Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 65

Growing up in Soviet Russia, moving to the US, dealing with a Soviet mother, writing and so much more: Elena Gorokhova talks about her blazingly entertaining memoir, RUSSIAN TATTOO

My grandparents were from Russia, something I am always very proud about, and I studied Russian for about 5 years, long enough to learn how to say "I like cucumbers" and "Where is the dog?"  I was also completely blissed when my novel Pictures of You was translated in Russian! Anyway, all things Russian fascinate me, including Elena Gorokhova's exhilarating new memoir, Russian Tattoo, which follows her wonderful debut, A Mountain of Crumbs, which was about growing up in Soviet Russian in the 60s' and 70s'.

Elena Gorokhova was raised in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, a Young Pioneer with a red kerchief tied around her neck and a dedication to the Motherland.  But then she felt the siren song of America and begin to learn English, much to the displeasure of her iron-willed mother. Leaving for America was even more terrifying (and yes, it involved KGB), and America, the Great Unknown., gradually becomes the Great Opportunity.

Thank you so much Elena for coming on my blog. спасибо!


I  always want to know what sparked a particular book.  What was the question haunting you that drove you to write?

This book is my attempt to figure out the complex and complicated relationships to the people who are, or were, close to me: my first husband, my mother, my sister, my daughter.  It was also an attempt to understand my connection to the two places I’ve called home: Russia and the U.S.   Like all immigrants, I live with my soul split in half.  The longer one lives in an adopted country, the deeper one’s roots grow into the foreign soil, so the wound of the internal divide begins to scab over with time.  But the scar of exile will always remain.

Your book is strange and fascinating and eerie.  Can you talk a bit about the difference between what you thought America might be and what it really was?

I had very few expectations when I came to the U.S. because there was no information available in the Soviet Union about the West.  Everything I came across in my first few weeks here – from eating a hamburger to looking for a job – was unexpected and unknown.  I had no idea how to take a bus; I had never seen a multiple-choice exam; I couldn’t buy a pair of shoes.  I was an alien, and I felt like one.  America might as well have been Mars, or any other place where no one I knew had ever set foot.

Not only did you give birth to a daughter but your mother came from Russia to help care for her, and stayed on for 24 years.  Can you talk about what that was like?  Did seeing her reactions make you remember your own, or were they very different?

My first husband thought I wanted to leave Russia to flee communism, while in reality, I was running away from my mother.  My mother was the mirror image of my motherland: overbearing, protective, difficult to leave.  I knew if I had stayed, I would forever be a child, living with her in the same apartment, for years obediently spooning the borsch she had left under a pot warmer.  When my daughter (her only grandchild) was born, my mother came to help and stayed.  Then my older sister came for a visit, and she stayed, too.  We were all together again, with my mother ordering me to eat soup and wear a hat, just like back home.  It was a difficult and almost surreal time: my mother functioned as she did back in Russia, and my growing daughter, born in this country, did things that an American child would do.  I felt like a buffer between the two worlds, the place where the old and the new collided – so I constantly felt bruised.  It took me awhile – probably way too long - to realize that I was trying to control my daughter the same way my mother had controlled me.  I told my daughter what she should read, eat and study, pummeling her with unsought advice.  I realized I was turning into my own mother I’d tried to escape.

What kind of writer are you?  Do you outline?  Do you have rituals?  Do you wait around for the pesky Muse?

I don’t outline, and I don’t have rituals.  I simply chain myself to a chair in my home office.  I sit there in front of my computer and wait, and once in awhile something happens.  I type words on the screen, and if words don’t come, I just sit and look outside onto my neighbor’s lawn.  Children walk back from school.  The neighbor comes out and tosses a ball to his dog.  I wait and then the pesky Muse may feel sorry for me, and I may type a page or two, so that the next day I have something to go back to.  Anything is better than a totally blank page.  For me, revising is bliss when I have something to revise.

What’s obsessing you now and why?

Two things: a new project based on my sister’s life and the state of contemporary Russia.  The former is a project I’ve always been interested in: the fate of an actress in a dictatorship (my sister was a well-known theater, film, and radio actress in Soviet Russia).  I’ve been fascinated by the process actors go through in creating a role - the real make believe, as opposed to the phony make believe we all had to live by during communism.  We pretended to believe in our bright future, which was completely fake – while Russian actors lived their roles, believing in what they did, creating the truth.

The latter obsession is trying to understand the delusional patriotism and pathetic gullibility of the people living in my motherland who applaud its massive disinformation campaigns and its alternate moral universe painstakingly created in the past 20 years by Putin and his cronies.  I will always remain Russian, and it is depressing to be a witness of how the cynical, revanchist KGB gang has taken over my country so deliberately and so completely.

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

Maybe the question of the language I chose to write in.  I only write in English.  It is my second language, and because I came to this country as an adult, I will always speak with an accent.  What I don’t know is whether I write with an accent.  It took me a long time to learn to write in English.  When I arrived here, for several years I read nothing in Russian, writing down snippets of good American writing in a special notebook I kept on my desk.  Now I read in both languages, but I only write in one.  It feels as if there were two brains in my head, a Russian one and an English one, and they function independently.  There is no crossover.  There is no translation going on between them.  Translation is a highly professional skill, and I am not very good at it.  My Russian brain does the speaking: with my Russian friends and sometimes with my daughter.  My English brain takes over when it comes to writing.

Reading with Robin is coming back! The extraordinary Robin Kall talks about author interviews, radio. breakfasts, teas, more--and has a book giveaway!

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(And who also is the warmest, funniest lunch date on the planet?) Robin is Rhode Island’s own book maven. From author interviews to events with best-selling authors, Robin shares her love of books wherever and whenever possible. You can connect with Robin on </span></i><a href="http://facebook.com/readingwithrobin&... style="color: #103cc0; font-size: 14pt;">Facebook.com/readingwithrobin</spa... style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14pt;"> and follow her on Twitter@robinkall, online at </span></i><a href="http://www.readingwithrobin.com/"... style="color: #1f6b6d; font-size: 14pt;">http://www.readingwithrobin.com</s... style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14pt;"> is updated constantly with all new author interviews and bookish information. Watch for news of the return of Reading With Robin radio – coming in January. <br /><br /><b>And the first three people who go to her site and sign up for her newsletter can nab a galley of Sally S. Hepworth's The Secrets of Midwives, which Robin loves.</b></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14pt;">I'm thrilled to host Robin here. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Robin.</span></i></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14pt;"></span></i><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14pt;"><br /><b>How exciting that you are returning to radio with your show!  Can you tell us what's going to the same and what might be different?</b>

<br /><br />I am so excited to be bringing Reading With Robin back to radio! What will remain the same is my passion for the books that I love and having the ability to share those with my listeners. I love giveaways and I'll be doing even more of those thanks to the generosity of the wonderful publishers I've been working with all of these  years. The show will still be broken up into chapters. That works well so why mess with it? I will have on debut novelists, beloved favorites and topical books depending on what's going on in the news or in my world. A few things that will be different will be the wonderful sponsors who have signed on to support this show. Too soon to share those now but you'll be hearing a lot about these wonderful people who are as enthusiastic about reading as I am!

<br /><br />I will be adding in a new feature -The Reading With Robin Book of the Month. Not sure that it will be called exactly that, but I will be highlighting one very special book each  month and will invite my listeners to participate by reading it as well and then participating in an on-air book club at the end of the month with the author also on the show. I am open to inviting local book clubs into the studio to get the whole on-air experience. So as not to have any spoilers for the real in depth look at a book I have something set up that will be invite only so those who have read and really want to get into the book will be able to do so. 

One of the additions to the show that I'm really excited about is going to be called "5 Minutes With Your Favorite Author." I'll give authors a chance to come on and talk up their favorite books and give a plug for theirs as well. The author community is so generous about championing others' books so I'd like the listeners to see for themselves what a supportive community it is. I have more but i should leave a few surprises…

<br /><br /><b>You are one of the people who do more for books and authors than just about anyone I know and you are beloved by the book community.  Tell us how you started out, how you built this community--and why such a thing is so important.</b>

<br /><br />Thank you, Caroline. Coming from someone who is most beloved in this community that means so much to me. What a wild story really. I started off in radio as a caller to a local show here in Rhode Island. Talk radio is addictive and as someone with an incredibly addictive personality, I was hooked. I was hooked even more as I started calling in, then becoming friendly with the host (15 years later and we are still best of friends) from there I would go into the studio for special segments and soon enough did a few fill-in hours by myself. Just thinking of those shows gives me chills. I remember thinking "What in the world am I doing here? In this studio. Alone. With all of these buttons on the control board. Oy.” I realized that I would really love to host my own show and knew immediately that the topic would be books/authors/reading -I pitched the idea, got a wonderful sponsor to agree to a show that i had no idea what it would really sound like and Reading With Robin had its first show in November of 2002.  <br /><br />From that first show I met the nicest people both on-air and at the many events I would host. People who are still in touch today -some who have moved from Rhode Island, but were able to keep on listening through the magic of online streaming. It's really amazing when I stop to think of it. Kindred book-spirits. Wonderful people who attend events, always ask to help out and love being around all of the wonders the book world holds.

