Back again, with some St. Patrick's gold

Or rather, sharing some stuff in case you're interested.
1) My Sunday column about Jillian Weise and her novel, The Colony.
2) A rewritten/updated version of an interview I did some years ago with Star Trek's Robin Curtis.
3) A rewritten version of an interview I did with my friend Janis Owens when she released her Cracker Kitchen cookbook.

This week, I'm working on a column about the local vinyl record store, which occupies an old skating rink that turns out to have been constructed using timbers from the old L&N train station in Century, Florida, where I grew up. I'll link to that this weekend. (Dad asked me to write a guest column for the Historical Society about the place also. -- And speaking of that, I've been invited to the April 24 spring celebration in Century, where I hope to sell a few books, maybe.)

Currently reading: DC Showcase Presents "House of Secrets" -- loaned to me by my friend Brady. He also recently loaned me the Showcase collection of the Warlord series by Mike Grell. I'll tell you more later and provide some links.

Just watched: "The Time Traveler's Wife" on DVD. Loved the book. The movie touched me too. I'll give a deeper review in the neat future.

Be back soon, I promise.
Peace.

Weise Words

I'm currently reading The Colony, written by Jillian Weise, who used to write a student column in The News Herald's Education section, many moons ago. She's now a poet, playwright, novelist and a professor at Clemson. I plan to write more about her debut novel later. For now, I thought I'd share something I wrote in February 2006 when she released a collection of her poems. It ran with this headline:

Translating Jillian: Playwright, singer, poet — just a girl?

There’s a disquieting intimacy to reading Jillian Weise's poetry.


I read her Notes on the Body, and can’t help recalling the middle-schooler who so bravely approached me — What? 11 years ago? — about writing columns. I read The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, and there’s a high-schooler posing questions to then-Gov. Lawton Chiles. Having not seen her for some time, those are the images with which I live.

I’ve heard that some have a problem reading fiction by people they know: They imagine the friend in the process of writing, or living it, and can’t buy in. That’s not my reaction here. Reading her work, moments so quietly not fictional, I buy in, and there lies the discomfort.

(Forgive me, Jillian. I’ll be brave.)

Jillian's first chapbook, Translating the Body (All Nations Press, 2005) was a precursor to the full-length edition, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, coming this fall (Soft Skull Press). I read it recently when her father dropped me a copy, and I looked her up online.

“I’m intrigued by H.D.’s (Hilda Doolittle’s) question in Notes On Thought and Vision: ‘What is the body? Where does the body come in?’ My work seeks answers for these questions,” Jillian said in a recent e-mail exchange.

“As an aside … I am alarmed by the current climate towards physical difference. Million Dollar Baby and The Sea Inside both garnered Oscar nods in the same year. Both movies portray characters living with a disability who choose to end their lives. The movies appeared to large audiences in a year when stem cell research was hotly debated in a presidential campaign. While the poems I write are not about movies or presidents, they do argue for the validity and worth of living with a disability.”

Is she a hero? She may be. I once described her in print as the kind of kid who got an idea and made it happen, the girl who invited the boy of her choice to the prom, who embraced theater and public speaking “despite” physical challenges that would sideline others — a bone displacement disorder, severe scoliosis, a bad lung, marathon surgeries, metal rods, a leg amputation in childhood.

(Now one of her poems that crushes me in retrospect, I discover, was based upon that terrible word: Despite.)

As a Surfside and Rutherford student living in Panama City Beach, Jillian wrote regularly for The News Herald’s now-defunct Education and Generation NeXt sections. She’s now 24 and on a second-year fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., on Cape Cod. (“Brrr,” she said.)

“I live on the third floor of an 1880s barn with a concrete seagull named Hoot,” she said. “The property used to house a paper mill until the 1960s, when a collective of artists purchased the land and surrounding buildings and created the Fine Arts Work Center. The FAWC is a non-profit arts organization that selects 10 visual artists and 10 writers a year from around the world to come and live rent-free with a monthly stipend. Our only obligation is to write or make art.”

Jillian recently worked as an editorial assistant at the Paris Review — reading submissions, scanning for talent and helping to “birth an issue.” Her plays have been produced at the Greensboro Fringe Festival and Provincetown Playwrights Festival, and her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, Verse Daily and elsewhere. She earned an MFA as the Fred Chappell Fellow at the University of North Carolina.


With Jason Matson — whom she met while both were students in Tallahassee and who moved with her to the Cape — she’s half of The Leaving, formerly The Jason & Jillian Band. According to her MySpace profile, she’d like to meet “people who drink sweet Alabama wine on ice in the winter.” She flosses her teeth.

And she writes unflinchingly about the pains and the freedom, the limitations and the pleasures of being who she is. Her voice is clear, nothing is lost.

A hero? Maybe she’s just a girl I’m glad I used to know.

------

Peace.

Not a Day Goes By

Today is one of those anniversaries you'd prefer not to have any reason to note as it passes.
And so it goes...

Anniversaries are for stories, and sometimes I make up 'Stories About Her.'

Here's what we do to honor her.

And here's a tribute by my son, performed at GCCC:



See you later, kiddo. I miss you.

