Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 44

Suzanne Rindell talks about Three-Martini Lunch, Greenwich Village walkups, fear of flying translating to gorgeous writing about it, and so much more

 Suzanne Rindell writes the kind of books I want/need to read. Gritty, smart and ambitious. Her first, THE OTHER TYPIST, was translated into 15 languages and optioned for film by Fox Searchlight. And her new novel, THREE-MARTINI LUNCH is--well, let's let Publisher's Weekly rave about it:

"With its vivid historical setting and the narrators' distinct voices, this ambitious novel is both an homage to the beatnik generation and its literature, as well as an evocative story of the price one pays for going after one's dreams." 
—Publishers Weekly

I'm honored to have Suzanne here. And let's get that martini next month, okay, Suzanne?



I loved it that you lived above a funeral home—so Six Feet Under—and do you think it helped or hurt your creativity?

Helped! I was so leery of living there, but ultimately, the price was right. I thought I was simply doing what was necessary to live in New York while working as a publishing intern. However, after moving in, I found it was a very safe, quiet place to call home – and moreover, it was a great place to write. I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to throw a party there, hah! I had less of a social life while living there, but I think that was good for productivity.

I love the whole Greenwich Village backdrop of Three-Martini Lunch. What was your research like? What surprised you? Did anything make you have to change a character or the story?

One thing I did for the sake of research is I moved from the funeral home apartment in Harlem to a very tiny studio in the West Village, because I wanted to be able to take walks around the neighborhood as I wrote. Every once in a while a certain detail would come up that would surprise me – for instance, women still weren’t allowed in McSorley’s  in the East Village in 1958. So obviously, my character Eden couldn’t go in there. It worked out better, though – I could picture her husband going there and leaving “the little woman” at home on purpose. Which tells you something about Cliff.

So much of your novel is about the price of dreams—do you think there always is some cost or loss?

I don’t think there has to be; often times hard work or luck is enough. The characters in Three-Martini Lunch are all trapped by circumstances specific to their time period. And at the same time, they intrigued me because I felt they each painted themselves into a corner, which is something we all do (or are capable of doing).

What kind of writer are you? Do you map things out or just feel your way? And do you drink martinis? 

I do a bit of both. I start a book with a feeling. At some point I make a map. Then at another point, I throw the map out as I feel my way forward. I’m getting a little old for the post-martini hangover, but I do like wine… wine might be the thing that helps me throw out the map, hah!


What’s obsessing you now and why?

The new book I’m writing is about a barnstorming (flying circus) act in California during the years leading up to Pearl Harbor and America’s internment of the Japanese. So I’ve been watching old grainy newsreels on YouTube of wing-walking and other tricks people did with biplanes. Given that I’m afraid of flying and heights, this is a stomach-turning obsession to have.


What question didn’t I ask that I should have?

“When are your free for martinis?” – Hah! We’re writers, we’re supposed to be constantly sitting around drinking martinis, pretending to be Hemingway, right? ;) 
ANSWER: Let's make a date at Pete's Tavern! It was good enough for O'Henry, right?

A young prisoner fights for justice in Jean Trounstine's extraordinary true narrative of murder, memory, truth and redemption, in BOY WITH A KNIFE

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Troustine </a>when I was researching a new novel and needed to know about women in prison. Not only was Jean smart, funny and full of every fact I needed--and every fact I didn't know that I needed--but she invited me to participate in Changing Lives Through Literature, an award-winning sentencing program featured in The New York Times and on the Today Show. Sitting in a room with around 15 women on probation, a probation officer and Jean, we all discussed my novel, and discussed our lives, and when I left, I was frankly exhilarated and every perception I ever had about women and crime was turned on its head. Since then, we've become fast friends.<br /><br />Jean's a prison activist, professor emerita at Middlesex Community College, and the author of Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison, based on her ten years at Framingham Women's Prison, where she directed eight plays with prisoners. She is also the author of the poetry collection, Almost Home Free, and the co-editor of the New England best-seller, Why I'm Still Married; Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex, and Who Does the Dishes. On the steering committee for the coalition for Effective Public Safety in Massachusetts, she explores and explains the criminal justice system for Boston magazine, Huffington Post, and more.</span></span></i><br /><i><span style="color: #3e003f;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></span></i><span style="color: #3e003f;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i>I'm totally honored to have this amazing woman on my blog (and even more jazzed that we are friends.) Thank you, Jean!</i></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #3e003f;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><b>I am always am haunted by something before I write it, and I imagine it's the same for you as well. Tell us, what made you know you had to write this book?</b><br /><br />The day I received my first letter from Karter is still embedded in my mind. I remember sitting in my office at the college where I teach, and beginning to examine the envelope. Like all letters from prisons (in Massachusetts, in my case), there was a stamp that told the world the letter was from a prison and warned readers to be wary. So I was a little anxious opening it. In fact, as I read the letter, I began shaking. But now, when I look back, I don’t think it was just fear. I think I knew unconsciously something incredibly important in my life was about to happen because of that letter.<br /><br />Karter was so smart, so amazingly articulate, and that piece of paper pulled at me so much I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I kept wondering how could this person I had never met before actually reach out of that letter and touch me? But it happened. He did. And he sounded sincere. I felt conflicted because I was aware of the weight of answering him. I called a friend before my class began and read the letter to him, wondering all the while. Karter told me so more than words. Oh, he told me facts: he had been sentenced as an adult at 16 for a murder he committed in a Massachusetts classroom. He was now 31, having spent half is life in prison. He asked for help for a female friend. But that wasn’t it. Partly, it was his language and his ability to string together words so elegantly. I could not believe the man who was writing to me was the same person who was called in Internet stories, a “monster.” He was no monster, but he had killed someone. I felt something like fate, and I felt something I have come to call “cognitive dissonance.” I wanted to understand the contradiction. Who was he, why had he killed a boy, how had he lived in prison, and was he the same or different from thousands of other kids who are sent to adult jails and prisons? But I also wanted to know how he could sound like every really smart student I had ever taught.<br /><br /><b>What was the research and the writing like for you? Tell us about Karter Reed and your involvement with his case.</b><br /><br />The book really evolved. The first draft was written in the voice of “Oh my God, I met a murderer.” In some ways it had the passion I felt reading novels and watching evocative TV shows, but the voice wasn’t quite right for the whole book and my agent at the time, said nope, won’t do. Now I realize that it was my discovery that I wrote and I needed to do that, but it wasn’t my ultimate voice for the book. However, discouraged, I rethought the book. The next draft was written in a year or two, along with a few years of letters to and from Karter. His story got me interested in researching juvenile justice issues and why indeed we allow kids to be sentenced as adults. By year five, I almost had a new agent, and  then she died. By year six, I had a brilliant editor with my publisher IG, and he asked me to expand the book. He was 100% correct. But at the time, I thought, oh no more rewriting? I have to say, it truly took seven years to reach this milestone, because the people I met, the material I read, and the issues I learned about, all made the book stronger. And Karter Reed helped me as his letters enlightened the issues I then delved into; his letters helped me see what was at stake for a child who grows up behind bars. We ended up writing more than a hundred letters to each other; I’d like to think I was one of the forces on the outside who helped Karter stay motivated when times got tough. I testified for his parole; I interviewed his family; and I cheered for him every step of the way. I still do.<br /><br /><b>You've also worked at Framingham Prison putting on plays, something you wrote about in Shakespeare Behind Bars. Can you talk about that please? </b><br /><br />My work with women behind bars turned me into a prison activist. And lately, I’ve become more of a prison abolitionist. I think we need to contain some people, for sure, but not in the kind of conditions that we currently hold people in where women are at threat to hang themselves because they can’t see their families and won’t get out of prison for years. I brought some joy and some intellectual challenge to a group of females at Framingham Women’s Prison by teaching and directing plays. We performed them for the whole prison. We did Shakespeare, Aristophanes, Clifford Odets, Jean Giraudoux, and adaptions of Hawthorne and other classic writers. This was not therapy, but like all art, it was cathartic. Eight plays in ten years. It was what gifted me with the understanding that most women I met did not need prison to teach them a lesson. They knew their crimes. They punished themselves every day. They had made lousy choices, and most were in for crimes involving drugs, bad choices, or men they followed into trouble; many were subject to vile harassment. Theatre gave them a way out. It turned me on to the fact that it is a crime sending most women away from their children instead of supporting them in their communities with programs that teach them life skills, offer educational programming, and build job readiness. We need to see the face behind the crime, and as Karter taught me, no one should be defined by their worst moment in time.<br /><b><br />And you work for this wonderful organization Changing Lives Through Literature, which I was so thrilled to attend. What astonished me so much was how the women related to the book--and to me, and how great our dialogue was. Are there more programs like this out there?</b><br /><br />Changing Lives (CLTL) is a unique book group which is designed to reach those in conflict with the law. A judge, a probation officer, a professor, and a group of probationers all sit together discussing books, in what we call a “democratic classroom” where all opinions are equal. When we read your book, <i>Pictures of You</i>. What was wonderful for you was that the women were honest about what characters they liked and identified with and who they didn’t connect with. There’s a no BS quality in CLTL and life experience levels the playing field. The program allows participants dignity and respect as they discuss characters’ lives and consider choices for behavior they might not have considered in their own lives. Reading a book about a family allows us to think about our own families and yet talk about the book. Sometimes it has a healing quality, and there’s an amazing community that forms from reading and discussing literature. Through the years since CLTL began, along with Massachusetts where we currently have twenty programs that link Education to the Courts, we have had programs in California, Arizona, Texas, Kansas, Virginia, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and in England!<br /><br /><b>It's terrifying to think that ten thousand or so youth are incarcerated in adult prisons. Is anything being done about this?</b><br /><br />Actually, 250,000 kids are tried, sentenced, or imprisoned as adults every year across the United States. My book unravels how we got to where we are and why it isn’t working. And there are some organizations fighting hard across the country to change laws, change the racial disparities we have in our justice system, and pass new laws to treat kids as kids. It’s slow-going. I’m writing an article now on “the state of juvenile justice” so to speak. The Supreme Court has ruled on cases that have helped the treatment of juveniles in the past years, keeping them away from the death penalty and away from life behind bars with no parole. But we also have states that have refused to raise the age of adulthood to eighteen. New York is one of two states—the other is North Carolina-- to automatically prosecute 16 and 17-year-olds as adults, despite risks to youth and public safety.<br /><b><br />What's obsessing you now and why?</b><br /><br />Obsessing me is how to ever again find time in the day to clean up my house.<br /><b> </b></span></span><br /><span style="color: #3e003f;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><b>What question didn’t I ask that I should have</b>?<br /><br />How are the people in the community where Karter committed the murder responding to my book coming out? The answer is: this was a brutal crime and a horrible tragedy and it is still a reminder of how it ripped apart people’s lives. In no way do I (or for that fact does Karter) justify what he did in 1993 when he killed Jason Robinson. There are still deep wounds and Karter’s development and change as a human does not take away the loss of life. Still, I believe that we must take care of all our children, or as James Baldwin said, more eloquently than I, “For these are all our children. We will all profit by, or pay for, whatever they become.” Education is the first step; then change policies as we change minds.<br /><br /><br /><b>Karter has become someone who I would be proud to live next door to. You can listen to him here on Radio Boston. You can find out about my book and my book tour at my website www.jeantrounstine.com and you can join my twitter chat on April 12 using the handle @justicewithjean and that day buy my book at its debut price on Amazon! After that, support your local Indie!</b></span></span>