Reading will always be important no matter how it is we're reading. I am an old-fashioned reader and perhaps that will change one day but I just don't see it. In the years since I started the show much has changed with the e-readers, book store changes, etc., but what remains is the storyteller and the listener/reader. I like to connect readers and writers. It's a known fact that children who spend a great deal of time reading do better in school and it all starts from there. I enjoy going into the schools during reading week or whenever I am asked. The radio show has given me a platform so that I'm able to spread the message around and make it a lot of fun.

</span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14pt;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qm5fU_A4OLY..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qm5fU_A4OLY..." height="180" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Robin, Susan Jane Gilman, John Searles, Dani Shapiro</i></span><br /><br /><b>You also have an amazing column called Well-Read, which will run every other Saturday, which will give exposure to your favorite books.  So what do you look for in a book?</b> <br /><br />What matters to you in a book? 

So happy that the column will work so well in conjunction the show. There's only so much I can cover in an hour a week so the column will enhance the show and visa versa (however you spell that) when I sit down with a book, I want to be entertained. Learning a little something is a bonus but mostly I want to get wrapped up in a story so much so that I don't even know what time it is or if Ari (my dog) needs to be walked. I enjoy a book with a sense of humor, not necessarily a funny book but one that's got a clever element or characters who see the world in an amusing way. If that makes any sense. Of course it matters that it's well written and what doesn't matter to me is that it's a book that everyone seems to be reading. I like to bring attention to books that others might not know about. I especially love a fabulous debut novel. That's one of my favorite things to share with my audience.

How do you do all that do?

Timing. I started the show when my children were young (ish) and I managed to do a lot with reading with robin often with their involvement.  Now that they are out of school, working and doing their own thing, i have more time to do mine. <b> 

<br /><br />What's obsessing you now (besides these exciting events) and why?</b>

<br /><br />Right now I'm obsessed with the movie,  The Interview. I want to know when how and if Sony is going to be releasing it. 

<br /><b><br />What question didn't I ask that I should have?</b>

<br /><br />You asked such great questions so nothing that you should have for sure.  Here are some i love to be asked :  Are you interested in writing a book?  Short answer is yes! Isn't everyone?  I have an idea that I am pursuing so fingers crossed!  <b><br /><br />How do you manage social media with your reading and prep for the show? </b> <br /><br />I do my best but it's an issue. I am a social person so having the ability to tweet out a message, answer a few, check for Facebook messages and running into funny videos and the like -it's a bit distracting. I am working on prioritizing. I have a feeling I'll be working on that for a while. 

<br /><br /><b>Will you be hosting Reading with Robin events outside of Rhode Island?</b>

<br /><br />Yes! Last summer I had the pleasure of hosting the Grand Central Station writers in NYC and on Long Island and I would love to do more of that. With the radio show available on I heart radio and the web site traffic I am meeting more and more readers from all over so when there are enough readers to support an event, I'll be happy to tour around. One of the great things about having so many incredible author friends is that when I decide to host an event in another state-I'll just see who is around and plan a party!

What do you have coming up in 2015 in Rhode Island ?

In case anyone's travel plans will be taking them to Rhode Island or points north please keep these in mind:  <b>January 31st </b>-Tea with Jane Green to celebrate Saving Grace
May 5th -Sarah Mccoy is kicking of her tour of the mapmaker's children here in Rhode Island and I'm hosting her in conjunction with Brown University<br /><br /><b>May 16th- </b>I am hosting the May breakfast for Reading Across Rhode Island's celebration of Derek Miller's Norwegian by Night. This is the 5th year in a row that I'm hosting this Rhode Island tradition of an event and I've been involved with the reading across Rhode island project since its inception in 2002.  Summer events are in the works and some very exciting ones coming up but I can't share yet!
<br /><br /><b>Wednesday, Oct 7th </b>is my annual An Evening With Authors which raises money and awareness for breast cancer awareness month. I do have this year's authors all set but not sure I should share yet. Hint -they're really great!!

And hopefully the fall will bring with it the release of Adriana Trigiani's long awaited movie release of Big Stone Gap! She has promised a big red carpet Rhode Island extravaganza so I'll be ready to plan that as soon as I get the word. I'm on 'stand-by!'<br /> </span></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span>

Tim Johnston talks about his amazing DESCENT, the surprise of writing a literary thriller, and so much more

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It's also the kind of novel where the sentences are so gorgeous, you want to underline them. The story of a family torn apart when their daughter vanishes after a morning run, it's harrowing, heartbreaking and tense.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.timjohnston.net/">Tim Johnston</a> is also the author of the Young Adult novel <i>Never So Green</i>, and the short story collection,<i> Irish Girl,</i> the stories of which won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers, and the Gival Press Short Story Award, while the collection itself won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. In 2005 the title story, “Irish Girl,” was included in the David Sedaris anthology of favorites, <i>Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules</i>. Tim’s stories have also appeared in <i>New England Review, New Letters, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Double Take, Best Life Magazine,</i> and <i>Narrative Magazine</i>, among others. He currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Memphis.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aZuXNpNH4Wo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aZuXNpNH4Wo..." /></a></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">1) I’m always interested in the origins of an idea. What sparked the book? How did the final story differ from your original idea? </span></b></span><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">For most of my adult life, I've made my living as a carpenter, and this book—or the characters—came to me at a time when I was actively not trying to write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I had all but completely cut myself off from all things writerly, publishy, agenty, by driving a truckload of tools up to the Rocky Mountains and throwing myself into completing all the finish work on a vacation house my father and stepmother had built up there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I'd been up in those mountains—way up there, on the far downslope of the Great Divide—for months, all by myself, working away, when this family of four began to make themselves known to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Of course I did my best to ignore them, but they persisted, and grew more and more distinct in my mind, until one day I set down my paintbrush and said, OK, and opened up my laptop and began to write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>All I knew about them then was that they, like me, had driven up to the Rockies from the Midwest, and that this common American undertaking was going to prove to be the worst kind of turning point in their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">I had in mind a story that dwelt in the aftermath of incredibly bad luck: how a family goes on with their lives once the headlines have faded and the world has moved on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I had not intended to have a concurrent story about the missing daughter—about her singular, personal struggle to survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I also had an ending in mind that I thought I was writing toward until, after a long long period of paused writing, I realized I no longer wanted to reach—that that ending simply would not do for the characters I'd come to know so well. The concurrent story of the daughter contributed to this realization that I couldn't end the novel as I'd intended to, and when I finally understood another way to end it, I wrote very quickly and efficiently until the book was, suddenly, done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">   </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">From a craft point of view, I do believe that because I didn't know the ending—or only thought I knew the ending—the characters and the plot have a less...guided feel to them than might otherwise have been the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In other words, I think that my surprise translates into a greater sense of surprise in the reader.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">2) You’ve been praised for your ability to make the novel both highly literary and yet also a grab-you-by-the-throat thriller. Is any of this a conscious decision?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">The "thriller" aspect of the novel was definitely not a conscious decision. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you spend six years writing a book, it does not feel exactly like a grab-you-by-the-throat project; it feels the opposite of that—very plodding, very painstaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Also, all my training and ambition have always been in literary fiction, and I had no conscious awareness of having a knack for the suspense, or thriller genre, except that I'd loved such books before I went to college and learned that the smarty-pants world makes a distinction between a great read and great writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>With <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Descent</i>, I was mainly trying to tell the best story I could, at the maximum reach of whatever literary skills I'd learned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>That said, I did not want to write a so-called quiet literary novel, but wanted to write a novel with a compelling storyline—even a "commercial" one: a story that would appeal to more than the MFA holders of America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I do think that much of the suspense of the novel came after I had a first draft in hand and I'd begun re-organizing the material, and working with the first readers and editors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Only then—hearing from these readers and editors—did I begin to realize that this might be one of those books that keep people up past their bedtimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And I'm OK with that.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">3) The structure of the story is so effortless, and so absorbing that I was wondering about the way you write. Do you plan things out in advance or just follow your pen? Are you an outliner? Do you have rituals? </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">Definitely NOT an outliner!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Beyond the opening events of the novel—what is now the prologue-like section subtitled "The Life Before"—I really didn't know what would fill all that middle space between a novel's beginning and its end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The way I proceeded, after that opening section was finished, was to follow the character who interested me most, and that character turned out to be the father, Grant Courtland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>So I stayed with him and wrote his story—perhaps a hundred pages worth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Then I did the same thing with his son Sean, then his daughter Caitlin, and lastly his estranged wife Angela.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The novel's plot hinges on the fate of Caitlin, but it was the four-way story of survival that most interested me and kept me going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Once I understood how to end the novel, the last 100 pages or so were written much as they now appear, structure-wise; but one of the real pleasures of revising this book was figuring out how to braid those four earlier story lines together for the most compelling and, yes, suspenseful narrative. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">I do have one ritual, which is to read good fiction whilst I drink my coffee in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>When I realize I'm no longer processing the words in front of me, but have spun off into my own sentences, I know it's time to get to work. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">4) There’s so much in this extraordinary novel about how life can change in a second, how, in a way, there are parallel lives we could have led if not for one action that occurred. Could you talk about this please? </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">Well, I think this is something that fascinates all of us humans: this sense of awe at the little accidents and seemingly innocuous choices that lead us to where we one day find ourselves, wonderful or horrible as that place may be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Some folks call this process Fate, or attribute it to the will and designs of a higher power, while others, like me, tend to believe that most of the things that have happened to the inhabitants of this planet—and to the planet itself since before it was even a planet—have been the result of accidents and natural laws, among which is the law of randomness. When something really terrible happens, we humans instinctively review events in reverse, and we can't help but imagine what would have been if only we hadn't done this, or done that—or if this random thing on its own trajectory hadn't intersected with our own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In the novel, some characters struggle with faith, while others look to the randomness of the world to give back what it hath taken away—and indeed the plot does operate on the belief that just about any damn thing is possible. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">Personally, I look back on the little accidents and innocuous-seeming decisions that led me to go work on that house in the Rocky Mountains, without which there never would have been the Courtlands, or this novel, period. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">5) What’s obsessing you now and why?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">Presently I'm kind of obsessed with time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It took me so long to write this novel, and certain parties are already asking, Where's the next one?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I know that the time I took has much to do with the kind of book I wrote, and I wonder if I have the time to take my time again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I mean, the world spins on, and there's all kinds of crazy shit out there just waiting to happen, and yet I'm a creature of a certain arrogance, or willful ignorance, that tells itself it has all the time in the world!</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">6) What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">What's it like to spend six years writing a novel, and then have to wait another 2.5 years after it's been bought before it's actually published?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Tahoma;">A: It blows.</span></div>

