One of Misty’s biggest obstacles is the sense of being alone around other people, unable to connect with them. Why did you choose to focus on this?
Misty’s loneliness emerged fairly quickly when I started writing. A lot of the conditions of her life naturally led there—she lives in a very rural, very mountainous, very small town without access to a lot of distractions; she’s growing up in a place and within a religion that often encourage silence when it comes to violence or abuse; she has an ability that she fears sharing with others because she’s not sure how they’ll react. There are a lot of things that Misty is holding back. And in regards to her ability, there’s also a whole part of her life that is so much bigger and brighter that she wants to share but feels unable to. She wants, like most of us, to be known, understood, and loved for who she is. But when the abuse begins, all of these circumstances become even heavier. Misty’s confusion and shame and fear grow and she feels even more alone. If she’s going to find healing, she has to reach out and find that connection, but with every event, every page in the book, reaching out feels further and further away. The cure and the poison are tied, as they so often are.
You deal extensively with the power of names throughout the book. Tell us how you feel about names, and your own name.
When I started publishing, I decided that I wanted to write under a pen name. Not in an attempt to obscure my true identity, but actually to get closer to it. When I married, I didn’t take my partner’s last name, and I knew I didn’t want to publish under my birth name, either. They were both just different men’s names. Neither really felt representative of me or my work. Blooms was an easy choice because it was a nickname given to me by my grandmother. The story goes that I, like many children, hated wearing clothing and would strip naked as soon as we got home from anywhere. Granny teased my mother about it one day, asking, “Why don’t you ever buy that youngin’ any bloomers?” Bloomers got shortened to Blooms and it stuck. So not only did using Blooms as a pen name link me to a kind of matriarchal lineage, but it also linked me to a time in my life where I was unafraid of my body. Where I could happily move through the world in the most vulnerable way. For me, one of the most difficult parts of recovering from sexual violence was trying to heal my relationship with my body. Taking the name Blooms is part of that healing. It links me not only to the women in my family who helped make me who I am, but also to myself—a name that is proof that I didn’t always fear or distrust my body. That I embraced it once, wholeheartedly. Blooms is proof that I can do that again. Every day that I choose compassion over shame, love over judgment, I am actually returning to myself, to that little girl I was. Blooms gives me hope. That’s the power of names.
Beth and her sisters are an interesting team, as are Misty and Penny. How did you go about exploring the sibling relationship? Do you have siblings?
The relationships in this book were definitely one of the most joyous parts of writing for me. Beth, Jem, and Dolly were especially fun to work with. When I started a scene with them, the dialogue felt like it was springing onto the page—I could hear them all so clearly in my mind. I drew on my own experiences with my siblings (an older brother and sister) and from watching my parents’ relationships with their siblings. I spent a lot of time with my extended family as a child, so I was often surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins. And there was always banter and teasing and joking with care and tenderness sandwiched somewhere between. And as a book, Every Bone a Prayer is really concerned with relationships, identity, and connection. Misty’s ability (or inability) to feel close to the people she loves is one of the driving forces, so capturing these sibling relationships felt like a vital part of the narrative. And I am always striving toward nuance and complexity. Sibling relationships are wonderful, but they’re also really annoying. Sharing such proximity, vying for the same attention and resources, reaching different stages of life and development at different times. Growing up together can be tense, full of falling out and hating each other, then being best friends ten minutes later. I wanted all of those things to be present here.
The moment when Misty examines her body and recalls the ways she has lived in it has an aching sort of tenderness. Do you think our bodies are always our homes, or is that a choice we have to make?
I want the answer to this question to be yes. I want to believe that our bodies are always our homes even if we don’t always feel that way. But I also know that our bodies are not separate from the world and our relationship to them is not defined solely by us or our feelings. That was one of the driving questions of the book: How do you reconcile with the parts of yourself, your body, your experience that you did not actively choose? What do you do with those pieces? Can you love them? Can you accept them? Can you erase them? I don’t have an easy answer, especially not for everyone. I can only answer for me in saying that every day I am trying to come home to myself, every day I am trying to give myself the love and care that others often denied me. I am trying to be better to myself and my body than the world has been. And through that, hopefully, find a kind of peace and understanding, a new relationship with my body.
Where do you start a story? Do you know the ending when you begin?
I often have an ending in mind when I begin work, even if that ending changes. Knowing where I’m going puts guardrails around the story and keeps me focused, helps me sort through the imagery, symbols, relationships, etc. Novels, especially, have a tendency to sprawl. There’s just so much that you could do that I find it helps to put at least a few limitations on myself. And the initial inspiration for my work often comes in many forms—a snippet of dialogue between two people in a moment of tension, an image of a character when their guard drops and they are alone and their face tells me something they’ve never said before, a flash of setting that invites me inside. It’s often something small. A bright, fleeting spark without context, usually without even a hint of plot, but there’s always promise. And the promise is enough to get started.
How do you strike a balance between the topics that are heavy and the ones that are beautiful?
