Author Kate Milliken Never keeps it Simple - A SOSS Interview

​Kate Milliken Never Keeps It Simple
An interview by Sue Staats

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author kate milliken

paperback cover of kept animals

hardcover cover of kept animals

​Kate Milliken's first Stories on Stage Sacramento appearance was several years ago, when we featured a story from her prize-winning first collection, If I’d Known You Were Coming. In the years since,  I kept running into Kate, and her partner Adam, at Peg Alford Pursell’s late, lamented reading series “Why There Are Words,” in Sausalito. We always had a lot to talk about, and we always made each other laugh. So I was thrilled that she would, at last, return to Stories on Stage Sacramento with a reading from her debut novel, Kept Animals. In a lengthy Zoom chat a few days ago, we talked about how she can’t avoid writing a complicated narrative, why Kept Animals isn’t a horse story, parenthood, being queer, and what she had for lunch. I had a very good reason for asking that last question, by the way….
 
Sue: Let’s start with your novel, Kept Animals. Every rave review—and there are many—mentions how complex it is. And they’re not wrong: it’s chock-full of characters, story lines and themes. How do you manage a novel this complicated? Can you contain it all in your head, or do you use Post-Its? Notecards? A giant whiteboard? Management software like Scrivener? How do you make it all make sense in the end?
 
Kate: Well, one thing is that I have the unfair, possibly unfortunate proclivity that too much occurs to me at once. And also, I feel hyper aware of how interconnected everything is. And I think because of that sensitivity, stories are the way I make sense of it, or at least stories give me a sense of control. So it all happens pretty naturally on the page. One of the places where my memory is strongest is in a narrative thread—but it gets to a point, usually around page 150, where I have to start using Post-Its. And those are those are my go-tos. Post-Its and also note cards.  Which I will tape up on the wall.
 
Sue: Do you ever regret adding so many layers to your novel? When you’re past 150 pages, and you’ve got all these threads to deal with?
 
Kate: Do I regret it? Yes, but only when remembering that not everyone wants that much complexity in a story. But I think some readers really want to lean in for the puzzle of things. I'm one of those readers, and I am easily bored when I don't get a puzzle to play with. I was a big Agatha Christie reader at a very young age, and I like having to keep track of everything so that I finally understand the outcome, because life feels that way. And the complexity makes it harder to position a book, or describe a book. But I can’t help wanting to articulate how much everything – not like the butterfly effect, necessarily – but how much it all matters, how everything affects everything else.
 
Sue: In one review of Kept Animals, the reviewer wrote that you were “a writer showcasing total control of her craft.” Does this describe you?
 
Kate: Oh god, no, if anything, I always feel like I have so much more to learn. And that I'm doing it as I'm working. So if I’m showcasing anything, it’s “Learning in Action.” But that's lovely, that they said that!
 
Sue: Horses are central to this narrative, although it’s not a horse story—far from it. Yet your knowledge of horses, and riding, and the world of competitive riding, is clear. What have horses meant to you, and is riding still part of your life?
 
Kate: I don't ride now. But I do volunteer work with equine therapy horses. So I'm working on the ground with horses and kids. It’s something I gravitated toward as an adult, because I didn't want to ride anymore. When I rode competitively, it was very dangerous. And I feel like I got lucky, not ever getting hurt. I knew a lot of people who did. 

The thing that really matters to me, at the end of the day, is the way that horses affect my own sense of the world and my value in it. What matters more than the sport is just that intimacy you can have with an incredibly intelligent and enormous animal. And that is what I want to be around.
 
Sue: I read somewhere that you when you saw the final cover for this book you felt like they’d really gotten what the story was about.
 
Kate: The hardcover cover? Yeah, that one made me cry when I opened it, because I was like, okay, that that was what I wanted. We'd gone through several iterations of the cover that all made it look like a horse book, you know, the wild stallion on the front. My editor—I think—had a discussion with the people working on the cover. She totally understood that it needed to be about Rory and her horse as kindred souls. And it has that, the kindred souls effect.
 
Sue: Rory isn’t the narrator of the book, but she is the main character. She’s involved with horses, and she’s discovering photography. The two seem like they’re a way out, for her. Can you tell me what kind of salvation horses and photography mean for her?
 
Kate: I think the horses are a salvation in that it's a thing that always gave her purpose. From a very young age, even though she didn't necessarily feel valued at home, she knew her value to the animals that she worked with, that she had a sensitivity toward them. And I think that sensitivity carried over into her photography, and that became a way to express her individuality—defining herself beyond her animal being.
 
