Monthly Wrap: Killing the Piano

August 7, 2009 – 12:01 am

This month, we talked about the instruments we played when we were kids. Mostly I played imaginary instruments, playing as fast and impressively as the masters. In real life, I was impatient with the learning curve, but I do have a story for you about me and the piano.

The high point of my piano playing was Humpty Dumpty, a humiliating song to lay on a girl who’d rather play Rachmaninoff. But even Humpty Dumpty didn’t come easily. I didn’t like to practice. And sometimes I walked up the street to my piano teacher’s house and never even rang the bell. I just stood there, considering, and then walked back home the long way.

I don’t know what upset me so much about her sitting beside me on the bench, her gnarled fingers on the keys, singing the correct notes as I played the wrong ones. Maybe I have issues with inadequacy. Failure. People telling me what to do. People sitting too close.

I’ve never been the kind of person to fly into a rage. I’m quieter than that. So one day, I sat at the piano with my father’s wrench and quietly snipped a piece of ivory off of every key. In order: low notes to high notes. Every one. And then, without a word, I swept the pieces into my hand and closed the lid. Never told a soul.

I’m not sure what that says about the kind of child I was, but I suspect it says something.

litpark hates piano

Shortly after Mr. Henderson and I got married, my parents surprised me by sending us the piano. It was an expensive shipment, very generous, but it came into the house like a ghost and made me avoid the room we’d put it in.

This is how much my husband loves me. That year for my birthday, I came home and found that he’d magically removed the piano from the house, even while wearing a sling for a dislocated shoulder, and replaced the piano with a tank filled with frogs.

Best birthday present ever!

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What did I read this month? Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez (editors), WRITER’S WORKSHOP IN A BOOK: THE SQUAW VALLEY COMMUNITY OF WRITERS ON THE ART OF FICTION (Gave me new writing heroes like Anne Lamott, Mark Childress, and Lynn Freed); Jennifer McMahon, PROMISE NOT TO TELL (The wickedness and heartbreak of young girls; LOVED it!); and the book for next month’s interview.

Thanks to my August guest, Naseem Rakha, and to all of you who played here. And thanks to those who linked to LitPark: Simply Wait, In Her Own Write, Confessions of a Hermit Crab, Publishers Weekly, The Writer’s (Inner) Journey, Backspace,  Marilyn Peake, Yearning 4d Sky, Jim Hanas, Blanquis26, Recommended Reading,  Book Bird Dog, Kirk Farber Fiction, Laurel Snyder, Ashlyn Harper, Dynamic Josh, kmwss2c, Charles Palmer, AS King, Joanne Levy, Robin Slick, Maureen McGowan, ktsetsi, Backword Books, Emrson Creighton, David Habbin, phalpern, i follow the night, lancerey, Brigita09, Eileen Rita, sarzee, TNB Tweets, Carmelo Valone, Laura Benedict, Despi Doodle, Georgia McBride, Maria Schneider, Jason Boog, HarperPerennial, Lori Oliva, Spaced Lawyer, Kimberly Wetherell, Jamie Ford, KayinCatEyes, BukowskiD, Laura Benedict, Regina Marler, Mike Gackler, My Feng Shui Life, Emrson Creighton, Rumbly in my Tumbly, Upstate Girl, Editor Unleased, and Lee Crase’s Vagabond Lit. I appreciate those links!

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Monthly Wrap |

Naseem Rakha

August 5, 2009 – 12:01 am

In Naseem Rakha’s debut novel, THE CRYING TREE, a 15-year-old boy is killed; and as his family unravels, the boy’s mother lives only for the day that the murderer will be executed. Months turn into years, and a single action changes everything, opens the possibility for forgiveness. I loved talking to Naseem about this book, which is already a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller and a pick for the Barnes & Noble’s autumn Discover Great New Writers program, and I hope you’ll join the conversation.

naseem rakha the crying tree litpark susan henderson

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I love the sentiment of the Mohandas Gandhi quote you use at the opening of your novel. “Love is the prerogative of the brave.” Can you put that philosophy into your own words and talk about why it strikes you?

While The Crying Tree is obviously about difficult subjects – murder, loss, secrets, the death penalty, forgiveness – more than anything else the novel is about courage, and more specifically the courage to love. The story takes on this theme in many ways, but the most obvious is in the protagonist’s (Irene Stanley’s) decision to forgive the man who murdered her son. Loss sears our souls only if what we have lost we have also loved. To turn around in the midst of the most grievous loss, and decide it is better to have hope in this world, to appreciate its beauty, and to love no matter what the cost, takes, I believe, tremendous strength and courage.

naseem rakha the crying tree book cover

You’ve written about the kind of grief people never fully heal from, the violent death of a child. Every member of this family lost their bearings, felt alone with their needs and their secrets. Even the tree at the burial site wept sap. But something survived, insisted, in each of them. And I wonder if you can talk about this push and pull of the human spirit – to lay down and to stand up again.

One of my favorite movies is Shawshank Redemption. A man is wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his wife, but instead of giving up, lying down as you put it, he finds ways to make his life whole. I think the reason this film appeals to me, and so many others, is that it speaks to our higher selves: that part of us that strives to be more than the sum of our accumulated hurts. We saw that with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission which helped people rise up from the desperation and anger caused by Apartheid. We see this in Iran as people risk their lives standing against a repressive regime. And we see it in the everyday acts of people that decide to forgo the victimization and pain of their past and move on with their lives. Survival is a natural instinct. The question is will you live this life standing upright, your eyes looking toward the sun, or will you be stooped by the weight of anger, your eyes always looking behind?

