Ruby Todd Interview, plus links to author biography, book summaries, excerpts and reviews

An interview with Ruby Todd

The author discusses her book, Bright Objects, with Talia Tyndall at The Strand Magazine

The Strand Magazine: You have taught for many years at the university level and with private clients, covering many facets of literature and creativity. How has teaching shaped your writing? What do you think you have gained as a teacher that influences your own work?

Ruby Todd: Teaching has made me even more conscious of my craft—focusing on concrete details, description, visuality, voice, and ekphrasis—because I return to these elements when teaching, just as I do in my writing. Recently, I've been working more with individual students, and one thing they've taught me is that I'm often the last to know which aspects of my experience and approach to writing and reading will be the most valuable to them.

For example, one student and I are currently working on reading aloud from the openings of classic novels, then dissecting complex multi-clause sentences for her to emulate as a stylistic challenge. This was not what we initially set out to do, but it emerged naturally as we explored what exercises would best suit her goals.

Teaching has been deeply rewarding, especially sharing my love of writing and reading. However, since my teaching draws from the same energy source as my writing, I've had to learn how to balance the two. I want to avoid becoming a writing teacher who doesn't write—that wouldn't benefit me or my students.

TSM: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

RB: I love Annie Dillard's advice in The Writing Life: write as though you're dying. I also often remind my students to consider the materiality of the world, and to ground the reader in time and space through verbs and nouns, actions, and things. Beginner writers often give readers too much freedom to interpret crucial details, ones they themselves haven't yet fully decided upon. This can leave me, as a reader, feeling disoriented—unsure of my position in time, space, or perspective. When I ask students about this, I often find that they, too, are unsure.

So, I tell them, you must make a clear decision, even if that decision is to create a sense of disorientation. That way, the effect is intentional, rather than accidental. But, of course, there are exceptions to every rule, including this one!

TSM: When did you fall in love with writing?

RB: In a way, it was before I even learned to write. My dad and I used to take turns making up the next chapter in a saga about warring witches and wizards in a distant land. It felt like access to a parallel reality—one I could escape to and control, much like lucid dreaming.

At the same time, I was falling in love with reading. I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by books, librarians, booksellers, and other readers. My parents and their friends were also incredibly encouraging of my efforts to describe experiences in fresh ways, using new words and images. So, I fell in love with language and storytelling first.

By the age of six, I was writing my own "books," and it felt like both an escape from daily life and a kind of superpower. In grade five, my teacher had us create books as if we were a publishing company, which sparked a fire in me. Since then, no other activity has felt quite as electrifying.

TSM: Your debut novel Bright Objects is set to release on July 16, 2024. Can you tell us what readers can expect?

RB: Bright Objects is a literary mystery following Sylvia, a young widow whose small-town life is disrupted by the arrival of a comet not seen for over 4,000 years. Two very different men enter her life around the same time: an American astronomer and a local meditation teacher who believes the comet is a divine sign. Sylvia has been fixated on avenging her husband's death, but as the comet brightens and these two men influence her, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about love, justice, and reality itself.

The novel is about searching for meaning amidst life's strangeness, and how cosmic truths can reflect inner ones. It's also a love story, paced by the comet's journey across the sky.

TSM: What was your writing process like for Bright Objects?

RB: I had a clear sense of the story's skeleton and atmosphere before I started writing. I let that mood build up over time, then began setting the words down. I still remember writing the opening on a winter night under a new moon, with Sylvia's voice coming through.

For the first draft, I wrote chapters in sequence, sending batches of three or four to my agent for feedback. This was my first time using Scrivener, which was a huge help compared to wrestling with a sprawling Microsoft Word file. Though the basic arc of the story remained the same, the novel underwent several rounds of structural changes through feedback from my agent and editors.

TSM: Bright Objects has two stunning covers—one with a scratch revealing metallic beneath, and one featuring a yellow beam shooting through space. How did these designs come about?

RB: I feel incredibly lucky to have had such talented designers working on both editions. The process was very collaborative, with my editors, agent, and the designers all contributing ideas. The Australian cover by Alissa Dinallo, with its rainbow tear through the night sky, evokes a rift in reality, which is relevant to the story. Natalia Olbinski's U.S. cover, with the all-seeing eye and comet's beam, has its own mystical quality. It was partly inspired by an earlier cover design that we couldn't use for legal reasons, but I was floored by Natalia's original vision, which perfectly aligns with the novel's imagery.

TSM: What inspired you to write this novel?

RB: Several threads of inspiration converged. Like Sylvia, I've always longed for a celestial lens through which to view ordinary life. I'd been exploring astrology and the tension between astrology and astronomy. When I read about an upcoming comet, I started thinking about how a comet could be a catalyst for a story.

The comet in Bright Objects becomes many things to many characters: an all-seeing eye, a beacon, a ghost. Sylvia, who works in a funeral home and misses her dead husband deeply, projects her own fears and desires onto the comet. In the end, it reflects back to her the truth about her life—something she never could have imagined.

TSM: When did you decide to write a novel about space? Do you have a personal interest in astronomy?

RB: I've always been fascinated by space. As a child, I spent hours on an illustrated essay about the planets, mesmerized by NASA's images of Saturn's rings. However, like Sylvia, I'm more of a dreamer and a romantic than a scientifically-minded person, though science captivates me.

In addition to researching for the book, I consulted several astronomers and visited observatories like Siding Spring in New South Wales. Learning about Australia's now-defunct Siding Spring Survey program, which searched for near-Earth objects, was especially inspiring.

Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.