Tiffany Clarke Harrison, BLUE HOUR
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[1:03]Tiffany Clark Harrison is the author of Blue Hour, a novel.
[1:07]Tiffany graduated from Salisbury University with a BA in English, creative writing concentration,
[1:12]and holds an MFA in creative writing fiction from Queen's University of Charlotte.
[1:16]Tiffany lives with her husband and two children in North Carolina.
[1:19]Blue Hour is her debut novel.
[1:21]Welcome Tiffany.
[1:22]Thanks so much for coming on moms don't have time to read books to discuss Blue Hour
[1:26]a novel.
[1:27]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:29]I was just telling you because I couldn't even hold it in any longer how much I loved
[1:32]your book and how deeply emotional and powerful it was.
[1:36]It slimmed size should not mislead the reader.
[1:39]It packs a huge punch, so anyway, really great moving job, it's just really a special
[1:46]read.
[1:47]Thank you so much.
[1:48]I'm really proud of it, so yeah, it was hard to write for sure, but I'm really happy
[1:55]with how everything turned out.
[1:58]So why don't we start with you telling the listener about what your book is about?
[2:03]And I have to say I did not go Google you or anything like that, so if there's background
[2:08]that links you to the book or that I should know, I apologize, but I did read the whole
[2:11]book.
[2:12]So you can give us some context on your own life vis-a-vis the book, which I'm totally curious
[2:19]about now.
[2:20]Sure.
[2:21]Yeah, first I'll start with what the book is about, so Blue Hour is a fragmentary novel,
[2:26]so it's told in these smaller kind of vignettes about, and the narrator is Black,
[2:32]Black Japanese woman who is an accomplished photographer and a wife, and she's also dealing
[2:42]with infertility.
[2:44]And she's always had this kind of ambivalence about motherhood and what that would look
[2:49]like or could look like for her, and so when another act of police brutality happens,
[2:54]and this time the victim is one of her photography students, Noah, she tells her husband
[3:00]who is white Jewish that if this round of IVF that we're about to go through doesn't
[3:07]work, I don't think I want to try anymore, I don't want to bring another Black body, I
[3:13]don't want to bring a Black body into this, I don't want to bring a Black child into this,
[3:18]and he desperately wants to have children.
[3:21]And so clearly this creates a strain on the marriage, and she continues in her career,
[3:29]she's embarking on this documentary on motherhood where she's interviewing Black and
[3:34]brown mothers of police brutality, and also visiting, secretly visiting Noah and the
[3:41]hospital as he fights for his life, where when she realizes that she's impossibly pregnant,
[3:48]and so this obviously turns things on its head for them again, and so they have to decide
[3:58]what their future is going to look like together, so yeah, that's what I'm going to
[4:02]to go with.
[4:03]Oh my gosh, it's also about just the resilience of getting through so much on every side.
[4:11]I feel like it's like a woman at the breaking point, and that's what she deals with
[4:16]that, because you've put her in this, it feels like almost like this position of fear and
[4:24]desperation mixed of not knowing how to get up and do the thing that needs to be done because
[4:31]things don't happen to you her, and people she loves and cares about, and the world, all of
[4:37]it.
[4:38]She's very much someone who I'd love to write in her because she's someone who's
[4:43]so outspoken, she knows what she wants, and at the same time, there's still this little girl
[4:52]inside of her that is so terrified of, am I going to screw it up?
[4:58]I'm going to totally eff this up, and that's not what I want to do, that's not who I want
[5:05]to be, and that's part of her ambivalence around motherhood too, another part is just this
[5:12]identity piece.
