Staff Reviews

This book was a great read- suspenseful and interesting characters

Here is a note from Jennifer on the book:

Eating Fire and Other Adventures on the Way to Burntown

Sometimes my writing takes me to interesting places and leads me to do interesting things. When I was working on Burntown, I visited several New England mill towns — I walked around abandoned factories, explored under bridges and in vacant lots, and nearly fell into rivers. I went to museums and national historic sites, toured a boarding house where "mill girls" once lived. I took hundreds of photos of crumbling brick buildings, nineteenth-century machines, the underside of bridges, old rail yards, dams, and riversides. I made a detailed map of my invented Ashford, an amalgam of all the towns I visited with some other details added in. I read all I could find about the rumor that Thomas Edison was working on a secret invention that would enable people to communicate with the dead. I listened to recordings of echoing, ethereal voices talking through "spirit box receivers," a tool that modern day ghost hunters love. 

And when I was creating a group of women who live in an encampment by the river in Ashford, where they inhale hallucinogens, see the future, and eat fire — I had to learn about fire-eating. I read about it, but mostly I watched countless videos. After all, as my twelve-year-old daughter has shown me, you can learn just about anything from YouTube. When the time came for me to write the scene where Necco (aka Eva, aka Fire Girl) eats fire for the schoolboys and Theo, I decided I needed to try it myself. (Don't try this at home, kids!) So I picked a YouTube video that seemed particularly reliable (that is, the demonstrator had no visible burn scars), and watched it about twenty times. Finally, I ripped off a bit of cotton ball (100% cotton, I verified over and over), fluffed it up a bit, lit it on fire with a Bic lighter, popped it into my mouth and closed my lips around it. It worked! It went out instantly and I was left with just a little wad of damp cotton to dispose of. My daughter was impressed and horrified. I felt incredibly stupid and incredibly pleased with myself at the same time. And I felt connected to Necco and her flashy trick in a new way. 

When I start a story, I never have any idea of the places it may take me, or the things it may lead me to do — the surprises and new experiences along the way are some of my favorite things about writing.

Happy reading,
Jennifer