Caroline Leavitt is silly and weird. I know this because I interviewed her here about her last novel, Pictures of You, but here I am again.  Is This Tomorrow is her second novel with Algonquin, the employees of which she refers to as “the gods and goddesses” of publishing. The novel centers on 1950s Jewish divorcée Ava Lark and her 12 year old son, Lewis, who move into an unwelcoming suburb, where Lewis quickly befriends the only two other fatherless kids on the block, Jimmy and Rose. But when Jimmy vanishes, Ava is targeted, Lewis grows up directionless, and Rose is convinced her brother is still alive. But what really happened that day, and should the truth of it really be told?

Thanks, Caroline for letting me pepper you with questions.

Your first novel is about the relationship between an aspiring female astronomer on Quaker Nantucket in the 1840s and an ambitious black Azorean whaler she’s tutoring in celestial navigation. That must have been a breeze!

Is this a question?

Do you like asking yourself questions?

Hell no! I want to be asked questions. I want there to be a stream of people thrusting microphones in my face, snapping photographs, and asking me a thousand unanswerable questions which I simple deflect with a wave of my hand and a dazzling smile which reveal my perfect teeth as I keep walking, and pausing – occasionally – to sign autographs and wave and blow kisses. All to the music of Josh Ritter. So it’s kind of a swell but also poignant and about-to-fall-off-a-precipice feeling. Oh, and I’m also rocking some designer bling as I’m doing this. In high heels. Backward. George Clooney may be holding my arm too. Or Jonathan Rhys Meyers (since we share that bit about being expelled from school at the age of 16). I’d be heading off to a rally for some cool social-justice cause or to party hard, depending.

Your newest novel, The World Without You, takes place over a July 4^th holiday in the Berkshires.  The Frankel family is gathering at their country house for the memorial for Leo, the youngest child, who was a journalist killed in Iraq.  Is the book autobiographical?

I wasn’t killed in Iraq.

I love the title of your new book!

Thank you! I didn’t think of it. It was originally called–

I just love mermaids.

It’s actually a rusalka, which is the mermaid of Slavic folklore. They are these kind of spooky, spectral siren figures that are the souls of wronged women – illegitimate mothers, brides left at the altar, pregnant suicides.  So the mermaid in the book is a kind of a spirit. In my first draft I didn’t even mention the word “mermaid.” I had this idea it would be like Zone One, that great Colson Whitehead zombie novel that never once says zombie in it. But then I remembered I’m not Colson Whitehead.

Why the title Tin God?

According to my esteemed Dictionary.com,  a tin god is someone, esp. a minor official, who is pompous and self-important. I’m referring to my fallen conquistador who perhaps was once pompous and self-important but as soon as he is relegated to the journey into the unknown, he’s in trouble. He has to gouge a dead comrade out of his armor and steal his tin hat in order to protect himself. His deterioration is a paean to “A Distant Episode,” Paul Bowles’ perfect story about the fall of an academic in Morocco, although maybe all stories about the disoriented in exotic climes derive from Bowles or maybe Dante’s Inferno, or even Rabelais whose narrator resides inside Pantagruel’s mouth for six months and discovers an entire nation living around his teeth.

Allison Amend: Why didn’t you make up your own questions?

A:  Every time I thought about a self interview, three images emerged: James Lipton asking me questions on “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” Vanity Fair quizzing me on its back-page Proust Questionnaire, and singing with the Beatles. I figured I would fulfill these aggrandizing fantasies here.

James Lipton: What is your favorite word? Least favorite word?

A: Amalgamate. Relatable.

Your own experiences going through an open adoption have informed The Mothers.  Why do you think people keep asking you this?

I think people are obsessed with reading fiction as truth. I would count my family in this category , as well as my friends. Anyone who knows a writer is looking for the reality, for themselves, as if it is a puzzle. As if novelists have no imaginations.  But there is logic to this, as fiction writers tend to take what can be our own experiences—even if it’s just what interests us as people–and grow them into fiction. And so there is a reason I did not write a primer on adoption, or, more realistically, a memoir about my experience.

