Boreal Book Club: The Lightening Bottles by Marissa Stapley

GWR: How did you start writing/become a writer?    

MS: I was a journalist for many years, writing in-house and freelance for several newspapers and magazines—but I always knew I wanted to write creatively. The key to starting to write is to just…start! It’s that simple, and that impossible. I finally sat down and started working on a novel which would eventually become my first. I managed to get an agent and sell it to a small Canadian publisher, but sadly that publisher went out of business before the book came out. There were a few years of false starts and challenges but I kept at it, and eventually wrote Mating for Life, my debut novel which truly kickstarted my career as an author.

GWR: You have written nine books (Marissa is also the author of: Lucky, The Last Resort, Things to Do When It’s Raining, and Mating for Life; co-authored as Maggie Knox All I Want for Christmas and The Holiday Swap with Karma Brown; co-authored Three Holidays and a Wedding with Uzma Jalaluddin; and has a new holiday novel, The Holiday Honeymoon Switch, writing as Julia McKay). Do you approach each the same way, or does your process differ based on genre?

MS: My process is only different now because of how many deadlines I have. I used to “pants” my way through a fairly lean first draft of each book, and then go back and do a sort of retroactive outline. That may be a slightly more fun and exciting way to work, but it’s not entirely predictable. Meaning that now I have become a plotter, and I’ll probably never go back. (Then again, never say never!) I tend to come up with an idea, write a one page pitch that I’ll share with my agent. We’ll discuss it, I’ll think about it for  a while, and then I’ll come up with a detailed outline. I actually adore outlining. Uzma always used to tell me when we were writing together that outlining is my super power. I do think I’m very good at taking ideas and running with them, and creating detailed road maps are now one of my favourite parts of the writing process. I do this with every novel, whether it’s one of the novels I publish under my own name, or a holiday rom-com.

And I certainly take all my books seriously, no matter the genre. The rom-coms may be more fun, but it is just as important to me to get everything about them right.I always say easy reading is absolutely NOT easy writing. In fact, it can often be the opposite. And just because I’m always heading towards a happy ending with those books doesn’t mean I can’t delve into serious topics or take my characters to interesting, thought-provoking places.  I look forward to doing so much more of that in the future.

GWR: What was the inspiration for The Lightning Bottles?

MS: I’ve been calling this novel the book of my heart. It is inspired by who I was as a teenager: music obsessed, and especially fixated on the world of grunge and alternative music. But that music scene had so much tragedy—not to mention a lot of misogyny.  Far too many artists were lost  too young, and far too many female artists did not get the credit they deserved.  I started to wonder what it would feel like to rewrite the history I lived through–and the idea for this book was born.

Photo credit: @marissastapley via Instagram

GWR: Jane is a strong female and is perceived as being difficult and not overly liked by her peers and higher ups in the industry. Why do you think that women in music, especially during that time, were thought of as such, rather than as influential and/or creative? 

MS: I really don’t understand why any of this happens. Why was Yoko Ono seen as less than, when in truth she was integral to John Lennon’s art, so much so that the words to ‘Imagine’ came from  her poetry, and this was only acknowledged later—and still not really talked about? Why did she bear the blame for the Beatles break up? Why was Courtney Love accused of everything from killing her husband when he clearly took his own life, to not writing her own music when she is clearly a talented musician herself? Why have rockstars historically been able to get away with heinous acts (such as staggering amounts of statutory rape, casually detailed in a sickening number of rock memoirs) but Sinead O’Connor stood up against child abuse and was erased for it? I think there is still a fight to be had when it comes to equality and that we need to keep doing the hard work. Which means, for example, that when a female artist like Chappell Roan stands up and asks for boundaries and refuses to smile and be nice when she’s being treated horribly by the paparazzi we need to allow that, not vilify it. We cannot allow “the way things have always been” to dictate what our future looks like or we will always be stuck in the dark ages.

GWR: This book takes a deep dive into other issues—mental health, addiction, toxic relationships—why was it important to include these elements in the story?

MS: I could not possibly have been true to the realities of the grunge music era without delving into those issues.  I did so much research on addiction and mental health and also drew from personal experience, as I have supported family members and friends through both. These are not easy topics. I remember thinking as I did my research that for addicts—such as Kurt Cobain—and those dealing with mental health issues—such as Jeff Buckley—fame just made it all so much worse. I started thinking that escape would have been the only option for them to ever get to a place where recovery was possible. This really informed the story. As far as toxic relationships, I wanted to try to see what would happen, fictionally, at least, if the characters in such toxic relationships were perhaps able to grow and learn from their experiences and hardships. So again, this informed the course of the story greatly.

Photo credit: @simonschusterca via Instagram

GWR: Tell me about the research you did for the novel?

MS: I’ve said many times that the books I read as research for this novel would stack all the way up to my office ceiling—and I have a high ceiling! I thought I knew the grunge and alternative music world inside and out, having come of age during that time. But there was so much research I needed to do to understand the inner workings of the music world, as well as song-writing—not to mention the harsh realities of addiction and mental health. I read endlessly. Music memoirs, addiction memoirs, books about songwriting, books about music. I also spoke with many industry experts, such as the great Alan Cross, to really get the story right.

GWR: Why did you choose a third person perspective and a dual timeline?

MS: The dual timeline was really the only way to tell this story. We had to start at the beginning—which was also sort of the end—and work back. As far as third person, I don’t think Jane is the type of character who would have allowed first person, if that makes sense. She is far too closed and self-protective, and it would have been really challenging as an author to try to get in as close as first person writing requires. I don’t know that there’s ever a conscious, ‘I am going to sit down and write this story in this exact way’ moment, at least not for me. I have my idea, and once I get past the conceptualizing stage and sit down to write, it just begins when it does and comes out the way it comes out. I might get a few chapters in and realize the story needs to be first person but I’m writing in third, or that I need to tell the story in a linear way when I’ve started it as dual timeline, but that’s usually the sort of thing I figure out pretty early.

Photo credit: @marissastapley via Instagram

GWR: If your book was a beverage, what would it be? 

MS: A shot of Chartreuse, straight from the bottle.

GWR: What are you working on now?

MS: My second holiday rom com, writing as Julia McKay, which is out next fall and I’ll have more news on soon. And two screen adaptation projects.