Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with B. Robert Conklin

Book Title:  Soft as Water

Released:  02/29/24

Genre:  Suspense

Interview by Heather L. Barksdale

What inspired you to write “Soft as Water”?

Conklin: As back cover says, “Soft as Water is a novel about bridges.” The bridge that inspired it is a classic suspension bridge spanning the Ohio River that I’ve crossed several times on my visits to Cincinnati. There’s a certain romantic quality about it, just like movies with the Brooklyn Bridge as a backdrop. I’m thinking Annie Hall and Saturday Night Fever, for example. Instead of big cities or boroughs, the bridge in the novel connects two small towns whose peaceful façades conceal a scandalous backstory involving the tragic deaths of star-crossed lovers: a young woman who apparently committed suicide by jumping from the bridge and her lover who died in despair of a heroin overdose. An undercurrent of small-town violence also threatens the life of the protagonist, Will Archer, who is trying to find out the truth behind their deaths to help the couple’s daughter, Essence Warner, avoid a similar fate of her own. The novel initially evolved from an idea of two strangers meeting in the middle of the suspension bridge at night, a male insomniac from the West Virginia side and a female sleepwalker from the Ohio side. This would have been fun to explore—more like a rom-com—but the novel morphed into something more sinister.

How did you come up with the names of your main characters?

Conklin: In a letter that Will comes across from Essence’s mother, she explains the name she chose is because “time was of the essence” when it came to reuniting with her lover for a life on the run from her own domineering mother. Essence’s mother’s name is Fortune, which turns out to be ironic when her life is cut short due to bad timing and miscommunication. You learn rather quickly that the protagonist, who ends up becoming romantically entwined with Essence as he tries to save her, has two identities: originally Alan Paxton, Pax to his friends, and his adopted name of Will Archer. Archer makes sense since Will is as tense as a bowstring. Paxton was a variation on the last name of a bone specialist who treated my hip dysplasia when I was a child. It’s no coincidence that several crucial scenes take place in hospital recovery rooms. As Will tells Essence at one point, “We need to stop meeting like this.” Essence’s father is Jamaal, a name I borrowed from my wife’s student roster for one of the classes she teaches. In Arabic, it means “radiant” or “beautiful,” which is fitting for the role he plays as the ghost of a young man who cares deeply about his daughter’s well-being—a quality of soul, not just outward appearance.

Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?

Conklin: My beginning notes for this novel go all the way back to 2016, which is also the year the novel takes place. I’ve not updated the time of the novel to the current year because the cold case takes place in the late 90s when cell phones and texting weren’t yet commonplace. The lack of electronic communication is important for the backstory because communication barriers between Essence’s father and mother are what partly lead to their demise.

Once I have a working draft, it’s like picking at a scab. I’m always going through it, tweaking and fine-tuning until I reach a point of creative exhaustion. When I got to this point with this novel, I really thought I was done, but my wife had other thoughts. She produced a last-minute chapter-by-chapter critique, explaining in excruciating detail what wasn’t working for her and needed to be revised. I had already postponed the launch on Amazon and was not permitted any more delays. So with less than a month to go, I went into hurry-up mode and made most of the changes based on her insights. As you might guess, my wife is my staunchest supporter as well as my harshest critic!

If "Soft as Water" was adapted into a movie, who would you like to see cast to play your lead characters?

Conklin:  Will Archer is a guilt-ridden loner who has broken ties with his family out of survivor’s guilt following a road accident that claimed the lives of two innocent people: a parent and child. His wife Abbey describes him as “too much the

gentleman. Boy Scout. He would get trampled, taken, run over, fleeced.” So I would go with someone who is innocent and naïve but capable of deep remorse. The first actor to come to mind is Ryan Gosling, who has a charming sort of boyish

innocence—a true romantic—as demonstrated in one of his early films, The Notebook. However, at 43, the actor may be too old to play a 27-year-old, so I might have to go with whoever is the up-and-coming Ryan Gosling of the current

generation.

For his romantic counterpart, Essence, I Googled “femme fatales” and came up with Zoë Kravitz who played Cat Woman in 2022’s The Batman. Just as Essence is multiracial, this actress has a varied ethnic makeup per Wikipedia: African American, Ashkenazi Jewish, and Ukrainian. Plus, Essence has programmed her phone to call her the Mistress of Darkness, which makes a creature of the night like Cat Woman a good fit. The only trouble is the actress is 35, which may make it

hard for her to pass as a 19-year-old. So we’re back to casting calls. On the plus side, the age difference between Ryan and Zoë is the same as between Will and Essence.

When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?

Conklin: I often experience writer’s block after pages and pages of freewriting when I write myself into the proverbial corner. When this is the case, I generally tend to step away from the manuscript, sometimes for days, weeks, or even months at a time. I may do some journaling or switch to other projects until I feel an urge to return to the work-in-not-so-much-progress. Usually, not always, when I come back to the draft with fresh eyes and renewed energy, I’ll find a way to move forward. Outlining different scenarios from the point where I became stuck can also help.

Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?

Conklin: Even if you end up self-publishing, revise your draft until it is as polished and professional as possible as though to submit it to literary agents. In fact, this is what I’ve done with several novels. With an early version of Soft as Water, I received a rare request for the full manuscript, which came this close to acceptance by Writers House. So I knew I was on the right track.

Also, don’t be too hard on yourself and give up too soon when you’re in the middle of a draft and aren’t sure where it’s going. Looking back at my yellow ledger versions of Soft as Water, I made marginal comments to myself along the lines of “Boring,” “Aimless,” “Hopelessly stuck,” “Oh, just give it up already,” etc. Per my “advice to self” to the previous question, I set the draft aside and came back to it much later when I decided what I had written wasn’t all that bad after all. I picked up where I left off and held on for a ride of twists and turns that were surprising to me even as I wrote them.

What is your favorite genre, book, and/or author?

Conklin: I mostly enjoy science fiction and fantasy. Favorites in these genres include The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski, the Hyperion/Endymion tetralogy by Dan Simmons, and N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy. I’ve also enjoyed A Song of Ice and Fire and, like everyone else, am waiting for the last two books to come out. I’d love to know what’s holding up George R. R. Martin. I mean, the books can’t be any worse than the final season of the TV show, right?

Aside from the above series, do I have a favorite book? One I wouldn’t mind rereading again and again? Jame Joyce’s Ulysses. Just joking. Once was enough. One of my favorite novels—although it may not even be long enough to be considered a novella—is Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. The setting is a family-run coffee shop that functions as a time machine for patrons who wish to revisit old friends or deceased relatives or unrequited loves, usually with the intention of making amends or expressing something that was left unsaid. Soft as Water has been called by one reviewer as “a powerful message about second chances,” so I guess I’m drawn to this theme of making up for past mistakes.

What are you working on next?

Conklin: Lately, I find myself shifting to young adult contemporary fantasy with a half- finished draft that is just limping along. I’m finding it challenging to write in this genre for this audience even though I have a teenage daughter living at home. So far, I have four different versions of a story involving a 13-year-old protagonist whose mother goes missing. The girl tracks her down to her intended location at a mysterious ancient woman’s house in the country—think Hansel and Gretel—where she waits for her mother to show up while trying to discover clues about her disappearance. There’s a magical mirror that acts as a portal and a Hindu god that can grant immortality, but these kinds of tropes are tricky. After all, you’re risking comparison with the likes of Alice in Wonderland; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; and Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series. Who needs that much pressure, really?

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