W.A. Schwartz

WA Schwartz was born in Northern California and raised in both the UK and the US. She studied literature at UC Davis and novel writing at Stanford. She holds a BS in biochemistry from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and an MD from UC San Diego School of Medicine. She worked many years as medical director at a mental health clinic on the outskirts of New Orleans and is currently in private practice in California She is the author of poetry, short stories and novels. Her work has been recognized by the journal Glimmer Train (2018) and was long-listed for the Alexander Chee prize in fiction 2020.

Uncaged welcomes WA Schwartz

Welcome to Uncaged! Your newest novel, Eden, will release in April. Can you tell readers more about this novel?

Well, technically, EDEN is a suspense story, a murder mystery, but that’s not really what the book is about. EDEN is about a small group of people from a small town in southeast Louisiana and the secrets they keep for decades. When a child’s body is unearthed, the investigation that follows unravels the town and the secrets very interestingly. I force the characters involved to reveal themselves in ways they wouldn’t have imagined, and the book becomes more about toxic family relationships and generational secrets.

How has your work as a psychiatrist helped in writing?

All the books and stories I write are character driven and focused on relationships between people, often people within families. As a psychiatrist, I have spent most of my career working with neglected and abused children and families with minimal support. For many years, I was the medical director at a mental health clinic in the outer parishes in Louisiana, which is where the story takes place. Although this story is completely fictional and none of the characters are based on real people, I could use much of what I know in developing the relationships between my characters. My career has given me a solid understanding of what it is like to deal with extreme poverty in the south and the stressors that it brings on. In addition, some characters in Eden suffer from acute and chronic mental illnesses based on real diagnosis which are commonly treated by psychiatric physicians. I don’t think it would have been possible for me to write EDED had I not worked many years as a psychiatrist.

What is the most difficult scene for you to write?

There is a scene in the book in which a character is burying his young daughter. Without giving away spoilers, I will say this was at least one of the most challenging scenes for me to write. The man’s tremendous grief over what he was about to do made it hard for me to write each sentence. Not only did I want to get the words right and do justice to his pain, but as a mother myself I really felt I was experiencing the scene along with him as I wrote it I probably rewrote that scene fifteen times What is the easiest?

This is tough for me to describe without giving spoilers, but I will try. There is a teenager a prominent character in the book, who finds herself in a difficult situation and manages very violently to get herself out of it. Although the scene itself is quite violent and not pleasant, I found it really easy to write. I think it had something to do with her personal empowerment and the strength of her family character, and I really enjoyed writing her way out of that predicament. The truth is, most young girls in a situation like that don’t wind up the way this particular teenager does, and the scene I wrote might to some degree have been my wish.

Where do you get your ideas for new plots and characters?

This is always a tough question. For me, ideas for books and stories come at me sort of all at once and it’s hard to separate one piece from another. They don’t come from a “place” they just come inside my head. If I had to pull it apart I would say I learn of characters first and then situations so for example I might be talking with someone about a particular experience they had or I might be in a particular place and see something and suddenly imagine a certain character having that experience or having a group of experiences like that and then from there I might imagine what that would be like or what it would be like for them to have a slightly twisted version of that experience. It usually comes to me visually. I hope this is making sense. With Eden it was actually Evelyn the protagonist who came to me first. I saw her as this very troubled woman in her 40s who had escaped her hometown and was living on the West Coast but was still struggling with alcohol and failed relationships and a very troubled teenage daughter and was somehow called back to her home which she’d fought so hard to escape. From there I had to develop a reason for her to be called home and that reason ended up being the discovery of this body so the plot kind of followed from her being in the situation where she was called home I wanted to sort out what would happen if a damaged person who had struggled hard to survive, then during it all gets sort of boomeranged back to the source of all the pain and suffering. I wanted to look at what that would mean and how they might COPE in that situation, so that’s an example of how I come about my stories

Bottom line, I would have to say it always starts with character. I am most interested in people. I certainly never start with the plot. In other words, I never outline a certain story and want to have it happen ABCDE and then stick people into it. That doesn’t work for me

What are you working on now that you can tell us about?

I’ll tell you just a little. I’m working on a book about a young woman who is not at all who she seems to be at the beginning of the book. It is a psychological thriller and I think readers will find it a little edgier than EDEN.

Do you base any of your characters on real-life people?

Never. I never base characters on real-life people and the only exception would write historical fiction I have recently finished a book very loosely based on the life of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and that book does not try to hide that those are the figures depicted. Otherwise, I never use real people for one it is not particularly interesting to limit oneself to the life of a particular person and in fact, even in historical fiction and author will have a lot of leeway and adding and subtracting details. before another, I think basing your characters on real people is somewhat disrespectful to those real people so no all of my characters are 100% fictional.

What behind-the-scenes tidbit in your life would probably surprise your readers the most?

I’m pretty dull, really. I have three children I adore, the youngest is now 19. I’ve been snowboarding once. I was a ballerina for almost twenty years and danced in a company called the Civic Ballet Company of San Luis Obispo. Today I do yoga instead.

Which comes first, the plot or the characters in the planning stages?

Character always.

What are some things you like to do to relax when you aren’t writing or working?

Yoga, play with my dogs (two big labs). Tend to my English Roses. Talk to my kids, quilting and sewing, I’m a secret Netflix binger.

Do you prefer ebooks, audiobooks or physical books? Are you reading anything now?

I love physical books and have a library in my house, but I admit my eyes prefer ebooks. I am always reading something. Right now it’s THE BOOKS OF JACOB by Olga

Tokarczuk.

What would you like to say to fans, and where can they follow you?

First, thankyou!! I love to write and obviously could not do it without a reader, so thanks a million. Next please comment and email and send me feedback. I love to hear your thoughts. you can reach me at: wa@waschwartz.com, www.waschwartz.com