Writer Deborah Wilde is more public now about the Jewish elements in her novels, which have always had a Jewish sensibility. <\/i>(photo from Deborah Wilde)<\/i><\/p>\n
East Vancouver author Deborah Wilde has been a writer since childhood, when she filled countless notebooks with her stories. Born and raised in Greater Vancouver, she also spent some years in Kitimat; hers was the only Jewish family in town. She read Isaac Bashevis Singer and watched Neil Simon movies. It was an upbringing she describes as being \u201crich in tradition.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wilde started her writing career in TV and film. \u201cI loved it. I got to be in writers\u2019 rooms, it was a real privilege,\u201d she said. However, she added, screenwriters are \u201cpart of a machine: you\u2019re hired to work on other people\u2019s stories. I wanted to tell my stories.\u201d These stories, as it turns out, are ones with strong Jewish representation and tough, sassy female protagonists.<\/p>\n With the movie industry being in what she describes as \u201ca terrible state,\u201d Wilde took the leap into young adult fiction. In writing the Nava Katz series, she was pleased to find that many of her screenwriting skills were transferable to this new genre. \u201cDialogue is my happy place,\u201d she laughed. \u201cI had a great time doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n She knew that she had to have Jewish protagonists. \u201cI was an avid reader as a kid but I only saw myself in Holocaust stories,\u201d she explained. \u201cWhere was the Jewish girl falling down the rabbit hole or going through the cupboard into Narnia?\u201d<\/p>\n In Wilde\u2019s books, we meet a Jewish mom from Mumbai, and the love interest in her current series is a Mizrahi Jew. Diversity even within the Jewish community is vital, she said. \u201cI want smart Jewish women who have adventures, who are the object of desire.\u201d<\/p>\n Having embarked on her career in fiction, Wilde has reached her initial goal of publishing five books in three years. It took a lot of stamina and she learned that being an independent (or \u201cindie\u201d) young adult author was \u201cnot sustainable.\u201d Setting her sights on an adult audience, she took inspiration from her \u201clove of old Hollywood \u2013 it was the banter. And I\u2019d always read romances,\u201d she said, \u201cso I wanted to include that as well.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wilde settled on first-person, urban fantasy. A relatively new but extremely popular genre, urban fantasy tales are set in the world we live in but with magical and supernatural elements. Ordinary or \u201cmundane\u201d activities are constantly disrupted by these troublemaking nasties, sometimes with deadly consequences.<\/p>\n And that is where we meet Jewish heroine Ashira Cohen, private investigator. Walking down a Vancouver street, Cohen comes across a \u201cgrimy convenience store selling long-distance phone cards and bongs.\u201d A Vancouver scene we probably recognize, but she might also run into a bodyguard who\u2019s been possessed by a demon or a delinquent teen with a talent for vanishing into thin air. Cohen is fast-talking, feisty and funny, but she\u2019s also \u201csomeone you\u2019d want to run into at Caf\u00e9 41,\u201d said Wilde.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, Cohen\u2019s finances are in a state, her love life is stagnant and she\u2019s extraordinarily (and creatively) accident prone. The character is unsentimental, caustic and cynically bored. An interview with a young adult client gave her, she says, \u201call the details about their nauseatingly cute courtship and very little useful information.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wilde\u2019s novels bring a big helping of zany chaos, a nod to the screwball comedies of the 1940s, staple viewing in the author\u2019s childhood home. But, while the books conform to established genres \u2013 such as the \u201cchosen one\u201d trope, the terribly attractive and just as infuriating nemesis \u2013 they\u2019re also full of little winks at the reader: neurotic elders, Jewish idioms, references to Jewish traditions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wilde\u2019s talent lies in her ability to layer elements of regular life \u2013 like an eye-rolling teen whose statements sound like questions, or the intrusive badgering of Ash\u2019s mother at a moment when tensions are already running high \u2013 over the frenzied dangers of the world inhabited by Cohen. The result is fiction that is absurd, surreal and peppered with rapid-fire dialogue reminiscent of the classic film His Girl Friday<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There is also a serious undercurrent. The author seasons her prose with references to history. For example, one of the magical characters, Meryem, is a Turkish magic refugee who has fled the \u201cpurges.\u201d<\/p>\n Jewish representation is very important to Wilde. \u201cThere is so little fiction and television with strong, tough Jewish characters,\u201d she said. The Jezebel narrative isn\u2019t a Jewish story but, explained Wilde, \u201cit has a Jewish sensibility \u2013 because that\u2019s my own. It\u2019s authentic to my experience.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There has always been a Jewish flavour to Wilde\u2019s writing, but it was more subtle; it could be found in the humour. \u201cReaders would find the Jewish stuff eventually,\u201d she said. \u201cBut now I\u2019m talking about it in my ads, or even in certain interviews. I\u2019m more public about it now.\u201d<\/p>\n This is one of the aspects that makes Wilde\u2019s work original. While Greek, Celtic, Roman and Norse tales have been all the rage for years, Jezebel\u2019s Jewish folklore and mythology make it stand out. \u201cI won\u2019t write it if I don\u2019t have something original to say,\u201d said Wilde. And that\u2019s where we find a magical organization called Nefesh, or, in Hebrew, \u201csoul\u201d or \u201clife.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilde is both a prolific writer and a businessperson. Talking about the switch to indie authorship, she describes it as \u201cexhausting and a huge learning curve.\u201d She is now both an author and her own publishing house. She has learned about search engine optimization, how to print and distribute books, the advantages of the different platforms and the wizardry required to publish ebooks online. But, despite all the technology that runs behind the scenes, Wilde finds that \u201cword of mouth is still the best form of advertising \u2013 many people comment on my ads with things like, I just bought this book because of all the comments, so it had better be as funny as you all said!\u201d<\/p>\n But she\u2019s not alone in her work: her team now includes her husband (who designed the back end of her online store), an editor, cover designers and a slew of peers on whom she has depended for critical (but kind) feedback, moral support, professional insight and companionship.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wilde sells her books directly to readers. She explained that, when you buy from Amazon, \u201cyou\u2019re actually leasing the book.\u201d Instead, she said, \u201cWhen you buy digitally from an author, you actually own the book \u2013 it\u2019s yours, not just a link you have access to while you have that device.\u201d<\/p>\n Past and present intersect with Wilde\u2019s writing. Most of her grandfather\u2019s family was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto. Of those who survived, she said, \u201cThey ended up in a displaced persons\u2019 camp in Germany. My mom was born prematurely in that camp, delivered by a former Nazi doctor.\u201d So, stories about how Jews once lived in Russia, which invaded Poland in 1939 and fully occupied it at the end of the Second World War, \u201cthat was my childhood.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Having been raised by her grandparents, Wilde said, \u201cI know there is absolutely an aspect of me working through this generational trauma, baggage, but, at the same time, there\u2019s also me working through the patriarchal aspect of Judaism.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Shula Klinger<\/b> is an author and journalist living in North Vancouver.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Writer Deborah Wilde is more public now about the Jewish elements in her novels, which have always had a Jewish sensibility. (photo from Deborah Wilde) East Vancouver author Deborah Wilde has been a writer since childhood, when she filled countless notebooks with her stories. 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