The only certainty in life is that death not only comes for us all, but it also comes for those we love. Grief is to be expected, yet our sorrows are often private affairs. Sometimes we lead ourselves out of the darkness. Sometimes the darkness swallows us. And sometimes we stumble upon a brother or sister in grief, and together, we lead each other into the light.
In her touching and insightful new novel, All This Can Be True (Keylight Books), Jen Michalski gives us Lacie and Quinn, two women at the crossroads. Each of them hurting, each a little lost. But in one conversation at a time, one kindness, one offered grace, they venture together into the changed life that waits on the other side of sorrow.
It was my pleasure to sit down with Jen and talk about her new book.
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Curtis Smith: Congratulations on All This Can Be True. It’s a wonderful read. You’ve published with a number of great indie publishers—but Keylight/Turner is a larger operation. How did it all come about and how has the process been?
Jen Michalski: I signed with a new agent, my second, which opened up a lot of avenues for this book that my last novel didn’t have. After I signed, things happened pretty fast⎯a month later I had an offer from Keylight, with whom I was already intrigued because this particular imprint of Turner’s was created to be kind of a pipeline for books to be optioned for television, movies, and media. Several of our common friends have books published with Keylight, and at least one has had her book optioned, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I really do think the novel has great crossover appear as a movie for streaming, although it certainly wasn’t on my mind when I wrote it. I just wanted to write a good, multilayered novel. And I knew, when I was finished, that I had a good novel and, honestly, it felt different. I felt different—like I knew someone was going to respond to it and it was going to have a good journey. But a lot of that success came from the novels before it, what seemed to work and what didn’t. So I feel like it’s been a long journey for the right book. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have wanted this journey for an earlier book, because I wasn’t ready and those books, in the end, weren’t ready.
CS: That’s really interesting. Would you want to be part of the process if it went to a movie or a show? Or at this point does the story feel too distant to hold your interest?
JM: I always say I want to be involved in the process, but I’d be curious to see how someone else responded to the book, what scenes they would cut and what they might add, so I’d be wary of having a heavy hand if I did. I wouldn’t want to be such an originalist, the way Stephen King was about Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, because I found Kubrick’s interpretation much scarier and more compelling that the miniseries adaptation of The Shining, which King felt was the more faithful. At the same time, I wouldn’t want viewers to get attached to the adaptation and then be disappointed that my book is a lot different, so I I’d want to have a little input. I wouldn’t want to write a screenplay, though. I’ve tried before and it’s just a different skill set for me, like writing with my left hand.
CS: Zadie Smith said something along the lines that one of the biggest elements of being a writer is the ability (and desire) to spend long periods of time alone. But with publication, one is forced to suddenly be very public. How is that experience for you? Are you comfortable with it? How do you view the role of writer-turned-promoter?
JM: I’ve head a lot of experience in promoting my work and also others (almost a decade as a reading series host, more than two decades as an editor-in-chief of a literary journal), so I’ve always been semi-comfortable in that role. But even so, it’s kind of daunting—the marketplace is so saturated, and people’s attention spans are hard to hold before they’re onto the next thing—everything is geared towards consuming, and I’ve always felt my work (and those of my fellow authors) is the kind of art that should be savored, not devoured quickly. I think you should do what you can, what feels right for you, and it might change from book to book. For earlier books I was doing more readings, but since the pandemic, I’ve pulled back on that. For my last novel I did several podcasts, which was new to me, and for this book I’ve been reaching out to book clubs, including library book clubs and zoom book clubs.
In terms of publicity in general, I try to take the approach that I’ve written something of which I’m proud and that some people may enjoy and remind myself it’s not being pushy to promote yourself—you’re simply letting your hair stylist or your Zumba class or whomever know about another side of you and inviting them to engage with it.
CS: We know each other from your Baltimore days, but you’ve lived in California for a number of years now. This novel is set in your new home area—do you find yourself placing your pieces more and more in the West? As someone who came from the East, what elements of your new home speak to you and then make their way into your work? Could this have been the same story if it had been set in Baltimore?