I talk to author Chris Jane about the effects of having a hit debut followed by 8 failures and then a NYT bestseller, what I won't write about, and much more

Thanks to Chris Jane for interviewing me for her wonderful 5 ON series

You post pictures around your writing area of people who represent your characters. I assume (maybe incorrectly?) you find the faces after you’ve imagined your characters. Has there been a time when looking at a picture has made you add or change something about a character – or even the story – because of what you saw in the picture (a scar, maybe, or a look in the eye)?

I start out with a vague image of the character. I might know that a character has frizzy blonde hair, and then I do a search until a photo speaks to me. I just know that’s the character. And yes, a photo can absolutely change things. I found a photo of this old woman with white braids wrapped about her head, but she looked so confident in the photo that I gave that confidence to my character!

What aspect of writing presents the greatest challenge to you, and has what challenges you changed over the course of your writing career?

Finding the right idea. I always have to have something new that I want to work on when I am finishing a novel because I hate that blank stage when you have no ideas at all and you start thinking that you may never write anything else except a grocery list! A lot of times I have an idea and it’s not the right one, but working on it will lead me to it. I spent months on this new idea and then during a conversation with a friend at lunch, I suddenly had this other idea that I was obsessed with!

Sometimes ideas just don’t work. I have the first chapter of a novel I’ve been trying to write for ten years, now, and I just cannot make it work. Sometimes it takes time. Is This Tomorrow was also one of those ten-years-can’t-make-it-work novels, and then suddenly, I was able to. I have no idea why. Maybe it was because I stopped stressing about it so much!

Imagine a world in which only one book from every author is allowed to exist for the rest of humanity’s time on earth. Which single book of yours from the last fifteen years do you save, and why?

Pictures of You. Because so much of that book is about my son when he was little–not that he is anything like the character, not that he has asthma (he doesn’t), but the love between one of the characters and that boy was and is the way I feel about my son.

If you’re stuck on what a character’s specifically worded response will be, or not sure what a character will do next, what do you do to move forward? How do you find that response or behavior?

Sometimes I try to imagine it as a movie. I write it as a script. I might say the lines out loud. I might try to go for “the negation of the negation”–which is finding what would be the absolute worst thing to happen to the character at that moment that would force the character to act or change.

What won’t you write about in a novel, and why?

I wouldn’t want to write a novel from the viewpoint of a serial killer or a rapist or a child molester. Those things, to me, are unforgivable crimes and you have to find the humanity in your characters. I don’t think I could.

You mention in a 2013 Psychology Today interview that Cruel, Beautiful World had just been bought by your publisher. Has your publisher ever rejected a novel you’ve submitted since taking you on as a client?  And if one is rejected, what happens to it?

Ah, see my response to this question below. The only other thing I would add is that Algonquin has bought both books I’ve submitted. If they rejected one, my agent would send it to other publishers. If they rejected it, it would go in a drawer, I would be deeply upset and cry, and then I would start writing something new.

Your first novel, Meeting Rozzy Halfway, had the kind of success that most authors dream their first novel will find. Were you surprised by it, and how, if at all, did that kind of attention affect your approach to your next book?

It was a total shock. I had enough rejection slips to paper the Empire State Building, and as a fluke I entered a story into the then very prestigious Redbook Young Writers’ Contest. I never thought I had a chance in hell, but I won first prize. And then an agent came calling, and then they sold a book deal on the basis of that story. That whole first year was magic. I was on TV, radio, everywhere, BUT little did I know that that is not how it goes all the time. My next book came out and my publisher went out of business so the book died. Same thing with book three and four. Then I signed with a big publisher for a two book deal, and they did no publicity and both books died. Then I signed with another publisher for a three book deal. The third book was Pictures of You and they rejected it as not being “special enough.” I asked if I could write something else for them, and they said, “No, we don’t think that will be special, either.” I was heartsick! It was my 9th novel, and outside of Rozzy, I had no sales at all. No one would want me. I was sure of it. So I cried to my friends, and one had this editor she loved at Algonquin, and she told her editor about my book. I sent her the book, and a few weeks later, I had a new publisher, who took that “not special” book and turned it into a NYT bestseller!

So now, I approach every book as simply that–a book I am writing. It may do well. It may not do well. It’s luck, timing, and a lot of other forces in play that no writer can control.

You write guest posts, you’re interviewed, you interview others, and you’ve appeared on television. What has worked best for you – outside of appearing on national TV programs like the Today Show – in terms of gaining visibility?

Social media! Facebook and Twitter are fabulous for interacting with people. I’ve met movie people there, other authors who I’ve been lucky enough to meet in person. It’s a water-cooler for writers! I’ve found the more open and honest and kind you are, the more those qualities are returned to you!

There can be a lot of imagined competition in the writing world (I say “imagined” because each writer is so different, and there’s so much reading space, that there’s little to compete for), and there’s also a kind of hierarchy. But you, a NYT best-seller who is well established and high on the totem, seem happy to promote other, some of them much lesser-known, writers and give some of your time to sites like this one. Why?

I’m glad you asked this question. There is indeed a lot of competition in the writing world–who made what list, who got what prize, who got what. And it makes writers crazy. Plus, if you look at the lists, it’s all really a matter of taste and the times, and who got the biggest publicity budget. I’m also a book critic at People, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe, and you have no idea how many wonderful, amazing novels come through my door and they don’t get reviewed because there is so little space for reviews. (I don’t make the decisions on what gets reviewed, by the way. My editors do.)

I felt awful about this, and I decided it would be my mission to help lesser-known writers and, really, any writer. I gave over my blog to interviewing writers, which meant I could also interview writers who are my friends (you can’t review your friends because it is considered unethical). And I could spread the word about books I loved. The blog has grown and grown and it makes me feel great to help others.

I was helped a lot by other writers in my career–and hurt, too. One writer actually wrote a piece about writers who don’t deserve to make the NYT list and said “Sorry, Caroline Leavitt” in the piece! I was dumbfounded! Another writer wrote a piece about why she wouldn’t blurb a particular book–and it was obvious that it was my book! I determined I didn’t want to be that way. I believe in karma, and kindness, and I think you can really change the world by being kind, by helping others, by all these little acts to help others.

What advice would you give a class of writing students about the business of publishing?

NEVER EVER EVER GIVE UP. Really. Things can change in an instant. Publishing is a weird and fickle business, but it’s good to remember that The Help was rejected 60 times. And so were a lot of really fine books. Remember Van Gogh died penniless and unknown, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a genius.

Write for yourself, not for the market. If you write for readers, it sounds fake. If you write the book that you yourself need to read, then you will hit something universal and wonderful and important.

Connect with other writers on social media! Be kind. Pay it forward.

