I elaborated on the idea of what it means to lose someone and what hand you played in driving them away. It’s a powerful idea. But as Pablo Picasso once said, “An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought,” and I will add, by feeling. 

S. K. Kalsi – 8 August 2015

The Back Flap

In his powerful debut novel, S.K. Kalsi has crafted a haunting tale of unvarnished self-examination, as experienced through the story’s central character, Somerset Garden, the stove-junker.
In the winter of 2012, 79-year-old Somerset travels back to his ancestral home in idyllic Drums, Pennsylvania, to renovate his dilapidated house. Burdened by the loss of his beloved wife, the long-ago disappearance of his rebellious son, and angry at God and at himself, Somerset hopes to reach a final understanding of the meaning of his life. While a blizzard barrels down from the north and “Armageddon” draws near, Somerset discovers an unnamed boy squatting on the property, a strange child who forces him to confront his past. As he unearths objects in the house that had been lost or discarded among the debris, Somerset remembers his father’s cruelty and the accident that cost him his brother’s life; he revisits the itinerant wandering of his youth, tethered to a troubled mother; he mourns the loss of his wife and ponders the decades-long absence of his son—all of whom are caught in the grip of Luzerne County’s ancient history of violence.
Author Cynthia Ceilán says of Kalsi and his work, “Here’s a writer who is going to give Cormac McCarthy a run for his money. The Stove-Junker is the kind of story that grabs you by the lapels and sears itself into your soul. The language and imagery are exquisite. Such a rare gem of literary brilliance.” That Kalsi’s work has been influenced by poets, musicians, and philosophers is clearly evidenced in his mastery of evocative language, and his ability to reveal the souls of loners and atheists, iconoclasts and dreamers, and people turned inward by obsession, broken by love, and crippled by heartbreak.

About the book

What is the book about?

The Stove-Junker is a novel about identity, memory, time, and loss; but it is much more. A reverie, an elegy, an existential ghost tale, a story of misguided passions, arson, family, religion, perhaps a philosophical investigation into meaning and love and language. It is an exploration of what makes us human, an investigation of our priorities and values.

After his wife Nona dies, Seventy-nine year old Somerset Garden returns to his ancestral home in northeastern Pennsylvania to renovate his dilapidated home. It is the winter of 2012. As Somerset deconstructs the house, tearing up floors, breaking down walls, he remembers aspects of his life that filled him with both horror and joy. The pain of his upbringing, the roots of the town’s historical violence, his early homelessness, his domineering, hypocritical Christian father and cruel-hearted brother, fill his heart with pain; and the joy revolves around loving his wife Nona and their son Cole. When he discovers a boy without memory or identity squatting on the property, his concern for the boy’s failing health and his “project” collide. The landscape is also a character; it shifts, alters, expands and contracts with the scope and dimension of Somerset’s memories.

But, at the heart of the story is a mystery. Who is Somerset? Why did his son vanish “into thin air” thirty years before? What role did Somerset have in the disappearance of his son? As a winter storm barrels down upon the landscape and Somerset’s supplies diminish, as the unnamed boy becomes increasingly ill, Somerset’s isolation deepens and he spirals deeper into the labyrinth of memory where his greatest monster, himself, lays in wait for him.

When did you start writing the book?

I began the book in the summer of 2010, after having abandoned a previous manuscript. I knew I wanted to write about Drums, PA, my old hometown and characterize it; it is a place as idyllic as it is restless with violence so deeply embedded in the history of the town as to render it invisible.

How long did it take you to write it?

I spent one year writing the first draft as part of my Master’s thesis at the University of San Francisco. I spent the next two and a half years expanding, contracting, shaping, reshaping, and polishing.

Where did you get the idea from?

My uncle lost his daughter (my cousin) in a fatal plane crash in 1985. There was a bomb on her plane and it exploded over the North Irish Sea. My uncle suffered tremendous guilt because of it, and overcome by grief he alienated everyone in his family, except his wife (I think), but mostly his surviving children. I elaborated on the idea of what it means to lose someone and what hand you played in driving them away. It’s a powerful idea. But as Pablo Picasso once said, “An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought,” and I will add, by feeling.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

Mostly the beginning chapters. The first paragraph of the novel I must have worked over a hundred times, if not more. The story needed something I wasn’t able to produce in the beginning of writing it, viz. a musicality to the language, lyricism.

What came easily?

When Somerset’s voice came to me, so did his words, thoughts, feelings, and so did the structure.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

All characters are composites, so there are aspects of my family and of me in Somerset Garden. And of the female characters they are based on people I have met, know deeply, but whose qualities and features have been combined and recombined. I am no good at purely inventing characters out of thin air. There has to be someone I’ve met, someone I’ve spoken to more than once, whose life I have entered, no matter how briefly for me to imbibe their spirit. It all comes out in the work in different forms.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

I owe a great debt to the modernists, such as William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. But also to those lesser known and greatly admired writers like William Maxwell, James Agee, and James Salter.

I have great admiration for Marilynne Robinson whose book Housekeeping I have read so many times I have memorized entire chapters, and also her Pulitzer Prize winning protégé Paul Harding. Cormac McCarthy’s pre-Border Trilogy novels Suttree and Blood Meridian and Per Petterson’s novels and James Baldwin’s Another Country.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy continues to inspire me, as does the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Wallace Stevens, and John Keats. Then there’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism, and Alejo Carpentier, whose “maximalist” style has deeply influenced my own writing, and lately it’s my two Alice’s: Alice Munro and Alice McDermott. In awe of their work.

