1–What is the title of your latest release?
2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Desperate to escape the Nazis, painter Remedios Varo and her lover, poet Benjamin Peret, flee Paris for Villa Air Bel, a safe house for artists on the Riviera. Along with Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and others, the two anxiously wait for exit papers. As the months pass, Remedios begins to sense that the others don’t see her as a fellow artist; they have cast her in the stifling role of a surrealist ideal: the beautiful innocent. She finds refuge in a mysterious bookshop, where she stumbles into a world of occult learning and intensifies an esoteric practice in the tarot that helps her light the bright fire of her creative genius.
When travel documents come through, Remedios and Benjamin flee to Mexico where she is reunited with friend and fellow painter Leonora Carrington. Together, the women tap into their creativity, stake their independence, and each find their true loves. But it is the tarot that enables them to access the transcendent that lies on the other side of consciousness, to become the truest Surrealists of all.
3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The book is historical fiction based loosely on fact. I’ve seen it called faction. Those facts dictated the settings for the book.
4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. Remedios Varo was a painter, a tarot enthusiast, an occultist, a survivor, and a true creative. She also had many important friendships with women throughout her life. She’d be great company.
5–What are three words that describe your protagonist?
All lit up!
6–What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That the right thing, said at the right time, can completely unwind something old and calcified in your heart.
7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Both. I will tinker at the beginning of each day as a way to reenter the work. Bigger more meaningful edits come later.
8–What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Nachos often have to be physically removed from my presence.
9–Describe your writing space/office!
My writing desk is rather wide and a bit shallow. All sorts of books and crystals and ephemera wind up on it. I love stationary and enjoy writing personal notes, so there’s a good selection always. The wall next to me is covered in post-its with quotes that have hit me deeply from Remedios Varo to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Virginia Woolf to my dearest friend to my brother and more.
10–Who is an author you admire?
Edith Wharton. I am so obsessed with her books that my first novel, Gilded Age, is inspired by the House of Mirth and updated for the 21st century in modern Cleveland.
11–Is there a book that changed your life?
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
12–Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
My agent and I weren’t at all sure what my editor would think of this book. I’m very lucky that my same editor and publisher have bought all three of my books.
13–What’s your favorite genre to read?
Literary fiction, up market fiction, and classics
14–What’s your favorite movie?
I love all of Sofia Coppola’s movies. I hear she’s been working on an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s Custom of the Country, and I can’t wait to see what she does with it.
15–What is your favorite season?
Like lots of bookish people it’s autumn.
16–How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I love a cake. I never turn down a slice of birthday cake, mine or anyone else’s.
17–What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Succession/Immune/The Long Corner by Alexander Maksik/Pulling the Thread with Elise Loehnen
18–What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
French bistro
19–What do you do when you have free time?
Hike, take very long hot baths, pull tarot cards, burn incense, wild swim, meditate.
20–What can readers expect from you next?
I was sad to leave the realm of the esoteric and spiritual so there will certainly be some of those aspects in my next book.
ALCHEMY OF A BLACKBIRD by Claire McMillan
A Novel
For fans of The Age of Light and Z comes a “beguiling novel of artistic ambition, perseverance, and friendship” (Katy Hays, New York Times bestselling author) based on the true story of the 20th-century painters and tarot devotees Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington.
In this “unforgettable adventure, and one you don’t want to miss” (Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author), painter Remedios Varo and her lover, poet Benjamin Peret escape the Nazis by fleeing Paris and arriving at a safe house for artists on the Rivieria.
Along with Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and others, the two anxiously wait for exit papers.
As the months pass, Remedios begins to sense that the others don’t see her as a fellow artist; they have cast her in the stifling role of a surrealist ideal: the beautiful innocent. She finds refuge in a mysterious bookshop, where she stumbles into a world of occult learning and intensifies an esoteric practice in the tarot that helps her light the bright fire of her creative genius.
When travel documents come through, Remedios and Benjamin flee to Mexico where she is reunited with friend and fellow painter Leonora Carrington. Together, the women tap into their creativity, stake their independence, and each find their true loves. But it is the tarot that enables them to access the transcendent that lies on the other side of consciousness and to become the truest Surrealists of all.
Historical [Atria Books, On Sale: July 11, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781668006559 / eISBN: 9781668006573]
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About Claire McMillan
Claire McMillan is the author of Gilded Age and The Necklace. She is the 2017-18 Cuyahoga County Writer-in- Residence and currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts. She practiced law until 2003 and then received her MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. She grew up in Pasadena, California and now lives on her husband’s family farm outside of Cleveland, Ohio with their two children.
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