A Guest Post by Laury A. Egan, author of “The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers”

Interested in reading a very strange book? Here are some thoughts about The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers:

As I wrote these two linked novellas, Virginia Woolf may have been perched on my shoulder, suggesting the Orlando-esque plots and the first novella’s Mrs. Dalloway-style beginning. From there, I was off and running: increasing pace, tangling time and memory, and mixing an imaginary writer’s attempts to uncover painful truths embedded in early traumas with her current narrative as she ages and deals with challenges to her mental clarity. Although I had modestly incorporated magical realism once before, in The Swimmer, for this book, I waded deeper into the waters of this literary genre.

Many people in their mid sixties and early seventies love to remember the good times that happened during their childhood and teenage years, but often they become impaled on emotional thorns that unexpectedly surface: disappointments, rejections, betrayals; the loves lost and other distressing experiences they have tried to forget. In this project, I wanted to delve into those youthful periods but also to focus on aging—how a woman faces fears of being alone without family or close friends, the paucity of new memories being created, and the physical discomfort that sets in and narrows the range of her life. In other words, to create portraits of a solitary, creative girl and also the solitary, accomplished author she became.

Are any parts of the novellas autobiographical? The house is based on my childhood home, and a few scenes are connected to my personal history, but they have been stretched and twisted into nearly unrecognizable forms. However, as a touch of a writer’s humor, the cover illustration is a painting of me done by my mother when I was almost twelve. So, perhaps the book’s epigraph may reveal the ultimate truth: “…the child is never far to seek in the author.”—Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

I invite readers to let loose any preconceived expectations they may have concerning plot structure and to plunge into these interwoven narratives. Of my twelve published books, this one is the most imaginative and was the most fascinating to write.

The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers is available in paperback or ebook at Amazon: https://mybook.to/tblktwr. Published on November 18, 2023 by Spectrum Books, UK. Author’s website: www.lauryaegan.com