📚 A Bookish Chat with Donna Dechen Birdwell Author of SONG OF ALL SONGS @donnadechen #Interview

When Donna Dechen Birdwell was about ten years old, she became obsessed with the idea that if she was thinking with her brain, she ought to be able to think how it works! She’s been trying to wrap her mind around reality (and how humans experience it) ever since. She made a career out of anthropology—that utterly boundless science of humankind and how we got here—and then sidestepped into Buddhist philosophy and then art and photography and writing stories that tend to fall somewhere in the neighborhood of speculative and/or science fiction. She’s a big fan of Ursula LeGuin and N.K. Jemisin.

In her EarthCycles series, Donna imagines a far, far future world in which pockets of survivors of a global apocalypse have evolved new ways of being human. “Not altogether new,” she says. “More like rearrangements of certain aspects of our inherent human potential.” The first volume of EarthCycles, Song of All Songs, received the 2020 silver medal from Self Publishing Review. The book introduces a mixed-race main character making her unique way through a deeply conflicted world. The second book in the series, Book of All Time, is set for release in August of 2021.

Donna’s first trilogy (Recall Chronicles) is set in a hauntingly familiar 22nd-century world in which nobody grows old, an achievement that turns out to be not nearly so utopian as one might expect. Each volume tells the story of a different character’s experience of that world, but the stories are intertwined and some of the same characters turn up in all the books.

A stand-alone contemporary fiction book, Not Knowing, explores intergenerational PTSD in the life of an archaeologist working in Belize. Donna worked as an ethnologist in Belize for many years, so there’s a lot of her heart in this one.

Before anthropology, Donna worked as a newspaper reporter, and beyond anthropology she studied Buddhist philosophy (and practice) and then became an artist and photographer. Her paintings are done in acrylics on handmade Nepali lokta paper. Her primary photographic interest is in Miksang contemplative photography.

Donna earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and previously taught at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: https://donnadechenbirdwell.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/donnadechen/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wideworldhome/

Welcome to The Writer's Life! How did you come up with the idea to write your book?

As an anthropologist, I’m endlessly fascinated by human beings—how we came to be what we are in all our glorious and terrifying diversity. I’ve also become increasingly dissatisfied with the usual postapocalyptic storytelling. I wanted to present a different scenario, one that whittles the human population back not to one or two intrepid individual survivors, but to a small population of survivors helping one another invent new ways of surviving together. Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven does that for the short term, but what about the longer term? And what if we have more than one pocket of survivors? What happens when these populations eventually meet one another?

How would you describe your book’s ideal reader?

Song of All Songs will appeal to any science fiction reader who’s hungry for a different take on what might happen to humanity after the apocalypse. It will appeal especially to those who already believe or suspect that there’s more to Homo sapiens than we find manifest in 21^st-century western “civilization.” My ideal reader will also be someone who savors the tastes of words and who lets their cadence and music sing in the mind rather than rushing through to see what happens next. (Although my story has also been called a “thriller,” so there’s that.)

What part of the book was the most fun to write?

For straight-up geek-out fun, nothing beats world-building, and most of that goes on behind the scenes. So much research! I loved it!

How did you come up with the title?

This book went through several titles before we settled on this one. Song of All Songs is the name of a song composed by the main character in the story. It seemed right for the title of the book as well.

What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?

I started compiling notes for the backstory and world-building back in 2016 in the context of the zika virus outbreak. That connection doesn’t really come clear (if indeed it ever does...no matter) until book two in the series, which is scheduled for release in August.

What advice would you give to a writer working on their first book?

It’s not about writing a book. It’s about telling a story. You know better than anyone what stories you have that want telling. One or more of them could very well become a book.

How do you use social media as an author?

Simple answer? Randomly and probably rather badly! I try to share articles and other things that inspire me on my Facebook page. I post photographs of my own art and travels on Instagram. Twitter is just for fun; I try to keep my inner snark under control. I have a blog that’s been going since 2013 and I post to the blog whenever some inspiration grabs me and won’t let go. It gets political sometimes, but sometimes I share a poem.

