The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers by Laury A. Egan Book Tour, & Guest Post!

Channeling Virginia Woolf
A Guest Post by Laury A. Egan

Virginia Woolf may have been whispering in my ear when I wrote The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers, two linked novellas, though at first, her voice was only noticeable in the Mrs. Dalloway-style beginning of The Black Leopard’s Kiss. But by the time the work was complete, I realized Woolf’s Orlando had also subtly influenced both novellas. Whether her novel is an example of magical realism (as my book is), I can’t say, however I admit to being one of many authors who have been inspired by Woolf’s style and interiority.

From the quiet start, I was off and running: speeding the pace, tangling time and memory, and creating a fictional writer, Sidonie Ross, who is driven to uncover painful truths embedded in early traumas and to shine light on dark parts of her childhood. In the first novella, she is sixty- four, and in the second, she is seventy, with regressions to earlier periods sprinkled throughout.

When in her older manifestations, Sidonie deals with challenges to her mental clarity and growing physical impairments, incorporating themes about aging and viewing one’s lengthening past while realizing the future is shortening. Being a single woman without family, which I’m also grappling with, is another subject of the book, as is how a creative child handles solitariness and feeling different from her peers.

In addition to channeling Virginia Woolf, did I also channel present-day and younger versions of myself? Perhaps the book’s epigraph, from Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, is a subtle signal: “…the child is never far to seek in the author.” And then there is the cover illustration, a dual portrait of me painted by my mother when I was almost twelve. Hmm. Still, most of the scenes and characters in the two novellas are fictitious.

Of my thirteen published books, The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers is the most imaginative and by far the strangest. Readers: lose your preconceived expectations about plot structure and plunge into these interwoven narratives. Enjoy!