Nature verses Nurture. Murderous sperm donors and how we bond with our children. Lisa Scottoline talks about her whipsmart new page-turner, MOST WANTED, gardening, mothering, garter snakes, more

Lisa Scottoline is the New York Times Bestselling author of 26 novels. That's right. Twenty-six. Over 30 million of her books are published in over 35 countries. She writes a weekly column with her author daughter, Francesca Serritella. Warm, funny, and so, so smart, Lisa is also the kind of person who, when she can't show up at your reading, buys six copies of your book from the bookstore long-distance. 

I'm always honored to host Lisa on my blog! Thank you, thank you, Lisa.

So much of you wonderful, tense novel, Most Wanted, is about nature verses nurture—are we who are genes tell us, or are we how we are raised? Added to this is the new scientific research about how the genes of our ancestors might play a role.  I know how the novel plays out, which is absolutely terrific, but I’m curious about how you, personally, feel about this. 

I'm still trying to make up my mind on the subject, not only as a novelist, but as a mother.  And it's a subject that interests me very much, and always has, especially since I found out late in my life that I had a half-sister I didn't know about, on my father's side, and in fact, a half-brother as well, but on my mother's side!  (I know, you can't make this up…) It was surprising to get to know them both, but it has become wonderful, and it provides me with an in-house examination on the difference between nature and nurture.

It's a long story, but I'm starting to think more and more that nature plays more of a role than I had thought, and I see this more and more with my own daughter Francesca, with whom I'm very close.  I'm a single mother, so it's always been just her and me, and now we are co-authors on a series of humorous memoirs about our lives, so we're learning a lot about each other, day by day, (and given our occupations, so is everyone else).  More and more, I see that her innate intelligence, her great good humor, her way of looking at the world, and her wonderfully thoughtful temperament is something that she was simply born with.  I'm the wacky one, of the two of us!

Your plots are always so intricate and have what I call the “oh my God, what is he/she going to do NOW?”  Is there ever a moment when you are writing where you think, “Oh, I just can’t do that to a character?” and go ahead and do it anyway?

Thank you so much for saying so, and I wish I could take credit, or at least give my characters some, but the fact is, I don't write with an outline so none of it is planned out.  I simply begin and say what would logically happen next, in this character's life.  In other words, what would she do, logically and of course, that begins to define her as she goes along.  For example, in MOST WANTED, I just got the idea, what if I were a pregnant woman and I had used a sperm donor and I found up my sperm donor was a serial killer?  (Yes, I know, I have a lot of weird what if thoughts, but it's a good thing in my job).  And I took it from there.

And in more direct answer to your question, the longer I live, the more surprised I am in the curve balls that life throws you, and I'm also amazed and marveled at the resilience and strength of the people I know and my girlfriends there all dealing with so much, both good and bad, and it never seems to stop.  So in a way, I think each of my novels is a little bit of a tribute to the resilience and strength in every woman.  And every man.

So much of your book is about what it means to be a parent and how that translates in how you bond with your child or don't bond—Do you feel that there is really something primal about all of this? I know that when I see anyone’s baby, I feel that primal urge to care for it—though there are certainly many many women who don’t. Can you talk about this please?

What a fascinating question, and I would expect nothing less from such a superb novelist and observer of families and parenting as you.  I absolutely do think it's primal and I can think of an example, a funny incident happily.  It actually happened when I was giving a signing at a bookstore in Dallas, and the bookstore happened to have an escalator and my signing was at the top of the escalator.  I was just yapping away, because I like to entertain during my signings, (I never read because I think my readers can read and they would rather know the inside stuff and I'm happy to do that for them.)  So anyway, were laughing and talking and asking questions and all of a sudden a toddler starts to wander over to the escalator, fairly close to the top.  The closer she got, the more distracted I got, and then I started to notice that there were people in the crowd looking over.  None of us could concentrate because we are worried about this kid, and I know that at some point, I might've begun to lactate.  Okay, just kidding, but all I can tell you is that the response of all the people watching this toddler, both men and women, was positively primal.  We all jumped up almost at the same moment and rushed over to get this kid - I actually stopped talking and went over - even though frankly, I'm not sure she was in any danger.  It was just something in our DNA telling us to save the kid and so that's my highly scientific explanation for my answer.

