Back On The Chain Gang

Remember those chain letters you used to send by hand until email took over and then email became Facebook "Notes" and then the threat of malware made us wary of chain anything altogether? Well, I am happy to report that the chain letter is alive and well, but in a much more edifying, safe form. The "Next Big Thing" Blog Chain invites writers to interview themselves regarding upcoming projects and then tag writer colleagues in kind. I've tagged a couple of amazing writers at the bottom of this post. I myself was tagged by the lovely and multi-talented Paullette Gaudet, who blogs over HERE. In her self-interview, she discusses her novel-in-progress about acrobats on the Gulf Coast (how cool is that?!) and her forthcoming short story, which will be published in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. As a recent convert to BBC's Sherlock series, I am very excited about this story. I met Paullette through the University of Washington MFA program, and I can tell you that she is a trifecta talent: wicked smart writing, sassy salon skillz, and very kind and funny to boot. She's also an Artist's Trust grant recipient!

So, here goes! Self-interview, commence:

1. What is the working title of your project?

The Minister

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

The bossy, drank-the-Koolaid voice of my main character sprang into my head, fully formed, after I read an article online about Squeaky Fromme, who was a member of the infamous Manson Family. The accompanying photo of Fromme as a young girl–defiant, brazen, and mousy—became the first image of the novel and my guiding Muse for the protagonist. I should note, however, that my novel is entirely a work of fiction, and not based on real people or events.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Literary fiction? I always have a hard time answering this question.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Although for parts of the novel, the characters are older, let’s be honest: the young, glamorous fantasy casting is the most fun.Willie, my criminally insane spitfire of an anti-heroine would be played by a young Holly Hunter (around the era of “Raising Arizona”). The Minister himself is meant to be highly beautiful and highly sinister. A snake-tongued Paul Newman would do the trick. To round out the quartet of young characters, I would cast Robin Wright Penn as my soulful, pained blonde and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as my Byronic-beauty-in-decay.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Two women reflect on their relationship with a highly charismatic--and dangerous--cult leader, and the havoc their incendiary youths wrought upon their adult lives.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Represented…hopefully.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I began working on the novel in 2009, and pecked away at it intermittently until I became more serious about finishing in 2011. Since moving to Wyoming to focus more intensively on the novel, I have completed the remaining 2/3. I am now in the process of quilting my two primary tales together.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

In terms of the storytelling style, I aim towards some tints of Duras’ The Lover or Louise Erdrich’s first person narratives. While not overlapping in subject matter or content, I think that those authors succeed at a hypnotic sort of lyrical narration, even when their characters are being nasty or cruel. My goal is to hit the same mark: create a voice that lures the reader in, even as the reader thinks Hey, this person isn’t someone I’d necessarily want to know…

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I worked in a criminal defense legal office for several years, and this experience has informed my novel writing, as well as my inspiration points in general. Two of my characters narrate from prison, and I have been very influenced by the real incarcerated voices that I've been privileged to know. There's a combination of grandiose writing, a belief in fatedness, a delusional insistence on blamelessness (even when evidence mounts to the contrary), and an awareness of the abject loneliness, privation, and suffering that incarcerated men and women experience that I believe I will carry with me forever. Phew, that's a long sentence!

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s a double love story. Happy Psychotic Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Thank you for taking the time to read about my current project/obsession. Now, please take a gander at the blogs of the two talented writers below!

Jaimie Gusman is a fellow graduate of the University of Washington's MFA program who has continued on to the enviable shores of Hawaii, where she is a PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii and instructs and investigates poetry. Her prolific writing has appeared in DIAGRAM, Juked, and Pacifica Review, among many others, and she also has three books under her belt. Her two recent chapbooks explore the Gusman-created concept of the Anyjar. To quote Jaimie herself, "'Anyjar', as object-idea, is a mediator of sorts, as it gives agency to language and all her movements through a world that is all at once alarming and comfortable, surreal and ordinary, serious and full of play." One Petal Row, which was the first of the series, spent a good couple months living in my purse being read and re-read. Jaimie's expert word play, incisive emotional and intellectual grappling, and technical brilliance had me completely floored. As if that weren't enough, she is also featured in a new anthology from Tinfish Press and curates an interdisciplinary art series entitled M.I.A. (Mixing Innovative Arts). She is a busy, talented, and all-around awesome person, and probably one of my favorite folks to stalk on Facebook.

