THE 9:09 PROJECT—The Story Behind the Story

by Mark Parsons

Having synesthesia is probably a little like being left-handed or maybe color-blind (most types of which aren’t literally “color-blind,” but that’s another story), in that the difference isn’t only non-obvious to most observers but may go mostly unnoticed by the individuals themselves until they learn the rest of the world sees things differently.

As far as I can tell I’ve had synesthesia since birth (primarily the color-grapheme variant—the most common type), but for a long time I didn’t know I perceived things differently than the vast majority of the population. Sure, my sister and I (she’s a synesthete also) used to play “So what color is Tuesday for you?” when we were little kids, but it wasn’t until my teenage years that I realized perceiving numbers, letters, days of the week, and months of the year as having specific colors definitely wasn’t the norm . . .

. . . for everyone else. But it absolutely was the day-to-day norm for me. Which is one of the reasons I had Jamison (the protagonist in The 9:09 Project) have the same condition—not as a “plot point” or “issue” or other structural contrivance, but because having that hovering in the background of my own high school experience made writing this story take on an extra degree of reality for me that hopefully got me a little closer to the emotions many of us are feeling at that time in our lives—uncertainty, insecurity, and a general vibe of not fitting in.

I’d read a few novels featuring synesthesia where the author clearly didn’t do any research but simply made up shit that sounded interesting and ran with it as a cool plot device. (I’m talking characters having superpower-level abilities due to synesthesia. I wish, right?) So I wanted to portray it as it actually presents for me and others I know—neither a superpower nor a disability, but simply a slightly interesting difference in the way some people perceive everyday objects and concepts.

It’s important to note this isn’t a book about synesthesia. It’s about a young dude who happens to have synesthesia, and I like to think the story would hold together even if he didn’t have it. It just gives an additional connection between him and his mother and serves as a recurring metaphor for seeing the world a certain way. In fact, Jamison doesn’t discuss it much with his friends or family in the book.

I’m drawn to that sort of understatement, where conditions that exist in the story don’t need to be the story, but just provide a more nuanced background. One of the things I love about the anime/rotoscoped/live-action TV series Undone is that the main character wears a cochlear implant but it’s almost incidental to the overall story. It’s just there as part of her daily life—she wears it in order to hear, but the story’s not about deafness at all. To me, this is a great example of true diversity in storytelling: having characters with differences, but not making their differences the story.

The 9:09 Project is actually about things far more universal than synesthesia: recovering from loss, harnessing the healing power of art, putting your grief to work, opening up to possibilities, and making connections.

In other words, it’s a love story.

Exploring synesthesia in this book was my way into the story, something to help bind me emotionally to the character (and, by association, to the rest of the characters, who are completely real to my writer brain and about whom I care deeply). This is art—not science—so your experience may vary, but for me, the writer having an emotional connection with their characters is the foundation for the reader having an emotional connection with the characters.

And after all, that’s what we all want, right?

Mark Parsons has written primarily non-fiction for several years, penning over two hundred articles for national publications as well as a pair of non-fiction books before turning to book-length fiction. His first YA novel Road Rash (Knopf/Random House) was named to the ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list, as well as Bank Street College’s Best Children’s Books of the Year list. His latest YA novel, The 9:09 Project, is coming from Delacorte/Random House this November. He also has a writing blog on his website where he deep-dives into several aspects of the writing life.

Writing Authentically Independent Female Heroines in Victorian Romance

By Mimi Matthews

The Victorian era is known for its suffocating societal rules, restrictive clothing, and the limited rights it afforded women. Writing independent female characters who exist authentically in this space can be challenging. There’s a temptation to simply substitute contemporary characters in historical costume—ladies who speak, think, and act no differently from women in our modern world. For my own novels, however, I love writing Victorian heroines who assert their independence, push social boundaries, and take their romantic fates into their own hands, all while remaining true to the era. 

In The Belle of Belgrave Square, socially-anxious Victorian beauty Julia Wychwood doesn’t look much like a contemporary romance heroine. Constrained by the rigid rules of fashionable society (and by the oppressive expectations of her overbearing parents), she’d rather stay home in bed, eating chocolates and reading novels, than navigate her way through the perilous London social season. Nevertheless, Julia still finds way to assert herself, often to dramatic effect.

Julia’s choice of reading material is, initially, her biggest act of rebellion. Novels were frowned upon in the mid-Victorian era. Some believed that reading them was hazardous to a lady’s health. Novels, it was said, had the same intoxicating effect as drugs or alcohol, overstimulating the imagination and polluting the mind. These concerns don’t prevent Julia from reading what she pleases. During the course of the story, she binge reads during a ball, patronizes independent bookstores, and discusses her favorite romance novels with the beastly, battle-scarred war hero Captain Jasper Blunt.

When not reading novels, Julia enjoys riding her horse, Cossack, in Hyde Park’s Rotten Row. Horseback riding was one of the few athletic pursuits available to well-to-do young ladies. Like everything else in fashionable society, it was governed by strict rules of decorum. Ladies were expected to ride at a sedate pace on suitably gentle mounts, making it less of a sport and more of an exercise in displaying the gracefulness of their figures. A gifted horsewoman, Julia refuses to hide her skill to suit society. She rides with passion, often galloping in the Row with her friends, despite the risk of creating a scandal. 