Sue: How did you decide on the title, Kept Animals? It’s not a phrase said anywhere in the book, and yet it’s a perfect title. So many layers of meaning. 
 
Kate: Yeah, I love titles. And this title came to me in the first few weeks of working on the book as a story. Rory is photographing Vivian, and there are all these taxidermied animals around her. It was that feeling, as a teenager, that you're not a grownup and you're not a child. And there’s a wildness to you that's very animalistic, right? Rory and Vivian are feeling that in different ways in this scene, which ended up becoming a chapter of the book. 

But also, there’s the taxidermy, which is a thing that runs throughout the book. That idea that we can keep the wildness of an animal on the other side of its having died. 
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So all those threads come together in the idea of "kept animals,"  like we're trying to keep ourselves one way or another in one realm or another, and how difficult that is, and what an impossible balance it is, and why it can make young women feel kind of crazy. They’re not fully themselves yet, and still they get to feel so incredibly alive.
 
Sue: Everyone in the book is a kept animal in a sense—horses, people, taxidermied animals. Do you ever visualize the book as having a physical shape?  Because I see it shaped like a horse, all bite-y and dangerous in front, complicated in the middle, and spare and beautiful, like the horse’s tail, in the end.And I'm wondering if you also see the structure of a book in any sort of organic way.
 
Kate: I think that I love this question.  I'm a visual person. Kept Animals to me was always a braid, a braided  fuse. The inciting incident set the fuse on fire, and I had to follow the braids of the narrative, all the way to the explosive ending, and then the puff of smoke afterwards. So I saw it a little bit differently, but I really did see that that fuse running through it, and I had to make sure that I kept the fire or just the little light of it, burning steadily throughout. But you had to be patient reading this book. You had to be patient right from the opening weave, you had to be willing to invest with a lot of characters so that you move along through with them. 

The book that I'm working on now is incredibly different structurally and voice wise. It’s more like a Hungry Hungry Hippo. Meaning it's simple, because it's a first person narrative, and it's moving through 30 days in time, but it's just got this really fast pace. It’s sort of choppy, with a quick, keep up beat to it. So it's a little childish. It's oddly about midlife. But it's  just got a different energy to it, and a different propulsion.

Sue: That’s a huge, and actually, a really fun change, but, one more thing about Kept Animals.  I loved the ending. It’s simple and immensely moving, and unexpected. I cried. Did you always intend for the story to end that way?
 
Kate: I did. I knew, probably after the first 70 pages, where it was going. I knew that I was writing an origin story for a mother and daughter. And one was revealing themselves to the other. If you have that, the stories have to connect at the end. It’s the section of the book that I rewrote the least number of times because I knew it so well. By the time I got to it, it didn't take the five thousand revisions everything else did!
 
Sue: I tried, and failed, to count the number of story lines in Kept Animals. They’re all so compelling, and, as you say, braid together in the end. But which story was the most important one, to you?
 
Kate: See, this is where my brain gets into trouble because I'm like, they're all the same story. It's the story of how we are not just a singular thing, we are affected by the generations that came before us, our environment, our community, and the laws around us. And that those are the things that manifest our lives. And I think that we have some control within that. But I wanted to reveal how much everything impacts us. By looking at people and characters intimately we reveal the universal truths.

For me the universal truths are about the systems of oppression we live under, and the systems of belief that can set us free of that. For Rory and Charlie—her daughter—it’s  a belief in family, and loyalty to others. 
 
Sue: Who is your reader, and do you hear from them?
 
Kate: I feel like the people that are most responsive to this book are women who grew up in the 90s, who have some remembrance of that era, whether it be in California or not, but and also women of any age, who are queer. It definitely resonates with them. Other readers that I've heard from are stepchildren, who understand the complications of those step-parent/step-child relationships.
 
Sue: Do you discover things about your own book that you didn’t realize, based on how your readers respond to it?
 
Kate:  Definitely, I think people can be put off by a horse book. And I really wanted to write a book that didn't isolate anyone who didn't know horses, to articulate those relationships without making anybody think they were reading inside bull. I've heard from a lot of readers who were sort of like, well, I wasn't going to read this because of the horses, but once I got through that, I understood. So that was nice. I was glad to hear those things.
 
Sue: Kept Animals had been out for a couple of years. And I know you're working on a new novel, and it must be somewhat tiring to talk about old work when you're absorbed in new work.  I’m wondering if there are elements of former work, things you learned writing Kept Animals and your short story collection, If I’d Known You Were Coming, that you carry into new writing? Mistakes you want to fix? New ideas you want to try?
 