Her mission on this day was to stay upright. To bear this thing called a funeral with her mind as closed off to its sights and sounds as possible. (THE CRYING TREE, p. 35)

The boy who’s murdered in this book played the trumpet, music his mother called ‘evidence of God.’ And I love that the image of him in the field, where he played Silent Night even in the summer, became the cover of your novel because the trumpet is used so beautifully throughout. It made me curious: Did you play an instrument as a child? And would you tell a story about you and music that says something about the kind of kid you were?

Music….

It is essential to me. Right now I am listening to Shivkumar Sharma’s Call of the Valley. It is classical Indian music. Santoor, sitar, tabla. Music follows me wherever I go. And if it is not on, it is only because I want to listen to the birds, or the wind, or the creak of the house. Or NPR….

I attribute my love of music to my parents. My father – from India, and my mother, from Chicago – shared a passion for music which they the passed on to all three of their children. I grew up going to Chicago’s Orchestra Hall to listen to the Symphony, I took ballet, I played the piano and later the guitar. In fifth grade, we were given an assignment to pick out a piece of music, listen to it, and then write a paper about why it appealed to us.

I remember the moment I picked my piece. I was leaning against our stereo – a big walnut console with speakers on either side – listening to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. When it came to the second movement – the Allegretto – I was bewitched. It is a simple theme repeated over and over again, building like a wave, or growing like a flower, at least those were the metaphors I used in my paper. I also remember feeling the music as something alive and almost magical. If everyone could sit down and listen to this one piece, I thought, then there would be no war or crime. There would only be this music, and all around it there would be people who understood its power.

I still love the Seventh Symphony. In fact, it was one of many pieces I listened to while I wrote The Crying Tree. Music was essential to certain scenes in the book. A song called Tennessee by Mindy Smith helped me recreate the land, the people, and the love Irene had for her life in southern Illinois. Bruce Springsteen’s You’re Missing helped me delve into that empty space created by Shep’s death. And the closing movement of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring helped me develop the tone and emotional landscape of The Crying Tree’s final scene.

For anyone who is interested, I’ve created a downloadable playlist on Itunes. You can find it on my web site: www.naseemrakha.com

The only thing that interested her was the trial. She wanted answers from Daniel Robbin, and she wanted to be there when he gave them. But most of all she wanted him to see her. She had an idea that when they finally locked eyes, her son’s killer would crumple and cry for mercy, knowing – absolutely knowing – the value of what he’d taken, and how in taking it he had altered the course of life. Not just his and Shep’s, but something far more vast and irreconcilable. And then in this idea of Irene’s a dream, really; a kind of sinking, spinning vision that moved through her days – Daniel Robbin would experience all the agony he had caused and would continue to cause, from now until forever, all of it ravaging him as he had ravaged her son. (THE CRYING TREE, p. 76)

A view from Points Beyond -- the small farm where THE CRYING TREE was written.

A view from Points Beyond -- the small farm where THE CRYING TREE was written.

The mother in your novel lives for the execution of her son’s murderer, but that wait takes years. Almost two decades. And what began as a rage we can all understand, became a hatred that destroyed her and all that she had left. You show other kinds of hate in this book, including the glee of those drunk and singing on execution day. What did telling this story teach you about hate?

Not only did the novel help me understand how addictive and annihilating hate can be, but how society colludes to make hate a pastime. Shock jocks pollute the airwaves with hate, making it easy, even acceptable to pit one group of people against another. Political leaders tend to do the same, setting up litmus tests to determine if your behavior is acceptable. And we know the role religious institutions have played in perpetuating the myth that there is only one true faith. With so much reinforcement, hate has become the easy antidote to any perceived slight or injustice. It makes us feel more in control, more powerful, more right. And, like a drug, it distorts our perspective of reality, interfering with our ability to be productive members of our community.

What I also learned is that when individuals renounce hate they find in its place feelings of balance, perspective, and joy. These are the people you want to sit next to on the bus. They are ones that see opportunity where others do not. They are creative and funny and almost impossible to offend. And more than anything else, these people are free.

The Crying Tree taught me a great deal about hate, and pain, and love and grace. It has also given me a great deal to strive for.

The choice was simple. Take the truth to his grave, or make her choke on it. (THE CRYING TREE, p. 154)

Lake Champlaign Vermont. September 11, 2001 Naseem and 18 month old Elijah watch the sun set on a very sad day.

Lake Champlaign Vermont. September 11, 2001 Naseem and 18 month old Elijah watch the sun set on a very sad day.

What’s gained by seeing our adversaries as human beings? And why do you think the idea of absolution or forgiveness is so threatening?

Forgiveness threatens us because it means we have a choice about what we carry. Some people do not want this choice, and moreover, they do not believe the choice really exists. When people are in pain, forgiveness can seem obtuse at best, and grotesque in the extreme. How can a mother forgive someone who murders her son? How can people who have suffered under apartheid, forgive the perpetrators of this generational crime? How do we forgive racists, or terrorists, or the neighbor who beats his wife? A lover that cheats on the other? A boss that fires an ill employee?

Anger is a legitimate response to these actions. The question is, what does the anger give, and where will it lead? For a decade, a friend of mine lived her life for the execution of the man who murdered her eighteen-year-old daughter. Today this woman considers this man her friend, visiting him at least two times a year on San Quentin’s death row. This transformation was not something she would have predicted, and if it had been suggested early on she probably would have been repulsed. Still, it can’t be denied that by setting aside her anger and dealing with Mr. X as a human versus just a murderer or a monster, both she and the man have gained, and learned and grown.