Reading novels and riding horses may not seem like the most daring of activities, but in each of them, Julia asserts her right to mental and physical liberty. These small acts of independence help her to gain confidence such that, when a crisis occurs, she’s able to rise to the occasion by performing her most audacious act yet—proposing marriage to Captain Blunt

Writing historically accurate Victorian heroines doesn’t mean confining oneself to insipid and unrelatable characters. On the contrary. History shows us that Victorian society was full of women who refused to abide by its restrictive rules. Young women like Julia who asserted themselves in ways both large and small, pushing up against the boundaries of their world until that world expanded to accommodate the full scope of their individuality. I never tire of writing their stories!

USA Today bestselling author Mimi Matthews writes both historical nonfiction and award-winning proper Victorian romances. Her novels have received starred reviews in Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus, and her articles have been featured on the Victorian Web, the Journal of Victorian Culture, and in syndication at BUST Magazine. In her other life, Mimi is an attorney. She resides in California with her family, which includes a retired Andalusian dressage horse, a Sheltie, and two Siamese cats.

The Meaning Behind the Title Find a Place for Me

By: Deirdre Fagan

When we are in the early throes of grief, our lost loved one dominates our every thought. We find ourselves angry that other people are going about their days doing ordinary things like getting gas or groceries, going to work, or kissing a partner, because we feel that our own lives have stopped. How can the world be going on when our loved one is no longer in it? How can anyone be thriving when our world feels ended? If we grieve wholly our world has truly stopped. But this feeling does slowly begin to pass. Soon we not only have to but can get up from our place of grieving and emotionally begin to place one foot in front of the other. We can begin moving towards a future where we are still alive while without the one we miss so terribly. When someone we love dies, we hold them in our hearts and minds forever, but we can eventually thrive despite the grief we will now forever carry.

My husband Bob and I experienced two great losses together five years before he was diagnosed at the young age of forty-three with the terminal illness amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Five years before, my father and brother had died two weeks apart, both suddenly, and we had been those people in shock and stunned into a world without them, wandering through it in a fog wondering how we would ever be able to look fully forward again. For Bob and me, it took nearly a year and a pregnancy with our second child before we began to comprehend that we and our son, and now soon daughter, had a future without my dad and brother where we needed to be very much present. We needed to not only embrace this future but learn to thrive in it for our children and for those who had left us behind. After all, our loved ones would not want anything less for us. They would want the best, and the best would mean a life of full-throttle living.

When Bob was diagnosed, we were both devastated, but ever the philosopher—Bob had a doctorate in philosophy and was a university professor—the day after his diagnosis, Bob told me he wanted me to love again. He said he had come to terms with his death in his twenties and he was also well aware how much his love blessing would mean to me and the children. Bob knew we would not thrive if we always remained in that early place of mourning. He knew he didn’t want me to be alone. He also wanted the children to have another person invested in their lives to guide them. Bob could do nothing to stop his illness from taking his life but he could help us continue in ours.

When Bob first told me to love again, I wasn’t at all ready. I could not go there. I was one foot in the grave with him and I didn’t want to get out of it. It was going to be a lot of work and I was going to not only be grieving the love of my life, but managing our children’s grief, and the full lives that we had once managed together. I was going to be a single mom doing all the work of a household, continuing to be a university professor myself, and somehow getting myself out of bed in the morning when I would want to do anything but.

As time went on, I began to realize Bob was right about love. The way to thrive was going to be to open my heart to the future just as we both had after losing my dad and brother, or I had earlier in life when decades before I lost my eldest brother and mother. “You have done it before and you can do it again,” Bob would tell me when I wanted to give up and said I could not go on after losing him. He believed in me. He believed in love and in my ability to love. After all, the measure of our grief is the measure of our love. If we love deeply, we grieve deeply. If we love deeply, we can also love again.

When Bob was sick, he made videos for the kids and me. At the end of mine, Bob says, “You are going to need to find a place for me,” and knowing Bob so completely, I knew exactly what he meant. In his absence, I needed to find a place for him that would not dominate all of my feelings or thoughts. If there was going to be room for me to go on, love again, and thrive in the face of the devastation of losing him, I was going to need a different place for Bob.

When I first started writing Find a Place for Me, I titled the book after Bob’s book of poetry, written during his illness and self-published a month before he died: After Thunder. My manuscript was therefore titled, After Lightning. During the publishing process, however, I realized that that title, while meaningful to me, didn’t say much to readers about the book itself

Find a Place for Me: Embracing Love and Life in the Face of Death is very much about Bob teaching me and others how to not only live well but die well. It is about our love for each other and how it transcends. Bob’s parting gift to me was to generously help me find a place for him that was forever and wholly his but also made room. I have found a place for him in this memoir and in my life. I hope upon reading it, readers will find a place for him too

Deirdre Fagan, D.A., is a widow, wife, mother of two, and associate professor and coordinator of creative writing at Ferris State University. Dr. Fagan, also a divorcee and the sole survivor of her birth family, is the author of the memoir Find a Place for Me. For more information visit deirdrefagan.com