The Wonderfully Weird Eleanor Brown

Don’t look at that title and think it’s a diss, if you’ve read Eleanor’s book, The Weird Sisters then you know it’s a huge compliment. Eleanor’s book has done extremely well, and the reviews for the book have been phenomenal. The Miami Herald called it, “Delightful . . . That’s Brown’s gift: She draws you in and makes you believe her weird sisters aren’t so weird after all.”

If you haven’t read The Weird Sisters then you can pick up a copy when it comes out in paperback on February 7th. And if you can’t wait until then…well hardback books look great on nightstands! The Weird Sisters follows the tale of three sisters, who have returned home to the small college town where they grew up – partly because their mother is ill, but mostly because their lives are falling apart and they don’t know where to go next. Rose, a staid mathematics professor, has the chance to break away from her quiet life and join her devoted fiancé in England, if she could only summon up the courage to do more than she’s thought she could. Bean left home as soon as she could, running to the glamour of New York City, only to come back ashamed of the person she has become. And Cordy, who has been wandering the country for years, has been brought back to earth with a resounding thud, realizing it’s finally time for her to grow up. The sisters never thought they would find the answers to their problems in each other, but over the course of one long summer, they find that everything they’ve been running from – each other, their histories, and their small hometown – might offer more than they ever expected.

You’ve had an amazing year! Your debut novel, The Weird Sisters has gotten wonderful praise and great reviews. Has it helped build your confidence as a writer, or did you decide before the novel came out to not pay much attention to the reviews, good or bad?

I have been very lucky – I didn’t expect the book to be embraced by so many people and it’s been a delight! But confidence is internal, so I can’t say that its success has affected me one way or the other. I am proud of what I’ve done, but I also beat myself up for my mistakes, just like anyone else. The very early reviews (from trade publications like Library Journal and Publishers Weekly) were helpful in that they gave me an idea of how the book would be received in general. Beyond that, however, I learned pretty quickly not to read reviews – professional or reader. It’s a dangerous thing to have other people’s opinions in your head when you’re trying to write. In On Writing, Stephen King talks about writing with the door closed (just you) and the door open (other people’s opinions). I think writers should be selective about whom they open that door for.

You wrote your novel in first-person plural, which is a tricky thing to do! How did you do it in such a way that a way that it wasn’t disruptive to the reader?

The voice came naturally when I started to tell this story, and there were only a few sections I struggled over with that voice. But, like any story, I devised rules: two sisters had to be in a room in order to use ‘we’ for action, and so on. Making it a smooth read was more important to me than adhering slavishly to the first-person plural narrator when it didn’t feel right.

I know you had to research extensively on Shakespeare and his work for the novel. Do you love research? Or do you find it a necessary evil?

Research is tremendous fun! I love the way researching details can lead me down all kinds of unexpected paths: in the past week I’ve read about carnival sideshows and the invention of sippy cups. True story. The best part for me is that if some piece of information doesn’t make it into one project, it might come in handy in another. There’s a bunch of great material on dude ranches that I cut from The Weird Sisters – I’d love to see that appear somewhere else someday!

What’s your writing style? Do you outline extensively? Where and when do you like to write?

Yikes. I wish. However, I’m a youngest child, so planning anything is not my strong suit. I write down ideas as they come to me so I can jump into those scenes when I’m ready, and at a certain point in the project I can start to plan out a few scenes or chapters ahead, but for the most part, I write in whatever order the ideas come to me and worry about cleaning it up later. I like to write at home – I’m not good with distractions, so I hole myself up in my office and turn on some instrumental music. Lyrics make me want to sing along! As for when, right now I’m writing in the morning because that’s worked out for my schedule. I think trying to come up with an ideal situation can be an excuse not to write, so I have always just tried to plan writing time into my schedule whenever it works.

Because of how well The Weird Sisters has been received do you feel pressure as you work on your second novel?

Definitely. It’s like being asked to capture lightning in a bottle…twice!

You’re on Twitter, Facebook, and have a blog. How do you juggle all three? Which do you like the most?

I like Twitter because there’s such a large community of book people there – authors, editors, bloggers, readers. But on Facebook, people have chosen to “like” my page, which means there’s an incredibly supportive group of people there. I try to stop in every day, but they feel like fun places to go, not duties. I’m not a natural blogger – I’m too long-winded! I used to put a lot of pressure on myself to blog, but now I just update it when I’ve got news or something to say, rather than trying to force myself to write. I’d rather use my creative mojo for my book.

How important do you think social media is for an author’s career?

It depends on what your goals are. I think if you want some degree of commercial success, it never hurts to have lots of folks in your corner, and social media is a great way to meet them. But if you watch what authors who are successful in social media to, it’s not publicizing their book. It’s interacting with people as a person. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that (and it’s fine if you don’t!), social media is not the place for you. It’s ended up that I don’t log in to Facebook or Twitter to promote my book – I go to hang out with people I enjoy, and if they end up checking out my book because of it, I’m thrilled.

Did you hire an outside publicist? How much of the marketing did you tackle on your own?

I did not hire an outside publicist; I was lucky to have a great team at Penguin going to bat for me. But I did do as much as I could outside of their efforts – participating in social media, joining a group blog, doing guest posts on others’ blogs, and doing some in-person events when I could. My goal was that if the book failed, I wanted to feel like I had done everything I personally could have to make it a success. Ultimately, this is my career and my life, so why would I not invest in it?

Now let’s get to the hair! In your author photo, it’s a lovely shoulder-length style with lighter blond highlights throughout. Is this your go-to style?

It is! I have been super-blonde and redheaded, but this is where I keep returning. But I had a hairdresser that day, so in real life, my hair never looks as good as it does in that picture! I moved to Denver (very dry) from Florida (very humid) a little over a year ago, and I still have no idea how to deal with my hair in this climate. It’s naturally very wavy with random ringlets underneath, and I tend to get triangle-head, so most of the time it’s up in a ponytail/bun. However, all this may change, because on the urging of my friend and fellow author, curly girl Sarah Ockler, I have an appointment for a Deva cut next week. I figure I might as well try something that embraces the curl instead of trying to work around it. Wish me luck!

Now the question that you’ve had much time to think about—which celebrity would you switch hair with? Why?

I will admit to having the Rachel in the 90s, so I should probably say Jennifer Aniston, but honestly, Julianna Margulies. I have always wanted beautiful curls like that, which led to lots of ill-advised perms in the 80s.

Tell us your biggest hair disaster.

Though I am probably one of the perkiest people you will meet, I spent a lot of high school trying to be deep and angsty, and at one point I dyed my hair blue-black. Not only did I neglect to dye my very blonde eyebrows to match, I am very fair, with very pink skin. It looked ridiculous. My sister and I tried to wash it out, but it didn’t work, so after a few months, when my roots began to grow back in, I spent $200 of babysitting savings to have it stripped and re-dyed to match my natural color. However, the most important lesson I learned from that experience is that hair is forgiving. Whatever you do to it, it’ll grow back!

I want to give a big cyber-hug to Eleanor Brown for stopping by Curl Up and Write! To learn more about Eleanor, check out her website, follow her on Twitter or like her on Facebook. If you haven’t already read her bestselling novel The Weird Sisters, make sure you catch it in paperback on February 7th. Can’t wait ‘til February? Then pick up a hardcover today!