Do you have a target reader?

I only want “good” readers, sensitive ones, readers interested in the nuances of language, style, ones more interested in people than in plot. I enjoy speaking to readers who make my work their own, establishing connections between images in the story I might not have seen. It’s always a joy when that happens.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I wake at 5:00 AM and after a cup of coffee I open my latest work in progress and begin tinkering with sentences, just to get a feel for the language again, the voice. Then I work until 7:30 AM and take a break. Then return to the work at 9:00 AM for another hour or two. I will stop around noon or so, leaving, as Hemingway once said “the tank half empty.” Throughout the day when I am not writing and my demands are spilt between taking care of my baby, my dogs, and attending to ancillary needs, I will continue to think of the story, question character motivations, send them down new avenues, throw new conflicts at them. I journal, so much of that gets written down in there.

But I am also a “lazy” writer. I will go for days without writing a word. I will simply roam about northern California in my Jeep or on my motorcycle, meditate on the landscape, listen, absorb, talk to people, drink wine, listen to music, and eat interesting food, because at the heart of it what I want from my life is to make art and to be an artist. I don’t ever want to feel that writing is a job, a nine-to five experience. For me creating art must be the purest expression of joy, even if there is tremendous effort involved in creating it.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

I don’t outline. I used to. I don’t feel it’s valuable for the type of stories I write, or want to write, which are more organic, the structure arising out of inner and increasing perturbations rather than external conflict. I found that when I hang my stories on a spine, they often change so much that all the effort gone into constructing an outline felt like wasted effort. I love the way a story can surprise me, and how a character can surprise me, an image, a line of dialogue, making me think I am not alone while creating.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I write like I clean a room: a little at a time and lots of self-correcting before moving to the next part. In the end, I do massive edits, but I need to see certain paragraphs shaped, the emotion captured, the ideas expressed through action and scene. I don’t recommend this process to anyone, because it often takes much longer to write a story this way than if you let things go and wait till the end to edit it.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

I don’t listen to music while writing. I find it distracts me. I admire anyone who can listen to it and focus on the task of writing at hand. Writing consumes all of my being when I write, so I enter a “Zenlike” otherworld where time often loses its value.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

Yes I did. Although several agents found my writing “gorgeous,” or “exemplary,” they felt The Stove-Junker was a difficult novel to pitch to the large publishers, namely because it is so unique in scope and structure. It is not your traditional plot-driven narrative, and so it limits the audience. I have kept in touch with one agent since the publication of the book, and we continue to correspond occasionally.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

After my nine months of rejections from agents, I found that many of their comments why they chose not to represent me actually emboldened me to try independent publishing houses. I found that the smaller presses were not immune to risk and that was something I value in my life and my work. They embrace risk. My publisher Little Feather Books embodies that spirit of adventure. We’re all a little bit like adventurers, like pirates casting off into the wilderness of the sea, or explorers of wild jungles, the journey itself being the reward. Publishing books because you believe in the author’s voice, the writer’s stories, and not necessarily the financial rewards that come with publishing, is one of the great services independent publishers do for humanity, for culture, for civilization. A brave act.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?

My publisher’s art department created the book cover, with input from me. Again, that level of control, having a hand in your own book cover design, is a luxury you won’t find from the larger publishing houses.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

Marketing the book is a challenge of both resources and time. I realize that as a first time author with a book from an independent publisher my book is at the bottom of a huge mountain looking up, with the larger publishing houses capable of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions to promote a book. I don’t have that luxury. I am doing what I can. With the help of my publisher, Little Feather Books, and my publicity company, Rare Bird Lit, I am reaching out to the independent booksellers and staging readings/signings. I am also using social media like Twitter and Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, all the modern tools to help spread the word that I exist, that I am a voice, and if I can generate enough noise, I might slowly climb my way up that mountain.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

Never give up. Write. Read. Write. Repeat! But I’ll say don’t be in a hurry to get your work published before it’s ready, before you have something your very own to say about the world. Find your own voice and oftentimes that is the hardest part of the writing life, shedding your influences and writing from your unique, your authentic self.

A good way to test the waters of publishing is to submit to literary journals. There are plenty out there with diverse sensibilities. It’s a wonderful way to reach a broader audience. Some of the best literary journals, like the Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, Granta and the Paris Review, have incredible editors who, if your work is selected for publication, provide insightful input into your work, strengthening it.

But nothing is a substitute for writing, and writing a lot, but also reading, reading everything that interests you, from the classics to modern authors. Everything bleeds into your work and becomes yours eventually.

About You

Where did you grow up?

Born in London, England. Lived in Lucknow, India. Moved to the USA and lived in Baltimore, Maryland, then Drums, PA, and Southern California.

Where do you live now?

Northern California.

What would you like readers to know about you?

I am an avid photographer, motorcycle enthusiast, and devoted father and husband.

What are you working on now?

My new novel also takes place in northeastern, Pennsylvania. Whereas The Stove-Junker is a soliloquy, a first person POV novel of a man talking into the void, my new story is a chorus, told in an omniscient POV, and about a very dysfunctional family who on the surface seem perfectly average. I am exploring the role of secrets and lies, of the things lurking beneath the surface. I suppose I am focusing almost exclusively on one of my favorite themes: Identity.

End of Interview:

For more, visit S.K.’s website, follow him on Twitter, or like his page on Facebook.

Get your copy of The Stove-Junker from Amazon US (paper or ebook), Amazon UK (paper or ebook) or Barnes & Noble.