Forgiveness takes work, and it takes time. But more than anything else, it takes faith. I am not a religious person, but I do have a strong belief in the ability of the human spirit to reach beyond the confines of rage and deal with one another in humane and just ways. In fact, I think our future will be determined by whether we are successful at this or not.

All these years with the DA telling her the execution would provide “closure.” That was their word. As if her son’s life were a book that could finally be shut. (THE CRYING TREE, p. 169)

Naseem in hot air balloon over Oregon's Willamette Valley.

Naseem in hot air balloon over Oregon's Willamette Valley.

Tell me about your journey to getting this book published. Looking back to the days before you had an agent or a book deal, or when this novel was nothing but a few ideas jotted down on the back of a gas receipt, is there anything you learned that you could share with other writers?

I knew what story I wanted to tell, I felt it was an important story, and I believed in this story and its emerging characters. Then, I worked on it every single day from June of 2004 until its final edits with my editor at Broadway Books in January, 2009. Working means that I was either physically in the act of writing, or I was mentally in the act of imagining, or as it often felt, listening. That effort, plus the exquisite and sometimes brutal advise from a solid set of writing companions helped make the book a possibility. I did not think about publishing, finding an agent, or book sale politics. These things were distractions, and as a mom on a small farm, with a big garden and plenty of animals, I had plenty of distractions.

Then, when I finally thought it was in a tight enough form, I attended the Backspace.org Agent Author Seminar. There, I found my agent and four weeks later signed on as a client with Folio Literary Management. Five months later, my agent and I felt the book was ready to be shopped around to publishers. Within a day, the book had an offer. The following week The Crying Tree went to auction. Since then, it has sold to six different countries and will also be offered in audio form.

In all, the process has been fast moving, and relatively painless. My agent, Laney Katz Becker, editor, Christine Pride and my team of marketers and publicists have been outstanding. And their support and excitement for the book is palpable.

My advice to writers is to find a topic that holds your passion. Research it, then dive in. Do not listen to nay-sayers (I had plenty), do not listen to the negative bugger that lives in the left hand corner of your brain. Do not listen to news about the publishing world. Just write. Then, when you feel ready, have people read it. These must be people who know how to pick apart a work, telling you honestly what works and what does not. They should tell you where in the book they were excited, scared, sad, bored, pissed and so forth. And they should be able to tell you why. After that, sit down and polish your work until you know it shines. In the mean time, research agents. Track Publishers Marketplace deals page. Look to see who is selling the type of book you have written. You don’t just want any old agent. You want an agent that is moved by your work, believes in you, has ideas, and is willing to work with you to make your manuscript even better. Finally, do everything with vigor and ardor and a deep sense of gratitude because you are a writer, and that means you have been given the honor to touch a little piece of grace.

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Interviews |

Question of the Month: Instrument

August 3, 2009 – 12:01 am

What instrument did you play as a child? Tell me a story about you and that instrument that shows me something of the kind of kid you were.

Wednesday, Naseem Rakha will be here to discuss her debut novel, THE CRYING TREE, and she’ll answer this question, as well. See you then!

By the way, all week I’m at Squaw Valley – amazing!!, and I’ll have lots more to say about it soon – so I may be around only at the oddest hours. But carry on, and I’ll jump in whenever I’m free.

And P.S. Happy birthday (Friday) to Dan Conaway, best agent ever! If you love him, too, send him a note so he has a great day.

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Question of the Month |

Book Deal!

July 19, 2009 – 8:49 am

The deal: My novel, THE RUBY CUP, will be published by Harper Perennial!

litparkharperperennialolive

A few details: On Friday, I got a call from my agent with an offer from Harper Perennial. It’s my favorite publishing house (everyone who knows me best knows this), so it was an extra thrill.

Earlier in the week, I’d spoken with the woman who will be my editor to see if we’re on the same page with edits. Do you know the feeling when someone talks about your work with ideas that are so in-line with yours but with an original twist you never considered? It sets off fireworks in your head. You can’t stop the new ideas; they find you when you’re driving and while you’re sleeping.

I always thought, when I got a book deal, that I’d shout it from the rooftops. My reaction surprised me. It felt intensely private, like giving birth; and then, after something full of seemingly endless pain and worry and utter exhaustion, you’re holding this baby. And he’s healthy and looking at you. And in the back of your mind, you know you have to call everyone to say he’s born and tell everyone his name and how much he weighs and all about the labor, but you kind of can’t move. You just want to stay in that quiet space for a while, just the two of you, and let it all feel real.

I spent the weekend cleaning. Can you believe my first real urge after getting a book deal was to wash and fold all the laundry?! And I just hung out with the family and gardened and threw a tennis ball to the dogs. Hardly went near the computer.

I feel good. Feel like getting to work. And I want to tell those of you who feel like Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up the hill, or who feel like a mother in some kind of cruel false labor, that I hope it happens for you soon. Because the second you’re standing on the top of the hill, or you’re holding that newborn, all that pushing doesn’t seem so bad.

Thanks to all of you for being here. xo

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Interviews |

Monthly Wrap: More Human than Hero

July 10, 2009 – 12:01 am

We talked about heroes this month, and every time I think of the word “hero,” I get that Mariah Carey song stuck in my head.

