About Skyler
Nationally bestselling author Skyler White’s debut novel, the vampire/neuroscience fable ‘and Falling, Fly‘ (Berkley, March 2010), was named one of the top five sci-fi/fantasy books of 2010 by ‘Library Journal’. Her follow-up, ‘In Dreams Begin‘ (Berkley, November 2010), is a time-travel horror/romance involving W.B. Yeats and other luminaries of the late Victorian ‘Golden Dawn’ occult movement, and was called a “singularly unique work of art” by Barnes & Noble.
The child of two college professors, Skyler grew up in an environment of scholarship and academic rigor, so naturally left high school to pursue a career in ballet. She’s been dancing around research and thinking through muscle cramps ever since. She has a master’s degree in theater and work experience in advertising; she’s won awards as a stage director and appeared on reality TV. She is a mother and an instigator, a wife and a realist, a liberal living in Texas and an atheist who believes in mythology. She is a sucker for paradox, and it’s a fortunate thing, too!
About My Books:
In Dreams Begin
Berkley, November 2, 2010
“I wrote In Dreams Begin because I fell in love with W. B. Yeats, which created some interesting problems for me. I fell in love with his world, one in which hypnotists and Charles Darwin, advocates of free love and Carl Marx cycled through the public lecture halls, where the tools of science were enlisted in the search for God and fairies, and where the sexual repression I thought of as “Victorian” did not extend to the artistic or royal classes, whose invention and exploration make modern sexual liberation look lacking in imagination. “I shared with Yeats a fascination with demonic or occult possession. While his investigations were more experiential than mine, in writing a woman from my time who inhabits the body of a woman from his, I got to play with changing ideas of beauty. I was able to question whether I am my body or a part of it, or it a part of who I am. Possession — by spirits or of stuff — on either side of the then rise and now (perhaps) decline of the consumer culture, raised interesting quandaries: Do I truly possess my own body? Is it mine to maintain, enhance, neglect or add horns to? Can I give myself to someone? Do I own my child? Is my body’s health a status symbol, a communication tool, a shell for my soul, or a public policy problem? And isn’t channeling the souls of other people really what all writers do? “Finally, I was attracted by Yeats’s total lack of interest in realism, the same restless curiosity I admire in contemporary fantasy writers, and by his passion and imagination, which I recognize and love in today’s bloggers and deep hobbyists. I also saw in him the beginning of the modern rejection of absolute certainty that makes it difficult to passionately commit to anything – book, blog or love forever. I loved his passion and his uncertainty. I still do. And I am still uncertain.”
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and Falling, Fly
“I wrote and Falling, Fly because I needed to tangle with Desire – with what it means to want and not get, with what turns desire into craving or addiction, and what takes it away. My research ranged from feminist accounts of female sexuality to scientific abstracts on the neurochemistry of attraction. Writing it changed the way I think about myself, my body, and my brain. I wrote it because I needed to meet Olivia. Because I was interested in the difference between wanting and being wanted, Olivia can only feed on people who desire or fear her. Because I struggle with body image, she’s a shape-shifter. Because she let me wrestle with these things through her, she is an angel. And she’s still kicking my ass.” and Falling, Fly was named one of Library Journal’s best sci-fi/fantasy books of 2010. |
