Alibi Bookshop is set to host author Linda Rosewood for a talk and book signing of her debut novel, “A Circle Outside”, on Saturday, April 4, at 5 p.m.
“A Circle Outside” follows eight witches: Robin, Wren, Gloria, Kelsey, Hazel, Lupe, Ginny, and Nikki, and their experiences to create a lesbian feminist utopia in a rundown farmhouse.
The novel includes themes of Dianic witchcraft — a modern pagan goddess tradition that focuses on female empowerment and experience — and the alchemy of sex and psychedelics. Dianic witchcraft is a modern pagan goddess tradition that focuses on female empowerment and experience.
“A Circle Outside” is set in the early 1980s in Santa Cruz, a turning point in which women gained more autonomy over their bodies, own property without a man’s permission, and more financial freedom when they could get credit cards in their own names.
“The 80s were a second wave of feminism that gave women civil rights, not just suffrage,” said Rosewood. “It’s about the right to live like the life I’m living right now. I have my own career, I bought my own house, I’m openly lesbian, and I chose not to have children.”
She wanted her novel to also be focused on the language, technology, and slang words that locals in Santa Cruz had around that time period. She drew from her own experiences, along with slang words that she remembered saying in that period of her life. Although Rosewood is now retired in Ireland, she has spent most of her life in Santa Cruz.
“For anybody that was in Northern California, particularly Santa Cruz, around that time, I wanted to give them little reminders of what our youth was like,” said Rosewood.
However, “A Circle Outside” is not a memoir.
Rosewood describes it as a “light” rom-com and, most importantly, a “funny book.” She wanted to dispel the stereotype that feminists and lesbians have no humor.
“I deliberately wanted to write a funny book. I think feminists and lesbians have a reputation for having no sense of humor, which is a giant lie. You get a group of women talking to each other, and you will get a stomach ache from laughing so hard,” Rosewood said. “It has drama. I wanted it to be entertaining for everyone so they could see how we talk.”
Although “A Circle Outside” is about lesbian separatists, she says this book is not specifically for them.
“This book is about how my people live and how we share our banter. A lot of my male friends were like ‘is it funny?’ They wanted to make sure they weren’t laughing at something they weren’t supposed to laugh at. But I wrote it for everybody. I wanted to show what lesbian life was like,” Rosewood said.
When it came to writing humor, she wanted to explore more about how to intertwine humor with her writing. She added that lesbian humor specifically is dry and self-deprecating.
“That’s something that I wanted to play with in literature, to give a little tension and release it. I wanted to make the reading experience pleasurable,” said Rosewood.
Before drafting her novel, Rosewood knew the kind of character she wanted to write about – an immortal lesbian who could remember her past life back to the Bronze Age, who had never been at the top of society and had a view of western history from around 1000 B.C. to now.
“I wanted to have a woman who lived in the working class, a woman of society who had seen it all. For the first time in her 3,000 years of memories, women got civil rights. They were allowed to control money, own reproduction, and come out and love women and men,” said Rosewood.
Her character, Robin, is the core of the story.
“With her perspective on history, what would this woman want to do? She just wants to see what women do, if they’re allowed to live how they wanna live, unsupervised by men,” she said.
She also wanted to incorporate character names that could be shortened to male names.
“A lot of the women in the book have names that get shortened to male names. My wife’s name is Artemis, and she has a friend who always calls her ‘Art.’ Hazel is a character in the book, and some women call her “Haze.” Robin’s cousin called her ‘Rob.’ It’s how we do it,” said Rosewood.
Rosewood’s characters developed their own voice the more she wrote. This was especially the case for her character, Gloria. She described Gloria as a narcissist and “awful to be around”, but did all the work in the commune.
“So (other characters) tolerate her bossiness and control because they don’t have to do the work,” Rosewood said. “She needed to have a fully fleshed out life. I came to fully understand her.”
Rather than writing her as a “satire paper doll”, Gloria became a real person to her.
“She has her story to tell as well,” Rosewood said. “Even though she’s a little annoying, just like me, who was probably annoying when I was in my twenties, I’ve gotten to be a better person. And so will Gloria.”
When it came to the writing process, Rosewood said she was not too hard on herself. Rather than worrying about the direction of her novel or even how the next scene would unfold, her method of writing came down to setting a timer for twenty minutes and seeing where it would take her.
Rosewood’s wife, who was previously a paramedic, told her that there was a saying in the field: “You can stand anything for 15 minutes.”
“If she could’ve sat through however many things that she had to endure when she was a paramedic, then I could write for 20 minutes,” said Rosewood. “If I can write after 20 minutes, then I can write for two hours.”
This repetitive process has allowed her to have the fortune of not facing writer’s block during the creative process of her book.
“I let it rip. I know how the scene begins and ends, and all the magic happens in the middle. I just let my imagination go,” she said.
When Rosewood first began to draft her novel, she had previously written 150 pages of “a long story” that served as inspiration.
“I wrote a 150-page novella. It was a mess,” Rosewood said. From there, she began the process of learning how to write a novel. She learned how to write scenes, how to properly structure her plot, and ultimately restructure her draft.
“I’m a rule follower that way. So I restructured it, and because of the structure, it’s a much better book now,” she said.
For writers who may be stuck in their own heads about the direction of their novel, Rosewood advises thinking about the most fun part of the story.
“What is the most fun that you’re gonna have writing this book that you haven’t written yet? Think about a specific scene that you look forward to writing, and write that,” Rosewood said. “Your first draft is always going to be (garbage). Always. But you need to keep going. It’s how we improve.” She added that throughout her creative journey, she gave herself pep talks.
“I’m just going to do what I want to do,” said Rosewood. “I want to tell my own story. No one else is going to do it.”
She hopes that what readers take away from the book is realizing that “the thing that you hate about yourself is probably your greatest strength.”
“Everything you are is you. If you know yourself, you can become a powerful and happy person.”
As for what’s next? Rosewood said she’s already outlined her next book.
“I hope to write more stories using these characters,” she said.
Rosewood recently stopped at Fabulosa Books in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco on March 24. Her next stop on Saturday is at Felton Public Library in Santa Cruz.
Alibi bookstore is her last stop.
To learn more about Linda Rosewood, visit: www.lindarosewood.com/
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.timesheraldonline.com ’
