BookView Review

Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors..

Rcently, we interviewed Marty Malin about his writing and his recently released novel, Transit, that chronicles one woman’s journey as she struggles to begin afresh after committing a heinous crime (Read the review here.)

Tell us a little about how Transit first came to be. Did it start with an image, a concept, a dilemma, or something else?

It started with a sentence that popped into my head out of the blue. I was wrapping up my first book, a collection of short stories called Grandmother’s Devil & Other Tempting Tales. I had no idea what to do with the sentence, since it had nothing to do with Grandmother’s Devil, so I stuck it in a document titled “Sentence?” on my desktop for safekeeping. Several weeks later I read it to a small group of my writer friends, who meet once a week to talk about our work: “Once I decided to kill my husband, it was just a matter of the details.” This one sentence shaped the novel. “Pantsing,” not “plotting,” from start to finish.

It had to be the first sentence of a story and it determined the narrative. It demanded a protagonist interesting enough to keep readers turning pages even though they probably wouldn’t like her, at least at first. Since the sentence was interior monologue, written in first person present, the rest of the book would have to tag along. It clamoured for a decisive character who would take charge of the story arc, the pacing, and the plot, as she did with the murder of her husband. As an author, the best I could manage was to keep up as the story took shape through the first few drafts.

 Everybody I showed the first chapter to hated the protagonist. But I knew Dr. Jessamyn Quilter was not a psychopath, as several early readers insisted. I did not know much more about her at that point, but I knew she was not the embodiment of unadulterated evil. Jessamyn is not amoral, antisocial, or psychotic—she is a well- liked, prosocial emergency department physician. Yet when we first meet her, she is coldly plotting to kill her husband. She tells us exactly how she plans to go about it. By the end of the first chapter, we have no doubt that she can and will commit the perfect murder. By the end of the second chapter, we have seen she means what she says. Her husband is dead, and she is happy about it.  

Two chapters down, forty-five chapters to go. Now what? If Jessamyn’s not a psychopath, she’ll have to convince us otherwise. So, the novel needs to be a transit, a voyage of discovery, for Dr. Jessamyn Quilter, for readers, and for me as the author.

Tell us some more about your book.

Well, now Dr. Jessamyn Quilter has committed the perfect crime.  No one will ever know what she did. No mortal, that is. But her evil deed has unbalanced the cosmos, and the balance must be restored.  Desperate to leave her old life behind and make a fresh start, Jessamyn books a long sea voyage aboard the container ship MV Andaman Pearl.

After an auspicious beginning, her journey goes terribly wrong.  As her life unravels, a series of chance encounters convinces her the evil she has unleashed will destroy her unless she confronts it. But how? The answer lies with an indigenous tribe in the Amazonian rainforest.  Her quest for healing and purpose involves an unlikely assortment of jaguars, jinn, witches, cannibals, shamans, pink dolphins, teacher trees and the guardians of the cosmos, Grandmother Aya and Anaconda Woman.

Where do your ideas for this story come from?

I developed supporting structures, characters, and situations on the fly, doing research as the story required it. I am not conscious of anything more concrete in terms of outside inspiration. The novel is propelled by plot, action, structure, and imagery — all derived from the protagonist and the situations she has created for herself. When Jessamyn chooses to take a long voyage aboard a container ship, for example, the Jungian trope of the Night Sea Journey is unavoidable. The journey involves pirates, mercenaries, and betrayal. The port call in Vietnam is colored by the trope of a sojourn to the underworld. At the end of the day, it’s Jessamyn’s coming of age story — her ports of call, her erotic passage, her perilous encounters, her spiritual death and transfiguration that drive the story.  

What sort of a relationship exists between you and the characters you created in this book?

I’m crazy in love with all of them. I live in their world and know exactly what they look like. They’re my imaginary friends, as real as if I met them on the MV Andaman Pearl. Admittedly, I love some more than others.  It’s a stretch with Jessamyn’s husband. Fortunately, she develops much better taste in men.

Are any of your characters based on real people you know?

No, though some would argue there’s a piece of me in many of them.

Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?

I don’t really think much about readers when I write. My focus is on the characters and what they will do next.  My ideal reader is someone who is beguiled by what I have written and will follow along with me.

How did you decide which form or genre was right for you?

The characters and their story determine the form and genre.  Since there are many characters in the book, both natural and supernatural, they need a lot of space. The novel form seemed best suited to that purpose. Transit defies genre. I hope the novel will find readers who enjoy character-driven stories in such genres as speculative fiction, coming of age, magical realism, and suspense thrillers.

Readers looking for the sort of strict genre novel seen on mass market lists might be disappointed by Transit. I hope nobody else is. But I think the novel would make a good movie or television series in the hands of a skillful screenwriter.  (Just in case anyone is interested.)

What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?

I was my good fortune to find Judy B. Roth, whose developmental editing made all the difference to the structural integrity of Transit.  She skillfully steered me around plot holes, continuity issues, and inconsistencies in matters of style in a very complex manuscript.  After I had written the first dozen drafts of the novel, Judy guided me through several more passes, each one making it a smoother, more cohesive book. Any errors that remain are mine, not hers.  

And thanks for the opportunity to talk a bit more about Transit.

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