I also wonder about how people with unhappy childhoods transcend that in being a parent, which also snaps up in your book. I had an unhappy childhood, but my husband and I managed to raise our child the opposite of how we were raised, and not only was it great for our son, but it healed us. Do you think our whole notion of parenthood requires more thought, that everyone should explore their own childhoods and what they needed and be sure to give that to their child?


Here's when you find out that I can be a little bit nutty because the truth is I think your question is absolutely on point and correct, and not only that, I think we should be mindful in everything we do.  I love the line of Stephen Sondheim’s when he says “careful the things you say, children will listen.”  I write a lot about my mother, whom I call Mother Mary, and though she loved us very ferociously, or perhaps because she loved us very ferociously, she tended to be very protective.  That meant that when I was younger I got a lot of messages that were like don't try, don't take the risk, don't run too fast, stay right here.  It was very loving in one way, but it made me a fairly cautious child and I had to grow out of it.

When my daughter Francesca was born, I caught myself doing the same thing but I tried to make myself do the opposite, just like you.  I don't think the world needs another little girl that is afraid to take risks, and thank God, I don't have one.  But to get back to my point, mindfulness is important in all things.  I’ve become more  aware of my carbon footprint, and I have become a major vegetarian.  I no longer see the difference between the dogs I adore and a pig, so I can’t eat bacon or anything else delicious anymore.  I sleep better at night, feeling like my ethics are in line with my actions, and I know I don't contribute to any food chain that at the opposite end causes factory farming.  So as you see, I'm all for all of us exploring how we do things, why we do things, and questioning ourselves, above all.

I always want to know how one novel is different from the one before—if there was anything that you learned or that nudged you into Most Wanted?

It really was the what if of what if I couldn't have had my daughter?  What if I had been infertile?  What would my life be like?  I think it started also because now that I am a straight up empty nester, in that I live alone, I still very much have my daughter and my life via phone and email and text, but I am a capella.  It's an interesting position for woman to be in, especially one who identifies so much as a mother, and I think all these thoughts were swirling around and gave rise to MOST WANTED.

And I think what I learned from the book, in addition to the more emotional aspects of mothering, is the more scientific side that came from my research.  Because I learned that the situation in the novel is absolutely plausible given the lack of regulation in the sperm banking industry.  It’s not something people talk about much, but they should, because it turns out it’s a business like any other but there are relatively few regulations in place to protect people who buy donor sperm.   

The details are in the book, because it makes a very interesting legal problem for the heroine and her husband, but my research showed me that once again it’s really important to have laws and regulations in place to protect people when big money interests takeover, especially when people are at their most vulnerable, like times when an infertile couple wan to have a child.  It’s also an issue that I think deserves more and more attention, since so many single women, single man, and same-sex couples are using donors of all kinds.  There has to be regulations and laws in place to protect everyone.

You main character says she doesn’t know what she is leaving behind, but she also doesn’t know what she is going to—which to me is like a door opening and it takes great courage to make that step. You agree?

Yes I totally do agree, and I feel that life offers that almost all the time.  More and more, we don't know what were going to and sometimes, we don't even know what we’re leaving.  I've never been unhappy with any risk I've taken and the only times I regret things are when I don't take a risk I think I should have.  As I’ve gotten older, my most current thought is, onward and upward!

Of course I have to ask you, what's obsessing you now and why?

Happily, my latest obsession is my garden, which is a fun thing to be obsessing over until you find out you have a nest of snakes, which is what I discovered the other day, after turning over a rock.  I went from being instantly horrified, to gradually interested, and now finally fascinated.  These are the most photographed snakes in history and they look like garter snakes, so I don’t think they’ll hurt me, so I vowed not to hurt them.  This is a triumph over mindfulness in the face of scariness!

Author Patty Chang Anker's talented young daughter G talks about art, creativity, why she can't paint with rap music on, and so much more

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text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GR5_xIEI4K..." style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">G at work creating</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GR5_xIEI4K..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EXoSdCOqkz..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EXoSdCOqkz..." style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of the artist with me</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sIAo5pjPyI..." style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">G with Kim Ray, her painting teacher, wearing a t-shirt designed by her other art teacher and inspiration, Katie Reidy</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /></span></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GVxdaQZhaH..." style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The portrait that started it all</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CqpQKlJo9A..." style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Patty Chang Anker and me at Sarabeth's</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">I support art and creativity of any kind, and I think it's crucial to support it right from the start. Author Patty Chang Anker changed my life. Her book SOME NERVE: LESSONS LEARNED WHILE BECOMING BRAVE was the inspiration and the force that helped get me, a non-swimmer, into a life jacket and into a fierce current to swim with my son under a waterfall in Hawaii. But she's also become my beloved friend and when I saw a painting her daughter G had done, I instantly decided I wanted to commission art from her. I wanted to treat her like a professional and hand her the check in person! </span></i><br /><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /></span></i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><i>I'm so honored to have G. on my blog. </i></span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">When did you decide you liked to paint?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">This past winter, my mom found out about this open studio session (with <a href="http://www.kimraymurals.com/">... style="color: #103cc0;">Kim Ray</span></a> at <a href="http://www.kimraymurals.com/art-studi... style="color: #103cc0;">Mountain Painters & Artisans Gallery</span></a> in Londonderry, VT) and I wanted to paint my dog. I love my dog and I wanted to immortalize her in paint! When I painted her it felt like I was capturing my baby. <i>I can capture my baby!</i> That's an amazing feat. So I decided I would like to paint pet portraits because I love animals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">What inspires you?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">My family, my puppy, and people's excitement when they see a painting I did. Thinking about how happy someone will be when they see their pet's portrait makes me happy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">How do you like to work? Do you have music on, cookies around?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">The first time I painted my dog a bluegrass group was practicing in the studio. They even serenaded my sister with a version of Old MacDonald Had a Farm. That was fun. Normally I would have nice, calm music on. Not rap. NO RAP. And no cookies because they would tempt me to eat them and it would be distracting.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Are there any other artists you like or admire? Why or why not?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">I admire Kim Ray, and <a href="https://rarigrafix.carbonmade.com/&qu... style="color: #103cc0;">Katie Reidy</span></a> (Rarigrafix). They are two amazing women. Kim's art is calm and serene. Katie's is fun and urban. They are different, but I like both. I'm lucky to have studied with both.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">What's next for you? What do you think you will paint? </span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Probably someone else's dog. That's what I hope.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">What question didn't I ask that I should have?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Hm. That's a good question. How about "How did you paint Minnie, what was the process?" The answer would be "First we found out a lot about Minnie, and looked at pictures of her and did research on Vietnamese Jagged Shell Tortoises. Then we painted the background and blew it dry with a hairdryer. Then we traced a picture of the tortoise onto the canvas to give it shape. Then I outlined the shell with black paint, and then did different colors for the body, layer by layer. Then we added shadows. Lastly we did the eye."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7h7on... style="color: #103cc0;"></span></a></span></div>

Elizabeth Crane talks about THE HISTORY OF GREAT THINGS, The Walking Dead, the inner life of her mother, and so much more

I loved Elizabeth Crane's books (all her work is dog-eared on my shelves from rereading) before I knew that she has the same need as I do for as many vintage, beaded or embroidered cardigans. I was lucky enough to meet her at a reading and liked her even more, and now I stalk her regularly on Facebook. Her new novel, The History of Great Things is just stupendously great, and I want everyone to know it.