[5:13]What does that mean for me, want to be married, and there's a part in the book where
[5:18]she references a Carrie Weems painting, and where the woman has like, has taped across
[5:25]her mouth, and she's in her wedding gown, and everything, and she's like, isn't this
[5:30]what marriage is, isn't this what motherhood is, giving away a piece, all these pieces
[5:36]of myself to the point that what would be left for me, and her finding her way through
[5:42]Oh, I can cultivate, I can create this to look like whatever I want it to look like, my husband
[5:50]and I can make this be whatever we want it to be, but then also still recognize there is this
[5:56]outside piece, there is still the world, she's not just a mother, she would be a mother to a black
[6:05]child, and there is that added layer, so yeah, she's she's grappling with quite a bit that,
[6:12]and she strongly feels like, I just don't want to mess this up, everything is messed up,
[6:17]I'm not already, I don't want to mess this up, so when I think that's something a lot of
[6:21]not just mothers, but women, I'm just gonna say that is very, really, really, like everybody,
[6:30]I mean, I don't know, maybe they don't admit it, I feel like that's a very common deep down
[6:35]feeling, right? Yeah, I'll just afraid we're gonna, like everything is so, so he's like about to fall
[6:41]and set like, can we, I don't know if it's like anyway, or yeah, this has become my fair
[6:46]obsession with you, now I'm gonna cry. Anyway, in terms of background that you asked for, so I
[6:53]started this book around 2015, somewhere around there, and I knew that I want like a several
[7:01]friend at the time my children were very small, I have two kids, and dealing with, okay, who am I
[7:07]with these two little kids, and my kids are two years apart, and also having friends who were
[7:13]experiencing miscarriage and infertility and how they were feeling so much shame, and even I'm carrying
[7:20]shame around like, okay, I don't want to be with them 24-7, I love my children, and even the fact
[7:26]that mothers feel like they have to say that piece, I don't get me wrong, I love my children,
[7:31]it's like, well, yeah, you even feel like you have to say that before you say, but I am my own
[7:39]person, and really it's not but it's and I am my own person, and I have these other things I
[7:46]want to accomplish and and and, and so part of it was just bringing those conversations
[7:53]to light because there there was so much shame around talking about miscarriage, there was so
[7:59]much shame about not saying things that aren't the loveliest about motherhood, and so, you know,
[8:08]that was part of it, and then I put the book down for a good little bit, about maybe a year or so,
[8:15]and then Michael Brown was killed, and I remember being on Facebook,
[8:21]and seeing comments from people, and I couldn't tell you specifically what they were, and reading
[8:26]through them, looking at it like, are you kidding me right now? He was a human, but that's a human
[8:34]being that you're talking about, and I remember shortly after it was my son's fifth birthday,
[8:44]and I can distinctly remember, I could still see it in my head, he was blowing out the candles on
[8:49]his cake, and I was looking at him, and I said, one day, people are going to look at that little boy,
[8:58]and they're going to be saying that stuff they were saying on Facebook about Michael Brown.
[9:04]This kid right here just blowing out the candles on his cake, that's what they're going to be saying,
[9:09]and that's when I knew this is a piece that's missing, this is a piece I want to incorporate,
[9:15]and then the story just bloomed from there, so. Wow. Well, you did it in such a beautiful way,
[9:22]and it's such a moving way. I love, even just the imagery of the photographs, how everything is
[9:27]like coming to light, literally, like it's all just developing, and like, you're showing the reader,
[9:34]this is my, I mean, to be cheesy, but I feel like the reader is getting the development of all
[9:40]of the story as the photos, or I used to be like the photo editor of my yearbook, and I took all
[9:45]these photography classes, so I loved the darkroom, I loved the chemicals, and the smell, and
[9:50]hanging them up, and just the magic of watching an image come to be, and you like, that's so
[9:55]what it felt like, with them, and also even, like, the character,
[10:00]I don't know.
[10:01]It was all just like this magical kind of developing,
[10:04]just like the images.
[10:06]So I don't usually say it's this much nice stuff.
[10:08]I have to tell you, but I don't know why it just really
[10:11]had helped me.
[10:13]So the miscarriage parts were very emotionally and physically
[10:21]grueling in the book to go through.
[10:23]You feel like you're actually going through this
[10:25]and the scene on the floor with the bar.
[10:28]And when she's kicking, it's just, oh my gosh.
[10:32]Writing those scenes could not have been easy.
[10:34]And I don't know whether or not it was your own experience,
[10:38]your friends or whatever.
[10:40]Like having to go through that sort of trauma of being
[10:43]in that person's body and writing about it.
[10:45]Like tell me about that and how you decided to write it.
[10:49]I don't know.
[10:50]Just like tell me about those scenes in particular.
[10:52]Yeah.
[10:53]So you're taking deep breath because, yes, they
[10:57]were very hard to write and allowing myself
[11:02]to truly understand, like I'm even rocking in my seat now,
[11:08]as I think about it, what did to be this main character?
[11:16]So in the book, she's nameless in the book.
[11:20]And to be this main character, who is so hard and so
[11:27]soft at the same time.
[11:29]And what, what that must look like.
[11:34]And so when I write, I do a lot of embodiment.
[11:37]So I might be sitting in this chair and my bed or wherever
[11:42]else.
[11:43]And I just like, I think of what the scene looks like.
[11:46]And I know how I might respond, but I am not the character.
[11:52]I need to filter my response through my character's lens.
[11:57]And because she is more of this kind of harder person, someone
[12:02]who is so just hard on herself and afraid of this being,
[12:10]this human that she and our husband have created for her to,
[12:17]I don't want to spoil too much, but for her to behave so lovingly
[12:22]towards it, that felt like something Tiffany might do.