And never give up. Never. Never. Never.

Thank you, Caroline.

Readers: If you enjoy this or any of the other 5 On interviews and have writer or reader friends you think might also enjoy them, please share! The series is just getting started and there’s a terrific list of interview subjects ahead.

Hope Katz Gibbs talks about PR RULES: THE PLAYBOOK, paying it forward, the 8 steps to success, and more

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I call mine at Algonguin "the gods and goddesses" and I know how incredibly lucky I am to have them. But what if you don't have a spectacular team in place? That's where the fabulous <a href="http://www.hopegibbs.com/">Hope Katz Gibbs</a> comes in. Her PR RULES: THE PLAYBOOK, THE ENTREPRENEUR'S GUIDE TO SUPERSIZING YOUR SMALL BUSINESS WITH THE 8 STEPS TO SUCCESS has tips, practical advice, and truly out-of-the-box solutions that anyone who needs promotion will find incredibly helpful. And what I love best about the book is that it's full of heart, too.<br /></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11.0pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Hope has an amazing background. She founded <a href="http://www.theinkandescentgroup.com/&... Group LLC</a>, a publishing company dedicated to helping entrepreneurs through public relations, marketing, design, website development, and book publishing. She's also the founder of <a href="http://www.inkandescentpr.com./"... Public Relations.</a> This public relations / publications / media relations / marketing / website & design agency helps entrepreneurs from around the country increase their visibility through interview published in newspapers and magazines, TV and radio, and by reaching out to their clients through monthly e-newsletters.<br /></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11.0pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>And that's not all! She publishes the monthly online magazine <a href="http://www.beinkandescent.com/"&... Inkandescent</a>. In each issue, a high-profile entrepreneur is featured, and more than a dozen columnists share their insights into best practices in their industries. Columns include: book reviews, cooking tips, education, events, fashion, finance, fine art, health care, immigration, insurance, law, leadership, management, medicine, networking, nonprofits, travel, wine, and more. </i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11.0pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br />And Hope is also working on a new book, <a href="http://www.trulyamazingwomen.com/&quo... Amazing Women Who Are Changing the World</a>. <br /></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11.0pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> I'm thrilled to host Hope here. Thank you so much, Hope.<br /></i> </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I love the way this book is structured, which is unlike any other PR book I’ve seen. Not only does it have a gorgeous, playful cover, but also the inside is so easy to use, and no matter where you flip the page, there’s gold. It has real-life hands-on tips and the underlying message is always based on being true to yourself and to your product. It’s filled with personal stories and interviews, too. But what I loved most were all the positive messages in the book, which I feel can be used for living your best life as well as doing your best PR, such as taking time to play, letting people know the real, true you, and more. Can you talk about how you came to have this structure?</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Hope:</b> How wonderful of you to say that! When I embarked on this book project three years ago, I knew that I wanted to impart the lessons I’ve learned in the 30 years I’ve been a journalist, publicist, and small business owner. Teaching people just how to get into the news barely scratches the surface of what it means to do PR well – much less grow a business. So we took a broad view and included as much insight as possible to help readers know that like a good life — good PR for your business is the fun stuff. So play with it, and use the Playbook as a guide.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I love your 8 steps, especially pay it forward. Why don’t more people realize how important a step this is? And are there creative ways to do this?</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Hope:</b> This step is definitely important, but I want to encourage people to get creative and think twice (three or four times really) before starting a nonprofit. It’s a natural instinct to want to do that, but that would be starting another business — and nonprofits are very tough to manage. Plus, there are 1.5 million nonprofits in the country already — so if you are inclined to donate time and money, find an organization that already is does what you want to do in the philanthropic world, and volunteer. </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Indeed, it’s possible to pay it forward in a myriad of ways. For us, we walk the talk through our InkandescentInternships.com program. We just opened an office in Richmond (November 1, 2014) to work with students at Virginia Commonwealth University, which is the number one public arts school in the country. These kids are talented, and five of them are working for us for college credit and a stipend. One of them is going to be our new assistant editor when she graduates in December. That’s a win-win-win — which is another one of our basic tenets of PR Success (we win, the students win, and the world wins).</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I also loved that you included Dr. Esther Sternberg’s ways to heal, how dealing with stressful situations can not only make you stronger, but can help you empathize with others and how that can build credibility. Can you talk about this please?</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Hope:</b> I met Esther years ago when we were both members of the National Press Club, and she’d just released her first book, “The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health & Emotions.” It was back in 2000, and she was a researcher at NIH at the time, and I was a freelance writer and mom of two little kids. </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Reading her book made me breath a sigh of relief, because her hypothesis — that a healthy spirit will result in a healthy body — dovetailed with what I’d learned back in 1993 when I became a Certified Massage Therapist. </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Her subsequent book, “Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well Being,” investigates whether the world actually makes us sick — whether jarring colors and sounds shake up the healing chemistry in the mind.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">These ideas fit perfectly into our approach to thinking about business in a holistic way. We maintain that “entrepreneurs are people, too,” and indeed — small business owners are only successful when they are healthy in mind, body, and spirit. I have long known that the more calm, confident, and comfortable I am in my own skin — the more successful my company will be. That’s true for everyone.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And as Esther points out, stress isn’t always bad — especially if it makes you empathetic to those around you. So here’s how I see the process working:</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">◦<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">    </span>The more I can empathize with my clients, their clients, the markets I’m appealing to — as well as our team, vendors, and subcontractors — the more compassionate I can be.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">◦<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">    </span>The more compassion I have, the more tuned up my intuition will be regarding making the right choices … everything from where to advertise to how to pitch a client, to what should be on their website.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">◦<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">    </span>Ultimately making those choices well makes for good decision-making.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">◦<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">    </span>And that builds credibility.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What mistakes do authors make in publicizing themselves?</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Hope:</b> I love working with authors, but too many of them don’t have a grasp on the business of books. Unless you have a national bestseller, odds are good that you aren’t going to make a lot of money on your book. Even if you do have a bestseller, the way traditional publishing is set up — you aren’t going to make zillions.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If you self-publish nonfiction book that shows off your expertise, the game is different. If it’s a good book (which, of course, is the key), you will likely break even, or even earn a bit. But the key is to use the book as a marketing tool for your business. There’s more money in selling your services than there is in selling a $10 or $25 book.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">No matter if the book is fact or fiction, be authentic about your promotion. Share tidbits from it on social media, spread the word to local reporters, and take as many speaking opportunities as possible to talk about the wisdom you have to share with the world.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">You do a fabulous job with this, and thank you for sharing your strategy in our Q&A in the book! See page 35.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>When people think about PR, they think about working 90 hours a day and being in high stress. So tell us about the importance of play?</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Hope:</b> It’s the number one thing to focus on, I believe. The older I get, the more time I take to play every day. Even when I’m working, I’m having fun. Monthly meetings with my interns are pizza parties. I like having business meetings at happy hour. When I’m in Richmond, I ride my bike to work every day and take a new route when I bike home in the evenings. When I’m stressed, and the weather is nice, I bike to a new place and look up at the sky.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Life is so short, and we spend much of it trying to figure out how to accomplish the things that so often aren’t easy — like building a business, managing a team, writing a book, and having a family. Even though these things are important, if we don’t take time to have fun … what’s the point?</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So here’s my challenge to you: Do one fun thing every day this week and post the list to your Facebook page. Then challenge all of your friends to do the same. Let’ start a fun revolution. At the very least, you’ll generate grins and “likes.” That’s pretty fun in itself.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Hope:</b> Ah, obsession. Just as having more fun is something that I am trying to embrace — letting go of my obsessions is another goal. I must admit that opening an office and buying a house to live in while I’m in Richmond was a pretty fun obsession. And now that I’ve accomplished that goal, I’m really trying to let go, enjoy where I am, and be in the flow. Can staying calm and cool be an obsession?</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Hope:</b> Maybe, what is my goal for the book? Because, of course, I want to sell copies. And I want to do PR workshops around the country. And I want to take on clients interested in hiring me as a PR Coach.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But mostly, I want more people to enjoy playing with their PR. Yes, it’s hard work to spread the word about what you do, and it’s hard to make a business grow. But so what? People much smarter than me have told us that everything worth having is worth fighting for. Why not enjoy the ride?</span></span></div>

Larry Baker talks about The Education of Nancy Adams, the persistence of love, and why "obsessive" just might be his middle name

Larry Baker has been a Pinkerton security guard, master-of-ceremonies at a burlesque club, the owner of an Oklahoma drive-in theater, and is now an acclaimed author.  He's the author of The Flamingo Rising, which was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie and was chosen to be Iowa’s selection in the National Book Festival held in the fall in Washington DC; Athens, America; Love and Other Delusions; A Good Man: and The Education of Nancy Adams, where a young woman discovers that her new boss is her old teacher, a man she adored when she was 17.