Kate: I always like formal challenges. Having worked on a book for so long, one that has six different perspectives in it and only one first-person voice, I wanted to write something in first person. I’m on the second draft of this new novel, so this could change in the next draft!  But I think what I have learned, so far is that I write about the reverberations of families and generations. That seems to be the flypaper I'm stuck to. But what I have learned about my leaning toward complication is that I’d like to have someone earlier on say you can take out three of these threads, and you'll be okay. It'll still be a story. But again, that complication is what keeps me invested and interested. So, it's a hard balance.
 
Sue: So you love the complication, the puzzle. Do you do crossword puzzles and other word puzzles too?
 
Kate: No, but mostly because my partner is the crossword puzzle person. And there's only so many crosswords in the paper. I'm more of a 1000 piece puzzle person on the table with the kids. I’ll do that kind of puzzle. 
 
Sue: Parenthood, good and bad, mostly bad, is a big part of the narrative of Kept Animals. And you’re a parent, as you’ve just said. Has thinking and writing about parenthood influenced how you parent your own children?
 
Kate:  Oh, definitely, I think every generation does a recalibration of the generation before, and maybe, generations of parents in the 70s and 80s, recalibrated from an overly strict generation. We were a lot of latchkey kids that had a lot of freedom. And now my generation is up against social media and, and the fear that somebody else is watching our kids that we don't want to have watching them. To me, if anything's exhausting about parenting, it's the hyper vigilance I have around understanding who else is with them. Whereas, my parents weren’t able to be hyperaware of where I was. And now, because of the technology, my kids can go anywhere. And that's fine, because I can track them or I can reach them. 

I’m always reflecting on the difference in the generations of parents and parenting and what we're up against. Every generation of parents is up against a new kind of societal threat. And then also just the fact of, how do you parent? Parenting is hard. It's like, everyone in the house speaks a different language and is finding a common language. So just whatever age they are, it's like a new person moved in with you. And then you’re relearning them, at all times. 

I love being a parent. I feel like I got incredibly lucky in who my kids are. For a long time in my life, I was trying to find my family. I have a lot of divorces in my childhood. And so when my kids were born, I remember my best friend from grad school said to me, “Oh, your people have been born.” And they really are my people. We get each other. Even when we're not getting each other. Exactly. 
 
Sue: I feel that way about my children, too. It's pretty wonderful. Speaking of which, does your family read your work?
 
Kate: My daughter has read some of Kept Animals. She's my oldest. My son is an avid reader and has no interest. And I'm fine with that. My mother was also a writer. And I got to see her plays being performed, but it wasn't until after I was in college that I actually read them on paper. It’s a little weird. It's strange to read the inside of your parent’s brain. 
 
Sue: How about how about Adam, your partner. Does he read your work? 
 
Kate: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, he does.
 
Sue: So, I have a question you can answer or not, as you choose. In several interviews, you’ve mentioned growing up queer. This surprised me, when I read it, because you’ve been with your partner, Adam, every time I’ve seen you, and you have children, and your life seems quite conventional. I guess heteronormal might be the word. And I want to ask how you mesh the two, how it works in your life. And as I type this I see my trans grandson rolling his eyes and saying, Grandma, please!  And maybe you are, too. But I’d love for you to comment on it. If you want. Or not.
 
Kate: No, I think it's good to have it out. I mean, I'd rather the question. How it works is, you’re queer, whether you're married, and forward facing heterosexual, or not. The fact is, when Adam and I met, we were both dating women. That’s probably the simplest way to explain it. It's just when we met, we were the right people for each other. But we're people. Instead of it being, I'm heterosexual, and he was the man I met, it's like he was the person I wanted to be with. So that's really all it is. I mean, no matter who you end up partnering with, as a queer person, you're with your person, right? So my family is very hetero facing, but if you come to my house, all of our doormats are rainbows. I'm not necessarily closeted. It's just that everyone makes an assumption. We're a family of four with two kids, and that’s fine.
 
And I’m so happy for my kids’ generation, because there is progress being made in the conversation they're having. There was no way I could have said to someone in high school, I like girls. And now no one assumes anyone’s sexuality, right?
 
Sue: I know. When I was growing up it was truly never discussed, or admitted. And now I’m Grandma to a trans grandson, and he’s just this kid that I love, like I always did. 
 
Kate: And how great that he gets to be comfortable in his body. 
 
Sue: Absolutely. Let’s make another right-angle turn, to the chapter being read at Stories on Stage. It’s early in the book, where June, the rich girl, drives Rory, the poor girl, home from the stables. It establishes the difference between poor and rich, and, by June’s behavior, captures the entitlement of the rich. Rory is alienated, yet feels a hunger to belong. The scene is very, very teen-agey. You really nail that aspect of it. And I want to know, how is it that you can write so closely to that character?
 