[12:27]But for her, who again feels like she messes everything up anyway.
[12:32]And this is yet another mistake I have made.
[12:35]Look at this other thing that I did wrong.
[12:39]I wanted as far away from me as possible.
[12:41]And I remember that just came to me that she ends up
[12:46]kicking this piece that was that came from her.
[12:50]And even I was like, oh my gosh, I've worked with authors
[12:55]writing their books to, and I let it work shop last year.
[12:58]And I shared about that piece.
[13:00]And like on Zoom, seeing their faces, they were just like, oh my gosh.
[13:05]And because, and it shocked me too, like, I didn't expect them to happen.
[13:11]But she is this person who's like, I need to get away from my mistakes.
[13:16]I need to get away from all of the shame.
[13:19]Yeah, that's as far away from me as possible.
[13:21]While at the same time, I'm so sorry.
[13:23]I love you so much.
[13:25]I'm so sorry.
[13:27]And so writing that, I remember I think I was actually sitting in this same spot
[13:32]at my dining table.
[13:33]And I was just thinking of her in the bathroom.
[13:37]And how she would be crouching down, like, even as I'm talking now,
[13:41]I'm like, the same movements.
[13:42]And I'm like, OK, she would hold on to this,
[13:45]onto the pipe because this piece is passing through her.
[13:50]And what happens next to the next thing I just saw was,
[13:53]she kicks.
[13:55]And it was so uncomfortable.
[13:56]And that's why I knew I needed to be there, because it was so uncomfortable.
[14:00]And it was so very firm.
[14:02]So yeah, those were definitely challenging and that kind of thing
[14:06]or afterwards he rang, and they're like, OK, I need to take some space.
[14:12]I need to go walking some grass barefoot or, like,
[14:17]just get some sun on my face, or, I don't know,
[14:21]watch an episode of 90s Will and Grace, just like as a pallet.
[14:25]And it's like, I just need to, I need to come down from this thing.
[14:29]So yeah.
[14:30]But how did you get, how did you get your start writing?
[14:34]And like, where are you from?
[14:35]And tell me a little, give me some context.
[14:37]And I'm like, I am a military brat out.
[14:41]Actually, my dad was a Navy.
[14:43]It was born in California and lived lots of places.
[14:46]And I started writing, I think, in middle school,
[14:50]like, I read down a little bit.
[14:52]And I remember the first story I typed up.
[14:55]This is like a song, so jigging it out when I was 12.
[14:58]The first story I typed out, it was in the 90s.
[15:01]So I even printed it.
[15:02]I don't know if you remember, like, the reason paper
[15:06]were like the perforated.
[15:08]Yes.
[15:08]Yes.
[15:09]And then for a third.
[15:10]Is it like, we're going to take out dot matrix?
[15:12]Or is that something else?
[15:13]Was it dot matrix with those things?
[15:15]And no, anyway, whatever.
[15:17]But I just remember it was out.
[15:20]And I printed it up.
[15:21]The name of the story, the name of the story
[15:24]was camped juicy fart.
[15:26]I don't know why.
[15:28]Like, no idea what I meant it.
[15:31]But that was in, yeah, that was in middle school.
[15:34]And I remember I wrote a poem.
[15:36]And I thought it was good enough.
[15:39]I remember reading it to my parents.
[15:40]And whether they were being honest or not,
[15:44]they were like, oh, wow, that was really wonderful.
[15:46]And from there, I would just kind of dabble with it.
[15:50]And it wasn't until undergrad in a college
[15:53]where I started playing with a novel form,
[15:56]or it kind of was birth that I was just journaling.
[15:59]And I remember thinking, oh, this could actually
[16:02]be a story.
[16:03]And I was a creative writing English major creative writing
[16:06]concentration.
[16:06]And then wrote that novel, didn't do anything with it.
[16:10]And then I had started, like I said, I started
[16:13]through a while or in about 2015.
[16:15]And then I was working and marketing.
[16:17]And in 2017, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
[16:21]And I remember one of my first coherent
[16:25]JAs in the hospital I said to my husband
[16:29]and one of my first thoughts was, I have not
[16:31]published a book yet.
[16:34]And sometimes people hear that.
[16:36]And they were like, what, how could that possibly
[16:38]be one of your first thoughts?
[16:39]But that's how, that's all I'd ever wanted.
[16:44]I had a professor in undergrad my senior year
[16:47]when I was graduating or last class,
[16:49]he's passing back our portfolios.