I'm thrilled to host Larry here. Thank you, Larry.

I always want to know what sparked a particular book? What was the question haunting you that drove you to write?

A convergence of events. The basic black/white racial story comes from my time living in St. Augustine, FL, back in the 1990’s. Nancy remembers seeing a newspaper story about the two high schools in her town, showing pictures of the graduating seniors at the downtown versus suburban school...one lily white, the other more racially mixed. That was St. Augustine. That contrast was a “story” to me, but I did not have the characters.  Throw in the recurring stories about high school teachers having sex with students. I started with just Russell and Dana to personify that angle, but I always knew their relationship was only gossip. How about older man/younger woman, but without the passion, but who still have to suffer the consequences. Perception the same as reality. But that version was still missing something. Nancy Adams was a minor character in the first few drafts, but then I thought she should be elevated to the role of narrator, but not necessarily participant...ala Nick Caraway. As other writers know and you yourself have probably experienced...sometimes a character gets out of your control and takes over. That was Nancy for me. Trying to understand her as a character, led to a  spontaneous realization by me....Nancy was in love with Russell, but he was not in love with her. And THAT absolutely intrigued me. Nancy evolved from Chorus in the other story to the lead role in her own story, a woman trapped in her emotional past who is literally sent back into her adolescent “home.” She had loved, and lost, and it took 20 years for her to understand that, and then only through the intercession of a younger woman.

Your book has a tantalizing premise--a woman is going to work for someone she loved when she was 17 and now she’s 37. There is something about the persistence of love that is mesmerizing. Do you think it is really possible that we change, but the love does not?

I started this answer in my response to your first question. For me, love is like God. You do not know God through your mind or through the laws of a rational world. There is no proof for God, only Faith. There is no explanation for love (sex intensifies love, but it is not the same thing). You believe in God, or you do not. You experience love, or not.  You cannot “will” yourself to truly believe. You cannot “will” yourself to truly fall in love. And love, like faith, can be lost. But their loss in one’s life does not mean that God and love do not exist, merely that you have changed. Something from the outside has blocked the Faith in your Soul, or the Love in your Heart.  (Oh, geez, I think I just went too far sappy and purple prosy.)

What I love about your writing is the depth of character. How do you build your characters?

I don’t have a process or technique that fits all the time. I abhor clichéd characters, so my first goal is to fit a character to a situation, knowing full well that the world is not full of 3 billion one-of-a-kinds. We are all versions of a type. The trick for the writer is to make the type...not necessarily unique, but certainly individual. (Old definition of art in general: “To make the familiar unfamiliar.”) As you write, like in life, a character does not develop in a vacuum. I’ve already described a little of Nancy’s evolution as a character. From minor to major. But as I was re-writing her, I had to go back and figure out the “why” of her behavior.  Everyone has a past, and we are the combination of that experience and an evolved intellect.  Nancy lost her beloved father early in her life. She fell in love with an older man. She married an older man. All sorts of daddy issues. As I was working on that theme, I remembered another important dead white male father figure for American historians. Nancy Flynn became Nancy Adams. (Private pun alert...I named Nancy’s parents Charles and Frances, ala Henry Adams’ father Charles Francis Adams). So, as I was fleshing out Nancy’s character I was also expanding on the theme of how we are all shaped by history, as well as sometimes trapped by history.  To be free from the men in her life, she also has to be free of the intellectual ghost of Henry Adams. She has to literally become his teacher by the end of the book. I know, I know, this is the sort of self-conscious machinations that reveal an effort to write a “serious” book. But even that serious theme has to be hidden for the book to be enjoyable. Nancy is a smart woman but she has never given herself credit for her own intelligence. She is educated and insightful about others, but she still requires the intervention of Dana to finally understand herself. I know there is a “coming of age” fiction category, but I wonder if there is an “adult coming of age” genre. That is Nancy’s story.    |

What kind of writer are you? Do you outline? Do you have rituals? Do you wait around for the pesky Muse?

I do not believe in Muses. And inspiration is over-rated. My literary hero is Flannery O’Connor, and she said it best: "I’m a full-time believer in writing habits…You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away…Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place."

I am no genius, and my limited talent requires constant practice. Until my wife retired recently, I was able to work six hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year, and could produce 300 pages a year. With her being home, my routine has become more irregular, and less productive. So she and I have agreed that a laptop computer is on my Christmas list and I will be finding an outside location to go back to writing as much as I did before. But, on a good day, I start by re-reading anything I wrote the day before, and then I warm up and start putting words on the screen. Rituals? None, except that I drink a lot of coffee and stay in my office with the doors closed. I seldom do outlines beyond a basic plot direction and a list of characters and their basic traits. I live in Iowa City, home of the Writers Workshop, but I am not a WW graduate. I have been writing since I was fifteen. I do not belong to any writer groups. I write a complete first draft before I do any significant revisions. The first draft of NANCY was written in 1998. The final draft was written in 2013. Put the two versions side by side, you would be amazed by how different they are. Of course, in between 1998 and 2013, I wrote and published three other novels.


What’s obsessing you now and why?

I am getting self-conscious about my age (67) starting to dull some of my writing skills, and I am trying to juggle two manuscripts I have currently started. I need to make a decision soon and focus on one only. I have a frame story written, about a dying publisher and his assistant editor (tentative title WINDSOR HOUSE, opening lines: “Suicide would have been an understandable gesture, if everyone knew the truth, but Bobby Beaumont had a secret, so he told the Germans to go to hell.”), and a mysterious manuscript they have received. The dying editor turns it over to his assistant (amid the crisis of a German conglomerate buying their parent company), and she discovers that the unfinished manuscript is actually about the editor, written about a love affair of his, with a married woman. That mysterious manuscript is the “story within the story” and it is still to be written, although I do have the opening lines: “I was stealing a book when he caught me. I was twelve. He was sixteen. I was taller than him, and I always would be.”

I want to write a book about the question of whether the book business itself is dying or merely being transformed. Or, have we merely romanticized what was always simply a business? Obsessive? Might be my middle name.


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

Here’s what I get asked at every reading I have ever had for this book: “How were you able to write from a woman’s point of view?”

Should you ask this question? I sorta think you already know the answer.

The Bard and women behind bars: Jean Trounstine talks about Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison

Jean Troustine is a professor of humanities at Middlesex Community College  and is the co-founder of the women's branch of Changing Lives Through Literature, an educational alternative to prison. She's been featured everywhere from The Today Show to The Connection


She published a book of poetry, Almost Home Free, and co-edited the New England best-seller, Why I’m Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out On Love, Loss, Sex, and Who Does the Dishes. Jean is on the steering committee of the Coalition for Effective Public Safety in Massachusetts and is currently working on a new book about the tragedy of sentencing juveniles to adult prisons.

 Her latest book Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison, focuses on six women's lives at Framingham Prison and how they were changed by art.  I'm honored to host Jean here.


What made you decide to teach at Framingham Women’s Prison? Were you frightened?

I decided to teach in prison because I was offered the job to teach a college class behind bars. Being an adventurer I thought it would be different, a step up (I taught high school at the time), and I was happy to make the extra $$$. I was never frightened, not of the women. There were a few COs who scared me from time to time.

What surprised you the most about your prison experience? (i.e. how does TV and movies get it so wrong?)

My classes at Framingham often felt more like just women hanging out together with the added plus of academics. The women were regular people who had made bad choices or had bad luck or got caught up with the wrong guy. I think what I wrote in the book was probably more clearly said, but the idea is that they were Shakespearean as well in their dramas and tragic flaws. But movies and TV either diminish women's issues, turn human beings into caricatures, comedy acts, or monsters--I have yet to see a movie or TV show that accurately portrays a female behind bars.

You and I have talked about how women’s prison is so very different than men’s. Can you talk about it here for our readers?

The easiest way to think about this is like so: women bring their whole selves behind bars as do men. What issues we see in men on the outside (don't cry/be tough/loyalty is all/don't snitch) we see on the inside in many cases--but not all of course. Women --80% are mothers--do time "more emotionally" than men. A man might stab you but a woman might pee in your perfume bottle. Women want companionship, connection, community. Both men and women are lonely and most people do want to change--many more than the public thinks. In my opinion, many people absolutely do not need prison; we sentence people for way too long; punitive sentencing doesn't rehabilitate. Treatment and programs do.

Art and education can give hope and can offer redemption. So why are some prisons so loathe to put this into practice?

Education and expression are the opposite of conformity, containment, and repression. The goal of prison is to incapacitate not to allow freedom. But stats show the more education one has, the less likely they are to return to crime. So go figure.

Why was Shakespeare especially the right choice for these women?

If you can understand and embody a Shakespearean character, you can do anything :). Seriously-- I feel challenge is the key to growing and becoming all that we can be. And, as I said above, their lives often seemed Shakespearean to me.
 
What’s obsessing you now and why?

