The untold origin story of Frankenstein that inspired "Love & Other Monsters"

You know, I think about, you know, the singer Nick Cave writes that um as we grow older, loss becomes the primary condition of living. And it doesn't mean that we're sort of hopeless and griefstricken. It just means that we carry this deeper understanding of what it means to be human. And I think because both Frankenstein and Love and Other Monsters are both novels about that mix of wonder and loss baked into being a person, that's really what I carry around with me and think about a lot. Hello everyone. Welcome to GBH's Beyond the Page with Emily Franklin. Emily Franklin is the best-selling author of 25 books. Her newest novel, Love and Other Monsters, which we're all here for, is historical fiction told from the perspective of Cla Claremont, Mary Shel's forgotten stepsister, who is integral to the creation of Frankenstein. So without further ado, please welcome to Beyond the Page with Emily Franklin. >> Hi everyone. Thanks Ben and thanks GBH for hosting me and thanks to all of you for being here. >> So I'm just going to launch into some questions because we actually don't have so much time and then we have some audience um some audience questions coming in too. Um we've spoken a lot about uh in in our own time. we uh cross paths in south coast Massachusetts about um the writing life and uh writing historical fiction which we both do. I always think when you're engaging in historical fiction, you are it's almost like you're writing up a contract, an invisible, unwritten contract really with the reader that a few of those things they're about to few of the aspects of this person's life that they're about to engage in um are true. And it's like this unwritten contract. If you're writing about a couple that goes on the Titanic, that ship ship better sink by the end of that novel, you know. Um, and so I was wondering in this book, what were sort of the contractual items? Where were the facts that anchored this story that you wanted to play around with in the world of fiction? >> Yeah. I mean, um, so I'll just say this, the the barest facts for the beginning that I started with, the simple truth. Um, because the truth in for me in my historical fiction, truth ends up being really important. The facts are really important. It takes years of research for me to write these novels. Um, but the the simple truth is that what I started with was the summer of 1816, which later became known as the year without summer. A group of now celebrity writers gathered on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. And this was a summer that was unlike any other summer. And it was very dark and stormy and cold. And in these unusual um months, this group of artists create these very lasting works of art. Frankenstein, the modern vampire, and lots of that romantic era poetry that's still read and widely taught today. But the thing about truth at least um what I'm asking readers to consider in love and other monsters and part of what I'm examining in this particular novel is the fact that even the barest truth um is often very complicated. So lots of different >> what was the spark that set this book in motion? What was your personal um encounter with those set of facts? Yeah. So, um, in 2009, so quite many years ago, um, I read an op-ed in the New York Times written by somebody who many people have now heard of or knew knew of then, Gearmo del Toro, who of course has his new Frankenstein adaptation that was out this past year. And I've started this book tour and people think because of the timing of Love and Other Monsters sort of coinciding with the film that somehow GMO del Toro and I are good friends. We are not. we do not know each other, but um I read his op-ed in the Times and it was called Why Vampires Never Die. And he was really focused on the mythical monsters that were created that summer in 1816. And in the op-ed, he talks about Mary Shelley. He talks about her fiance Percy Shelley, uh celebrity Lord Byron, who is there and Lord Byron's personal physician, John Polydori. And so I was really interested in the setting and the weather and the art that was created. And so I went and I immediately wanted to read more and immediately came upon the fact that there was somebody else there that summer. And that some that somebody was Claire Claremont and she was um actually the person who brought them all together and she was integral to the group. She was intimately connected to everybody there. And this is not really a spoiler because you find it out on the back of the book, but she was Lord Byron's lover in addition to being um Mary Shel's stepsister. And it it's critical also to note that she is um the gobetween in Mary and Shel's marriage. And we know that she's there and this is very well documented. And yet when I went to my 1831 edition of Frankenstein, which is really like the school edition that you know certainly that I read in high school, there's a preface that Mary Shelley writes that the publisher asked her to write. They said, "Can you explain the origin of how you came to write Frankenstein?" So Mary Shelley tells this origin story about how on a dark and stormy, and I will add steamy night, um, Lord Byron challenges everybody to write a scary story. But Mary Shelley goes on to say there were four of us there that summer. And she lists herself and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polydori. So why would Mary Shelley write Claire, her own stepsister, out of the story? And that was really the starting point for Love and Other Monsters. You know, very quickly, um, in my research, I I knew that Claire had left behind real journals, but the journal from 1816 does not exist. And so, um, one thing that I