I heard that song constantly when I worked as a counselor at a rape crisis center because one of my teenage clients loved to sing to me. She liked over-the-top songs: “Hero,” the theme to “The Titanic.” Oh, she was an awful singer – I suppose she couldn’t help it because she was hearing impaired – but what she lacked in pitch, she made up in emotion.

When you’re a counselor, people come to you with expectations that you’ll be some kind of super hero who can save them from the complicated pain they’ve been living with, but you know better. And your clients will find out soon enough: You’re just two human beings sitting in a room together and hoping for the best.

Downstairs in the waiting room, week after week, were the parents of my singing client. They’d adopted her when she was a malnourished orphan living on the streets. They gave her a home, took her to a doctor to get hearing aids, found her a school, and brought her to me when she was date raped.

Heroes? Maybe not.

Imagine you’re a 25-year-old counselor who looks like you’re going on twelve, and it’s the day your singing client tells you that those parents in the waiting room have been molesting her. As you’re riding down in the elevator, you’re trying to find the right words, words that will become part of the court case, to explain why their daughter can’t go home with them, and what they can expect when the investigators get in touch.

If you think there’s anything heroic about stripping a girl from her family and sending her into the nightmare of group homes, there isn’t. The thing about group homes is that the workers and the residents there have that same quality as counselors and adoptive parents and all the rest: they’re human. Sometimes beautiful. Always flawed. Capable of great good, great evil, and mostly, great mediocrity.

Maybe the word “hero” can only truly describe a single moment, a single courageous choice that happened to get good results. Most times, there are no heroes, nor even heroic moments – just people trying (or not trying) their best.

If you’re wondering how the girl’s story ends, I don’t know. Counselors share a tiny room full of painful secrets and brave recovery for just a brief time. And then you just hope the kid’s doing okay. You hope she still sings.

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What I read this month: A whole lotta research books for the novel I’m writing, plus Naseem Rakha’s THE CRYING TREE (I’ll talk more about this beautiful book very soon), Zora Neale Hurston’s THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (What took me so long to read this book?! It’s glorious), and John Connolly’s THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS (Two beautiful opening chapters about death and fairy tales and WWII before it becomes, much more clearly, a children’s book. I read it through anyway, hoping the ending chapters would hit the same notes as the first two, and I’m glad to say they did).

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Thanks to my July guest, novelist Lance Reynald. Thanks to all who played here, and to everyone who linked to LitPark: She Writes, Georgia McBride Books, joannamauselina, Mots Justes, Side Dish, Tayari’s Blog, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Amazon Blog, Stet, Alpha FEmale Mind, acparker, EllenMeister, spacedlawyer, lancerey, marilynpeake, artbizlaw, kmwss2c, BklynBrit, redRavine, LitChat, TerryBain, LanceRey, lorioliva, PD_Smith, nicebio, and zumayabooks. I appreciate those links!

Okay, off to dinner in the West Village with Amy Wallen, Eber Lambert, Neil Lambert, Rebecca Friedman, Rachel Shukert, Kimberly Wetherell, and Mr. H. Looking forward to it!

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Monthly Wrap |

Lance Reynald, author of POP SALVATION

July 8, 2009 – 12:01 am

Most regulars of LitPark know Lance Reynald, who is an integral part of this place – not just for his interviews, but for helping to build and maintain a community of enthusiastic readers and supportive writers.

Now it’s Lance’s turn to be front and center with his gorgeous debut novel of outcasts in search of love and identity. POP SALVATION is set in Washington DC during the MTV generation, with its emerging punk scene and long lines at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and features a boy who dresses like his hero, Andy Warhol, and struggles with the courage to be himself. Please stay and talk with Lance; and thanks to everyone who buys his book!

litpark interviews lance reynald

Talk to me about freaks. Just riff, if you would.

I don’t really see them. I know that it seems that the general public does… and that seems to be something that I don’t really have, or just didn’t pick up. Throughout life there have been times that people have questioned my judgement when it comes to the company I have kept. My outlook is pretty simple; we’re all these beautiful creatures, each and every one unique with boundless potential. The error of society labeling anyone a freak is that it dismisses an opportunity to see beauty that is greater than we could ever dream.

litpark interviews lance reynald

Let’s talk about Caleb – a boy who never felt good enough, whether it was being smaller than the other kids or having problem skin or the way his accent and his walk and the feelings he had set him apart. What drew him to Andy Warhol as his hero?

Caleb and Andy both faced adolescence as outcasts. Warhol was a sickly effeminate child of immigrant Pittsburgh, nothing extraordinary really. But instead of trying to fit in and be just like everyone else he played up the characteristics that made him different… and the brilliant twist from that was he presented everyday objects as the art. Think about it for a moment. Here you have a man that looks like Andy Warhol telling you that the everyday objects you ignore in the grocery store are actually what real beauty is… everything that surrounds you is art. If you hold that thought you begin to recondition yourself and you might realize that Warhol isn’t so strange looking after all. Andy Warhol as an Icon is pretty damn empowering to a boy that feels he can’t ever fit.

I’d transformed myself into a grade school clone of my hero. A pint-size Warhol. My summer with the art school crowd had given me the confidence to not only be different, but also to express myself in an extreme fashion.

So shocking was the art I had made of myself that James and the other children dismissed me with just one word on our first day back at school.

Freak. (POP SALVATION, p. 23)

Do you have any heroes?

I used to.

I think it’s great to have heroes, icons or someone to emulate, but all of that should be a starting point. Everyone feels powerless at some point and you might need the thought of someone greater than you to use as a catalyst to make you stronger.