She's the author of three collections of short stories, When The Messenger is Hot, All This Heavenly Glory, and You Must Be This Happy To Enter, and another novel, We Only Know so much. Her work has been featured on NPR, the Chicago Reader, and more. And her work has been adapted for stage and film. I'm absolutely jazzed to have her here! Thank you a zillion times, Elizabeth!


What was haunting you that made you need to write this book? (I always want to know what sparked a novel!)
Well, of course, the obvious answer here is that my deceased mother was haunting me. But since she haunted me while she was still alive, that’s nothing new. Kidding aside, it’s interesting to think of it with that word in mind. The initial spark was Percival Everett’s incredible book Percival Everett by Virgil Russell. It totally blew my mind, and is no easier to describe than my own book, but basically it’s a father-son relationship done in a way I’d never seen before. And it made me think: If I could sit down with my mom and talk about what we each thought the other’s life story was, what would come out? I loved my mom, and in certain ways we were close, but it was a complicated relationship, and I know how much I didn’t tell her, and I am 100% certain she didn’t tell me just as many things. And also – she was just a huge personality, and I had yet to exhaust what I could do with her as a character. I keep thinking I have… and then more comes.
I deeply admire the structure of the two narratives, a mother and a daughter, each contemplating the other’s life. Was that always going to be the structure and how difficult was that to pull off?
Yes. It was the structure that really compelled me. There were a couple of challenges: one was what to do with POV, because it was easy to make myself really crazy about it. Should it be – Betsy tells the mom stories sort of from her POV, and vice versa? Should it be acknowledged that in a certain way at the bottom of it, it’s all Betsy? Should I try to make it a bit blurry, in the hope that this would play into the sort of identity issue being explored? In an early draft, some of the Betsy scenes were way skewed to the Mom’s POV, but the Mom scenes were still close on the Mom’s POV, and it didn’t seem balanced. It seemed to be a function of me, the writer, imagining that my real mom couldn’t possibly imagine what it was like to be in my head, whereas I have the hubris to think I do have an idea of what’s in her head. So in the end, I scrapped a bunch of scenes and decided to endow the mom character with just as much insight as I thought the Betsy character had. (Does this even make sense? It gets muddy, even for me!) The other thing I fretted over was the dialogue between them; mainly I didn’t want to overdo it as a device so that it was annoying or distracting.
Part of what is so fascinating about this book is the way you examine the power of story. I’m not sure where I read this, but there is an exercise that people can do to gain greater intimacy, which is exactly what you’ve done--to tell the story of the person opposite you. In a way, it’s a real gift, as well as a revelation to do this. Can you talk about this please?
Thank you! I have never heard of that exercise but now I want to make all my students do it. It was a revelation, creatively and personally. I’m not a fan of using writing as ‘therapy’ per se – I’ve had plenty of therapy, and I’m 54 years old and hopefully I’ve looked at this relationship long and hard enough over the years to have some insight about it without having to work that out on the page and make you pay money for it. Ha. That said – there are always layers, right? And a new layer for me, personally, was going even deeper into having a kind of empathy for what her inner life might have been life. I know that I will truly never know that, since she’s long gone, but digging into it, trying to imagine hurdles I’ve never known given the time and place she grew up in, coupled with who I knew her to be, I felt so much compassion for her on a new level. And I do wish I could talk to her about that. Honestly, writing this answer to you, um, I think I have something in my eye. Creatively – having done this with other characters who weren’t like me – it can be revelatory to feel deep compassion for characters who are not behaving well.
You’ve written another novel (the wonderful We Only Know So Much) and I was wondering what lessons from the past novel informed this one? Or was it a completely new experience?
Basically, it was a new experience. The main thing I brought with me from that was that I could actually write a novel. I never thought I’d write a novel, and when that one happened, it was fun, and sort of accidental, which in some ways this one was as well, but I was more willing to give it another shot since I had somehow pulled it off once before.
I love the last line: Enjoy your happy ending. I mean it, because it reminds me that we are not always the architects of our own lives, that sometimes we are not really seeing our story the way it is meant to be. And sometimes we are not seeing other’s stories the way they are meant to be seen either.
SO true.
In your novel, the two women grapple with story, and with each other, filling in the blanks, and they come to this luminous understanding that feels richly satisfying and deeply earned. It seems to me that so much of life is in those “filling in the blanks” moments, when we misinterpret things. Care to comment?
Wow, that’s just so nice to hear. I mean, I think you’re so right about misinterpreting things. One thing is – people so often just don’t say what they mean. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I try to be mindful of it – but it’s so hard to keep our own reactions in check, and it’s so hard to just say simply “I feel hurt or angry” without wanting to put that onto someone else instead of taking responsibility for one’s part in that. I could give so many examples, but so much of our behavior has nothing to do with other people, and yet we can take it so personally, and it creates conflict where there often doesn’t have to be any. As a fiction writer though, messy humanity = gold! (Does that all make sense?)
What’s obsessing you now and why?
Real talk: The Walking Dead. I’m so not into zombies. Or I wasn’t. I might be now. Mostly I have had a longtime fascination with the idea of what it would be like if our natural resources ran out. So this is that, with zombies, and some really, really great characters.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
These are all so great, I can’t think of anything better.

Kim Brooks talks about her ravishingly unsettling novel THE HOUSEGUEST, parenthood and fear, using storyboards, and so much more

I work with a lot of publicists (which is a lot of fun) and I deeply admire and am devoted to them. What I love the most is when a publicist is so excited about a book that it comes through on every word--that's something I never ignore. The amazing Megan Fishmann at Counterpoint Books sent me this book and it is everything she said it was--and more. 

Kim Brooks is the personal essays editor at Salon. Her memoir, Small Animals: A Memoir of Parenthood and Fear, will be published in 2017 by Flatiron Books/ Macmillan. Her stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, One Story, Five Chapters and other journals and her essays have appeared in Salon, New York Magazine, and Buzzfeed.
Thank you so much, Kim! I love the foreboding cover—you can’t take your eyes off it. Did you have any input? And can you talk about the image as it applies to this glorious novel?

Yes, I did have the chance to offer my input and I feel very lucky in this regard. Early in the process, my editor asked if I had any thoughts about covers, and I told him I was obsessed with trains and rail travel, and that this was one of the motifs that ran through the novel. We spent some time browsing photographs of mid-centry trains stations and found a few that seemed, not just beautiful and haunting, but evocative of the novel’s main time period, mood, and its literal and metaphorical focus on transience and placelessness. Specifically, the cover is a photograph of Grand Central Station, New York City, during approximately the era in which the novel is set. So while the image alludes to both the time and place of the world inside the novel, it is the mood and ambiguity of the image that immediately spoke to me. I loved the way it seems to pose questions rather than providing answers about the book— is the lone, anonymous figure in the foreground the houseguest? What awaits her, and the reader, on the other side of the doorway? The imagine is an invitation to follow her as she emerges from the shadows.

Your novel is so gorgeous, and so sometime unbearably difficult to read because of the times it portrays and its concentration on American Jews reactions to what is happening to Jews during WWII. What was your research like? What stunned you about what you found?

Well, I definitely didn’t begin with research. I began in a much more interior place, writing about this particular family living in upstate New York on the eve of the United States’ involvement in World War II. I was primarily interested in their psychology and relationships and family life. I wrote and published a short story that didn’t go much beyond this in scope. But eventually, of course, as I began expanding this into a longer work, the characters had to step outside of their domestic boundaries, and I realized that if I was going to build a novel around these people, I’d need to learn about the country they lived in, their particular, cultural moment. I began reading a number of books about American Jews in the thirties and early forties, both regular, Jewish American citizens and those heading the Jewish agencies and organizations in the U.S. I read David Wyman’s book, The Abandonment of the Jews, and was shocked and disturbed to learn, not just about how much resistance there was throughout the country toward rescue efforts, but also how much discord and disorganization existed amongst those charged with heading these efforts.

