Layers and Layers of Chewy Goodness - An Interview with Author Jo Carthage

What happened during your visit to the Department of Energy Museum that inspired you to write your novel, Nuclear Sunrise?

To the right of the doorway is a Geiger counter, now held tight in a plexiglass case. The doorway is the only entrance and exit of the white cinder block box that served as a top secret nuclear research facility in the sage dusted plains of southern Idaho from 1949 to 1964. The Geiger counter was used to wand staff as they left the building, to keep them from bringing work home, as it were. Sometimes, if it was just a bit of uranium that had rubbed off on someone's pants, the man holding the Geiger counter would just take the researcher's pants, and send him on his way into the snows of Idaho.

That was the story our tour guide told my tour group on July 4th, 2019, and that was the story that inspired me to think about the man holding the wand, and the man handing over his pants, and what relationships might form under that kind of pressure and that kind of isolation—and, frankly, that kind of absurdity.

How did you develop your main characters, Captain Brian Flynn and Dr. Aaron Antares? Are they based on real historical figures?

I'm what's known as a pantser, which means I don't outline or do formal character development before I write. Brian and Aaron aren't historical characters, though some of the people around them are, both named and unnamed. I hope readers familiar with the larger-than-life personalities of the Atomic Age will enjoy the cameos!

How would you define your genre and what does it mean to write about “stellar light-based life”?

Nuclear Sunrise will probably get shelved in m/m historical romance, alongside K.J. Charles and Cat Sebastien (should I be so lucky!). An adventuresome bookseller might shelve it with other Atomic Age historical fiction, though because queer love is at the heart of the story that isn't as likely, given how these things go. A particularly opinionated librarian might catalogue it as science fiction, but since it's in a historical setting and centers a queer romance, that is a stretch for the current publishing landscape. I'll shelve it alphabetically, because that's how I manage my home fiction library (though my Pratchett, Pierce, McKinley, and Stephenson books all have their own shelves). If it helps, when I wrote Nuclear Sunrise, I wrote it as historical science romance, since it's a love story in a carefully-researched historical setting, with aliens (spoilers!).

For my own personal genre as a writer, I tend to think of myself as a historical novelist, it's just sometimes I'm writing future histories.

Thanks for asking about that phrase! I picked it as the tagline on my author website because it's a phrase that fills my heart with wonder, at the reality that we are all stellar light-based life, that is, that we all exist because of the light of distant stars. It's a broad category of work, but that sense of wonder and connection are through lines in my writing.

How do you combine elements of science fiction and historical fiction in a way that keeps the reader engaged in both but not distracted by either?

My biggest tool is consistently using third person POV, because then I can only include what my POV character sees. That helps me cut anything that might distract the reader. Now, particularly when working in genre fiction or fanfiction, one of the joys of close third is that the reader can know or guess things that the POV character is missing, either because they're hinted at on the jacket copy or the readers have some kind of foreknowledge. I love playing with that dynamic where readers know more than the character in whose head they are seated, it adds layers and layers of chewy goodness.

What is the value of finding and then sharing hidden queer histories? What is the ultimate message that you want readers to come away with about queer histories?

Even though I was privileged to grow-up around out queer adults, I also grew-up in the 1990s in America. Matthew Shepard's 1998 murder and the month of listening to my local NPR hosts bend over backwards to excuse his murderers left me with the distinct and unexamined belief that as a queer person, I would not live past 30. When I did survive that long, I found in myself a deep need to know I was not the only one. So I started reading more and researching more queer history. That brought me to books like Pages Passed from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1914 which is the most extraordinary collection of literature that was read queerly by queer folks in the past. Reading stories of people excising chapters and rebinding them by hand, just to hold onto words where two characters are permitted to fall in love a little longer, even though the rest of the novel that chapter existed within condemned that relationship, connects me so powerfully to my queer fore-bearers.

If there is such a thing as a single message from a novel, it is that queer people have always existed and we are not alone.

I saw on your website that you have “Free Reads” on a platform called “Archive of Our Own.” What is “Archive of Our Own” and how and why do you utilize it as an author?

The Archive of Our Own, known as Ao3 to those who know and love her, is a volunteer-run website for archiving fan works. If you've ever wanted to know what happened next after a TV show ended, or what happened between the panels in a comic book, or wondered how a character would deal with living in the Regency era or in the Roman Empire, you've shared the same impulse fan creators have to keep the story going and play in someone else's sandbox. In the past 10 years, I've written more than half a million words and nearly 100 works, from novel-length pieces to drabbles of exactly 100 words. These stories are fanfiction, that is, they borrow characters and settings from other properties—think The Aeneid, Troilus and Cressida, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court as mainstream, historical examples of this style of writing.

My hope is that readers who enjoy Nuclear Sunrise and are perhaps awaiting the sequel (I'm working on it!) can go back and read some of those other stories to continue to enjoy the work I've put out into the world.

If you're intrigued by the idea of Archive of Our Own, I encourage you to check in out. But just know it has no algorithm, it functions on a gift economy and so is completely non-commercial, and many of the users are deeply committed to free speech and personal responsibility. As an example, there is very little that is not allowed on Ao3, but users must use some specific tags and most good community citizens tag extensively (and are supported by more than 700 volunteer tag wranglers). So, if you want to read a meticulously research story about Steve Rogers' relationship with his Catholic faith from 1923 - 2013 you can and in doing so, be the 169,802nd person to do so (or you can listen to it as a free audiobook, or read it lovingly translated by volunteers into Chinese, Magyar, Russian, Korean, and Spanish.) But if you click on any of the tags above, you may find stories with vastly different points of view, meanings, and styles. That can be a bug or a feature, depending on where you are at in life.

How is writing a novel different than writing a novella? What did you learn about writing while working on your debut novel?

It's about scope and scale. When I'm writing a novella-length story, I usually try to keep the number of characters, settings, and plot points down, so as not to overwhelm readers who have opted into a short reading time. When I'm writing something that is novel-length, I let myself add in more threads to the overall story, since we have the time and space to write more.

I would say the biggest thing I learned is how to work with an editor. I have had such joy working with Elizabetta, I get better every time I go into a document to see her edits.

How can readers connect with you and stay up-to-date on your writing?

Thanks for asking! You can sign-up for my newsletter, follow me on Instagram, tumblr, Twitter (X is such a silly name), or check-out my website.