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FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Picking Bones from Ash

Welcome our guest blogger, Author, Marie Mockett, as she tells us a bit about herself and about her debut novel, Picking Bones from Ash.

I always knew that my novel, Picking Bones from Ash,

was going to be haunted—I’ve long been fascinated by ghosts. As a child, I had the feeling that ghosts were more “alive” in Japan than they were in my home in California. In Japan, ghosts pop up in pretty much every medium of art and entertainment: from five hundred year old Noh plays, to manga—Japanese cartoons that are now so popular with youth in the west. Every summer, Japanese children dress up in yukata, or summer kimonos, and do the Obon dance to entertain the spirits of the deceased. Homes routinely house ancestor shrines, and display large, bold portraits of loved ones, to whom one lights incense and serves tea and perhaps some sweets each morning. The dead get a lot of attention in Japan.

But how to write a good ghost story—one that mattered? Initially, I just tried to create something atmospheric and scary. I quickly realized, however, that this would be a facile way to proceed—stories don’t captivate or grow on fear alone. So I asked myself what it was about ghost stories and Japan that so fascinated me. I know that people often have the impression that Japan is a rigid and somewhat impersonal place. But what may seem like rigidity to outsiders, as I understand it, is in fact a desire to take the feelings of others into account before any action is undertaken. In other words, most Japanese people I know are very tightly connected to and concerned for each other—and this is reflected in the care shown for the dead. Slowly I began to understand my characters, and their wants and needs both from each other and the world around them.

I had the strange experience of having to further rethink ghost stories when my father died, a year and a half before the publication of my book. He, along with my mother and husband, was my greatest champion. He lived long enough to know that my novel would be published—my first phone call, after getting the news, was to him, and we both cried, relieved that this long spell of aspiration and waiting had finally ended. He didn’t get to see the book in print or even admire the cover; I console myself that at least he knew the book would be a real thing.

I miss my father every day. Every now and then someone—a stranger or perhaps a friend—will say something that I recognize as an idea or opinion my father might have shared with me. And then I will think to myself that I am still maintaining a relationship with him, even though he is not here. Most of us aren’t in minute-by-minute contact with the people we love. Adult lives are busy. But the reach of people we love—particularly those who have been with us for a long time—is long and deep. A part of them remains somewhere in the psyche, prodding and pushing us, buoying us if we are lucky and tormenting us if we are not. Ghosts, I realized, are like this. They are the most personal connections we can have.

Among the scenes I was careful to re-read and edit before publication were those involving the ghost. To be haunted, I now understood, meant to continue a relationship with someone with some personal news to deliver. And this, after all, is what makes ghost stories work, either by frightening us or moving us—the idea that someone can see through to the core of who we are and what we need to know, and that this person will continue to reinforce this important bit of truth, even after he or she is no longer here.

Visit Marie's web site at http://www.mariemockett.com/

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