Title: Sideshow
Author: Amy Stilgenbauer
Genre: Historical Lesbian Romance
Publisher: Interlude Press
Release Date: August 25, 2016
Cover Artist: C.B. Messer
Blurb
Abby Amaro wants to sing at La Scala Opera House, but she’s a good girl, and in 1957 good girls get married. Still, when she receives her first marriage proposal, she freezes, knowing the way her suitor makes her feel bodes trouble. When he won’t take no for an answer, she flees, joining up with a traveling carnival.
Thanks to a burlesque trapeze artist and the world’s saddest clown, Abby bides her time and fits in until she can rejoin the world she knows. She doesn’t expect a sideshow strongwoman named Suprema, who captures her imagination. As the carnival makes its way across the Midwest, Abby learns much more than she had ever imagined—about herself, about her identity, and, most importantly, about love.
Excerpt
Abby couldn’t remember falling asleep. She only remembered the dark night and how, outside the window of Della’s trailer, the rolling slopes of Eastern Ohio slowly flattened into the farmland of the western side of the state and faded into darkness. She didn’t say much during the trip, but her mind was spinning, unable to process what she had done.
Once, when she had been a little girl, barely older than Annette was now, her mother had taken her and Natale to visit their aunt in Chicago for a week. It had been a nice visit. They had embarked on the train with a great deal of ceremony, and Za Teresa had spoiled the pair rotten, loading them up with peach-shaped marzipan and pizzelle until they were both sick. She hadn’t left Cleveland for any extended period of time since. Oh, sure, she’d talked and dreamt about it. Nonna often wistfully mentioned taking a trip back to her girlhood home one more time now that the war was over and taking Abby along to look after her, and then, if her opera career took off as she had once hoped, she would be visiting all the great cities. In her scrapbook, clippings of Palais Garnier, La Scala, and The Met were decorated with carefully drawn hearts and hopeful stars and the scrawled word: someday. Still, she had never imagined that when she departed the Coventry neighborhood again, it would be in a burlesque dancer’s trailer.
Author Interview
Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Amy Stilgenbauer author of Sideshow.
Hi Amy, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.
Thanks for having me! I’m an incredibly nerdy lady from Michigan, who writes books, knits sweaters, and organizes historical documents to support her cats. They eat a lot, what can I say? Sideshow is a historical fiction novel that takes place in the late 1950s. It follows the adventures of Abby Amaro and what happens to her as she leaves her home behind and joins a traveling carnival.
Where do you find your inspiration?
This is going to sound super cheesy, but to paraphrase The Troggs and/or Love Actually, inspiration is all around. I keep notebooks (both paper and electronic) handy for me to write down something if it strikes me. Could be a newspaper article, or people watching, or document I come across doing historical research, anything really. Sideshow in particular was inspired by a number of things. First and foremost, my short story from the Summer Love Anthology, “The Fire-Eater’s Daughter”, but also by the carnivals I grew up attending, stories told by my relatives about their own lives, census records, and a myriad of vintage photographs just to name a few things.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Tricky question. I’ve always considered myself a writer in some way as I’ve always been writing and telling stories, but my significant other once pointed out to me that I vary between telling people I’m a “writer” or an “archivist” depending on how confident I feel in my writing career trajectory at the time. It’s unfortunate really, because I don’t think you have to wait for someone else to declare you a legitimate writer, you should be able to claim that mantle whenever you set out to create something using words.
Do your characters become like real people to you?
Absolutely! As I write a character, the more they come alive to me, the more their motivates, thoughts, actions become clear. I’ve been known to write a scene and be tremendously confused by why the character would do such a thing but know that it’s right, somehow, and then later as it comes clear to me, I will go back and fix up the scene so that the motivation I didn’t fully understand at the time is transparent. This happened with a few characters in Sideshow. One in particular didn’t open up until very late in the process.
If you weren’t a writer, what else would you like to have done?
Well, probably an archivist. But that’s not an interesting answer because you know that already and I did have several alternate career paths. I went through a lot of different stages of “what I want to be when I grow up” as a kid, but the two closest things I ever actually came to becoming before bowing out were lawyer and high school English or history teacher. One I was told 2 years into the program I didn’t have the personality for it and the other I couldn’t find work during the recession. I’ll let you guess which is which.
What do you want your tombstone to say?
“Loved.” By whom or as what, only time will tell. Also, “She gave it her all.” I have no idea if I will be successful in my life, but I do know that I do not want to live by halves. I want to give everything I have to my endeavors. I’m still working on actually getting myself there, thanks to an innate cynicism and fear of most things, but I’m working on it.
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Meet the author
Amy Stilgenbauer is a writer and aspiring archivist currently based in southeast Michigan. She is the author of the novelette series, Season of the Witch, as well as the Young Adult novel, The Legend of League Park. Her short story, The Fire-Eater’s Daughter, was included in Summer Love, an LGBTQ Young Adult collection published by Duet, an imprint of Interlude Press. When she isn’t writing, Amy enjoys all things bergamot and tries to keep her cats away from her knitting.
Giveaway
Thank you so much for hosting a stop on the tour! I would be more than happy to answer any other questions.
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