What kind of writer are you? Do you map everything out or follow the muse, and why?

Yes! I map everything out. I use post-it notes and story boards and special software and complicated outlines. And then, in a moment of exquisite frustration I throw all my efforts at mapping out and follow the muse. And then I do it all again, five or six times over the course of many years until, miraculously, I have a something resembling a novel. That’s not a very clear answer, but for this book, I’m afraid it’s the best I can do. I think in many ways I am, or was, more comfortable with shorter forms— stories, essays— which I’m able to complete with minimal preparation or planning. One of the challenges of moving to a novel for me was the organization, technical skill, and three-dimensional mind-mapping it requires. I found all this very, very hard. But I’ve been told and promised that it gets easier with each book, so this is what I’m choosing to believe.

What’s obsessing you now and why?
I’m working on a memoir about parenthood and fear. It explores various themes in an essay I wrote a few years ago called The Day I left My Son in the Car. On a surface level, it’s about an experience I had four years ago when I was arrested for letting my son wait in our car for 5 minutes while I ran into a store, and the experience of other women (it’s usually women) around the country who have been arrested for similar crimes. But the larger narrative is really concerned with how our culture of fear, judgment, and insecurity has changed the way we parent over the past several decades. I’m very interested in fear and anxiety and its impact both on individuals and on society at large. When people ask what my next book is about I always say that it is completely different from The Houseguest. But maybe it’s not so different.

What question didn’t I ask that I should have?

A lot of people have wondered why I chose to set much of the novel in Utica, New York, which is something I myself have wondered. But a few weeks ago, I received an email from a man who had seen my novel advertised in a bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky. He emailed me and asked what my connection to the city was. His wife's grandfather, he told me, had come from the Ukraine around 1918, ran a scrap yard and hardware store, Barney Levitt & Sons, in nearby Rome with his sons Sonny, Billy, and Joe Levitt. Sonny and Billy lived in Utica. This family might have easily been the model for the Auer family in my novel, had I known them.

 This message delighted me, though I knew nothing of Barney Levitt & Sons or Kowalski’s scrap yard, enterprises on which the junk yard of my protagonist, Abe Auer, might have easily been based. It delighted me because it suggested that the strange intuition I’d followed in setting parts of my novel in Utica, New York, was based on something, if not factually, then emotionally true.

The emotion or impulse that led me to this unlikely setting arose, like so much of my fiction, from barely-remembered childhood memories. My father and both his parents were born and raised in Utica, a town that could not be more different from the one where I grew up—a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, the heart of the Sun Belt, the sort of city that sucked the economic life from places like Utica. Once or twice each year, I’d visit my grandmother there. We’d visit the zoo, take a tour of the old brewery where kids could get root beer floats, visit the various parks. Sometimes we’d visit the downtown, a stretch on Lafayette Street where daily trains had once arrived at the main rail station, where people had once eaten and shopped at Woolworth’s and The Boston Store, where visitors had lodged in the shabbily elegant Hotel Utica. Now, the old buildings were mostly closed, the sidewalks empty. And yet still it seemed a beautiful, small, quintessentially American place.

 The summers I spent visiting my grandmother there remain among my fondest childhood memories, despite, or maybe because of the fact that I was so struck, even as a child, by the haunted, abandoned aura that hung over the town. The rural suburb of my Virginia home had been literally built on a swamp. It sprung from the inspiration of a seventies developer: woodland cleared, reservoir filled, a few thousand single-family homes plopped down as quickly and as economically as possible in a location where there was nowhere to go and nothing to see and nothing to do without a car. It was a place without history, or rather, a place that existed completely outside of the history of the land on which it sat. Utica, by contrast, seemed to exist almost entirely in the past. Like so many Rust Belt cities, it felt not so much like a living, breathing place as a remnant of the community it had once been, a shell of a turn-of-the-century textile boomtown. I suppose this ghostly quality penetrated my subconscious. It lurked and shifted and re-emerged, eventually making Utica seem like the correct setting to begin a novel that is largely about what it means to hold onto or let go of the past, how it feels to abandon and to be abandoned.

Yoo hoo, got a jones for cool jewelry? Lisa Gaffney talks about being a jewelry-maker, stamping metal and so much more.

Anyone who knows me knows I can't live without cool jewelry. Earrings, bracelets, necklaces--I crave them. ALL. THE. TIME. And Lisa Gaffney makes the coolest. She's worked in publishing, fashion and entertainment, and found her true calling designing jewelry. So of course, I had to interview her because a. I love jewelry and b. I love people who give up what they think they should be doing and find what they really should be doing.

Thank you, thank you, Lisa!

I always want to know what sparks creativity?

People's stories spark my creativity.  Life in general sparks my creativity.  One of my elevator pitches for my business is “Inspired by life events, Heart and Sol Designs creates whimsical, handcrafted-hand stamped jewelry, accessories, pet tags and ornaments.”

The “about me” blurb from my Amazon shop is “Heart and Sol Designs was born out of the desire to make a difference and be creative in my daily life. I wanted to do something that would get me out of bed in the morning without hitting the snooze button. I now have the opportunity to make gifts for significant events in people's lives. A day doesn't go by that I am not moved and touched by people. I am also very fortunate to have a great support system - a wonderful husband and family and great friends and two hilarious rescue dogs. Every day I am filled with gratitude for my life and that I have this opportunity to run this business. People and their stories inspire me!”

What got you interested in doing jewelry with words? (Words have such power, don't they?)

I have always been a writer.  As a teen, I loved to write.  I would write poetry and short stories.  It was cathartic for me.  It helped me get through Junior and Senior High to be able to write.  I kept a diary from the time I was Junior High all the way through college and into my “adult” life.

In a sense, it was a natural progression for me to start writing on metal.  I remember being in Junior High and going to a mall and seeing silver rings with words stamped on them.  I was mesmerized by them.  They each had one word stamped.  One had “DREAM” and one had “BELIEVE” and so on.  They had inspirational words on them.  I never did buy one but I did to back to the store often and “visit” them.  Funny, I know.  I didn’t need to own one to be inspired by them.

How do you train to be a jeweler, especially when you and your passion in junior high school!  When was the moment when you knew--this is what I want to do.

I didn’t train to be a jeweler.  I have always needed a creative outlet.  If I wasn’t writing then I was stringing beads and making necklaces, bracelets and earrings.

One of my first “jobs” was working for a scientific book publishing house.  I definitely needed a creative outlet then.  I started my own business then of making brooches out of puzzle pieces and vintage watch parts.  I was also making beautiful (if I do say so myself) eyeglass leashes.  I sold to a few small boutiques.

A few years later, when stretchy bracelets were all the rage, I was making Swarovski crystal and silver bead bracelets.  Even though they didn’t have words I found that creating something beautiful had a cathartic effect on me.

Years later, my husband and I were visiting San Francisco and I stumbled across a book about jewelry.  In the book was hand stamped jewelry.  In that moment, I knew that I had to do this.  Memories of my childhood came flooding back.  Those rings, so vivid in my mind, were inspiring me 25+ years later.  I knew I had to figure out how to stamp metal and make jewelry.  That was the beginning of the reinventing of Heart and Sol Designs.

You've told me that people have amazing stories about anniversaries, births, deaths, weddings, that you are deeply moved emotionally. Can you share some of the stories? I think that making jewelry is akin to creating a character in fiction is so many ways. Would you agree?