Scott Herman and I met through the trivia domination of Team Stimulus Package at my local Seattle pub, and I then had the pleasure of learning playwrighting craft from him in a class that he designed himself. Scott earned his MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in dramatic writing at Goddard College. Last year, his original full-length play, Octopus's Garden, was staged by San Francisco-based theatre company PianoFight to rave reviews. In the Seattle area, his work has been seen at Open Circle Theatre, Pony World Theatre, and 14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival. An avid motorcyclist, Scott is affiliated with ACT Theatre and is also a frequent performer at Seattle's The Moth's storyslams. He is an associate editor of T(OUR) Magazine, which is a collaboration of art related to the queer experience, and features a variety of writing and art in each issue. As associate editor, Scott often posts about the uber-fun parties T(OUR) throws for its issue releases, and I kick myself every time that I am stranded in Wyoming and unable to attend. I hope that will not be the case for the next play he has staged!.

Image Credit: http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/crave/Paul%20Newman(1).jpg WOWZA!!

Story Up at City Arts(!) and Other Musings

First things first, a short story of mine, Mitigation Report 1, is now up on the City Arts magazine website. It has also been published as an excerpt in the print version of the magazine. For those unfamiliar with City Arts, it is a monthly arts magazine devoted to covering Seattle, Tacoma, and the Eastside. It's free for the taking, and widely distributed around the Seattle metropolitan area. I am pretty excited to be published in its pages. As I like to say, it has all the quality (free!) arts coverage of a publication like The Stranger, but without the snark. Last month, their cover story focused on letterpressing and the mad, brilliant folks who still painstakingly set type on vintage machines in order to craft something more personal in our digital age. Good stuff. This month's cover story focuses on the Seattle International Film Festival. Give it a gander, and click on the link above to check out my story.

Speaking of my story, a link on the right side of this page can take you to an audio file of me reading Mitigation Report 1 last year at Castalia, a UW-sponsored reading series at local literary center, Richard Hugo House. As I explain in my preamble to the story, I was inspired to write this particular short short by the work I have been doing this past year as a legal assistant for a criminal defense attorney. Legal work requires the (oftentimes tedious) organization of reams and reams of documents. This often includes mitigation documents.

I was unfamiliar with the idea of "mitigation" in the legal sense until taking my current position, but the presentation of mitigation evidence in a criminal trial often forms a crucial aspect of what is called the "sentencing phase." At this point, the jury has already returned a guilty verdict, but the presentation of evidence is not over for the prosecutor, or the defense attorney. Now, evidence is presented that mitigates against the seriousness of the crime and attempts to elicit some mercy from the jury or judge before a sentence is returned. In a capital case, this element of the trial proves especially important, as garnering sympathy or understanding from the jury can quite literally be a matter of life or death.

In these high-profile capital trials, a mitigation expert will often be retained by defense counsel. This expert completes the work of obtaining voluminous documents from all stages of a client's past -- from childhood to adulthood. These social history records comprise everything from birth certificates, to records of child abuse and institutionalization, to adult correctional facility records. The mitigation expert then crafts a kind of story from these records and attempts to ask, and answer, the question: Who is this person who sits before you for judgment? How might he/she have arrived here, in this courtroom?

Although it would be inappropriate of me to comment on the mitigation records I have reviewed for specific clients, I will say that as a writer, I find them extremely compelling. In these photocopies are the stories of children running away from home, being abused, lashing out, begging for help. In short, they are the story of a life. Reading them puts me, and I would imagine a jury member, in the interesting position of seeing two people: a person who has been found guilty of a heinous crime, and that person as a child; an innocent who will be formed by the experience he or she encounters -- formed, and perhaps hardened and twisted beyond repair. It was with these two people in mind that I composed this story, interspersing the "official" language of state and legal agencies to add an institutional flavor to the collage piece.

This is what I find amazing about legal work: at its base, it is the messy stuff of life itself. Children growing up; parents making mistakes; the state often tragically late in coming to the aid of those in need. Since taking this job, I have thought a lot more about what it means to be merciful, what it means to "condemn" a person, and the conflict inherent in despising someone's acts, while understanding (partially at least) how they came to the juncture where the act was committed. In short, I have had to negotiate my relationship to that child, and to that child as an adult.

Oh, and speaking of archives and records, I have now begun sorting through a collection of beautiful old letters and photographs and postcards, most pre-dating 1930, that belong to my mother's family. I hope to blog about this in the future, and perhaps write some flash fiction about the experience of cataloging these family records...

(http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/english/about/preservation/pics/documents_2_520.jpg)