was examining in this book was who might have taken that journal because we know she she wrote that summer and and who might have destroyed or or stolen that journal and why. >> How what is your personal what is how do you feel about Frankenstein and this book and how it seems to it's a difficult thing to tease out Mary Shel and Frankenstein their sort of massive gravitational pull from this story. I think this when when it could almost be like this that Love and Other Monsters is people might think it's about Frankenstein or Mary Shel, but it's about this other person and it's the non Frankenstein story. I mean, do you feel like you're trying to give her sister a fair chance at the narrative or are you frustrated with the size of the Frankenstein story and Mary Shelly or I mean, it's almost impossible to separate them. I mean, >> yeah. Well, that I mean I think that's my point is I think without Claire I don't think Frankenstein exists. Um not only because Cla is the person who brought them all together that summer, but because um you know Claire and Mary have a very um complicated sibling relationship. They are close and competitive the way that sometimes sisters are. And Claire was really raised the way a lot of girls were and I think still are, which is to really be agreeable. And um she winds up being manipulated and used although I think to what extent even she doesn't quite grasp at the time and Mary really needs Claire. um you come to learn about the sort of dynamics of their relationship and Mary really needs her but she also really resents Claire and I think um Mary in some ways feels that she has um created Claire and she feels a certain degree of ownership over her sister and she really doesn't like when Claire begins to have a life of her own which sounds familiar because that's Frankenstein um you know and it's also parenting and it's also art when make something, it isn't ours anymore. And so I I'm not sure that I can extract Claire from Frankenstein. And I'm not and and this novel really is sort of that untold origin story of how even maybe Mary's brain was mushing all of these facts together and this complicated love and turning it into her own fiction. >> You know, a fact that that people might skip over might is may be hard to understand for modern audience. And you just said how girls were raised is do you want to talk about how young these people were? >> Oh gosh, they were so young and it's hard to keep a hold of that as maybe when people read the novel. I just had one reader write to me saying that she had to just keep reminding herself that Claire is 17 at the beginning of the novel, then she turns 18, Mary is 18 and 19. Um, Polydori is a 20-year-old physician. He's sort of a medical prodigy. and Shelley is Percy Shel is 23 and Lord Byron is the wise old man at 28. So these are young sort of hot celebrity writers and they're all together and they're all just so young um but really experiencing so much of life at the same time during this extraordinary summer. >> Do you think I've gone totally off my list of questions now but it is too interesting. Do you do you think there is some you think it's a teenager is writing in their time and able to um I mean 18 19 years old 20 years old these are these that's an incredibly young person today who we wouldn't expect to write a massive work of um literary genius. Um, how did that I mean as you're going through the journals, do you have any explanations for has our time changed so much? Has expectations changed so much? Like what what >> how we think I think part of it is um they had time, you know, they had fewer there were fewer distractions. I mean, Mary has a a baby and Claire's helping with her baby. But in general, these were artists who were encouraged to be artists and to write and to sit and read and they kept lists of all the things that they read, all the books they read that summer, all of the books that were in the library of the villa that Byron rents, which is this very fancy villa, Diodati, where they're all together and they're just spending hours and hours reading and writing and discussing literature. um the way we sort of picture, you know, somebody just sitting with a quill and paper and having just so much time to sit and and of course Claire in this moment is not one of these extraordinary writers. She's not considered to be part of their group even though she is in their group. They keep giving her all of these sort of tasks to go do because she's a mere mortal. So they keep having her walk to the mail carriage or go she starts to learn to forage for food because food is so scarce that summer. But it is I think um people were able to create extraordinary works also with the time afforded to them. The same way that some writers that we both know um are very productive when they go to writing residencies um because they just have fewer life life and household and job distractions. I know. I love the goose quill pens in this book and the the ink that's on their fingertips and it's really uh we were talking about it um some point how uh physical writing seems in the early 19th century almost like painting that's a physical activity. It's not a computer screenbased activity. You're working with materials. You're working with bird feathers and ink to create something >> and you're actually getting stained like your your your hands, your fingers, your arm from enviable in some way. >> Yeah, it just feels indelible. >> What is your writing day like? What is your writing process like? Are you um ha and have you tried to write a chapter with a goosequil pen? >> I I have I was a slightly you know odd teenager and I did have a fascination with fountain pens and I still love to write with a fountain pen. Um I have tried to