But those heroes out there are made of the same molecules and energy that you are. They love. They have insecurities, headaches and bad days. And no doubt that they have a part that hurts too. Their actions, achievements or the way they live has made them heroic to you. Your interest should be the point of inspiration.

I’ve noticed that lots of young writers travel down this road to our peril. They attach strongly to their heroes and icons. Everyone wants to be Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Burroughs or Thompson (the list goes on and on to tedious extremes) but imitation is just dull.

You have your own voice, it’s the only pioneering thing you can do (which brings me to the inevitable grab for some pop song wisdom…because borrowing lyrics is totally different…*smirk*):

I can remember
Standing by the wall
And the guns shot above our heads
And we kissed as though nothing could fall
And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them forever and ever
Then we could be heroes just for one day
-David Bowie, HEROES

I don’t recall when and where my mind changed on it, but I think it’s better to live heroically than to put being a hero on someone else. We all have that potential.

The love story in this book is beautiful, aching, and tragic, but most of it happens via the safety of artistic collaboration and voyeurism. I’d love to hear your thoughts about what’s gained and lost with being so guarded.

This part of the story is a direct riff on some of Andy Warhol’s musings on love, relationships and art written about in From A to B and Back Again.

litpark interviews lance reynald

Voyeurism provides a safe remove. Subject and muse don’t have to engage in a dialogue about rejection or disappointment.

In the Philosophy, Andy makes a point of stating that he preferred the idea of fascinations over love. He goes on to say that love affairs get too involved and aren’t really worth it, and that the version of love you see on the screen is better than anything that happens in real life… The ideas in the book are all the arguments of keeping relationships at a safe remove to both protect your own heart and create the conditions for absolute adoration of subject.

The downside? If you stick to that philosophy you consign yourself to a rather monastic life. Fascinations are but a substitute, not engaged love.

“Remember. Art is what you can get away with. Action!” (POP SALVATION, p. 100)

Riff for me again: Love.

If any of us ever claims to have that one figured out we’ll have nothing left to write for or about.

There’s a line in the book that says, “A full beating heart is the greatest happiness.” Tell me what a full beating heart looks like to you.

It isn’t in the grandest of overtures, it lives in the subtle moments that you can’t ever plan. It can be in the comfort of a reunion between great loves that find life too complicated to be together or in a partner that manages to look at you and smile first thing every damn morning. I’ve been learning that if you pay enough attention it can be found constant throughout life, you just have to look close because it might be hiding beneath feelings you aren’t prepared for.

litpark interviews lance reynald

Talk to me about the process of writing this book. I remember your photo of the pages tacked up on the wall. Walk me through the way you work, how an idea or an urge became a novel.

There is a phrase in a RHCP song (Otherside) that I think illustrates how my mind works pretty well.

I heard your voice through a photograph
I thought it up; it brought up the past
Once you know you can never go back
I’ve got to take it on the otherside

I’m very visual in the way my thoughts arrange. Perhaps this is the product of being the first generation MTV audience. Stories build and unfold for me once I’ve assembled enough raw material to build with. Sure, I tend to write out ideas and dialogues longhand in composition books but I also need things surrounding me as visual reference material. I tear pages out of magazines and collect postcards and snapshots of the world that causes me to imagine my characters.

To build Caleb’s world I had a base of snapshots of DC. The architecture, the cherry blossoms, a garden diagram of Dumbarton Oaks and a streetmap of Georgetown. To this base I added the art. Warhol postcards and prints, a NYC subway token, a copy of a Mapplethorpe portrait of Andy Warhol, a Rocky Horror Picture Show poster and a disco ball…

litpark interviews lance reynald

But, the last piece was torn from a magazine. A DKNY ad that picture a guy and a girl standing in a crosswalk in what seems a moment that could be a reunion of intimate friends. One of those subtle but seemingly true moments. A good reference point for a story.

With those visuals tacked to the wall and evolving I also add music. I load the hell out of my iPods. For Pop Salvation I had a steady stream of 1980s pop going. My ears were constantly filled with the songs the characters would hear on the radio and see on MTV. For me this was easy, it was a nostalgic journey back to my youth through music and I love me some BritPop!

But even with all of that, you have to allow the characters to speak for themselves. I wish I could explain this better, but I think every writer out there knows this in the abstract. You can create the conditions, but the characters come on their own when they’re damn good and ready.

Call it whatever you want; the universe, the muses, the divine or some form of schizophrenia. None of us really ever works alone. It is what it is, and if you think you have the stomach or the talent for the writing game you’d best come to terms with this thing being out there. It is in the realm of the unknown or the deeply felt just being the mysteries you really don’t have to answer for anyone. I resisted this notion at first, then a darling young girl by the name of Brit decided to show up and demanded to be written in. It was as though she stood in the office doorway and challenged me with a tap of her stilettos and the question, “You forgetting someone, fucker?”. She changed the pace of the whole thing and the story couldn’t happen without her. But, she was nowhere in the planning.

litpark interviews lance reynald

Ah, the wall era.

I don’t know if anyone else does this but it works for me.

In the final stretch of a manuscript I staple the whole thing from start to finish on to the walls. From that perspective I can survey the whole thing, get a sense of the size of it and see the holes. At first I just scan the whole of it. Then comes the red pen strike outs and margin notes. I can walk into the room and start reading the story anywhere without having to shuffle through pages to find where I left off or where I should go. I can even randomly go to a section just to see if it reads sharp and conscious in a moment. Once the manuscript is ready for the wall treatment I know I have something that can be an entity without me. Plus you get this really crazy juvenile rush of,  Ha. I did this much! That is a pretty rewarding simple pleasure. I find it important to remember such pleasures in the craft of writing.