[16:51]And he handed mine to me and he said,
[16:54]you got to be because you don't talk enough.
[16:58]And he said, but you will publish a book one day.
[17:01]And that has never ever left me.
[17:04]And so about a year after my diagnosis equipped my job,
[17:08]I applied to grad school for an MFA program,
[17:11]I already written about two drafts of Blue Island.
[17:14]And it was go time, like it just really was go time.
[17:18]And that was my focus for about two years.
[17:25]So yeah, but that what that professor said never left.
[17:28]And actually when the book was required,
[17:30]I found his email, he's no longer teaching,
[17:34]but I found his email.
[17:35]And I said, hi, you don't probably don't remember me.
[17:39]I graduated in 2001, you said I would publish a book one day.
[17:44]And I just wanted to tell you that my book was acquired.
[17:47]And he did not remember me.
[17:49]But he was like, I'm so glad I got something right.
[17:54]So and he was just really excited for me.
[17:57]So yeah.
[17:58]Oh, I love that story so much of Goosebumps everywhere.
[18:01]Oh my gosh.
[18:03]Honestly, I feel like that is one thing
[18:06]that so many writers who actually crossed the finish line
[18:10]say, is somebody saw something in them
[18:13]and said, wow, you really have talent here.
[18:16]Like you should do, you're going to do something with this.
[18:18]Or I have, you know, I can't wait to see where you end up.
[18:20]Or you know, just something, it's a little thing.
[18:22]And think about what a throwaway line that is
[18:24]for someone to say.
[18:25]So easy to say if you mean it, you know, like I don't know,
[18:29]but the power that that could be something
[18:32]in that hour of your life that that became top of mind
[18:35]and you didn't never, you just don't give up.
[18:37]It's amazing.
[18:38]Oh, yeah.
[18:39]Yeah, it would come around like every two or three years
[18:45]hearing those words would come around.
[18:46]And it's like, you're still, you haven't done it yet.
[18:49]And it wasn't in a shaming way.
[18:51]And even when I woke up in the hospital,
[18:52]it wasn't in a shaming way at all.
[18:54]It was in a, it's go time.
[18:57]Yeah, we're not messing around with our life anymore.
[19:01]This is what I've always wanted to do.
[19:04]I didn't think it was practical to, you know,
[19:08]oh, I'm right, I'm a novelist.
[19:10]And so I actually, I got a master's in business
[19:14]when I was 30.
[19:16]My daughter was like seven months old.
[19:18]And I went back for master's in business
[19:20]and because it was practical and graduated.
[19:26]And I was like, oh, I don't want to do anything with this.
[19:29]Like, I don't want to run it.
[19:33]And so yeah, I was 39 when I got into the MFA program.
[19:38]And truly I went in there.
[19:40]I knew what my vision for blue hour was.
[19:43]And it was just like, we're going.
[19:45]This is going to happen.
[19:47]I had already had an agent interested.
[19:50]And like I said, it was just go time.
[19:54]I'm so excited for you.
[19:55]I feel like I'm just so excited for you and so great.
[19:58]So now that it's, is it?
[20:00]It's not out yet. Right. Oh, eight. Oh, my gosh. So how do you feel with this around the corner now then? Are you worried? Like, no, it's it's a little bit surreal or a lot. It's a real. Actually, no, I'm not worried at all. Like it, again, it's a little bit surreal, but also feels like
[20:19]This is what I'm what I'm supposed to be doing. This is what I've been met what I was meant to do.
[20:27]I tell a story. One of the first workshops I had in my MFA program was my first workshop in like 15 20 years. And it was nerve-wracking all the things that workshop is when you're getting critiqued and I remember speaking to the professor afterwards and he said glowing things and I was walking to the parking garage and I started crying. Like was by myself and I just started crying.
[20:54]And I set out loud. I said, I'm where I'm supposed to be and it was the first time I had felt that way and a very, very long time and kind of going back to where we're speaking about earlier with just, you know, you get married and if you decide to do these things, you get married, you have children and there's this piece of you or pieces of you that fade to the background and yes, everything happens in seasons.
[21:22]But sometimes those pieces of you, you don't seem to get them back or you forget them and that's something too that the main character of blue hour, she was so afraid of I don't want to lose myself and being a wife and and being a mother. I still want to be this person and it's not a either or it's an and and so yeah, having this come up now.
[21:50]My children are older to my children are 15 and 13 and so when the book was acquired, my son, my husband had told my son when he picked him up from school and my son came home and he was like, so does this mean your famous.
[22:03]I said, I mean, no, I could be maybe someday but right now, no, but my book will be when you go to a bookstore, you'll see my book and he goes.