This is something I think about a lot because I want my work to feel authentic, and in order for that to happen, I believe there has to be a mix of good and bad. No matter how dark or dire things seem, there’s also hope, laughter, community, family, love. The fact that these things happen alongside one another doesn’t negate them, but it does complicate things. So I try to be mindful about including those moments of reprieve, like in Misty’s relationship with her cousins or when she gets to go see the fireworks in town. Even something as seemingly small as the moment when Misty eats cornbread and milk near the end of the book. I don’t think the comfort and kindness of those small moments should be neglected. Especially when it can feel like we (as Americans) favor narratives of pain and suffering, especially the pain and suffering of certain people. The only value in a story doesn’t come from how harrowing or raw it is, just like the value in a life doesn’t come only from what a person has survived. I think there can be something unfair and maybe even dangerous about focusing too much attention on pain. It flattens life in a way that doesn’t seem real. It’s messier than just moments of hurt. Messier because those moments often exist in tandem with great hope and fear and courage. I try my best to value each part of a life, of a story, and to give my attention to the whole complicated mess.
Acknowledgments
Here, at the end of all the work to bring this book into the world, I am struck by the number of times that I almost set Misty’s story aside. There were days when I felt I might suffocate on my own doubt and worry, days when it felt easier to give up rather than press on. And I am struck by the number of people—so many people—who were there to set me on my course again.
In the midst of some of my darkest, smallest days, I found a friend in you, Scott Lucero. And how many lives have we lived together since then? How many strange and fantastic adventures? I have cherished ev
ery one.
Then, as an undergrad, I walked into your office, Derek Nikitas, and received such encouragement, such generous feedback. You put books in my hand that helped me understand my own work better, and I can’t thank you enough. And in that same year, R. Dean Johnson, your compassion and excitement made me want to write again, to write always.
Yet I still wasn’t sure I could ever make it as a writer when I joined the MFA program at the University of Mississippi. Elsa, Sarah, Matt, and others helped change my mind. So did my instructors—Kiese Laymon, Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly. And Molly McCully Brown especially and forever: you plucked me out of my shell and showed me gentleness when I least expected it. I am grateful every day for your friendship.
To Billy Meyers: Without your counsel, I don’t think I ever could have finished this book. You helped set me on a path of healing and joy that I hope will never end.
My 2017 Clarion cohort: Amanda, Amman, Amy, Emily, Ghis, Jane, Karen, Lucy, Luke, Macky, Nina, Patrick, Peggy, Rachel, Ren, Sanjena, and Ted. On week six, I shared the first chapter of this book with you. Your feedback and encouragement helped me see that this was a story worth holding on to. C. C. Finlay and Rae Carson, my week five and six instructors, your clear-eyed and warmhearted counsel helped me find the right place to begin this story.
But even after all these people, all their love, months later, I still doubted this book. In that doubt, I shared it with Dorothy Allison at the Tin House Winter Workshop in 2018. Your feedback and stories and encouragement gave me the strength to keep going once again.
And when it was ready, I sent the manuscript to you, Harper, because I knew that no one else would be able to see it quite the way you could. You are a light that I look for in the dimmest and loneliest moments of my life, and I know that you will always be there.
And, Ames, you were there for every panicked text, every ounce of angst that I could offer (and I offered much). You are one of the steadiest friends in my life, and I am so glad you are here beside me.
To Alexandra Levick, who read the culmination of all this work and saw something worth investing in. Thank you for being my agent, for every frantic, nervous email you answered, for every kind word. To Shana Drehs and the team at Sourcebooks, who believed in Misty and in me, who gave so much love and energy and care to every single word. You all made my dream come true, and I will always be thankful for that.
To my family who exist beyond timeline, beyond doubt, beyond memory. To my mother for believing in me first and most fiercely. To Brian and Niki—my brother and sister—I want to apologize now, because I will surely spend the rest of my life writing you both into different characters and faces and strange, far-flung places. But it’s only because I wouldn’t have made it this far without you, and I wouldn’t be nearly as strong as I am now had I not survived the two of you throughout childhood. I love you all.
And finally, finally: to Sam. Thank you for spending hours teasing out the materiality of magic with me, for all the late-night trips to Sonic, for running me hot baths, for all the silly voices and silly songs, and for making everything, even the dreams that scared me most, seem possible. The greatest story I will ever tell is the one I am making with you.
About the Author
Photo by Karen Osborne
Ashley Blooms has published short fiction in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Shimmer, among others, and her essay “Fire in My Bones” appeared in The Oxford American. Ashley is a graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop and the Tin House Winter Workshop and received her MFA as a John and Renée Grisham Fellow from the University of Mississippi. She was raised in Cutshin, Kentucky, and now lives in Berea, Kentucky. Visit her online at ashleyblooms.com.
Thank you for reading this Sourcebooks eBook!
Join our mailing list to stay in the know and receive special offers and bonus content on your favorite books and authors!
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Books. Change. Lives.
Every Bone a Prayer Page 30
