's what I had been taught when I was 10 was that if you tell
[7:51]the truth about this you will lose everything that you have. So what ended up happening is that I
[7:56]just started to try to tell one true thing after another true thing and then eventually you know I
[8:03]had a book and I couldn't believe that my first book was going to be a memoir but you know now
[8:08]that it's been out for about five years. I'm so grateful that it was my first book because I
[8:14]feel like it's such a foundation that reminds me of like what's at stake when you sit down to write
[8:19]whether it's a story you're imagining or if it's something that happened to you there's there's
[8:24]real stakes about putting your story out there and inviting other people to kind of like sit in it
[8:28]with you know. Totally I have to go back now and read your memoir. Seriously I also am just so
[8:36]struck. I mean I've talked to so many people who talk about the damage that keeping secrets
[8:42]really does to somebody especially a child. Like there seems to be no worse thing than telling
[8:48]a child to not you know own up to something that's happened. Well it's in any context not just
[8:54]sexual abuse but really I don't know that I feel like there should be some sort of deep dive into
[8:59]the damage of keeping secrets. I'm sure it has been done but anyway. I mean absolutely because
[9:04]you know what one of the saddest thing for me was when I was an adult and I realized that keeping
[9:10]that secret made me feel like I was disguised accomplished and not his victim and that was something
[9:19]that I really had to work through in part of writing Cinderella and was me saying you know what it
[9:24]is okay for this man to be accountable for what he did it's not wrong it's not you know the quote
[9:31]Christian thing of me or the quote unquote female thing of me to let it slide and to offer
[9:35]forgiveness that there's a real importance to saying no you know he can be held accountable for what
[9:40]he did and so that's you know a lot of what that book is about but it's also about you know
[9:45]a longing for home and all those things that I thought I had lost as a result of what had happened
[9:51]you know that some of the things ended up coming back to me a lot of friendships I thought I
[9:55]had lost actually returned to me after I published the book so that was a really wonderful thing.
[10:00]do. Well, when the pandemic ends and if this ever can work out, I would love to have a conversation
[10:06]between you and Adrian Broder, who wrote a book called Wild Game. And she had to keep a secret
[10:10]from about the same age as you, although it was the fact that her mother was having an affair.
[10:15]And she became an accomplice to that. And I feel like you guys would have really interesting
[10:18]the conversation. You loved about secrets. Anyway, okay, as an aside. Also, I wanted to talk about
[10:25]your love of ballet and how you called yourself a Rust Belt ballerina, which was so great.
[10:30]And I feel like should be a children's book, by the way, Rust Belt ballerina. So you can start
[10:34]working on that. I'll head into my list. Tell me about that and how you found your love of ballet
[10:42]and what that did for you growing up. Yeah, so it's funny. I mean, my first ballet lesson, I think I
[10:47]was maybe six or seven. My mom took me and it was in an old community center. I didn't even have a
[10:54]a pair of ballet slippers. I think I had like an orange pair of chalk tailors. And we didn't even
[11:00]have a bar. It was just like a row folding chairs. And we listened to a recording on an old
[11:07]boombox that was a recording of a recording of a recording to this, you know, piano music. So it was
[11:13]very static and things like that. And yet, even in all of that, I just found such a grace and beauty
[11:20]about the art form of ballet. And what it became for me, I think was for a way, it was a way for
[11:26]me to express myself that I couldn't find through words. I couldn't find it through anything else.
[11:32]And now, of course, looking back, I can see this young girl and this young woman who was wrestling
[11:36]with all these things she couldn't articulate. And ballet became that weekly thing I did where it
[11:42]was like my body was just able to speak for itself. And that was why I loved practicing
[11:49]ballet, but I never wanted to perform it. It just wasn't, it didn't hold that draw. I'm typically
[11:55]you hear about ballerinas loving the lights in the stage and all that. But for me, I just, I loved that
[12:01]solitary practice at the bar up and down, you know, the sort of like predictable rhythm of it.
[12:07]And it became something that was a real anchor for me when I was young. And I mean, you know,
[12:13]please know, I'm like five foot tall never. You know, a professional ballerina, but it was one
[12:21]of those things that is, it was so life giving to me at such an important time. And when I think about
[12:27]it now, I see myself performing ballet in the middle of this town that was literally in the midst
[12:35]of a steel collapse. I mean, the building we had it in, I think was like next door to this empty steel
[12:40]mill mill, the reason we were able to practice was because nobody could use the building anymore,
[12:44]you know. And when you're a kid, you don't pick up on all that stuff that then when you're an
[12:48]adult, you think, oh my gosh, like there's, there's a sadness to that, but there's a real beauty
[12:52]to it too. So that is one of many things that I loved about growing up there, even though the rest
[12:59]of the world full of fitness thought, oh, this town has passed this crime to me. I thought it
[13:04]was beautiful. And I still think it's beautiful. And I think that also shows up in China or this
[13:10]idea of, you know, what the rest of the world thinks is true about the mountains in West
[13:15]Virginia. And if it's a cautionary tale and the people who live there say, like, we refuse to be
[13:20]written off, we're living very complicated, very vibrant lives, you know, regardless of what the rest
[13:26]of the world thinks. You said somewhere that the expressions that people use to describe you, like,
[13:31]I can't remember exactly what they were, you had never even heard until you left home,
[13:35]right there where someone derogatory and you're like, what, what do you mean? Why are you describing
[13:38]that way? Yeah. So, you know, my name is Amy Joe, obviously. And I never realized it, but it, you
[13:45]know, when I went to college, people wanted me to like explain my name. And that was how I realized,
[13:51]oh, this having a middle name, like Joe, or going by a first and middle name at all sort of
[13:56]signifies maybe that you're from a certain region of the country or that maybe your, you know,
[14:02]a hillbilly or a redneck. And that was some of the questions I got asked. And, you know,
[14:06]I would be in class and they would sort of talk about this area that's known as the Rust Belt,
[14:11]or this area that's known as Appalachia. And I'd be looking at a map and I was like, oh,
[14:17]wrong. And so it just was such an interesting thing, how people academically try to,
[14:25]you know, slot you in some category. And you think, I mean, it's nothing else. It was fascinating
[14:30]to me. But then also like, oh, when you realize that doesn't really match what I felt or what I
[14:36]experienced. And I think that probably more than anything else is sort of a common thread to
[14:41]write everything I write. It's like, oh, you think you know the real story, but I don't think you do.