Kate: Oh, I'm just stuck there! Rory’s point of view came to me pretty easily. She’s the character I feel closest to, and whose experience most mirrors mine. So that was easy. June, the other character does not get a perspective, but I wanted her to be a fully formed human. And she was a lot of fun to watch, as a writer, to describe her from a little bit of a distance.
 
Sue: You’ve had your work featured at Stories on Stage Sacramento once before. What’s it like for you, hearing your work read by someone else?
 
Kate: Well, it’s a total thrill for this COVID 2020 author! Because the book release was a bit of a fizzle, because of COVID. After finding a great publishing home and a great editorial family, we had to ride the roller coaster of, literally, the paper press shutting down midway through making the book.  The books went out in April, and everything shut down in March. And it was a scramble publicity-wise. I was grateful we could pull things together on Zoom, and I met with some book clubs. So this is super-exciting for me. 
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Honestly, I'm so thrilled to get to have it belong to someone else. Like that's what a writer really likes. That's the ultimate goal, right? For someone else to embody that experience that you had for the eight years you worked on it. And then it gets to belong to the audience in front of me. I’m super excited.
 
Sue: You and you and a lot of other writers had really bad, bad times. It wasn't fair to anybody.
 
Kate: COVID is just a totally awful beast, right? 
 
Sue: So you spent, as you said, nine years writing Kept Animals?
 
Kate: Well, eight—I took I took a break to do my kids yearbook school yearbook one year, so it was eight.
 
Sue: That’s got to be one great yearbook! So, you spent eight=plus years writing the book. In one interview, you said that the “time spent adds layers of richness, but you hope you'll be more efficient with the next one.” And I'm wondering, are you more efficient with the one you're working on now? Have you figured out ways you could make the process shorter?
 
Kate: I know the process could be a lot shorter if life let you go away for a month at a time, I totally understand how valuable artists' residencies are, but that’s not the structure of my life. I’m definitely more streamlined, and more confident. But the artistic challenges that writing throws at you still exist, no matter how far you come. I think everybody still gets has to hit the same walls over and over again, but I'm scaling them a little bit more quickly.
 
And another thing I’ve learned about myself is that I have to have multiple projects going. And I think if I had learned that earlier, I would have been quicker with Kept Animals instead of forcing myself to go back into that book over and over again. I have written several stories in the midst of this current project.
 
Sue: Kate, who’s your go-to writer for inspiration?

Kate: I like multiple voices. I will go to a short story pretty readily knowing I can finish it, and if it wasn't the thing I needed to keep me going, I can always pick up another one. The New Yorker is always at hand. Specifically? Kevin Wilson is somebody whose work is so fun. Andrew Sean Greer. Louise Erdrich— talk about a writer who takes on everything and has multiple layers!  Joy Williams. Elizabeth Strout. You know—the heavy hitters.
 
Sue: Also, I noticed a quote from an Annie Proulx story as the epigraph for Kept Animals, and you set part of it in Wyoming, so it sounds as if her writing inspired you.
 
Kate: I listened to her collection of short stories (Close Range) quite a lot because the voice was something I wanted to have ingrained in me when I was working on my Charlie chapters—that Wyoming voice, and then I finally went to Wyoming. She is, of course, the author that made so many of us fall in love with Wyoming.
 
Sue: I know. I read that collection over and over. So, some last questions. At a party, are you a watcher or a participant?
 
Kate: Oh, gosh, that’s interesting, my favorite role, actually, is host, which I haven't done in a long time, but that was kind of who I was, for a very long time. You get to orchestrate and then listen.

Sue: I have to say that's probably that's probably my favorite too. So,  what is your favorite way to spend time?
 
Kate: Well, this sounds like such a dork answer. But the thing that makes me the happiest is writing. But it's only my favorite way to spend time about 20 minutes into doing it. That first 20 minutes I'd rather be in a dental appointment. Other than that, I love walking. I love hiking with my kids. That's probably my second favorite. Not second favorite. Let's make those ties.
 
Sue: And my last question, which I’m only asking because I’m fasting today, and really hungry. What are you having for lunch?
 
Kate: I just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
 
Sue: That sounds perfect. Exactly what I am craving. I knew we thought alike. 

this interview has been edited for length and clarity 
Link to a New York Times interview with Kate about Kept Animals:
​https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/books/review/kept-animals-kate-milliken.html

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