Professor Cynthia Struloeff, who publishes under the name Cynthia Hand, had just finished shooting six rounds from a pistol (for research purposes) in her father’s backyard when she received the news that her Young Adult novel, “Hallowed” (the second in a trilogy) had made it to The New York Time’s Best Seller list. They celebrated with champagne, dancing and even a few tears in her father’s remote Idaho home. Her series starts with a girl named Clara who discovers she is part-angel and has a purpose to being on Earth. Readers follow her struggle through Hand’s trilogy, “Unearthly”. Her last book“Boundless,” will hit bookstores everywhere Jan. 22, 2013.
Struloeff is an Idaho native who got her master’s at Boise State University and her Ph.D. at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has been teaching creative writing courses at Pepperdine since March 2009, which is also when her journey with the “Unearthly” series began.
Q: When/How did the idea for “Unearthly” come about?
A: I hadn’t been doing very much writing for a long time. I had gotten my Ph.D. in writing but hadn’t really felt the urge to write anything for a long time. One important thing that happened was that we lost our free cable at our apartment complex, and we had no reception for any regular channels. So suddenly we lost television. And I had nothing to really occupy my mind if I wasn’t reading or watching television. So it really doesn’t surprise me that within a week of losing television I started to feel the desire to write again…. It was about a day or so that had passed before the idea for “Unearthly” came, which is sort of mysterious. Like I don’t really know where it came from … I just know that one minute I was having the desire to write, and the next minute I was scribbling notes frantically about this character that was part angel and what would that entail. I sort of started with Clara and I heard her narrative voice…. She was very concerned with the idea for purpose.
Q: For your process in general, how do you like to approach your writing? Do you outline before writing or like to discover what is happening as you write?
A: That’s always been where I find a lot of the fun in writing, is sort of discovering where the characters are going to go and I am a really big believer in if you build the characters well enough they will inhabit themselves and they’ll write the story for you — well not literally write the story for you, right, but you can follow them home — that will surprise you. I really liked the surprise of that. I don’t do very well when I have to outline something very carefully and then check it off the list as I write it. I usually have a vague idea of events that will happen and then I like to see where they go. It’s more enjoyable for me that way.
Q: My next question is about the great divide between genre and literary fiction. I know you’ve written both. How has writing literary fiction affected your Young Adult literature? Do you see a great divide between the two as many do?
A: I think my background in literary fiction has helped me be successful in Young Adult fiction. I do attribute a lot of my relationship with language and my study of writing as an art and not just a story as being a part of why my voice is unique and why it stood out in the slush pile…. I think there are pros and cons to that. I think that what my literary background lends is a sense of character. You know that literary fiction is very character driven and certainly my Young Adult fiction is very character driven and very language oriented. I think both of those things are strengths to me as a genre writer. I think that I write better genre for having studied literary fiction very intensely. I also feel that young adult is my genre …it’s sort of coming home. The downside of having studied literary fiction is the same thing, being very character driven and the pacing of it. The faster paced plots of young adult fiction are sort of challenging for me …. My natural pace because of my literary training is slower.
Q: How has being a professor at Pepperdine affected your writing?
A: Hugely! I started writing “Unearthly” in March (2009) and that was my first semester teaching actually…one of the things that was hard when I started teaching was that I was teaching writing without writing, and I always feel like a fraud in that instance. I got through this long dry period of not reading and not writing, and I think that when I began teaching again it sort of lit the fire under me to practice what I preach. So then I started writing scenes from “Unearthly” while my students were doing writing exercises. And then I was submitting the book the next fall, and my students got to see the process, and it was so great the support I got. I think they really keep me honest as a writer…. I really love it (teaching) as much as I love writing actually.
Q: If you can sum up these last few years, the journey you’ve had, how would you do so in a few words?
A: It always strikes me as ironic that I wrote this book about this girl who is really trying to find her purpose, and in writing that book I really found mine. These last few years were really about me coming into my own and finding my purpose as a writer.
Regarding the spiritual aspect of the series, Struloeff says, “‘Unearthly’ has its surface story for everyone, but for me it has always been a metaphorical spiritual journey about a character wondering what she is and deciding what her beliefs are. As a writer I’ve always been interested in spiritual questions and struggles a character has to go through, regardless of their religion.”
Can’t wait for “Boundless” to come out? Struloeff has revealed that an Unearthly-based novella will most likely be released before the final book. Keep your eyes peeled for future Cynthia Hand (Struloeff) projects, one possibly involving a female pistol shooter.