[14:47]And tell me a little about your writing process and how, how you tackle both the memoir and the
[14:52]novel, if you do outlines or how you organize yourself and how long it takes to write those books.
[14:58]Lord, it is a mess.
[15:02]Books that I have written, it just was such a mess. And I had to learn to just be okay with that
[15:07]because anytime I tried to organize my mess, it would sort of like circumvent the whole process.
[15:12]And I would have to start again because I think that when I start writing something, whether it's
[15:17]an essay or, you know, the memoir or a novel or something like that, my subconscious is my best friend
[15:23]and it's sort of trying to work something out on the page. And if my inner editor comes in and tries
[15:28]to have an opinion about it too soon, then it just sort of like goes off the rails. So I mean, I think
[15:35]logistically my process for everything, whether it's something long, something short, you know, true,
[15:41]not true. It's pretty much the same where I would have a notebook and I will write down a bunch of
[15:48]just they're not even sentences. It's just, you know, phrases, images, things. And I will fill
[15:54]up an entire notebook that does not make any sense to anybody but me. And I really want to point
[16:00]that that is, that's my first draft. It's sort of like getting a bunch of patchwork pieces all
[16:06]together and then you sort of step back and look at it. And then you can kind of make a quilt
[16:11]from it. So my second draft is usually, you know, trying to match up all the quilt pieces and then
[16:16]I go from there. So it, it takes me a long time. I mean, I think, um, cinderland, the difference
[16:22]with writing that that probably took me two or three years. The big difference with that I did
[16:28]not have kids when I wrote that book. So I was able to sit down and just work for five, six,
[16:34]seven hours straight. And I just felt like I had gone into that material so deep. And, you know,
[16:40]I was so in it in a really interesting way. And then I had two kids. And as you know,
[16:46]you don't get, you don't even get an hour. I know, you don't get a minute.
[16:51]You don't want it. And so much of Shiner was me sitting down. I mean, I would get my laptop
[16:59]all set up in my pen in my paper and then would run and, you know, try to get my his son and his
[17:04]crib and cross my fingers and then run downstairs and maybe get 45 minutes.
[17:10]Where I would write something. And I thought every day, I was like, I'm never going to finish
[17:15]this. And then I would kind of let myself say it. And then I would write 200 words. And then
[17:21]all of a sudden, you know, I mean, I say all of a sudden, but it was a lot of rewrites and things
[17:26]like that and having another baby. And but then it was done. And it was done in these sort of very
[17:32]45 minutes here, maybe an hour and a half there. That's how that book was done. And I feel like
[17:38]that's so important to mention because I think it's scary for a lot of people to think, how do I
[17:45]make this creative life with kids? And it does change. And I won't lie and tell you, I don't miss
[17:51]those deep dives into the material that I had before. But I'm so happy with how Shiner came out.
[17:58]And I think there's something special about it that I probably wouldn't have able to capture
[18:02]if I didn't have kids. You know, so there's a lot of, I see a lot of evolution of myself as a person
[18:09]in Shiner that came about because I couldn't work the way I once did. And I kind of just had to
[18:14]roll with it and let my creative energy figure out. It's amazing. Well, Amy Jo, thank you so much.
[18:23]Thank you for sharing about Shiner. Thanks for sharing your deepest darkest secrets with us that
[18:27]just like globally talking about them in the middle of the day. So I'm so happy to do it because
[18:33]I think that it's really important to say it's not the secret themselves that should cause
[18:39]us any kind of shame. So it's something I'm always happy to dive into in the middle of the day.
[18:45]So thank you for asking me and hearing me out. Of course. All right. Great talking to you.
[18:51]You too. Okay. Bye bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode from Thriller Thursday,
[18:57]part of my July book blast to get great authors into your hands while the summer is still going on.
[19:02]I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[19:07]Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram
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[19:22]Thanks so much to page one books for sponsoring today's episode. I hope you'll all check out my
[19:26]summer beach bundle at page one books dot com. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[19:32]for the sound editing and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic
[19:36]intro and out for music. Thanks for listening. You could always email me at Zippy at Zippy Owens dot com.