write with a a quill. Um I will not be writing a a long book with that. that would take very very very many um hours that I don't have. Um but my writing sort of day starts very early. Um I go to bed really really early like toddler early and I wake up really early. Um >> you go to bed. >> I mean everyone after this is over I'll be going to bed. >> Okay. Yeah. >> No, I go to bed around 8:30 or 9 and I wake >> Yeah. It's early and I wake up a very liberal parent. Yeah. Who's >> Yeah. You know, I Yes. Really lights off around 8:30 and I wake up at five and um my writing um the way that I my brain works I have a very big cup of coffee and I I read a chapter of the book that I'm reading, not that I'm writing, but somebody else's book. And then I go for a run. And it's on that run that my brain starts to sort of open up and find words. And it's very meditative, but usually ideas are starting to come to me. And if I'm in the middle of a project, um that's when these sort of voices will start to um make themselves known and I sometimes have to take out my phone and dictate. And then I come back and you know, I have four kids so I trained myself to sort of write during school hours. Certainly when I'm when I had four kids that were eight and under with no child care, it was much more catches catch can, like writing during nap time. Um but now I have more time and but I still keep to this sort of school schedule and um by the by mid- late afternoon my brain is ready to not be writing. >> Are you always writing on the computer? Did you say >> I write a lot on the computer? Um I write um in lots of different genres and I find that often when I'm writing poetry I am writing with um paper and pen and it it's more more uh portable somehow. >> Um are you outlining for novels? Are you writing chapter by chapter? And then I will smuggle another question in there. Do you have a favorite chapter or passage that you wrote that you remember from Love and Other Monsters? Um, you know, I outline a bit. Um, there are novels that I've written where I've done a real bullet point outline. Um, it's always great when that happens because then, you know, you sit down and you know exactly what you're supposed to write that day. But, um, this novel was unlike any other novel that I've written. Um, it came out, um, just in in floods. And this is after years and years of research, I have never felt more um haunted by characters and more um more in demand by characters. I mean, I was getting woken up in the night by them and my brain was just filled with these voices. Um and originally I thought this book might be narrated by multiple points of view. you know, a chapter from Byron and a chapter from Mary, but every time I sat down to write, Claire was coming out on the page and making herself known. And um initially I kept trying to control the narrative and trying to write the book the way I had written maybe The Lioness of Boston and impose a certain structure on it and it was kind of a fraught experience and it was much less enjoyable. And one day I just thought, you know what? if I just let this be sort of what Claire wanted it to be. And as soon as I did that, it was exciting and it was so fun and it just came rushing out. And there was a mix of I knew there were plot points that I needed to to hit and I knew that there was there were stuff that I uncovered in my research that I had to get in there, but in terms of how it came out, you know, the way that I tend to research is I I know I work so hard and I think a lot about stuff and so by the time it makes its way onto the page, it's sort of synthesized and I was weaving together all of these facts and um you know, the funny thing is I'll get to your question about the sort of um line or scene that I I think about a lot. Um the first line of the book um is it was the first line of the book which is not always right. Sometimes you write the first line and then you scrap it completely and you you just need to get into the narrative. Sometimes what you write first becomes the middle of the book. This first line um was really the beginning of the book. And um you know Claire is 80 years old at the beginning of Love and Other Monsters. That's how the book is structured like Lionus of Boston. And um and she's looking back on the summer that she was 18 that you know and and this is the summer of 1816. And um I was asked in a a radio interview recently why I chose to frame it that way. And um I really thought a lot about that sort of that Kirkagard idea of life being lived forward but understood backwards. And so Claire for Claire the first line of the the novel itself is all love stories are ghost stories waiting to happen. And I think about that a lot um because it's true for the characters in the book but it's also true for all of us. you know, everybody that we love will become a ghost of memory. And you know, I I lost my literary agent um right right before this novel was published and we worked on this book together. And so he is also one of those ghosts of memory. And um >> yeah, and so you know, I think about you the singer Nick Cave writes that um as we grow older, loss becomes the primary condition of living. And it doesn't mean that we're sort of hopeless and griefstricken. It just means that we carry this deeper understanding of what it means to be human. And I think because both Frankenstein and Love and Other Monsters are both novels about that mix of wonder and loss baked into being a person, that's really what I carry around with me and think about a lot. >> Um, is there a question you wish people asked you about your work, but they never do? Um, I feel like I've gotten a lot of good questions. Um, you know, one question that that comes up sometimes is, um, you know, how