What have you done now?

I’ve spilled coffee on my shirt.

Do you own any clothes that aren’t stained?

I must. Stuff I haven’t worn, probably. Do you have any club soda? If I act now I can save this shirt.

Why are you such a slob?

I’m really not a slob. I just get excited. What is that?

Who on earth are you?

You don’t know me? I’ve been writing since I was like two. I wrote my first novella, Sweet Friendship in fifth grade. Two mice meet on a pirate ship, face formidable danger, overcome obstacles and fall in love…sort of.

Who are you now?

I’m a novelist and short story writer and teacher. I’m also a parent of two children. The Sunshine When She’s Gone is my first novel.

Your second novel is The Mapmaker’s War: A Legend. What’s your elevator pitch?

Margaret Atwood meets Beowulf.

So what’s it about?

A mapmaker, exiled for treason, who must come to terms with the home and children she left behind. It’s an exploration of good and evil and the choices that lie between. There’s adventure involved—a quest, of course, to find a dragon—and war and peace and love and betrayal. It’s told in the spirit of legends, like Beowulf, an account of a remarkable person’s life and deeds. However, unlike old tales of this kind, Aoife (pronounced ee-fah) tells her own story—and her own truth.

It’s 4:17 in the morning.

What?  Last time I looked it was only like 9:30 pm.

So, what have you been up to all night?

Obviously I’ve been watching YouTube videos about the reptile humanoids that rule the world.

Your boyfriend must be out of town again.

Yeah.

You’re such a chicken.

Excuse me?

And a liar.

Well, I am a writer. But this is a strange way to begin an interview. Can’t you be nicer to yourself?

Why didn’t you just call your book a memoir, chicken? Were you too scared to put yourself out there and be honest?

Hand Me Down isn’t a memoir. It’s a novel.

So your couplet of novellas from Dzanc Books, Could You Be With Her Now, is about (1) the first-person point-of-view of a developmentally disabled boy who mistakenly kills a neighborhood girl on whom he has crush; and (2) a May-December romance between two women. Not gunning for The Notebook crowd with these, huh?

I’m just hoping my mother reads the back cover before she buys copies for her friends as Christmas presents. I feel like we’ve gone through this awkwardness before with my writing.

Seriously, why?

Why do I write? Why do I write commercially unsuccessful fiction? I don’t think you choose what you get to write. For better or for worse, it chooses you.

A lot of teeth-grinding out there about the state of publishing, or not being published by the big publishers. Or something.

Well, of course it’s my dream to ink a six-book deal with one of the biggies for millions, or even one book, but I write because, in some way, writing is my disease. It’s not a choice; I am compelled to do it, otherwise I don’t function properly. My brain doesn’t feel right; how I process information isn’t being used and I become mentally and emotionally constipated. I think Camus said something about writing being a disease in his Notebooks, but I can’t find the excerpt. The rest of it, the publication, awards, respect, money, is fun, but I have been writing since I was five, long before I ever realized there could be a career in it. (And a year before that, I was convinced I was going to be an elephant when I grew up, so that tells you all you need to know about my career choices.)

Okay, so with every new client I like to ask, what do you hope to gain from therapy?

I want to become a better writer. My novel, Good Kids, published by Scribner January 29^th, is derivative, monotonous trash, and I’m carrying a lot of shame.

On the phone, you mentioned that you’ve been in therapy before. What kind of work did you do with your prior therapist?

I often found it soothing when she would take a copy of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, and write “A Novel in Stories by Benjamin Nugent” on the jacket with a Sharpie. Sometimes we’d do that with The Corrections, and with Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red. On my bad days she would pretend to be a fan begging me to read some of my stuff out loud. She’d go, “Will you just read that passage from Howard’s End, where you say that stuff about ‘only connect?’” And I would say, “There’s only so much of myself I can give to any one of my readers.”