Oh, yes.  I cry all the time in my job.  I get moved to tears ALL the time.  Sometimes the stories are fun and happy occasions.  Like when a couple bought a cabin on the Oregon coast.  Their whole family helped them renovate it and make it beautiful.  They came to me to make personalized key chains for everyone who helped make their vacation house a home.

One of my most popular items is a key chain for Dad.  It is mixed metal with top copper disc having the year he became a Daddy, the middle disc has a quote like “a daughter’s first love”, and the bottom disc has the name or names of the children.  Often times I will make this key chain a week or so before the delivery so the mother can give it to the father at the hospital.  That one always moves me!  Truthfully, it moves me when a daughter is buying this for her dad and she is my age too.

Some of the sad stories, of course, involve death.  I had a woman contact me and ask if I could make 3 bracelets for a grandmother whose whole family perished in a house fire.  She wanted me to wait a day or two and she would get back to me as one of the children was still in the hospital and she wanted to hold off on the names until she knew if the infant was going to make it.  Knowing that I am stamping names of loved ones that recently have passed is heart-wrenching.

Usually, around Christmas, I get requests from men and women who are deployed overseas to make gifts for their loved ones.  That too always is remarkably moving.

I commissioned some artwork to be made into stamps – a dog angel and a cat angel – so I could make memorial gifts for when people have lost a loved furry companion.  Literally every time I stamp them I well up.  Honestly, when I was talking to the artist about them and received the artwork I cried.  They are so sweet and so evocative.  Plus, I am a HUGE softy anyway, so the idea of a kitty angel or a dog angel…it just makes me well up.

I have stamped some funny things too.  That is always a pleasure when someone has a sense of humor.  A mother asked me to stamp a bracelet for her daughter that said, “I love you, Poophead!”

I love that you and so many different jobs before you found your calling! I've been a Valium-giver for two poodles, worked at a dirty puzzle factory, answered phones, wrote high fashion copy while coming into work in jeans and a black t-shirt, and wrote about movies. What were the jobs you had and which was the worst? The best? And why?

Over the years, I have had many jobs - RA in the dorms in college, Sales and stock in a sporting good store, assistant manager of a plus size women’s clothing store, photographer’s assistant, executive assistant to a radio mogul, accounting assistant to a CPA group and more.

In High School I worked for the San Diego Zoo.  I loved that job.  I mostly worked in the gift shops.  But once in a while they would put me in the information booth.  That was fun!  And, what a fabulous place to take a lunch break.

I worked for a fashion company for a long time.  I worked in the office managing human resources and the legal end of things.  I learned so much about running a business during those long 8 years.  I think the most important thing I learned is that I really love working for myself.

What's obsessing you now and why?

Because so much of my business is online, the thing I am obsessing about the most right now is the best way to be found.  Most of my online presence is on Etsy.  There have been a lot of changes there and there is a lot of competition as well.  So, I would say, the thing I am obsessing about the most right now is how to be sure my gifts show up in the Etsy search and the Google search.  The words that are buzzing around in my head a lot right now are “algorithm” and “relevance”.

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

The question you should have asked is, “How do you stamp metal?”  All of my work is done with individual steel stamps and a hammer.  Each letter, number or design stamp is stamped individually.  It is different than engraving.  Engraving is done with a machine and usually there is more precision with machine engraving as well.  Engraving takes metal away to make the impression whereas hand stamping presses into the metal, distorting it, to make the impression.  Hand stamping has a more organic look and feel.  It’s never perfect either, which I love.  Even when I stamp the same thing over and over it will never be exactly the same – kind of like a snowflake.


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WIN a $100 Pandora certificate and a signed copy of the fabulous Wade Rouse's (aka Violet Shipman) new novel, The Charm Bracelet

I know the photo of that handsome devil on top doesn't look like a Viola Shipman, but he is! I first met uber-popular memorist Wade Rouse at Kathy L. Murphy's exuberant Pulpwoods Queens event. Imagine 500 people and 30 writers, and all the writers had to dress in circus gear and serve barbecue to the guests. Being a vegetarian, this was hard for me to do, but Wade and his husband Gary began joking with me, putting me at ease, and soon I was on the floor in stitches. And they kept me that way through the 3-day event. We've all stayed friends and I am thrilled to announce Wade/Viola's new book, THE CHARM BRACELET.

For his pen name, Wade chose his grandmother's name to honor the woman whose charms, life and lessons inspired his debut novel.

I was lucky enough to read an early manuscript of this novel and fell in love with it so much I provided a blurb which appears on the back cover. I'm excited to be able to pair with the author on a giveaway that truly captures the beauty and meaning of the novel, in which the charms on a grandmother's heirloom bracelet reconnect her to her daughter and granddaughter and remind them of what's most important in life: family, friends, and a passion for what you do.

You can win a signed copy of this book, as well as a $100 Pandora gift card, if you please respond with a story (and photo, if you can) of your favorite heirloom and what it means to you. I will announce a winner a week from today (the 29th) by having my husband select a random number based on the total number of entries. Good luck, and please pre-order Wade's beautiful book today from your favorite bookseller.

The amazing, book-passionate, force of nature, Colleen Dunn Bates talks about the incredible publishing house (celebrating its tenth anniversary): Prospect Park Books

Colleen Dunn Bates is wonderful. We talk books, we talk publishing, and what I most want to do is get to have coffee and pie with her in person. Her Prospect Park Books (celebrating it's tenth year!) produces wonderful , critically acclaimed nonfiction, fiction--and these books succeed like crazy. And she deeply cares about her writers. In one conversation, I mentioned this novel I loved, Gina Sorell's Mother's and Other Strangers, and Colleen, overburdened with work, heard the passion in my voice, and took a look--and bought the novel a few weeks later! I'm thrilled to host her here. Thank you for everything, Colleen!

When and why did you start Prospect Park Books? How has it changed since its inception ten years ago?

Prospect Park Books is a California native, publishing beautiful print and digital books with wit, creativity, and intelligence. We focus on fiction, humor, cooking/food, and regional titles, and we work with authors, designers, and artists who are outside of the New York mainstream.
Prospect Park Books is a California native, publishing beautiful print and digital books with wit, creativity, and intelligence. We focus on fiction, humor, cooking/food, and regional titles, and we work with authors, designers, and artists who are outside of the New York mainstream.

I started Prospect Park Books in my house ten years ago. (Side note: not in Brooklyn—I live in an historic neighborhood of Pasadena called Prospect Park.) In the ‘80s and ‘90s, I was the packaging editor of a series of guidebooks published by Simon & Schuster, and I also wrote tons of magazine articles and a few nonfiction books. In 2002, Crown published a book called Storybook Travels that my friend Susan LaTempa and I wrote. We were so proud of that book—still are—and were sad to see it fizzle from neglect, bad luck, and some poor choices. The experience left me a little bitter, but I loved books, so eventually I decide to publish books myself and try to do a better job with and for debut and midlist authors than the big guys were doing.

 PPB has changed dramatically since those early days. I really had no idea what I was doing back then, so I learned by doing and failing. My first book, an unusual guidebook called Hometown Pasadena, succeeded far beyond my (modest) hopes, and it gave me the hubris to keep going. I learned some hard lessons in the following couple of years, not the least of which was the nearly impossible challenges involved in publishing guidebooks, which date very quickly.

 I now think of Prospect Park as two businesses: The first phase lasted four years, and the second iteration is six years old. Six years ago, luck and circumstance and friendship led me to publish my first novel, Lian Dolan’s Helen of Pasadena, and it did very well. I’ve always been a big fiction reader, but until then, I felt that I had no business publishing fiction. But suddenly that’s what I was doing.