how does poetry sort of factor into my, you know, fiction writing, my pros writing. And it's funny because I started off life as a poet. My first, uh, the first pieces I ever published were poems all the way back in high school in the Globe and other places. Um, and poetry is really the the foundation for everything that I write, whether it's a screenplay or historical fiction. Um, I think that for me, poetry is the best teacher for um, fiction writing. It really teaches how to take these very big ideas and winnow them down into a very small space, how to be a good editor. You know, line breaks teach you about how to sort of create tension and make sort of want to pull you to the next line or the next page. And so everything that I write is really um structured and scaffolded by poetry. And um you know I think Ada Leone the poet says that um noticing is the religion of the poets and I think that that is something that I practice on a daily basis and just being very aware and try to be very present and notice and so maybe a question is is just about my poetry. Yeah, there's a there's a lot of genres that you hit. Did you ever consider turning this into a non-fiction book? >> No. Um I would not want to People ask me that with The Lionus of Boston, too. Um I I have this I I know how to write. Um but and I like to research, but um I also love to make things up and that is generally frowned upon in the um non-fiction world. So I because also, you know, it's not that I'm making up, you know, again, the Titanic isn't going to the moon at the end of this. This is sort of the story and and it's really based on so much truth and so much research, but we don't have the transcripts, for example, between Mary and Claire or between Byron and Clare. We know what happened from the surviving letters, from the surviving journals, not just hers, but Byron's letters and Polydori's journal, um Mary's journals, all this stuff exists. There's so much um academic work about these people. So, um I never wanted to write anything non-fiction about this, but um it's certainly fun writing essays about it because there's there's so much current there's so many current events and issues that are well um in place in 1816. So, you've got sort of celebrity culture um being looked at. They're being followed around by the paparazzi of the era. You know, Dr. John Polydori is paid £500, which is around $80,000 in today's currency, to write gossip pages back to London reporting on Byron. You know, there's a lot of abuse of power in this. So, we're seeing that unfortunately um in the news all the time still. And the idea of complicity is still in here. And there's also this is the time of Jane Austin. It's 1816, so it's the Regency era. and their carriages and corsets and so many cups of tea and we're still fascinated with Jane Austin and this is sort of more of a um a little bit of a darker Jane Austin look I guess. >> Yeah. Can I double click on something that you said which is you like to make things up. I mean up your answer that seemed to be the the only part that really was about turning this into fiction. All the other stuff you mentioned was is true is non-fiction and you know authors like David Grant or Nathaniel Philick a b you know yourself you know non-fiction authors can turn stories keeping to the truth with um make them into enormous narrative adventures. So what what is have you what part of it is it that you want to mess with the story a little bit? Is that you're more interested through with the emotions? Is it more interested in your the hidden parts that you can never discover by fact? Why? >> Yeah. a little bit of those. Yeah, I love being >> Go ahead. >> I love being a literary detective. So, we have these facts, but then I can triangulate from those and come up with um my understanding of the truth and then I can sort of say this is my understanding of what actually happened here. Is it possible that this is real that I've discovered? And then can I now do some more research and find other people whose views and research might support that? You know, for example, Mark Twain, for example, Fiona Samson, who's a, you know, Mary Shel expert. So, you know, coming up with sort of um these un untapped parts of the story. And so, part of it is I'd like to be a literary detective and part of it is um really wanting to lean into the description. And if and if um I want to describe a meal or a scene in a particular way um and we don't know what the setting was in particular um what the we don't know what the table looked like where they were having all these dinners. I can look up and I can make a menu from what people might have been eating at that time but I can't say for sure that this is exactly what they ate. So, if I were writing non-fiction, I would really be beholden to um a particular menu and I want to be able to make up the menu. >> Yeah. Yeah. It seems more more fun and um adds a lot of texture and atmosphere to a story. I know I think it was I just brought up Nathaniel Filbrick, but I think he had said once sometimes it takes a month to write a single sentence in non-fiction, especially if you're writing about the deep past. I mean, you're working on other things, but it will take so long to verify every word. Um, are there other, speaking of fun, are there other creative activities um that uh assist your novel bookmaking mind and process? >> Absolutely. Um, well, you know, so because of the extraordinary weather in this book, as I said, Claire becomes a forager. She learns about food and cooking largely from the the books in the library, but also from the cook in the villa who is Elsa. And for people who liked Mr. Valentine in in the Lionus of Boston, he was sort of a favorite character for some people, she is