Love, Pop 2.

Dress for Success

You'd probably never believe it, because I certainly don't give the appearance of one who cares about his appearance (my wife scolds me for wearing pants that need to be ironed) but I often worry about what I should wear when I go places.

Not "places" like to the grocery store or work. I understand the requirements of such environments. But "places" like a book conference, or a party, or a gala. 'Cuz let's face it: I don't have the wardrobe or style (or cash money) to pull off "gala."

I had to worry about this on the Thursday before Books Alive, when Debra and I went to a "dinner party" for Karen Z at the Clemons castle. On the following evening, I was not so concerned about the meet-and-greet party, as I'd been several times before and knew the routine.

(Daniel Wallace asked if he needed to go to the Gap to pick up nicer clothes for the Saturday "gala," and I knew I was in the right company. But he had an out. As I told him, "You're one of the guests of honor. You can wear what you like.")

(NOTE: We did not attend the gala. I'm sure he was dressed just fine.)

But then, I was stuck thinking about the next morning's Books Alive, and hoped I wasn't going too under-dressed. I decided on the black jeans and a button-up shirt. Then realized that I wanted to wear the David Bowie tour shirt Debra got me for Xmas, so the button-up remained half-buttoned up. Then couldn't decide if I should wear my black dress shoes or just go with the Converse One Stars. I chose comfort.

I made the right decisions. I was gratified to see that Daniel was wearing jeans, black Converse, a blue button-up shirt with a T-shirt showing. This is what the famous author wears; it's good enough for me.

They say you should dress for success. Dress for the life you want to live.

Well, it seems I've got the look. It comes natural to me. ... Now if only the rest would follow ...

What are you wearing?

Peace.

We Interrupt This Blog

... For a special catch-up post. (I will get back to Mr. Wallace later this weekend.) Meanwhile:

Received in the mail this week an advanced copy of THE COLONY by Jillian Weise. Jillian was a middle school student more than a decade ago when she walked into the News Herald office and told me she was going to write a column for the weekly Education section. She was pretty awesome even then. She has had work in literary journals and anthologies, and her first poetry collection was The Amputee's Guide to Sex. I will be coming back with a review of the book and profile of Jillian in the very near future.

Also recently picked up a few books from the discount shelves in the past couple of weeks: Just Another Judgement Day, a Nightside novel by Simon R. Green; Between the Tides by my new acquaintance Patti Callahan Henry; The Book of Ballads and Sagas by Charles Vess. Also, I have two upcoming novels by local folks that I am behind on reading: The Universal Essence by Dean Lincoln Minton; and Miss Hildreth Wore Brown - Anecdotes of a Southern Belle by Olivia Cooley.

I am also trying to work my way through a gift of hundreds of comics from my friend Chris Arrant. Most recently, I have read the first few issues of a series called "Dead Eyes Open," a twist on the zombie tale in which the "returned" have all their memories and no desire to harm anyone, but because living people fear them, they are hunted and kept in internment camps. Spooky stuff.

And oh yeah, I'm also trying to do some writing of my own. So, you know, kinda busy these days.

What are you reading? What are you writing?

The Secret of the Glass Eye (A Books Alive Fable starring Daniel Wallace)

Glass eyes are the window to Daniel Wallace’s soul — or at least, to his work.

Wallace, author of Big Fish, Ray in Reverse, and most recently Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician, collects prosthetic eyeballs. He calls the online search for them “his porn,” and describes his wife walking in on him to catch him browsing glass eyes on eBay. “You’re not bidding on another eye!” she said.

Glass eyes have figured in his work from the beginning, as they figured in his childhood and because so much of his writing is informed by the fables of youth.

When Wallace was in sixth grade and “everybody was new” at his school, he met a kid named Frank. Frank lived nearby, which made them “friends by default,” he said. However, in the heirarchy of coolness at school, Frank was somewhere behind Wallace. Wallace might not have been the most popular kid, but at least he knew Frank would always be the last one picked for teams.

Frank had a glass eye.

Some days, Frank would raise his hand and ask a teacher if he could go to the restroom to wash his eye. She always said he could. He always asked if “Danny” could go along, and she always said he could.

“She didn’t know — maybe washing a glass eye was a two-boy job,” Wallace said.

It was not, and sometimes Frank and Danny would barely even speak during the operation. Frank would take out the eye, run water over it, dry it and replace it. And they would go back to class.

Today, Wallace wonders whatever became of Frank. He would like Frank to know what an impact he had on young Danny. He wonders if Frank has read any of his books. He has looked for Frank for years, and is baffled that there’s no trace of his old friend on the Internet.

He says he learned many things from Frank, most of which was subconscious at the time. But one thing he learned ties to him being a “visual writer.”

Wallace, 51, has been seriously writing since he was 24. His first book, “Big Fish,” was published when he was 39. The movie version by Tim Burton was a “shocking development,” he said, and while it is very different from the book, he thinks the two have one thing that connects them.

“Imagery. Everything is being held together by images, things that get a story going and hold a story together.”

Like reflections in a glass eye.

----
Tomorrow: More of my time with Mr. Wallace during Books Alive. Converse sneakers, heart attack symptoms, nursing shoes, and catastrophic recalibrations.

