J.M. Miro, GennaRose Nethercott & Yaffa S. Santos: A Conversation

GennaRose Nethercott is a writer and folklorist. Her first book, The Lumberjack’s Dove, was a winner of the National Poetry Series. She is also the lyricist of the song collection Modern Ballads and the interactive Lianna Fled the Cranberry Bog: A Story in Cootie Catchers, among other projects. She tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow) and composing poems-to-order for strangers on an antique typewriter with her team The Traveling Poetry Emporium. In her debut novel, Thistlefoot (Anchor), Nethercott offers a reinterpretation of the myth of Baba Yaga. The Yaga siblings, Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist, have been estranged since childhood, but reunite to receive an inheritance. Their bequest isn’t land or money, however, but a sentient hut on chicken legs. Moreover, Thistlefoot, as the house is called, arrived from the Yaga ancestral home in Russia followed by a sinister figure, the Longshadow Man, bearing violent secrets from the past. As brother and sister embark with Thistlefoot on a final tour of their family’s traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows them, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide.

J.M. Miro is a poet and novelist who lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. He is currently a professor of fiction and poetry at the University of Victoria. Ordinary Monsters: A Novel (Flatiron Books) is set in Victorian London in 1882, where two children with paranormal powers find themselves targeted by a man made of smoke. Despite surviving a brutal childhood, Charlie Ovid doesn’t have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. Given their powers, a detective is recruited to escort them to safety. All three begin a journey into the nature of difference and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous. This is a story of wonder and betrayal, from the gaslit streets of London and the wooden theaters of Meiji-era Tokyo to an eerie estate outside Edinburgh, home to other children with gifts – like Komako, a witch-child and twister of dust, and Ribs, a girl who cloaks herself in invisibility. As they discover the truth about their abilities, a new question arises: What truly defines a monster?

Yaffa S. Santos is the author of a previous novel, A Taste of Sage. Born and raised in New Jersey, she is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied writing and visual art, and is a member of Romance Writers of America. In A Touch of Moonlight: A Novel (Harper Paperbacks), Larimar Cintrón works hard at three things: her job as brand manager for a corporate bakery chain; taking care of her parents and her “abuela”; and hiding that she’s a “ciguapa” – a mythical creature of Dominican folklore with long, straight hair and backward-facing feet. Larimar is a ciguapa only on full moons, but she feels like an outsider in her family the rest of the month, too. After meeting Ray, a bakery owner and fellow punk rock lover, Larimar thinks she may have finally found someone with whom she can be her true self. But when she discovers that her chain’s new location is right across from Ray’s bakery, she is torn between impressing her boss and saving Ray’s business. Embracing her magical nature may be the only way Larimar can have everything she wants.