sort of the Mr. Valentine of this novel. She's Cla's friend on the page. And so I got to write a lot about food. And I um in an earlier iteration of my life was a was a cook. And so I do write a lot about food and I enjoy cooking very much, but it's a lot of it comes from my garden. So I grew up in my grandmother's garden and do my own pickling and canning and preserving and all of that stuff and was just out there today. I had a rare morning off and I just planted tons of seeds and perennials and um so I find it both meditative and really exciting. And so yes, that is a big joy for me. Oh, that's so that must be so satisfying to be able to fold that um into your work directly, too. >> Absolutely. Very fun. >> Um let me see the the um the one of the most loved questions is um if Oh, I do like this question. It says, "If Claire's journals were lost, how do you begin to work through the story?" >> Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so some of Claire's letters still survive, so I could find out what her voice really sounded like um and and the the manner in which she wrote. She was a beautiful writer. And um and then the blessing for me is um you know there were enough of her journals that survived from other years that I could sort of glean some information about again just about her character, some of her humor. She was quite funny. Um but then um with reading the work um from the other people that survived was how so I can sort of again sort of I was using the word triangulate if Mary is talking about a particular day and Byron is talking about a particular day and it's the same day and they're both referencing Claire. I have a pretty good idea of what happened on that day. But I can then start to use my imagination and say, "Okay, well, this is Mary's view of Claire and maybe is colored by Mary's perspective and this is Byron's view of Clare." And again, he had a particular lens for her or Shelley, the same thing. And I can come up with like what what might Clare have been feeling at that time, you know? And part of it was again, we know these details. We know that Claire was 17 in March of 1816, and she writes a letter to the most famous man really in all of Europe at that point. Everybody is obsessed with Byron. They have Byron mania it's called. He can't walk down the street without being mobbed. He's sort of like, you know, the Beatles being rushed at, you know. And she writes a letter to him and he was no stranger to receiving fan mail. But this time it was different. There was something in Claire's words and the way that she wrote that really touched him. And it was different because he wrote back and they meet and it's really electric. And so, um, we have all of this documented and so then I can really I know when and where they met and then I can imagine that scene. So, I don't need Claire's journal to tell me all of those things. I have lots of other ways of finding out certain times and place and then I get to use my real writerly imagination of, you know, what did the inside of the Drury Theater in London, you know, I I can look up and actually find out what it looked like inside, but how am I going to describe that? and what would it be like to be 17 and meeting the biggest celebrity um ever and being so excited about that and also coming from a position where Claire was in her own words young and vain and poor and had no agency. The only home she had at that point was with Mary Shelley and her uh fiance Percy Shelley. And again, it was a very complicated relationship. Mary really pushed Clare towards Percy in ways that ended up being sort of disastrous for everybody. And so it's a an interesting amount of information to have and then imagination to get to use. >> Um did you travel to any of the places you just mentioned? Um some of the place did you actually travel to any of the wonderful places that you um that the story is set? >> Yeah. So um maybe in my bio probably people heard I grew up um half in the UK. So I've spent so much time there. Um I did not need to go to Pimlo to know how to describe Pimlo at this point. But what was great was being able to do lots of the research, which I love, and pull up street maps of what shops were were available, and the actual address where they they rented this house at that point in Pimlo. And being able to pull up the actual exterior of Byron's um house in London at the time, where Claire is sort of going to visit him. And I I could look at that. that I found the real estate listing from that which is actually hilarious um because at one point it had been for sale. So I did I did get to to use um my knowledge of the UK pretty well. And then I've been I had been to um Lake Geneva and Switzerland, but I didn't go back for this time um partly because of um pandemic stuff and partly because I was touring for the Lionus of Boston. So I I wouldn't have been able to go there. >> Yeah. When did you start this book? you were telling me it was or >> Well, I mean, I I had the idea for it in in 2009 and then just slowly chipped away at it and then was writing it um as soon as I turned I mean a little bit here and there here and there and research and different lines that I would sort of set aside and then once I turned in the lioness of Boston I I tend to turn in a book and very quickly start the next one. >> Yeah. Um what book are you currently reading as part of your routine, your morning routine? Oh. Um, I am not I'm not reading um a novel right now. I'm reading Small Town Girls by Jane Anne Phillips because I will be in conversation with her at the end of May. And so I'm reading her memoir and um interspersing that with um the collected uh poems of um James Wright, who I like to go back to at this time of year because he writes so