[22:12]So you're famous, I said, sure, so I'm famous and my daughter is an avid avid reader and when I when I got the advance copy of the book, you know, she's looking through it and she's like, can I read this, I said, I don't know, maybe it might be a little it might be a little much for you at 15, but, but just seeing them and having them be old enough to.
[22:43]Not fully understand, not fully understand, but understand as much as they can look what mom did.
[22:51]And also showing them there is another way success can look so many ways success isn't just.
[22:59]And nine to five, it doesn't have to be to look this one particular way and like, even in the work I do with authors, like, I design that I put that together myself, it's not something I go somewhere else and do and having my kids being able to witness that it's just it's it's wonderful.
[23:18]So that's amazing. I had my memoir came out in last July and my kids were saying the same thing. They're like,
[23:24]well, here it is like, are people going to recognize, I was like, no one's going to recognize me.
[23:29]Like people are like, it's only in like two bookstores, but it's fine. You know, but I know kids are so funny.
[23:36]I also have 15 year old, 15 year old twins, so and then guys, anyway, but that's really exciting.
[23:41]So are you still writing? Are you working on something new?
[23:43]I am. It is in the very, very, very early stages, but I'm playing with psychopathy and so and that's been that's been really fun to kind of go into the even darker places that maybe aren't as sad as blue hour might take people.
[24:06]But just to go into really the recesses of a darker mind has been it's been fun actually. And I was
[24:14]interesting. They this character, the psychopathy didn't come until I started watching I'm
[24:23]killing Eve. I don't know if you ever watched it. I haven't, but I know of it. And it was a few episodes
[24:31]in where like I wasn't even really working on it yet. It was just kind of in my head and it clicked
[24:38]that my person could, my character could rank pretty high in the psychopathy scale. Like she's not
[24:43]in a sassan or a murder or give the show, but and it just was really exciting and like an
[24:50]unlearing fun thing to play with. And so psychopathy and sexuality and some other things.
[24:57]But like I said, it's very, very early. So well, but you were saying earlier about how your
[25:04]career doesn't have to look a certain way. We were talking at the table and one of my kids was like,
[25:10]well, maybe I'll be an author. And I was like, that's great. I was like, you know, that's not all
[25:14]you can be like, that's something you could just do on their luck. Authors have lots of other jobs
[25:19]you could be a teacher. You could be a teacher. You could, you know, go to Japanese like he loves
[25:25]time. And so I'm like, when we were young, I feel like the narrative was so much like, what are you
[25:31]going to be? And, you know, I'm 46. I'm a little bit older than you, but it was always like,
[25:35]I'm going to do this. And now like, we've all done like a million things. You know, and I'm like,
[25:41]I'm still trying to decide what my answer is to that. But like, I don't know. I don't have a
[25:43]good answer. So I do a lot of things. Like, we all do a lot of things. So I don't know.
[25:48]Yeah. And it changed. And that's okay. Yeah. That's why I tend to write to more creative
[25:54]characters. So like I said, the narrator, she's a photographer and she's embarking on this
[25:59]documentary. Her husband, Asher, he owns a men's boutique and that was awesome. Yep.
[26:06]Nine's ties. He used to be a line cook. And this was before the bear.
[26:13]That's when I love writing those types of more creative people. And one showing that,
[26:20]yes, people can be successful at these things. And let's please start to do away with this idea
[26:26]of all artists are starting. They don't have anyone. And two, like they dabble in these different
[26:35]different mediums. And it's okay to kind of see, oh, I like this over here. And I like this
[26:41]over here. And now I've created this career where I have elements of these different things that I
[26:47]liked pulled into one. And I can do that. And I'm allowed to do that. I don't have to follow this
[26:52]particular narrative. And that's one thing that I love about both a main character and her husband
[26:58]in Blue Hour. So yeah, you did a really nice job too from his point of view. I mean, I know it was
[27:03]from the unnamed narrator. But you know, people don't often talk about the emotional effect of
[27:08]miscarriage on the man in the relationship. And you really developed that, you know, with him being
[27:13]like, like, this is affecting me too. Like, it's not, this didn't just happen to you. Like,
[27:20]let's do this together. So anyway, well, it was lovely chatting. Thank you for coming on mom's
[27:25]time to read books. And I'm I'll be reading for you when your book comes out. It's exciting.
[27:30]Thank you so much. It was nice reading you. Okay. Take care. Bye.
[27:36]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[27:40]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign
[27:45]up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors
[27:50]on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan. Heck, texture sound for the sound editing.
[27:55]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now
[27:59]trim music.