 At that same time I was going through breast cancer, which was pretty overwhelming. I had a teenager at home, another kid in college, a business I was running alone, and a year and a half of surgery, chemo, radiation, and more treatments. But thanks to a wonderful husband, great kids, and an amazing and large community of friends and family, I got through it all very well. And then we became empty nesters, so I hurled myself, with tremendous post-cancer energy, into growing Prospect Park. About that same time, an old friend, Patty O’Sullivan, joined me, and together we created a business plan, got some funding, committed to publishing more titles (including more fiction), and moved our distribution to Consortium. Patty moved on to new adventures recently, but we remain great friends, and I’m grateful for how much she did to help grow the business.
   
Patty once described us as a “nano Random House,” which was apt. We are quite unusual for a small press. Typically they have a tight focus: perhaps poetry, or fantasy, or sustainable living. It would have been much smarter, business-wise, to just publish one kind of book. But I find that boring. I want to publish what I love and what I know. I read popular and literary fiction and mysteries and humor, and I was a writer/editor in the food world for many years, and I love my hometown of L.A.—so therefore I publish fiction, mysteries, cookbooks, humor, and books about L.A. A crazy-broad mix for an indie, but there you have it.
   
Prospect Park Books does such wonderful books--and they get acclaim in the NYT, The Washington Post, and make the Best of the Year lists--and they also happen to have fabulous covers. This is amazing in a tough publishing climate! How do you do what you do?

With an inherent (if now tempered) optimism, a lifelong drive to be around and to connect smart, talented, thoughtful people, tons of hard work, and no doubt a stiff shot of insanity. Really, it’s a nearly impossible business for those of us who are not nonprofits and therefore can’t get grant money to help with overhead and staff. But I’ve given this ten years of my life, and goddamnit, I’m going to make it work!

 In truth, it's all about the people. It’s always about the people. The books are wonderful because talented people write them and talented people design them. My job is to find those people, assemble great teams, make the books as good as they can be, both editorially and physically, and do everything I can to get them the attention and sales they deserve. Without deep pockets. How hard could that be?

 The heartbreak is the tough publishing climate. I’ve had worthy books sell well, and make the L.A. Times Bestseller list, and win awards… and I’ve had equally worthy books struggle to get the audience they deserve. There are just so damn many books out there. I recognize that I’m part of the problem by adding to the stacks littering the hallways at Library Journal. But I’m in too deep now to stop. Plus I believe in every book and every author.

Tell us about "being arrested" by Booklist! The story is hilarious. And see the mugshot above.

I publish mysteries, and they’d been getting well reviewed in Booklist, because I’m blessed with such damn fine mystery/crime writers. They were doing a feature on editors of mysteries, so the writer included me. It was an honor, because Prospect Park is so small. And it was fun to play along with the theme, which included providing front- and side-view mugshots of me.

What's obsessing you now and why?

Two things. First, the search for funny. It is so very hard to write funny, and nothing makes me happier than a smart, engaging book— fiction or nonfiction— that makes me laugh. I’m all about a good laugh, which you might not know from some of the more serious books I publish. (But I love all my children equally, really I do.) It has been so much fun to publish such witty authors as Lian Dolan, Anne Flett-Giardano, Jennifer Worick, Judy Rothman, Christopher Noxon, Karen Rizzo, and Phoef Sutton, and I am always on the hunt for a new writer who has the rare gift of writing funny.
   
Second, I’m obsessed with my business. Nothing is more entrepreneurial than a small press. Unlike tech, we’re not getting VC money to pay for staff, and we’re selling a product that can and is returned for full refunds for basically forever. So like a cactus in the Mojave, we have to look for every clever way we can to survive. I’m always working, always thinking, always trying to figure out how to make it succeed. So many people have this fantasy of life at a small press, that you get to sit around and read and talk to authors and leisurely debate cover designs. We get to do that for about 15 minutes a week.

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

What books are coming up next? I’m so glad you asked. This spring and summer have such a lovely mix: the big, gorgeous cookbook Little Flower Baking, by Christine Moore; the gripping and important novel This Side of Providence by Rachel Harper; the sixth Mas Arai mystery, Sayonara Slam, by the gracious and beyond-wonderful Naomi Hirahara; and the paperback launch of Christopher Noxon’s wise, witty, and tremendously entertaining debut novel, Plus One.
   
Coming in the fall-winter season is an equally diverse mix. First up is Bertrand Court, the second work of fiction from Michelle Brafman, whose debut Washing the Dead we published last year. She’s such a talent, and as you know, this new book is so beautifully written, and I have very high hopes for it. Next is the paperback edition of Alan Hruska’s excellent legal thriller Pardon the Ravens, which we published in hardcover last year; an adult coloring book (yes, jumping on the bandwagon) for my current hometown, Color Pasadena; a fun and fast-moving crime thriller, Heart Attack & Vine, the second in the Crush series by the very talented Phoef Sutton; a terrific debut novel that you’ve already read, A Narrow Bridge, by Joyce Gittlin and Janet Fattal; and a humor/gift book called Talk Like a Californian: A Hella Fresh Guide to Golden State Speak. We're having lots of fun with that one.

 And even more beyond that, including Gina Sorell’s remarkable debut novel, Mothers & Other Strangers, which you told me about! It’s already well into 2017 in my world. And I’m happy to say that 2017 is looking very good indeed.

Kristi Coulter talks about Yoga Behind Bars, blogging, her new novel THE THIRD PARTY, yoga poses and so much more

       
Thanks to the amazing Jean Trounstine, I've been attending bookclubs run for previously incarcerated women who must attend a class as part of their parole or probation. It's been an extraordinary experience (forget everything you know about women's prisons. Every woman I spoke with hated Orange is the New Black and felt it was unrealistic.)  So I happened to meet the amazing Kristi Coulter who started up Yoga Behind Bars. I'm so jazzed to have Kristi here. Thank you a zillion times, Kristi!

I've spent most of last year researching women in prison, and the most profound experience I had was going to two book group classes for women who were on parole or probation. I loved these women--and I was shocked at how stunned they ere that someone would actually WANT to come to their group, because as far as I could see, the honor of listening to their stories was mine. You're involved with yoga in prison.. Yoga Behind Bars/ Please, tell us about it--how does the program work, what does it do for women--and what doesn't it?
Yoga Behind Bars is a nonprofit here in Seattle that offers free yoga and meditation classes to incarcerated people throughout the Washington state prison system; I'm on the board of directors. Prison is an insanely stressful, dehumanizing environment--we try to counter that impact by giving prisoners tools for dealing with stress and anxiety both while they're incarcerated and afterward, when they are back in their communities. Our students tell us they feel calmer, healthier, and happier from practicing yoga, and that leads to great downstream effects like more thoughtful conflict resolution and decision making.

We have a long-term vision of changing what incarceration means in America--making it something that actually helps people and sends them back out into the world ready to succeed, vs. just warehousing them for a time. We work with other organizations and the legislature toward that goal. But our core mission is to give prisoners tools right now. Some of the people we teach probably shouldn't be in prison at all. Some of them are there because of crimes stemming from untreated addiction or mental illness. And some of them did pretty bad things and absolutely are in the right place. We don't really draw a distinction. They all can benefit from mindfulness.

We reach 5,000 students a year via a small army of yoga teachers who volunteer their time. Even with their efforts, it's hard to keep up with demand--so in late 2015 we launched the nation's first 100-hour teacher training program for prisoners. Our first class of ten men--we started with men because 93% of our state's prison population is male--just graduated, and now they can offer yoga classes in their home facilities. These are all guys who are serving long-term or life sentences, and now they are in a position to be embedded teachers and role models in their prisons. That's huge. That's how cultural change starts to take root and spread.