well about nature. >> Right. Um, somebody just mentions how much they loved Lionus of Boston. How did your research journey differ um with both books? >> Um, there there's actually sort of a similar process for me in that I I research very very widely. So I always want to know sort of um the the wide lens for this book and for Lionus. You know, what's the artistic background? what's happening in the arts, what's happening politically, what's happening um in in current events, and really get a feel for the landscape of the world that I'm I'm writing in. Not just the physical landscape, but the emotional landscape. Um what is it like for women at that time for artists, for people who are are different in some other way? Um and then the actual characters themselves. So, what do I know about Byron? What do I know about Claire? Sort of Mary's history and sort of their own timelines. Um but then I I um allow myself to go down these rabbit holes of research which um is really helpful for me because that's where scenes start to suggest themselves. So um we were talking about quills and it was during one of you know a very very big deep rabbit hole maybe more like a rabbit warren that I sort of stumbled into about the stationery and the supplies because you can't just say um Byron sat down to write okay what is he writing with? Are pens invented? if it's a quill, what kind of quill? Does it have a metal tip? Is he writing with a glass pen? You know, what are all these? What does it look like? And so then I needed to research quills. And it turns out, you know, that quills are left and right-handed. And different quills were more or less um expensive. Byron can afford Crow quills, which are very, very fine or swan and Claire cannot. So um it's always a mix of finding out um these very big sort of um movements like at this time again because of the the weather phenomena there was a global climate disaster just you know sort of sounds familiar and it was so cold that um you know everybody was was freezing and so there was no there were there was crop failure nothing to feed the cattle and so Claire is learning how to forage for food. So, I'm researching both the political uprising that's happening with these blood and bread riots at the time and bread being made out of sawdust in Germany, but also then thinking, how does this affect Claire? What is she reading in the library? Is she reading the books that are in the library, teaching her about um the classification of herbs and plants and vegetables, and Elsa is teaching her how to forage? And she's finding her purpose in this world of artists, you know. So, I'm researching all of this stuff. and coming up with um great stuff that I can use um in the book that you know it's the year that the stethoscope is invented and the metronome. Um but I'm also aware that I'm not trying to something that I was very aware of with the Lionus of Boston and with this is I don't want to just info dump and just put all my research on the page. I find that really distracting when I'm reading and it sort of pulls me right out of a novel if I can see the mechanations of research. So I want it to feel very organic to the story. And so that um you're you might be learning as you're reading but not in an obvious way. And if it's just interesting to me, you know, at one point with the Lionus of Boston, I had written 10 pages on the history of Boston street lamps in 1861. And I thought, you know, who wants to read that? No one. And so then I sort of cut it and so it's just one sentence describing accurately, I hope, um a street lamp in 1861. But, you know, I don't want to put um the metronome and um the stethoscope into this book unless it has a reason to be in there. But, of course, with Dr. John Polydori carrying a new invention, the stethoscope with him to take care of Lord Byron and Claire taking the stethoscope and trying it on herself and putting it to Lord Byron's heart. Lord Byron has rejected her at this point and saying, "I think this is broken for he has no heartbeat." you know, those kinds of things where it's like a cutting funny scene. It's a use. It's useful to have that um comfort with what I've researched. >> I love that in historical fiction how you can look at everyday objects a new that were maybe new inventions. I read somewhere >> I like think about like the photograph for you like the records, you know, like all of those. I mean, I think the late 1700s or early 1800s is apparently the last time that the average person in Europe uh understood everything that they encountered in the day. I mean, just think about how we're using I don't know how a radio works, you know, like >> Right. Right. Right. >> It was so long ago. Yeah. Um so, how did you come up with uh the title um Love and Other Monsters? And I'll cut that question in two. How did you when did it strike you? And when did it strike you that that should be the title? >> Um, you know, um, a while ago. I don't I know I don't know exactly when. Um, but I knew that there were two parts to this, right? There's there's this intense love between Claire and Mary. between Mary and Shelly, Shellyley and Claire, Byron and and Claire. There's so much love between everybody. And um but it's really complicated. None of this is really simple love. Um and there there's also the love of making art >> and um and sharing that art. And that at the same time, there were these monsters that were being created. And there were the monsters being created on the page. Frankenstein, the modern vampire is created that summer. You know, the there was a vampire before this summer, sort of an ugly, hunched creature with claws, but the sort of rich, sexy, alluring vampire we think of when we think of a vampire is actually based on Byron. And