Mass incarceration and how to stop it. Our punishment system is out of control and unfair to poor people and people of color. I'm writing a book about a former prisoner due in 2015 which will show the injustice of how we treat juveniles as adults in terms of sentencing. I also blog at Justice with Jean: jeantrounstine.com. Speaking of obsession, I tweet too about it @justicewithjean.

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

How can you help? Begin by seeing that most people do not want to be drug addicts, commit crime, or leave their families to do time behind bars. There is always a story behind a person who has been incarcerated. Look for the humanity and how we can fix this system. Paraphrasing Angela Davis from a talk I heard last year: prisons are incubators for outdated ideologies. The prison itself creates much of the problem, but the people need your compassion.

On the Manifest-Station, My Mother's Boyfriend and Me

From Jennifer Pastiloff's wonderful The Manifest-Station, my essay about my mom falling in love for the first time in her 90s. My Mother’s Boyfriend and Me.November 24, 2014
By Caroline Leavitt
When my mother turned ninety-two, she fell in love for the first time.
Although my mother and my father had been married for over thirty years, theirs wasn’t even remotely a love story. Before she met him, she had thought she was in love with the son of a butcher. He courted her for a year, and one night, he had even scribbled out their wedding announcement in mustard on a napkin, giving it to her to put in her purse for safekeeping. Then he left for Chicago, promising to come back to her. He kept his word to return, but not until six months later, and then, he was holding the hand of a pretty, very pregnant wife. When his wife excused herself to powder her nose, he cornered my mother in the kitchen, hotly whispering against her neck, “Maybe I made a mistake.”

“No,” she said. “I did.”

As soon as he left, my mother let her heart break. It wasn’t so much that she cared about this young man, whose character was clearly lacking, but, it was more that she saw her future leaving her. A family. A home. All the things she wanted so desperately. She was living with her parents and she lay in bed crying, so long and so hard that her father began to plead. “You have to live,” he urged. He sat by her bed, coaxing food, insisting that she get up, and try and be happy again.

And so, because she loved her father, because she didn’t want to be a disappointment to him, and mostly because she was twenty-eight, which was as close to spinsterhood as she could allow herself to get, she let herself be trundled off to what was then called an adult day camp, where single men and women could spend a month, living in cabins, enjoying swimming, boating and arts and crafts, but really looking for their mates. There, as if she were choosing a cut of meat for dinner, she had her pick of men.

She settled on two of the most marriage-minded: a sturdy looking guy who was going to be a teacher and my father, who was quiet, a little brooding, but who already had a steady, money-making career as an accountant. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him, but she believed that love had already passed her by, like a wonderful party she had somehow missed. But even so, she could still have the home, the family, the life she wanted if she were only brave and determined enough to grab it. My father asked her to marry him, and she immediately said yes. But later, she told my sister and me, that when she was walking down the aisle, her wedding dress itchy, and her shoes too tight, she felt a surge of terror. This isn’t right, she thought. But there was her father, beaming encouragingly at her. There was her mother, her sisters and brothers and all her friends, gathered to celebrate this union. Money had been spent on food and flowers and her white, filmy dress. And where else did she have to go? So she kept walking.

My sister and I grew up knowing our mother wasn’t in love with our father. She told us all the stories, like cautionary tales, making us her confidantes, even as we squirmed to be with our friends, or be by ourselves, rather than to hear her secrets. We knew about the butcher’s son, and how our father was second helpings. She told me things I didn’t want to know because they felt like problems I had to solve for her, and they often kept me awake, worrying over her, feeling panicked and scared. And sometimes I was the solution. When I was seventeen, on the cusp of leaving home and starting my own, brand new life, she whispered to me that she needed me to go to the Cape with her and my father on vacation because she didn’t want to be alone with him, not then, not ever. She wouldn’t go unless I went, too. She admitted though, that sometimes, she still liked to sleep with him.
“Mom!” I cried. “Don’t tell me that!”
“Well, who else am I going to tell?” she asked.

My sister and I didn’t need our mother’s stories to know exactly what her marriage was like. My mother and my father rarely talked. They certainly never touched, and there was a big nightstand pushed in between the two beds. I didn’t blame my mother because I kept away from my father, too. He never kissed or hugged my sister or me, and when he spoke, it was usually to scold, sometimes to yell, or sometimes to shut us off with silence. He had a hair-trigger temper and everything set him off, from a spilled water glass to the way my mother forgot to ask his mother about her arthritis. He didn’t know my mother’s favorite flowers were daisies, and he didn’t know the names of any of my teachers or the books I loved to read. I was glad that he left the house at six in the morning, happy that he didn’t come home until eight most nights, and I did my best to stay out of his way.


The only advice my mother ever offered on marriage was, “Choose someone kind. That’s all that matters.” She never said anything about love. We knew that “kind” was code word for “unlike your father.” She didn’t love our father, but it didn’t matter to us, because the truth was, we didn’t love him either.

My father died young at fifty, felled by a stroke, the potato chips and candy he wasn’t supposed to be eating anymore because of his riotously high blood pressure, stuffed in his pockets, his medicine still on the top of his dresser. I was twenty-four then, and I came home from college and heard my aunt tell my mother, “Well, you didn’t really love him anyway.” And my mother said, “Well, maybe I liked him.” At night, she cried, but then she picked herself up and went to work, teaching school a block away, making friends with the other teachers and with the principal who seemed sweet on her. She was still beautiful, and I felt responsible for her, the way I always had been, so I asked her, “Do you want to meet someone good this time around?”

“I’m done with men,” she insisted. When my aunts tried to fix her up, she bristled. But I saw she was lonely, and I saw, too, that she was fabulous, and why shouldn’t she be happy? So, for her fifty-fifth birthday, I gave her a personal ad in Boston Magazine, which my mother laughed about and ignored. “Who needs it?” she scorned. Still, she read all the responses before she tucked them into the trash.
She didn’t trust men. She never liked the boys who hung around my sister and me. She didn’t like my sister’s husband, whom she didn’t think was kind enough to my sister, and she criticized my husband Jeff for his driving, for his clothes, for his job as a writer, which she refused to consider real employment. “Does he have work?” she asked me, every time she saw me or called. Once, when my husband Jeff and I were dancing at a wedding, she criticized us for dancing so close, for kissing on the floor. “We love each other,” Jeff told her. She scoffed.

Still, she filled her time, which made me happy. She taught school into her seventies, socializing with friends and her sisters, but if any man paid attention to her, she swatted him away like she would a housefly. She was in her eighties when my sister and I began to worry about her being alone in her rambling Waltham house. The basement kept flooding. The icy walk to and from the house worried us. The last time I drove with her, she ran the car up on the sidewalk. We began to send her brochures for independent living and the arguments started. “I’ll die in my own home,” she insisted.
She burned with rage. Life had cheated her, she said, and now it was ending. It was a terrible thing to think of, my mother being old and unhappy, and facing death, but no matter how desperately I tried to make her happy–with books, and dinners and flowers, her anger still boiled. The last time I came to visit her, she had taken every picture off the wall, leaving blank spaces where they had been, like accusations. She had cleaned out her closets and given away furniture and the one thing she wanted me to look at were the folders about how she wanted her funeral to be held, and where her money was. When I left her, I sat in the car and cried. Not only was I losing her, but her long life had not been a happy one, and that seemed tragic to me.

That spring, She finally agreed to move. Her apartment a bright, sunny apartment in an independent living place that looked like a hotel, filled with flowers and people. She slumped on her new couch, resigned. “End of the line,” she said bitterly.

She called me every day, her voice tight with rage. “I hate it here,” she said. “How could you put me here? How could you do this to me?” She had no friends. The food was terrible. The people were too old. She didn’t want to go dinner at night and she didn’t want to go to the activities during the day. She should have stayed where she was, in her home. One night, she was sitting in the hall, brooding, when she overheard two women talking about her in Yiddish. “That one never smiles,” one woman said. “She never talks. Like a stone, that one.” My mother turned to them. “I talk,” she said, angrily. “And don’t you talk about me like I’m not even here.”

She told me later that those women had got her thinking. If this was her life now, then maybe she was going to have to make an effort. She was going to have to at least try to talk to people, to maybe have a friend she could take walks with. “I might as well,” she reasoned. “What else is there here?”
That night, she got dressed up for dinner, carefully combing her hair, putting on lipstick. She sat at a table, talking brightly to the woman across from her, who invited her to play cards the next afternoon. And even though my mother was not a card player, she said she’d try to make it. It wasn’t so bad, she thought. And then a man sat next to her and he asked her if she was going to the New Year’s Eve party. “Of course not,” she said, and he smiled and he said, “Then I’m not going either.” She told me later that something switched on in her, like a light. Impulsively, she took his head between her hands. “Then I’ll have to kiss you now,” she blurted, and there, in front of everyone, she did.
He called her the next day. “How are you today, Sunshine?” he said. She sat up in bed, her heart galloping.