JM: I don’t think the story could’ve been set in Baltimore, but the images that sparked the novel honestly could’ve happened anywhere—I’ll touch more on that in your next question. Anyway, I find myself writing more about families since I’ve moved to California (my novel in progress is about a family weekend gone wrong at Coachella). I live in an area that is quite suburban compared with Baltimore City, my former home, so the people with whom I spend time with, and the places I go, are definitely more family oriented or retired-feeling in vibe. We live behind a huge resort, The Omni, which hosts the NCAA Division I Golf Championships, so there’s a definite leisure class feel that isn’t better or worse, it’s just different. And, of course, I’m a little older now, too, and a little more domesticated/leisurely myself. I feel like I’ve moved into more of a Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom or Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies writing phase of my life. I’m also in a different writing group, one that’s more West Coast-affiliated (although one of us lives in Nova Scotia), so there’s definitely different energies and ideas than my groups back in Baltimore. I will say that I miss the culture of living in a major city. Although we can still see the ballet or the symphony or a good play in San Diego, it’s less common that we will do it because it’s no longer at our fingertips like say, The Baltimore Museum or Art or the Walters, was in Baltimore.
CS: A bad weekend at Coachella sound really interesting—I’ll look forward to that. Can I ask about the writing group? Have you always been involved with a group? What has belonging to a group done for you and your work—and what unexpected lessons have you learned from reading the work of others?
JM: I’ve been in one writing group or another for more than twenty years. My first group was with a group of writers in my master’s program who decided to keep meeting for beer and critiques after graduation, and here in California, I connected with a few local authors who I knew on social media but had never met in person until I moved. However, location is no long a hindrance to being in a writing group, since the advent of social media and also Zoom, and I had considered trying to stay in touch with my last writing group, but I’m not sure it would have worked since we always met in person (and I’d be the only one zooming in).
My current group made some really astute suggestions regarding how to ramp up the tension in All This Can Be True, for which I’m forever grateful. The most important thing I’ve taken from this group, or any group, really, is not to take anything too personally and not to hold on too hard to whatever you’ve got at whatever stage it is. We all want each other to put forward out best work, and we’d rather hear what’s not working from each other and workshop possible solutions than hear it from an agent or acquisitions editor, with whom we won’t get the second chance. I can’t tell you how many times not dying on a hill for a certain sentence or a character motivation or whatever has helped me to discover the existence of an even better hill. I’ve also learned to be more critical of my work after years of reading others’ writing; I’ve learned to take the same detached approach.
CS: I’m always interested in the initial spark that got everything going. Was it one of these two main characters—or perhaps the what-if of this unique situation they find themselves in? Or was it something else that got the ball rolling and then faded?
JM: This novel had two sparks—one was the pandemic, which had just began when I started writing (and Derek, Lacie’s husband, originally was in a coma because of a mysterious airborne illness and not a stroke). The other was an image I had in my head of a woman lying in bed, another woman by her side, when the phone rings and it’s the hospital, telling her that her husband has awoken from his coma. That’s where I originally intended to start the book, from this phone call, but it didn’t quite work out that way, although I kept the scene of them waking up like that as the prologue for a long time before moving it to the end of the first act.
CS: It’s interesting you mention the novel’s start. I find that for most of my novels, what I thought was the beginning often isn’t—sometimes it’s pushed back and just as often dropped entirely. Is this common to your other novels? You also mentioned starting with a spark—when you start that first draft, do you have a general idea of the ending—or at least what will become of that spark—and then write toward that? Or do you discover that as you move along?
JM: Yeah, I find it usually happens that where I think the story is staring isn’t necessarily where it winds up starting. But I think you’ve described what you call an “access point” and what is the first line. But although they’re two of the most important parts of a novel, they do different things—the access point is what brings the writer into the story and the first line is what brings the reader into the story. Of course, at first our access point will be the first line, but as the story grows or changes, we realize maybe it begins in a different place, or a different voice. I do have a general idea of how I’d like a novel to go, but I’ve written enough novels now to realize they never pan out the way I envision, and now I tend to write toward the sense of surprise—what I am going to discover about this draft, via my own inspiration, that will set the story off in a new direction? I also don’t ever feel like a novel is completely done—it just happens to be the version you wrote at that point in your life. Accepting the organic chaos of writing—like clay that never retains its shape—has helped mitigate a lot of frustration I felt in my earlier books, when something didn’t work but I was so attached to it.
CS: You employ an alternating point of view between your two lead characters. I think it works really well and brings a lot to the story. What are the challenges and rewards of using this structure?
JM: You know, originally I told the first draft through Lacie’s point of view, and it was until one of its first readers, Jennifer Pooley, suggested that Quinn was too interesting a character for us not to see the interior (and certainly with Lacie’s privileged perspective, it seemed unfair to show her only through the lens of Lacie, no matter how empathetic Lacie felt about her situation). It was the best suggestion because the story has more depth now and feels a lot richer. Some of the drawbacks were trying to keep the timelines parallel and equal, and making sure their interactions intersected at the right places on their own individual trajectories. Another drawback is that the reader knows right away the secret that Quinn is keeping from her, whereas before the reader found out the same time as Lacie, halfway through the novel.