What other books are you working on and when will they be published?

Song of All Songs is book one in the EarthCycles series; book two—Book of All Time—is being released in August. Book three is nearly halfway through the first draft and should be ready sometime in 2022. Then I’m going back to finish up a final volume of my Recall Chronicles (appropriately entitled Final Recall) and a stand-alone novel based on my decades of field research in a Mayan village in Belize. Could there be a book four in the EarthCycles series? Maybe. There are reasons why I’m reluctant to call something a “trilogy.”

If you could spend a day with another popular author, whom would you choose?

Prior to January 22, 2018, I would have said Ursula Le Guin. Her worlds are so beautifully and wisely crafted! Sadly, that is no longer possible. So I guess I’d choose N.K. Jemisin, though I’m certain I would feel thoroughly intimidated by her masterful artistry and imposing presence as a human being. I just know it would be time well spent!

Finally, what message are you trying to get across with your book?

Humanity is capable of so much more! Don’t give up on us. Don’t settle for thinking we have already achieved our finest hour.

Thank you again for this interview! Do you have any final words?

As I struggled to finish editing Song of All Songs in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown, I sometimes wondered if it was worth the effort. Why did it matter that I write this story? For one thing, I told myself, if I should die of the damn coronavirus, I didn’t want to leave behind an unfinished manuscript! But that wasn’t enough. Why was this particular story something I wanted to finish?

“What is it about?” I asked myself. And I answered: “It’s about humanity. About all the things that may or may not be ‘human nature.’ About our diversity and how diversity is the bedrock of survival. It’s about a woman who thinks, because she’s biracial, that she’s nothing. And then she discovers that she’s everything. It’s about people who hate and distrust and misunderstand one another and then end up needing one another to survive. It’s about us.”

Thank you for your interest in Song of All Songs!

Title: SONG OF ALL SONGS: EARTHCYCLES BOOK ONE
Author: Donna Dechen Birdwell
Publisher: Wide World Home
Pages: 375
Genre: Science Fiction

BOOK BLURB:

Long after the apocalypse, Earth has repeopled itself. Twice.

Despised by her mother’s people and demeaned by her absent father’s legacy, Meridia has one friend—Damon, an eccentric photologist. When Damon shows Meridia a stone he discovered in an old photo bag purchased from a vagrant peddler, she is transfixed. There’s a woman, she says, a dancing woman. And a song. Can a rock hold a song? Can a song contain worlds? Oblivious of mounting political turmoil, the two set out to find the old peddler, to find out what he knows about the stone, the woman, and the song. But marauding zealots attack and take Damon captive, leaving Meridia alone. Desolate. Terrified. Yet determined to carry on, to pursue the stone’s extraordinary song, even as it lures her into a journey that will transform her world.

PRAISE

“When anthropologist Donna Dechen Birdwell turns her keen sense of how societies evolved in the past toward imagining a post-apocalyptic future, the result is a thoughtful, nuanced, intelligent thriller.” — Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of The Oppenheimer Alternative

“Song of All Songs is a beautifully written and richly realized vision of the future, informed by a deep understanding of humanity.” — Christopher Brown, Campbell and World Fantasy Award-nominated author of Tropic of Kansas and Failed State

“An immersive and visceral vision of the future. This first installment of the EarthCycles series plays out as both a wonderful adventure and a well-crafted prophecy. The economy of language in certain moments is striking, while the poetic flow in other passages makes this novel a delicious pleasure to consume. This rare blend of naked imagination, careful storytelling, poetic flair, and meticulous language is reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin at her best. Showcasing the speculative fiction of a wildly gifted author, Song of All Songs is a very special book – an enigmatic and inventive treasure, and certainly not one to be missed.” –-Self-Publishing Review