Peace.

Daniel Wallace poses with Karen Spears Zacharias, left, and Patti Callahan Henry, right, after their afternoon session at Books Alive on Feb. 6. (Photo by me, stolen from KSZ's blog.)

Masha, Masha, Masha (or, 'Writing Tips for Good Beginnings')

(I wonder how many times she has heard that particular Brady Bunch joke.)
---

Masha Hamilton was a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in the Middle East for half a decade, then she worked another five years in Moscow as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. While in Moscow, she began to dream what she described as “fictional anecdotes.” Eventually, she realized her subconscious was sending her a message. She decided to quit journalism and follow a new path.

She has since authored four novels: Staircase of a Thousand Steps (2001), The Distance Between Us (2004), The Camel Bookmobile (2007) and 31 Hours (2009). She also teaches writing workshops online and in person. She taught one Feb. 5 at FSU-Panama City when she visited for Books Alive.

I had the pleasure of participating in her workshop. And her publicist asked me to give her a lift back to her hotel, during which time she grilled me on the local meth epidemic. Later Friday, during the "get acquainted" gathering for the authors and volunteers, she questioned Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Ruth Corley about the same thing. (That's Ruth, left, and Masha talking in the photo below.)

“I am closer to my fictional characters than I am to a lot of people,” she told the small gathering of writers-in-training at FSU that rainy morning. “They have revealed so much to me.”

In turn, Hamilton revealed a few trade secrets to her class. She says the first few lines of a story must make a reader invest in the rest of the tale. An editor friend wading through the slush pile of manuscripts in his office once told her, “I read that first paragraph. If I can put it down, I do.” He had so many pages stacked on and around his desk that every paragraph had to give him a reason to keep reading.

Here are Hamilton’s tips for beginning a new story or setting off on the adventure of writing a novel:

1) Start your story at (or as near as possible to) the moment everything changes for the character, when every-thing is propelled forward.

2) Provide an immediate feeling that something is at stake. “Suspense is what keeps the reader going to the next paragraph and the next, and turning to the next page,” she said.

3) Focus on a character that the reader can care about. “Characters are human. They must be flawed,” she said. In addition, you must know more about your characters than you reveal to the reader. To write realistically about a made-up person, you must give this person depth. Know incidental things like what is in that character’s refrigerator and medicine cabinet. What was his first kiss like? What is his belief about God? How does he handle money? (And so on.)

“You write the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “You have to know all the rest of the iceberg too.”

4) When writing a first draft, don’t over-think it. Don’t self-censor, or second-guess. Don’t let yourself be frozen. “The first draft is a process of exploration,” said Hamilton, who does not write from an outline. “Free write. Don’t stop. Don’t self-edit.”

5) For writing dialogue, Hamilton refers her writing students to Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” Look for subtext in the dialogue, she says. Beginning writers mistakenly have characters say too much, too clearly and with too much exposition, she said.

“Dialogue should reveal character, create mood, push the plot,” she said. “It’s the place to use lies, hyperbole, exaggerations. The best place to use subtext.”

6) At the climax, slow down the action. Don’t rush through it. This is what your readers have been waiting for, after all. Give them all the storytelling you can muster at this point. “You should vary the psychic distance throughout the story, but get very close to the character at a moment of suspense,” she said.

Finally, she had everyone in the room write down three small personal fears they have, and three BIG fears they have. Then take those fears and apply them to a character they are already writing about in one of their projects. This 25-minute writing exercise was supposed to include some physical details and dialogue.

Without revealing what six fears I wrote down, what follows is the narrative I wrote. The point-of-view character is Jonathan Maxwell, the grandfather of my Tom Caliban character. He has just gotten word that his daughter, Rebecca, was in a car accident and is at the hospital. Please recognize that this is a first draft, free written, as Masha said we should do:
----

All the long drive to the hospital, Jon kept imagining the fear and pain Rebecca had suffered. He’d been in one nasty crash several years ago, and he could replay the stop-motion memory of that wreck as if it were happening right now.

Surprise of impact. Tug of belts across his chest and waist. Glass peppering his face. Pain of his head striking the door frame. Vision of glass suspended in air before his eyes like a photograph of sleet as the car shifts to the right at the same speed as the glass flying within it. Glass raining as the car digs in and skips in the dirt shoulder of the road, turns and rolls forward.

What had Becca seen in that hot, frozen instant? What pain seared through her body? Did she lie in her blood and tremble, shake glass from her long black hair? Did she call out for him or Maggie? The thought of her suffering, alone, terrified — it shook him to the soul. He felt helpless before the cold fact of it. Small.

Jon carried a single scar from his wreck, a line of skin sensitive to the touch even decades later. It was hidden by his gray flat-top, but he could find it unerringly and trace it now with one finger as he cried behind the wheel.

He wondered what scars Becca would carry, and whether they would be so easily hidden — or as simple to put a finger on.

Maggie touched his arm and he turned to look at her. Her face was dry.

“Slow down,” she said. “The hard part is over.”

But Jon suspected that Maggie didn’t know what she was talking about.
----

Peace.