A friend who keeps up with both this and my other, YA-based blog asked me rather crossly, “How come you don’t mention that your novel Headlong was reviewed by the New Yorker online this week?  Not relevant, or what?” Well, yeah, tangentially: and I do briefly mention Under the Poppy in the interview.  Where the actual relevance occurs (besides, OK, the byline) is in the “Tool Bench” featurette, where I share my love of paper scraps, and the scraps in question are actual, in-use Garden Path notes.  So I guess my friend is right.  So here it is.

Which does beg a larger question – is it self-segregating, or just keeping the lanes clear, when you write two different kinds of books, and, what? Don’t cross the streams?  What makes Under the Poppy/Garden Path an adult novel, or a novel for adults, or however non-porn way you want to phrase it, is not so much the setting (brothel; war) or even the sex, but the major emotional concerns within: what is it to be faithful?  What is it to stay true to what you do, and who (and how) you desire, when the wind blows very hard indeed?  To me, these questions are not inappropriate for younger people so much as they are premature; the arc of a life is very different when seen from its rising, or its apogee.  And passion is a very different landscape when you’re fifteen, or you’re thirty, whether that passion is for a person, a calling, or both.

That said, the right book for any reader is the book that speaks most eloquently and directly to that reader.  So read away, those for whom the Poppy and its regulars, and the Garden Path‘s inhabitants, speak true. The writer is probably the last person who should make these kinds of judgments anyway!