CS: I admire your pacing. We have the present moment of these characters—but we also get to slip back into their pasts and hear their deeper stories. This really adds to the emotional layers at play—but it’s also tricky because sometimes a story can stall when we abandon the main storyline for too long. How do you manage juggling sharing both the present and these past events? Do you plan out when and where you’ll share this background info? Do you have any rule of thumb or internal timer that lets you know when it’s time to return to the present story?
JM: This is a great question, and I wish I had a good answer because it’s one of those things with which all writers struggle. For me, it was really working with my writing group. They’re already really good at finding points where the narrative is dragging or I’m taking too long to get started, so sometimes it was just trusting them to let me know that I went too far down the rabbit hole of flashback. I will say, with my current novel in progress, I’m using a completely different approach. I am writing all the flashbacks I think I need as a separate document, and once I finish the first draft, I’m going to determined where in the narrative, before which events, they need to be placed—if they need to be placed at all. Sometimes what you think will be an important flashback just turns out to be background information on your character that was useful only to you in becoming acquainted with their character.
CS: As I read, I felt drawn to the themes of forgiveness and what happens to the secrets we keep and the ones we share and how one soldiers on after their hearts have been broken. I was wondering if you enter a project like this with some sort of emotional center already in place—a kind of North Star that pulls you through some basic staking of territory that will be addressed—and if so, what guided you through this?
JM: I like to write about things that interest me, particularly the messiness of the human heart. We basically all describe to a very rigid idea of love and family, in least in American society, when in most instances it’s anything but that. As a result, I think we make it very hard on ourselves when those systems fail. But we are constantly growing and changing as people, so it makes sense that most relationships in your life aren’t forever and in many instances are just vehicles of growth themselves. I try in my own life not to look with judgment at things but rather, “how has this made me [or someone else] a different person for the better? How has it not?” If we look to our human movements as steps to grow rather than a be-all-end-all, or as being defined by this relationship or the other, I think there’s more room for understanding ourselves and others.
CS: I’m also drawn to friendship in novels—and I loved the slow development of the connection between your two main characters. If it’s handled correctly, friendship can become almost like its own unique character—but it’s not always easy to portray, especially one like this where there are hidden histories and desires. How did you approach this relationship—especially its pacing and its revealing (and not revealing) of information?
JM: It was a pretty standard—decide what your character wants and keep it away from them as long as possible. However, the roadblocks really lent themselves well to Lacie and Quinn because they’re both people who know they have no business getting involved with the other but the pull between them is too strong. Quinn almost makes it out of town but is slowed down by an unexpected hardship. Lacie vows to never see Quinn again but then is forced to interact with her in a very public (also intimate) setting. Of course, it also helped that there was tragedy unfolding in Lacie’s life. In the end, the I wanted them to want the best for each other because of love and not for their end goal to be instance on being together because of love. The ending was a little different, a little less hopeful, which I felt was the most realistic. However, my agent and also another friend who’d read the manuscript (Ross Angella) were actually kind of pissed about it. It was then I knew I needed to make the ending a little happier (and also that I had something good, that Lacie and Quinn’s relationship resonated with readers).
CS: What’s next?
JM: That Coachella novel! Another perk of living on the West Coast—I went to a couple of outdoor music festivals last year, Coachella and also the Ohana Festival, which is Eddie Vedder’s festival every September at Dana Point. I’ve set novels over very short periods of time, like a weekend, but never at something like Coachella, where you’re basically battling the elements watching ten hours of live music a day.
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Jen Michalski is the author of the novels All This Can Be True (Turner/Key Light, June 2025), You’ll Be Fine (NineStar Press, 2021), The Summer She Was Under Water (Black Lawrence Press, 2017), and The Tide King (Black Lawrence Press 2013), a couplet of novellas called Could You Be With Her Now (Dzanc Books 2013), and three collections of fiction. Her work has appeared in more than 100 publications, including Poets & Writers, and she’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize seven times. She’s been named as “One of 50 Women to Watch” by The Baltimore Sun and “Best Writer” by Baltimore Magazine. She is editor in chief of the literary weekly jmww.
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Curtis Smith’s most recent novels are The Magpie’s Return and The Lost and the Blind. His next novel, Deaf Heaven, will be released in May 2025.