that was created that summer. And so there were these mythical monsters. Um, but then there were the monster of making art. How hard it is for people to really make art and and get it out there and be disciplined and um share it and then be brave enough to share it and let go of it. But then very clearly there's also the monsters who are walking um on the earth and those are without spoilers um a a number of different people in this book. And so I wanted to have both of that. I always wanted to have the sort of love and and monster element happening and especially it's it has its place in the Gothic tradition. So um there is that element of of monstrosity and hunt. >> Yeah. Or the allimportant word that the entire title hinges on love and other monsters implying that love is perhaps a monster. I mean was that >> it can be. Yes. And I think for Claire it really is. And I think um for Shel it is it really is for all of them in different ways. >> Yes. And that's why there's that giant amperand on the on the cover. >> Yeah. Um what is there? Let me get this. Is there any other art that helped inspire this book? Um music that you listened to or visual art that you um came across while you were writing it? Anything that helped you along? Um there are there are a couple of pictures of Diodati the villa um including one that somebody has painted um at night and that was really great because I could see these historic and actually you can take a little video tour of Diodati as it stands today. Um, but it was really great to see the contrast between what it looked like in the day and what it looked like at night because Byron was up at all hours and um, a lot of people were up with him at 3:00 in the morning and he kept a very strange schedule. So, that was very exciting. But I always when I'm writing I I cannot I can write anywhere. I can sit in a cafe. I can sit at my in my my kitchen tables where I most often write. Um, but I cannot listen to music when I write except for classical music because I end up being so distracted by the words and I love to sing. So I end up singing. Um, and so I don't listen to music like that while I'm writing. But when I'm running, I listen to music all the time. And it's really like a treat for my brain. And so I actually made a Love and Other Monsters Spotify playlist. And so most of the songs that are influential for me in terms of getting in a certain headsp space or thinking about something are on that playlist. So if people are curious, you can go to Spotify and find it. But um yeah, so there there are definitely some songs that that make their way into there. >> Cool. Um this is not on the Q&A list, but a question for you um that I have. Uh did have you were you are you a fan of Byron's writing? because I have tried to read Lord Byron. >> Yeah. You know, it's not um I think his reputation might be more um exciting than some of his work. I mean, some of his work is has stood the test of time, I guess, but um there's actually a a a poem by Richard Armore called Survey of the Romantic Poets. And um I'll just I can I'll read it to you. It's just >> right >> says Werdsworth who was fairly mild had an illegitimate child. Cridge almost all his life yearned for someone not his wife. Shelley an immoral elf caused his wife to drown herself. Byron who was most impestuous went the limit was incestuous. Keats who might have had the gumption was affected by consumption. Rarely did the great romantics equal in their verse their antics. And so sometimes I think that um I don't know what would be published today, but at the time, you know, this was really groundbreaking work and certainly the idea of being captivated by nature and and and love and being able to um express it was really, you know, formidable and exciting at the time. But of course, >> I'm sure there's somebody in an English department somewhere shrieking, but uh I uh it is so flowery and so hard to read that writing and think that people were moved to um such powerful emotion. I mean, words, who doesn't love Wordsworth? But Lord Byron's writing, it's pretty tricky. It's like hard to and you're right, his life and what you uncover is so raw and weird and uh far more bizarre and on the edge than than his writing is. I wonder if it's like one of those things when you see a movie from 20 years ago and all the CGI looks so fake. If if cultures just moved forward a little bit and and what we expect of real emotions versus flowery, over-the-top, hyperbolic emotions has moved so far into um realism that it just doesn't register anymore. But I wondered if you read the the poetry while you were >> Oh, I did. I had I had to go back and reread their poetry, especially because there were poems that, you know, Lord Byron wrote for Claire. There were poems that um Percy Shelley wrote for Claire and that Mary Shelley later edited to remove Claire's initials from the dedication or remove mention of her name. So there was a lot of again we're going back to that truth you asked at the beginning of our conversation which is a lot of the truth was attempted to be edited out. And so part of what I was doing was trying to uncover that and say, "Wait a second, just because you cross out somebody's initial doesn't change, you know, the dedication or the story behind it." So what was the story behind it? You know, and so I'm really trying to to get at a lot of that. >> Um there's a smattering of questions that all touch on publishing a novel, your your journey into a writing life. Um do you want to talk about uh in in any way you see fit how your journey into um publishing books, how you publish your first novel, how you find the writing life, how you find um uh inspiration for your next book? Just the >> Yeah. >> Um again, how I find inspiration