What does our program do for women? Well, on a purely physical level it helps them (and men) feel better. Many of our students have chronic aches and pains or other physical issues that yoga helps to relieve. It also helps them to find some quiet. New teachers are often shocked by how LOUD prisons are. For a couple of hours a week our students can be in a quiet room where they work on cultivating internal calm and peace. And most importantly, it builds their self-esteem, which is a major issue for many incarcerated women. We're currently raising money to hold a 100-hour teacher training for women prisoners. Funds permitting, that should happen in the fall.

What doesn't our program do for women? One thing is that it doesn't help them sustain a yoga practice or yoga community post-release. Yoga classes are expensive, not to mention very white. Many of our students are of color, and when they look inside a commercial yoga studio they don't see anyone who looks like them and are dissuaded. (Just like I'm too shy to go to one of those black churches with the big gospel choir even though it would be supremely awesome.) And even if that weren't a barrier, affordability often is. We constantly kick around ideas--could we offer scholarships? could we at least give a free mat to every paroled student for home practice? There's much to be done by the broader yoga community to make it more accessible to people who aren't your standard head-standing middle-class white lady (like yours truly). One local studio launched a monthly class geared specifically toward people of color, and received such an onslaught of harassment, including death threats, that not only was the class cancelled, but the entire studio closed out of safety fears. Death threats! Over yoga! In one of the most liberal cities in America! I mean, sweet fancy Moses. So yeah, there is work to be done.
 
How did you get involved with Yoga Behind Bars?
I've been practicing yoga for 12 years and at one point considered becoming a teacher, because yoga has been transformative for me and I wanted to pass that along to other people. But there are a LOT of yoga teachers out there already, especially (or so it seems) on the West Coast. When I learned about YBB I thought aha, here is a different way to help. I became a donor, and then got to know the leadership team and helped them recruit and hire a new executive director. (I have conducted almost 700 job interviews in my corporate job, so I'm sort of an expert.)  And last year I joined the board of directors. From my day job I know a lot about building businesses from the ground up via strategic planning, team development, and other wonkish-sounding skills that are very useful for a fast-growing organization like YBB. So that's the role I serve. I can't teach a roomful of people to do Revolved Triangle, and I can't speak with deep authority about reforming our penal system, but I can read a 5-year plan and pinpoint the traps and blind spots that someone else might miss.

 You've written fabulous essays and commentaries, all on your great blog, and you're now a novelist. Tell me what that feels like? (I ask because when I first wrote a novel, I threw up a lot. A whole lot.)  Can you talk about the novel, please?
Well, here's my story: I went straight from college to an MFA program at age 22, and won some nice prizes and published some pieces and was pretty darn sure I'd be famous by 30, or at least 30-*ish*. And then...what happened? A few things. One is that I did not yet have the stamina required to really do the work. Writing had always come easily to me, and I stood out in a few small ponds, and then post-MFA I landed in a big pond with other equally talented writers who actually worked really hard and I went "Wait, what's going on here?!" Plus I had bag-lady fears so wanted a "real job," which proved to be a distraction. And also I was just TIRED. I'd been writing like a maniac since high school and had never really done anything else. I would give my characters the most awkward, obviously fake jobs because I barely knew what a job was like myself. I mean, I was one step away from making them all recent MFA graduates who now temped in law offices.

So without ever officially quitting, I drifted. Got married, got some dogs, traveled, found my way into a number of fairly high-powered and interesting corporate jobs, etc. (I still have bag-lady fears, though.) And along the way, managed to develop a white-wine habit that eventually led me to realize that I was a--oh, what's the word I'm looking for?--a drunk. A high-functioning, urbane, nice drunk, but still. So I threw a bucket of cold water over myself. As part of getting sober I started my Off-Dry blog, and it seemed to resonate with a lot of people. And about six months into sobriety I had a craving to WRITE-write again, so one day I sat down and wrote three pages of a story. I would say it was as easy as getting back on a bike, except I recently rode a bike for the first time in a decade and it was kind of a disaster. (Bumpy dirt road, angry Mexican dog, etc.)  It was much easier than that.

That was almost three years ago, and I've been writing pretty steadily since then, and it's FUN now in a way that it wasn't in my striving 20s. Even when the day-to-day work is kind of a slog, which it often is, it's a GLORIOUS slog. So that is how it feels. Sloggy and glorious and woeful and joyful and just the right amount of scary. There's not a luckier girl in the world.

As for the novel itself: the working title is THE THIRD PARTY. It's a love-and-friendship triangle about a feminist historian and two very tall men: a former track star who has never left the state of Michigan and his misanthropic older brother, who makes hipster bourbon for a living. It's set in Ann Arbor and is a (mildly exasperated) love letter to college towns--the way they are urbane and provincial, arrogant and defensive all at once. It's about people trying to expand the boundaries of their lives and what happens when they do so thoughtlessly or too fast. There is a St. Bernard named Scobie in it, and a 50K race run on a single one-mile loop, and a made-up heroine of the Michigan women's suffrage movement. There is a dowager with a sword cane, and a little bit of sex. I was inspired by big-hearted, wryly funny books like The Art of Fielding and The Interestings and every Laurie Colwin novel ever. I'm trying to write a novel that could make someone feel the way I did when I discovered those books.

Seeing it all written out like this makes me think I sound crazy. That's normal, right? Please say yes even if you have to lie.  (Note: Answer is YES.)

While working on THE THIRD PARTY, I've also been writing and publishing essays about my transformation from chronically hungover jackass into sober and bright-eyed semi-jackass. I'm currently working on a proposal to turn those into a book, too. Perhaps I'll call it SEMI-JACKASS. (Then again, perhaps not...)

What kind of writer are you? Do you plan things out or just sit down and write and see what happens? Do you have rituals? (I love rituals..)
Oh god, I want to be a planner! It sounds so wonderful. But I can't do it. When I plan more than one chapter ahead, the words just sit there on the page like lumps of bad biscuit dough. I started THE THIRD PARTY with a last line, a couple of characters, and a song stuck in my head, and it's grown organically from there. I'm very scene-oriented, so often the process feels like I'm swinging from scene to scene on a jungle vine, trying to hang on. At one point I told a writer friend, "I seem to be writing this thing in concentric circles" and then waited for her to tell me that was totally normal. I'm still waiting.

I also love rituals, but I've almost made a fetish this time around of NOT having them, because I can easily get hung up on everything being just so. I carry an iPad mini and keyboard in my purse so I can yank it out anywhere and write a few lines--as someone with a full-time day job, I knew I had to learn to seize the moment and not be precious about it. I actually wrote a decent paragraph while sitting inside a drive-through car wash last week.

What's obsessing you now and why?
I think a lot lately about women and why our freedom so often seems to be in the hands of a small group of powerful men, whether they are senators or mullahs or just guys with guns. I'm also fascinated by the way that alcohol permeates every aspect of US culture--I ran a half-marathon last year that had a margarita tent!--and by how I see women confusing over-drinking with empowerment. (Which I TOTALLY did myself.) What else? Distance running, Tom Ford lipstick, a Cincinnati band called Wussy who are the best-kept musical secret in America. A wonderful new novel called Private Citizens by Tony Tulathimutte. And finding the perfect tan booties for spring--so if you see any...

What question didn't I ask that I should have?
"What's your favorite and least favorite yoga pose, Kristi?" Favorite: Uttanasana. What's not to like about just flopping forward? Least favorite: so many to choose from! Today I'll go with Parivrtta Utkatasana, or Twisted Chair Pose. I do not particularly enjoy cramming my stomach and most of my internal organs onto the side of one leg while also doing a squat. Maybe it's just me.