Brian ran to a neighbor’s house and started to pound furiously on the door. His neighbor opened the door with a shocked look on her face as she tried to understand the sight of a young boy in a party dress with blood oozing from his chest. (POP SALVATION, p. 119)

There’s an interesting tension between you and your main character here. You’ve told a poignant story about a boy who struggles with the courage to be his true self. But to write this story, you as the author had to put something real and unguarded down on paper. How hard was that to do?

Hmm. The writing was actually easier to do than answering this question seems to be. I understand the question, people tend to think that writing in such a visceral manner is a very dark and taxing practice. Yeah, it is and it can be, but I don’t really know how to do it any other way. Stories of loneliness, outcasts and the struggles to be accepted and loved seem to come naturally to me. It is what I have seen in my family and friends through the years.

The parallel that people may see or presume between Caleb and I is two boys that have struggled with their relationship with their fathers. Sure, I spent most of my life feeling that I was overshadowed and that I might be a disappointment to my Dad. Perhaps some of this was imagined on my part. But, it was imagined under conditions of distance. Writing the narrative as I did allowed me to explore and exorcise some of those feelings.

As Caleb developed and observed his world I distinctly recall having to remind myself to let him feel the things as a boy would. As a child everything is so much bigger than you and you feel powerless. Sure, Caleb is precocious in some of his interests and he grows up a bit too fast at some things, but being the outcast still makes him want to die, and indifference makes him feel he can’t ever be good enough.

Taking that journey through the eyes of a child allowed me to think through my childhood and put a lot of demons to rest.

I was one of those people you ran into and wondered, What had he been before he gave up? (POP SALVATION, p. 204).

Scared or excited about going on your book tour?

Terrified? Prepared? Both!

Over the years I’ve struggled with mild to severe bouts of Social Anxiety. There are times when something as simple as a trip to the grocery store causes me to come unglued. I’m not even on display in that situation, it’s a totally anonymous everyday activity that no one is ever going to notice.

The only way I’ve found to express how I tend to feel about the whole thing is to say that if I had become an actor instead of a writer, I’d be the kind of guy that would never see his own movies. Since that isn’t possible with public readings I guess I’ll have to wing it.

But, when I remove myself from that whole mess I also accept the fact that I am the only person on the planet that can do this. Every moment, word and step has led me to being the last word on Pop Salvation and being Lance Reynald.

litpark interviews lance reynald

Are you the same person now as the guy who first started writing this book?

I don’t think I’m the same person that started this interview.

I think we as writers tune in to life at a different level than most people. Every moment is filled with details that we will draw on some day to fill out the narratives of our stories. In casual interactions here and there, people have commented on the details I note and remember. Life really is an ever changing journey, and all the moments you’re at it can hold entire universes of wonder, split-second opportunities to create new stories. The art will always evolve because of this simple fact. There could be some sentence I said up there a few paragraphs ago that launches another writer on to their debut novel and from that starting point they are the only person on the planet that can tell that story.

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Question of the Month, Reynald's Rap |

Question of the Month: Hero

July 6, 2009 – 12:01 am

Who’s your hero?

And bless all of you who want to tell me about your moms, but try to keep your answers to public figures.

Wednesday, Lance Reynald will be here to talk about heroes, freaks, art, music, and his debut novel, POP SALVATION. Don’t you dare miss it!

litpark susan henderson lance reynald joseph papa in times square

Here, by the way, is a photo of me and Lance (and a little piece of Joseph Papa in light blue) last week in Times Square. Photo by director and screenwriter extraordinaire, Kimberly Wetherell.

One last thing. Want free stuff? My pal John Griswold (Oronte Churm on McSweeney’s) has something for you right here.

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Question of the Month |

Monthly Wrap: Sore Throat

June 5, 2009 – 12:01 am

I have the kind of voice that’s meant to whisper. Good for libraries and pillow talk. When I answer the phone, the first thing people tend to say is, Did I wake you up? They didn’t; I don’t even like to sleep. I just have one of those voices. It’s my father’s voice. The sound of someone who needs to clear his throat. The sound of someone who can’t raise his voice though he certainly has the temperament for it.

When I try to speak up – even enough to talk to someone across the table from me, my voice quickly gives out. I speak from that place you shouldn’t – the place Brian Johnson of AC/DC uses to sing. If I have a long conversation one day, I’ve got a sore throat the next.

Do I have an accent?

I never thought of myself as having one until I went to college, where I was teased for my southern twang. I worked hard to lose it by reading out loud to my Boston-bred roommate and letting her correct me. Now I’m not sure why I tried so hard to lose it. But my Virginia roots show when I’m tired – I get lazy with the vowels.

I was glad to hear your stories of stutters and loud laughs and nasal tape-recordings. For those of you I haven’t met in real life, it’s a nice way to sharpen the picture of you.

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What I read this month: Joe Hill, HEART-SHAPED BOX (not my usual genre, but, wow, it’s a good ghost story, and I’ve been recommending it to everyone). I’ve also been knee-deep in a whole mess of research books for my new novel, but I’m not telling what the books are about.