From that moment on, they became inseparable. They ate all their meals together. They watched TV in her apartment or his. They walked outside and talked. He became her best friend, her confidant. And even better, they kissed.

What was it about this man that opened my mother’s heart? I asked her that and she said, “He calls me every morning at six to say good morning.” She was now so busy that her daily, angry calls to me stopped, and I began to miss her. I was the one who called her now, and she began to sound different on the phone, as if there were bells in her voice. All she wanted to talk about was him. “I’m in love,” she told me. “For the first time.”

I was stunned. Imagine going through your whole life and never feeling love until you were in your nineties. Imagine my mother, so furious about her life, being so happy.
My mother became busy with love. Now when I called her, she’d cut our talks short because her boyfriend was calling. “Goodbye, darling,” she’d say, her voice as bright as a splash of pennies. When I visited, wanting to see her, she wanted to see him instead. “Can’t I have you to myself, just for an hour?” I asked. “Of course, you can,” she said, hugging me, but the whole time we were talking in her apartment, she was looking at the phone, waiting for his call.

They were the best of friends for four years. And then she began to have dementia.
She wasn’t eating. She forgot names. She wet her pants and she began to be obsessed about fire drills. She would go down to eat with her boyfriend and stare at the food and mumble. She told us it was over with him, that he had a new girlfriend, a woman who was 44 and would pick him up and sleep with him, and then bring him back. “Love,” she snorted. “I don’t even care.” My sister and I were terrified, but we knew we had to move her into assisted living.

She was tiny and terrified, shivering and enraged. “How can you do this to me?” she shouted, and the truth was, I didn’t know how I could. I didn’t recognize her. She was here and she wasn’t here. “Come with me in the bathroom,” she said, using her cane. She needed help pulling down her pants, and she had on Depends.

She didn’t understand the move. The other residents stared at her and she lowered her head shamed. I knew they must be thinking, what’s happening to her? Or worse, will it happen to me?
I was so upset that I called her boyfriend that night, to tell him what was happening. “We were the best of friends,” he said. “I really really—“ and then he paused. “I really like your mother.”
When I hung up, I kept thinking about that pause. He liked her. Was that it? Was it really just like? I wrote to him. I told him that my mother had said she fell in love for the first time with him. That she loved him. And I sent it off.

Two days later he walked the hall from his apartment in independent living to hers in assisted living. It was as if he had awakened, and that made her do the same. He held her hands. He kissed her. He said, “Would you love me if I had no teeth?” because he was going to the dentist. Love. He used the word love. I watched the two of them together. He didn’t care that she was forgetful, that she couldn’t walk so well and wore depends. When she started getting anxious about the fire drills she was sure were about to happen any second, he soothed her. “I’m here with you,” he said. He just wanted to be with her, and when he was, her dementia softened. She calmed.

The last time I spoke to my mother, her boyfriend had just left. “But he’s coming back,” she said. She couldn’t remember my son or my husband’s name. She didn’t know what she had eaten for lunch. But she remembered him. “I’m so glad you have each other,” I said, but my joy wasn’t just for her. I realized that my mother was giving me something important. She was showing me that love can find you when you least expect it, that love doesn’t care about your failing eyesight or your foggy brain. That love sometimes just needs to be spoken out loud, like an invitation, a light even in your darkness.

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You.

Stephen Policoff talks about his dazzling new novel COME AWAY, the Grateful Dead, Changelings, magic, pain, and more

I've been a huge admirer of Stephen Policoff since his debut, Beautiful Somewhere Else, and his new novel, Come Away is extraordinary. (He's also a professor at NYU.)  I'm a sucker for stories about father-child anxiety, and this one also adds in imaginary and not so imaginary friends, and the mystery of the human bond. I'm thrilled to have Stephen here.  Thank you, thank you, Stephen!




On my New Novel Come Away:Changelings, Dream Lore, and the Grateful Dead
I tend to collect bits and pieces of idea and images and characters, and then try to figure out how they go together.  In some long ago interview, Nabokov talks about how he scribbled images and phrases and moments onto file cards and put them in a box.  When the box was full, he said, he would begin writing the novel.  I’ve always liked that idea, though I’m not nearly organized enough to fill a box with file cards. My bits and pieces are more like imaginary file cards.            Come Away—despite its slender size—emerged from many many imaginary file cards. It began about 7 years ago, when my older daughter Anna, who has a dreadful neurogenetic disorder, began to deteriorate.  She had been diagnosed at 5 but was leading a more or less normal life until she turned 12, and then, as in some frightening fairy tale, seizures came over her like the cloud of slumber that envelops Sleeping Beauty.  Around that time, I was talking with a neighbor whose son is on the autism spectrum; he told me that when his child was diagnosed, he felt as if his beloved boy had been replaced by a changeling child.  This sent a chill down my spine—and it also sent me back to read and research some of the tales I had loved as a kid.  Northern European folklore is full of stories of the changeling—the healthy child whisked away by malign forces and replaced with a withered husk of a child.  I always loved those stories—who knows why? They are certainly not cheerful childhood tales.  I began to wonder if all these tales might not be folktale explanations of childhood illness and disability (it turns out there is some research to suggest this might be true), and I began to think about using that idea in something, though my original thought was that it would be a YA story of some kind.              But like a sticky plate left out on a table, other ideas and images and memories kept accruing,landing on that initial thought and staying there.  I remembered and re-read the wonderful Yeats poem, “The Stolen Child;” I recalled my undergraduate enthusiasm for the mad Victorian fairy painter Richard Dadd, who spent most of his adult life in the infamous Bedlam after killing his father; I stumbled upon and became fascinated with the medieval legend of the Green Children of Woolpit…            I had been working on another novel, but was not pleased with its progress.  When I confided to a friend my deepest fears about Anna’s declining health, and my not-entirely-rational  association with changelings and magic, she said, “Why aren’t you writing about that?  That’s the novel you should be writing.”  And she was right.            I have always been interested in magic—like Come Away’s narrator Paul, I was a barely competent teen magician and both stage magic and the supernatural kind have always beguiled me, not so much as a belief system but as a metaphor for how little control we have over our lives, and especially our children’s lives.  Show me a parent who has not engaged in magical thinking about his/her child!  Aren’t we always bargaining on some level with forces which may be wholly imaginary but still hold power over us? Well, that’s true for me anyway, and writing about my family’s struggles with the malign power of illness, while at the same time not actually writing about it, was both liberating and (occasionally) exhilarating for me.Of course, some might argue that the reality of parenting is fraught enough without adding the strands of preternatural possibilities with which Come Away is threaded.  But I’ve always liked to interweave dark domestic comedy with the mild buzz of the supernatural.  It seems to be my natural métier.Like magic, dreams, too, have always intrigued me.  As a hyper-sensitive youth, I kept a dream journal for many years, and I have used dreams and dream studies to teach writing classes since I started teaching several (gulp!) decades ago.  Often, this is catnip for undergraduates.  I always make my freshman writing classes do a dream research paper, and even got a YA book out of it (The Dreamer’s Companion, Chicago Review Press, still in print 17 years later!). I like the way in which dreams seem to gnaw at our sense of what is real and what is not…I think it is Nabokov who said that the word “reality” is among the only words which makes no sense without quotation marks around it.  In Come Away, the narrator’s father-in-law, a New Age philosopher, suggests that the small green girl Paul has been seeing, and whom he fears has come to take his daughter Spring from him, is a seeping dream object, an image which has leaked out of his unconscious into the world of objects.  This is a phenomenon I totally made up, though it’s hard to make anything up that is more fantastical than the Twilight Zone world of dream research.I never outline, and I rarely know exactly where my work is taking me.  This is just a personality thing, and I certainly don’t urge anyone to write that way. I write lists, and scribble various fragments in journals but have never been able to sit down and outline a plot or a character arc. I am sure my writing—or at least my process—would be better served if I were better organized.  I have a lot on my plate—I am a single father raising my profoundly disabled daughter and her madcap 14 year old sister—so I have to be obsessive about my writing even when (or especially when) I am only randomly organized about it. Once in a while, I discourse aloud to myself about whatever I am working on, record it, then play it back.  That helps me sometimes.  And I often speed-write a kind of blathering forth about what I am working on, and then read it back to myself.  That is about as close to an outline as I get.I have written plays and fiction and nonfiction for young people and adults.  I started out wanting to be a playwright, and I actually worked in the Off-off-Broadway theater scene for many years, and had a number of plays produced in obscure locations around the country. But I got frustrated by always having to deal with crazy egos and the many many assholes who work in the theater—not that there are not such people in every walk of life but writing novels allows me to avoid them for much longer. I sort of fell into writing magazine articles as a young man and did a lot of that for a while, but it was only a job, I never really cared about that kind of writing, at least for personal fulfillment.  Novels seem to be what I like to write these days (though it takes me far too long to do it).  I will probably try a young adult novel at some point, though mostly I seem inclined toward writing quirky literary fiction; it’s the kind of writing I like to read, and usually, whatever I start out with, it ends up in that genre.I am currently obsessed with ghosts.  Not that I believe in ghosts so much but again, I love the idea of some energy that is left behind after a loved one leaves us.  After my wife Kate died tragically young a few years ago, I started wondering if I could ever write a novel about how much I missed her, how empty and unmagical life seemed without her.  I was reading Oliver Sacks’ s book Hallucinations (another subject of lifelong interest to me), and there is a whole section on bereavement hallucinations.  And it seemed to me that my character Paul—who, OK, sounds a lot like me, though he is far more loosely wrapped than I am—might well experience such a thing.  So, I started reading ghost lore, especially Asian ghost lore, which is somewhat different from the Western image of the phantom in a sheet. I never planned to write a trilogy, but it rather seems as if there is another novel featuring Paul, the narrator of Come Away (and my first novel, Beautiful Somewhere Else) and his daughter Spring coping (sort of) with the loss of Spring’s mother. So far, it’s called The Dangerous Blues.No one has yet asked me why there is a repeated fragment of a Grateful Dead song in Come Away! I keep waiting…so I will now tell you, even if you do not wish to know.  My late wife Kate was a part-time Deadhead back in the day, and I too used to go see them now and then when I was younger (there was an epic Dead concert my senior year at Wesleyan, now shrouded in the mists of legend). One year, Kate’s brother Gerry—a major league Deadhead—gave us a CD of the 70s Dead classic American Beauty for Christmas, and the first song, “Box of Rain,” one I had loved when I was younger, really grabbed me, especially the linesWhat do you want me to do
to do for you to see you through?
this is all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long agoAnd the final, enigmatic line: Such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be thereMy wife and I used to joke that we wanted that song played at our funeral; but when Kate died, I was too distraught to remember that.  Actually, I barely remember anything about the funeral (except that Anna had a huge—and hugely appropriate—seizure just as the funeral began, almost toppling over while everyone around us wept). So, when I was revising Come Away, I remembered the song and the half-serious promise.  The beauty of that strange idea—how long we are “not here,” how painfully brief is the time we are here—really seemed to echo everything I was thinking about while writing Come Away.  So, I sort of shoved it into the narrative, as a song that Spring and her mother sing together, as an image that (I hope) will resonate with some as much as it has resonated with me.
--Stephen Policoff/November 2014