for the next book is what I was saying about um the the um importance of noticing and being present and just taking things in. So, um, for me, I don't walk and look at my phone. Um, I just walk and and be or if I'm standing in line somewhere, I try really hard just to stand in line and listen to people and talk to people and notice um because ideas really are everywhere. And I feel that we're losing a little bit of this human connection and our ability to be um bored and also be present and make conversation. And you know, um, my husband and I, we have the two very, very large dogs and we walk them every morning and we walk by these kids waiting for the school bus and they are all head down looking at their phone and then there's like one kid and she just stands there and she's looking around and I think, "Oh, I I wonder if you're the writer." Because, you know, that's that's what you're doing. You're you're you're looking around and you're noticing. And so that's where my ideas come from. my my publishing path, you know, um again, I started off life as a poet. I I went to grad school and um wrote uh fiction there as well as screenplays. And um my my a lot of my poems were narrative poems. So, I gave myself a task to see if I could write some short stories based on my own poetry, starting with the same first line and ending with the same last line. That became a story collection. um my my first novel was published and um I sort of abandoned poetry for a long while and then um back in 2021 my first poetry collection was actually finally published. So it felt like a coming full circle in some ways and I just finished a second poetry collection. Um and the book actually that comes out after this is done um that comes out in in I think uh spring of 2028 and it is called the side effects of happiness and it is uh short stories told um it's sort of basically the pit meets George Saunders. So it's um medical short stories told from the points of view of women in medicine. And so, um, I'm always writing, um, >> except when I'm not writing, except when I'm with my my my kids or or, um, in my garden. Um, so >> like what you said about that that um, girl on the side of the road, I as as I was reading this book, I I thought if iPhones were around in the 18s, no way Frankenstein would have ever been written. Not because of who teenagers are, but just the it it it would be impossible. Um, these >> just there's too much other stuff. >> Too much other stuff. Um, did your feelings about Mary Shel and I'll expand this to all your characters change in the process of writing this book? Did you enter the idea? Yeah, go ahead. >> Yes, they did. They changed from the beginning um until the end. And um like Claire, I think I have complicated feelings about them. And um there are parts of all of these characters that I really admire and feel like I have a much better understanding of. And at the same time um I think just like we're seeing um in the news now, you know, I I think part of what this novel is asking is like, you know, the same question that we wrestle with like can we love art created by people who maybe don't act like great people? um you know people who behave really admirably in the political realm or the artistic realm but then treat the people in front of them pretty poorly. So it gives it really provided um a different a different lens for each of these characters and within their their circumstances. I still have great fondness for all of them and um at the same time it's it's a complicated love. I feel like that was a very political uh response. That was Did you um did did you end up having more or less sympathy for for Mary Shelley? >> Oh, um I don't think that my my sympathy level changed, but my understanding of her changed and um some of the um Yeah, I think I think Claire paid the price for a lot of people'sions. >> That's so interesting. Um, okay. So, we're going to wrap up soon. Um, but we like to end Beyond the Page with one final question that every guest is asked. If you were to share your top three books that made you quote unquote, what would they be? They don't have to be literary masterpieces. They could be guilty pleasures, childhood favorites. Three books that stuck. >> They would all just probably be childhood books because I was read to a lot as a kid and I read a lot as a kid. And so I would start with um The 14 Bears in Winter and Summer, which um is by Evelyn Scott. I think it's out of print, but it's about a large bear family and it just has their daily life together in in two different seasons. And I I just read that book so so many times. Um tons of descriptions and and character. Um and then there was a a chapter book that I read over and over again called Thimble Summer. It's by Elizabeth Enright, and that has stuck with me for years and years. Each chapter is almost like a a short story and a lot of um setting and um humor and um real beautiful writing. And then um I probably something like Cars and Trucks and things that go the world of Richard Scary >> was important to me growing up and I I read Richard Scary to all four of my kids and um yeah, so I'm I'm going to say that and then just and then I know this is four but then just lots and lots of poetry. So The Richard Scary one. That's a good one. And it it makes sense you'd be a historical fiction writer because it is a whole world that you enter when you enter. >> Absolutely. Like what do people do all day? I guess they write with quilts. >> That's such a great answer. Um well, thank you so much, Emily. We're at the end of Beyond the Page. Um I want to thank Emily for this thoughtful and exciting conversation and for all of you for joining this talk. Um have a great night. Thanks for attending. >> Thank you all so much.