Thanks to my guest, Attica Locke, for her courageous story of finding her voice, and to all of you who played here this month. Also, big thanks to those who linked to LitPark: The Thrill Begins, In Her Own Write, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Amazon Blog, Upstate Girl, Side Dish, Terry Bain’s Amazon Blog, Rumbly in my Tumbly, Tatuaj.org, Kimberly Wetherell, Red Room Blogs, Rachel Kramer Bussel, EI Johnson, Tayari Jones, Tanya Egan Gibson (thank you for the book!), Neil Gaiman, Brad Listi, Alexander Chee, Robin Slick, kmwss2c, Urban Haiku, Trish Tha Dish, Tayari, Rachelle Gagne, Nick Belardes, Bella Vida Letty, th3maw, Spaced Lawyer, and to the mentions in Wikipedia pages for Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Maria Dahvana Headley, Daisuke Tsutsumi, Scott Snyder, Denis Johnson, Greg Downs, and Bruce Benderson. I appreciate those links!

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One announcement before I go…

The Nervous Breakdown: Off The Blog!
A New Monthly Reading Series
Beginning June 9, 2009

litpark supports the nervous breakdown reading series

The Nervous Breakdown is a creative non-fiction literary blog, written by published and emerging authors from around the world.

Come hear the writers of this award-winning collective as they read hilarious, journalistic, poignant and often salacious tales, as told on the pages of this engaging and highly interactive literary website.

The series kick-off includes readings from:

Jessica Anya Blau (The Summer of Naked Swim Parties)
Autumn Kindlespire (Random House Books)
Greg Olear (Totally Killer, coming Sept ‘09)
Kimberly M. Wetherell (Filmmaker: Menage a trois, Why We Wax)
Todd Zuniga (Opium Magazine, Literary Death Match)

Tuesday, June 9
7:00pm
D-Lounge
101 E 15th St, NYC
(downstairs from the Daryl Roth Theatre, Union Square)
$10.00 Cover

After party at Bar 119, 119 E. 15th St.

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Monthly Wrap |

Attica Locke

June 3, 2009 – 12:01 am

Attica Locke has written movie scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros., Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, and is currently co-writing a miniseries for HBO about the civil rights movement. But it’s her debut novel, BLACK WATER RISING*, that has satisfied her need to write original material and find her own voice.

litpark interview with attica locke, author of black water rising

This literary thriller is about a good man who makes many wrong choices until he’s snared himself in a dangerous trap. There’s greed, politics, corruption, and oil in a city divided by race and class. We’ll talk about this book, as well as the heartbreak and satisfaction that is the life of a writer. I’m very fond of this author, and I hope you’ll leave her a message at the end of this interview.

*LitPark encourages you to buy books from your local independent bookstore. Click here to find the store closest to you.

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First, let me ask you about your name. Attica like the prison?

Yes. My parents were political activists in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I was actually born three years after the uprising at Attica prison in 1971, but my mother was so deeply moved by the events that took place there—the inmates who stood up to demand humane treatment and the crush of government violence that killed over 40 inmates and guards—and when I was born, it was the first name that came to her.

BLACK WATER RISING is your debut, but you’ve been writing for quite a while. Can you talk to me about your career leading up to this book?

I’ve been a screenwriter for ten years, writing the kinds of movies that production companies love to have on their roster—character based dramas or thrillers with a sociopolitical bent—because they sound classy and smart, but when it comes down to actually spending millions of dollars to make the movie they hesitate or their financiers don’t think it will sell, etc. In ten years, not one movie I’ve worked on has gone into production. It’s not a bad way to make a living, but not fulfilling enough for me to feel like I’m really living as an artist. I started to feel like film as a medium, especially because it’s such an expensive art form and companies can be fatally risk-averse, is getting more and more narrow in terms of the kinds of stories that get told. And that both saddened me and pushed me to explore a more inclusive art form: books.

And anyway, even as a screenwriter I’ve always had a very literary style. One production executive once told me in a meeting, flipping through the pages of my script, “There are too many words in here.” So, maybe I was destined to be a novelist.

litpark interview with attica locke, author of black water rising

I’m not normally a thriller reader, but I’m an absolute junkie when it comes to books about civil rights and race relations, and that’s what made me so anxious to get my hands on this novel. What I didn’t realize until after I’d finished is that this very real portrait of 1981 oil-rich Houston, with its corporate corruption and disputes between newly-integrated union members, is actually from before your time. What drew you to this period in history?

Jay is representative of my parents’ generation, and I think in some ways writing a character like him was an attempt to understand the people who raised me. I was a kid in the early ‘80s in Houston. My parents had been college activists in the early ‘70s and now found themselves smack in the middle of the Reagan era. There was a tremendous cultural shift going on in this country, from a focus on the political to the economic, in terms of the path to upward mobility. Money could be its own kind of equality. My parents played the game. They worked hard, bought houses in the suburbs. But I always felt that something in them got left behind. They never talked about it, but I think it was a challenging psychological shift for both of them. And I wanted to understand that better.

Also, in reality Houston was just an interesting place in 1981. They had just elected their first woman mayor, Kathy Whitmire. The city was flush with oil money and on the receiving end of worldwide attention. It was an arrogant, adolescent city, newly rich and oblivious to signs of impending doom on the economic horizon.

But most of Jay’s clients are walk-ins or people who get his name out of the phone book or friends of Bernie’s extended church family. People who, for the most part, cannot afford to pay him. Over the years, he’s engineered all manner of creative financing plans. Monthly installments and deferred payments. In lieu of cash, he’s taken everything from used furniture to free haircuts. (p. 207)

I never thought I’d be so thrilled to read about labor unions, but those scenes absolutely buzzed with tension. What a timely book—the resistance to change when it means a redistribution of power.