Erin Beresini talks about her gripping new book OFF COURSE, the Spartan Ultra Beast, obstaacle course racing for everyone, and so much more

It doesn't matter if you get up to run at five in the morning, or if your hardest exercise is getting up from the couch to get more cookies. You want to read this wild, fired-up, exhilarating book about the world of obstacle course racing. Erin Beresini makes you believe you can do anything. And she ought to know, because she did.

 Erin Beresini is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and the author of OFF COURSE Inside the Mad, Muddy World of Obstacle Course Racing.  In it, she uncovers the rivalries, lawsuits, scandals, and major players behind the fastest growing sport in U.S. history. I have to put this line in because Erin is so funny: "Her unbiased opinion is that it is probably one of the greatest books ever written.
Erin writes about health and fitness as Outside Magazine‘s Fit List columnist, and is a contributing writer to Triathlete Magazine. She started Outside‘s Fitness Coach column, and has written articles for Outside Magazine, Men’s Journal, espnW, Competitor, Inside Triathlon, and The New York Times. She also shoots photos and video. She was previously a senior editor at Competitor Magazine in San Diego.

I'm thrilled to have you here, Erin! I wish I could run a course with you!



Tell us about the Spartan Ultra Beast?

It is an insane race! When I did it, the event was two laps of the Vermont Championship Beast course—about 27 miles. There was rarely a moment where the course was flat, just straight up and down Killington ski mountain. At one point, there was even a goat trail that wound up a ridiculously steep section through the trees. It seemed like it would never end, and when it did, I still had to climb at least another half hour to the top. The sun set on my second lap, and my worst nightmare happened: it started to rain. It wasn’t particularly warm to begin with, but icy rain, I knew, would freak out my Arizona-bred body. I was at the top of the mountain in the dark in the watery sky, looking down at tiny twinkling lights at the very bottom. I knew that’s where the finish line was, but getting there would involve a harrowing butt-slide down slick black diamond slopes and tree runs. A man next to me slipped and couldn’t stop tumbling until a rock finally broke his fall. “I’m bleeding, but I don’t know where from,” he groaned. Holy poo, what am I doing out here!? was all I could think. (Except with more cussing.)

You’ve said that obstacle course racing “has done more to make fitness fun than any other sport.” Why do you think that is? Was there any time when you felt, “Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?”

Obstacle course racing includes dodging fire, slogging through mud, navigating barbed wire, and even fighting gladiators.

I have a pretty hefty tolerance for weird stuff. It’s not necessarily the on-course craziness that’s made fitness fun (although it is ridiculously fun!), but what you take away from the events. For me, that was the ability to see my workouts and tired running routes in a new way. Now I always stop at the monkey bars that are half-way through my six-mile loop—I look forward to getting there—and swing across them. I’ll do dips and push ups and squats and rows while I’m there, then take off for the rest of the run. OCR encouraged me to be more creative with my workouts. Strength routines shouldn’t be limited to gym equipment. Grab a rock and hike with it. Fill your car washing bucket with water and walk up and down the driveway with it. Drop and do burpees at every stop sign on your run. That’s stuff I never thought of doing before, and that I do all of the time now. I haven’t been to the gym in years. (Except when I want to swim indoors.)

What was the training like?

My very kind personal trainer neighbor took pity on me when he found out I’d signed up for the Ultra Beast but couldn’t run because of Achilles tendonitis. We did a lot of fun body weight exercises in his garage gym--push ups with my feet or hands in TRX straps, planks, squats. I’d also do battle ropes, farmer walks with kettlebells, kettlebell swings, sideways medicine ball tosses. At one point, he loaded me up with a sandbag and told me to go hike the Avenue C stairs, a long string of concrete steps about half a mile away from his garage gym that lead down to the ocean. You’ll find a lot of people working out there, but not usually carrying what looks like a body bag. In short: a lot of strength training and hiking, not much running.

What surprised you about being a part of obstacle course racing?

How inclusive the sport is. There’s an OCR for everyone, and people of all different sports backgrounds and abilities at every race. I’ve seen pro athletes from all different sports jump in. Pro triathlete Jenny Tobin has won Spartan races, famous ultra runners like Max King are getting dirty. People who’ve never raced before in their lives are popping on tutus and jumping into the mud—and they get just as much love as the pros. It’s glorious.
 
Besides getting a super buff body, you also gained some emotional strength. Can you talk about that?

I might sound like a total jerk saying this, but I have always believed I can do anything. That doesn’t mean the journey doesn’t get tough. But with that mindset, setbacks don’t feel too big. My brain and body were not on the same page at all leading up to the Ultra Beast. I was mentally ready to race, but was struggling a lot with tendonitis that never seemed to end. (Side note: it’s likely because the charming 1937 apartment I’d been living in had a mold problem!) A lot of my adult identity had to do with endurance sports, and being knocked out for practically a year made me really upset. It also made me think a lot about why I race. Ultimately, it’s for the cool people I meet and the friendships that are strengthened through unique shared experiences. Deciding that might’ve made me soft—I haven’t trained to compete at a high level in a few years—but it kept me out there and happy, on course and off.




Part of what I loved about the book was the wild cast of characters. Talk about that, please.

Spartan Race inventor Joe De Sena is a unique guy. He hurt his hip in a car accident and doctors told him he likely wouldn’t run again. So he went on an Ironman binge and raced something like 12 of them in a single year. He practically owns an entire town in Vermont, where he invites racers to live and train. He’ll wake them up before dawn to make them go hiking with him. No excuses.

Mr. Mouse, inventor of the UK’s Tough Guy is a hoot. A septuagenarian with a big bushy white mustache, his race is similar to Tough Mudder’s, but Tough Guy started in 1986. He had a rough childhood, and served in military conflicts. Those combined experiences led him to create Tough Guy. He felt he learned a lot about himself from reaching his lowest point—so he created a race that would break you with electric fences and cold water and constricting pipes so you could build yourself back up. He calls his residence the Mr. Mouse Farm for Unfortunates, and tries to employ people that, for some reason, couldn’t get a job elsewhere.

What’s obsessing you now and why?

I love the Facebook group Chicked Nation. It’s a place for women of all athletic abilities to come together and encourage each other to reach their health and fitness goals—no boys allowed! It now has more than 15,000 members. Ask a question you have about anything—OCR, training in general—and you’re sure to get smart, helpful responses. You might even find a teammate for a future event!

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

 I think you nailed it. J