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My starting point for most big projects is research—even if the research itself never makes it into the book, it puts me into a frame of mind. The research process can be very rich, but it can also tip over into a form of procrastination, so figuring out that balance is important. I love talking about process in general. I'm also a freelance editor, and am happy to talk through your ideas and projects.
Writing can be an isolating process, so it's very cool to actually get to hear from readers and connect with them.
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Prize-winning author Katya Apekina’s Mother Doll is a sharp and visceral nesting doll of a novel, about four generations of mothers and daughters and the inherited trauma cast by Russian history.
Zhenia is adrift in Los Angeles, pregnant with a baby her husband doesn’t want, while her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world is dying on the opposite coast. She’s deeply disconnected from herself and her desires when she gets a strange call from Paul, a psychic medium who usually specializes in channeling dead pets, with a message from the other side. Zhenia’s great-grandmother Irina, a Russian Revolutionary, has approached him from a cloud of ancestral grief, desperate to tell her story and receive absolution from Zhenia.
“Spellbinding, hallucinatory, and very funny . . . A rare achievement.”
— Elif Batuman, Author of The Idiot, a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Moving through a selection of first-person accounts and written with a sinister sense of humor, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they can’t, and shouldn’t, have to themselves. In this captivating debut, Katya Apekina disquietingly crooks the lines between fact and fantasy, between escape and freedom, and between love and obsession.
"The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish is brilliantly structured, with multiple characters narrating the events of the novel. It's an unusual technique that Apekina uses to stunning effect, creating a kind of narrative tension that propels the novel forward... The structure, characters and storyline are all refreshingly original, and the writing is nothing short of gorgeous. It's a stunningly accomplished book, and Apekina isn't afraid to grab her readers by the hand and take them to some very dark and very beautiful places."
— Michael Schaub, NPR