Well, there are things about this country’s current state of affairs that I never could have foreseen, other than to say that class tension has always been a hidden fault line running through our culture. Also, the labor fight for better wages for black workers was a part of the larger theme of the move from the civil rights movement’s focus on politics as a way up and out and the Reagan era focus on money as the path to equality.

“You know, Marx said that the working class is the first class in history that ever wished to abolish itself. And if one listens to some of our ‘moderate’ Negro leaders, it appears that the American Negro is the first race that ever wished to abolish itself. And, my black brothers and sisters, it stops tonight.”

The crowd was clapping and stomping, so loud that Jay could feel it backstage, as if the walls were shaking. He could not believe the heat this man was generating, like a lightning rod in a prairie storm. It wasn’t just the man, but, really, the ideas, the words…two words: black and power.

“So what you’re preaching, man,” one of the white students down front asked, a cat dressed in cords and a denim patch jacket, “isn’t it just racism of a different color? Isn’t ‘black power’ inherently anti-white?”

“See, you still putting yourself at the center of it, jack. That’s what you ain’t yet getting. Black folks ain’t talking about you, or to you, no more.” (p. 202)

One theme I see again and again in this book is the pressure for those with the least power to lie down and take what they’re given. Those in power say, Here, take what little we give you because we can certainly offer you something worse. I think that’s the magic in Jay Porter’s character because we know him, or we’ve been him—someone who feels such fatigue and discouragement when his ideals and dreams keep hitting a wall. Tell me what you think of Jay.

If I’m being honest, beyond the political focus of the book, Jay’s journey mirrors my own as a writer. His fatigue is mine. Was mine, I should say. Before I wrote this book, I had grown so disenchanted with film, which was the whole reason I’d moved out to LA. I’d made a big splash years earlier with a script that was accepted into the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Program. It was optioned by a film company. We were location scouting when they ultimately decided that because most of the lead characters were black and the story dealt with very American issues of race and history, the movie ultimately would never make any money in foreign sales, which they needed to offset the cost of the financing the movie. They pulled the plug, and I was crushed. I stopped writing original material and started taking assignment jobs. Somebody would have an idea for a script or a book to adapt, and I would write it. I helped my husband go to law school that way. I bought a house. But my voice as an artist was silent. Another one of the themes of the book is Jay finding his voice again.

That’s me.

It wasn’t until late in the evening, the waiting room empty and the two of them the only ones still waiting, that she understood what was going on, that this white hospital had no intention of treating her husband. (p. 71)

I love the marriage in this book, and not just because of the wonderful bickering and the secret-keeping and the obvious love there, but because this marriage taps into a larger theme of the book. You nailed that moment when the ideals of youth meet with the reality of making payments and creating a safe and stable home. Talk to me about that moment.

Some of it’s what I wrote above. But I also saw this tension in my parents.

litpark interview with attica locke, author of black water rising

They came out of the movement with two kids to raise. My mother had a Master’s degree but had been working in a factory because she was a socialist. My dad worked at Shell Oil. The movement was gone. The marches had dried up. The country had moved on, and they were forced to move on too. So my dad went to law school, and my mom eventually started her own business. And both have done quite well for themselves. But, like I said, I grew up feeling like there were a lot of unresolved feelings about where they’d been versus where they were going.

“I heard you go out,” she says.

“I was taking out the trash,” he says.

Bernie nods. This makes sense to her, makes her feel better.

“You gon’ put another bag in?” she asks.

“I always do.”

“No, you don’t, Jay.”

He reaches under the sink and pulls out a black trash bag, snapping it open to make his point. “You gon’ fight with me about trash bags?”

“I’m just saying. Sometimes you don’t.” (p. 41)

In the end, this book has something to say about the courage of standing up for your convictions. Tell me, what are you passionate about? What, for you, is worth fighting for?

My voice. I never again want to spend ten years disconnected from who I really am.

Jay has three guns: a .38 in his glove compartment, a hunting rifle in the hall closet, and the nickel-plated .22 he keeps under his pillow, always within arm’s reach. He’s tried to break the habit of carrying it into the bathroom with him. But most days it’s right by his side. Some people, when they’re in the shower, imagine they hear the phone ringing. Jay imagines people breaking into his apartment with guns drawn. (p. 65)

The LitPark community is full of writers at every stage of the journey. Is there anything you learned along the way to publication that you’d like to pass on to them?

Well, I’m as neurotic as they come (as my husband can attest), but I have a good therapist and I pray a lot. I’m kind of being funny, but I am also completely serious. I don’t know how to do this work without a little faith, a belief in magic. I’ve certainly been rejected a lot, and I don’t know how I kept going except that I just did, even when it hurt like hell. In the end, no rejection has ever been greater than my desire to write.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on another book right now. And I’m writing a mini-series for HBO about the civil rights movement. It’s based on the books by Taylor Branch, and he and I are writing the scripts together.

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Interviews |

Question of the Month: Voice

June 1, 2009 – 12:01 am

Describe your voice. I’m just curious to know if you have an accent, a loud laugh, a stutter, ….

Wednesday, Attica Locke will be here to talk about her new literary thriller, BLACK WATER RISING, and the importance of finding her voice.

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Last thing: My kids performed in a Southern Rock show over the weekend with THE PAUL GREEN SCHOOL OF ROCK. Here’s just a few clips from the show: The Allman Brothers, Skynyrd, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Ram Jam. That’s Green Hand on guitar and drums; Bach Boy on keys and vocals.

By Susan Henderson | Posted in Question of the Month |