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Author Q & A with Elliot Ackerman

On September 30, 2018

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 30)

National Book Award finalist Elliot Ackerman shows his grit as both a tested warrior and intrepid wordsmith with his new release Waiting for Eden, a fiercely moving novel about how the wounds of war linger beyond life itself.

It was five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan that earned the former U.S. Marine the Silver Star, Purple Heart, Bronze Star for Valor and the distinction of White House Fellow–and it would be his novel Dark at the Crossing that secured his finalist spot for the National Book Award in 2017. His also authored the acclaimed novel Green on Blue.

Other writings and articles by Ackerman have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine, as well as The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Travel Writing.
Ackerman divides his time between New York City and Washington, D.C.

Elliot Ackerman

How do you align your remarkable military career with your accomplishments as a writer?

People who don’t know me often say they’re surprised that I would have gone from the Marines into the arts. However, people who knew me growing up often say it surprised them that I went into the Marines instead of the arts. Those who aren’t familiar with the military often view it as a monolith. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the most talented writers, playwrights, and artists I know spent time in the service. That’s true today and it’s been true in the past.

The tone, the structure and the plot of Waiting for Eden are all striking in their uniqueness. The story itself is brutal, yet gentle–and obviously influenced by your own years in the military. How did you form the idea for this emotional and unexpected tale?

If you spend any time at war, you get acquainted with loss. That was a big part of my war experience. I learned about losing people that I loved when I was young; I was 24 when my first friend was killed in combat. Obviously, those who fight in a war aren’t the only ones who are acquainted with loss. A parent, a sibling, a friend– who among us isn’t touch by similar loss?

I wanted to tell a story about the wars, but also one that transcended the wars and dealt with issues that are universal, which is why so much of the book occurs at home. Grief was a theme that interested me. We often think of grief as a transitory state. We suffer a loss, then we grieve, and then through our grief we’re able to move on. But what if you can’t move on? At its core that’s what this novel is about.

Eden Malcom, the main character, is a victim of a tragic explosion during a deployment in Iraq. He is left with terrible injuries that leave him badly burned and clinging–for three long years–to life. His wife Mary spends those years by his side every day in a San Antonio burn center. His best friend, the book’s narrator, is actually dead but can see, hear, and understand Eden’s thoughts and feelings. This would probably be a good place to ask you to explain the title of the book.

The opening lines of the book are, “I want you to understand Mary and what she did. But I don’t know if you will. You’ve got to wonder if in the end you’d make the same choice, circumstances being similar, or even the same, God help you.”

When you meet Mary and the unnamed narrator at the beginning of the book, they have been waiting for three years for Eden to succumb to his wounds. They have no hope that he might recover; his injuries are too severe. Mary lives at the hospital, having sent her young daughter to live with her mother, and Eden’s best friend remains in a quasi-purgatory, hovering over the narrative as he tells us Eden’s story. So with Mary at the hospital and his best friend watching on the other side of life, these two have kept faith with Eden.

But what they are really doing is grieving, because grief is a type of faith; contained within it is the belief that eventually our spirits will heal. I’m not sure the healing always happens. When it doesn’t, we are left with something other than grief. We are left waiting. Hence the title of the novel.

Tell me about Eden’s phobia of–and ongoing battle with–cockroaches.

Like Eden, cockroaches are virtually indestructible. They’re one of the few species of animals that would survive a nuclear holocaust. They’re impervious to radiation and most diseases. Few creatures can withstand quite as much punishment as a cockroach. So Eden has this in common with them. But he also has a phobia of them, and this phobia predates his horrific injuries. It’s as though he knows what he is going to become, and it terrifies him, causing his phobia to act on a subconscious level. Here he is thinking of the cockroaches he imagines are lingering in the crevices of his hospital room, “He knew they’d crawl over him before he could even get a look and he did the only thing he could: he waited.”

In what ways did John Milton’s Paradise Lost influence this book–and the name of the main character?

The idea of original sin, which is present in Paradise Lost, certainly influenced this book. More than anything else, this is a book about a marriage and the sins that occur within a marriage and the way that they project out through our lives. The idea of an Eden, or paradise, goes hand-in-hand with the idea of original sin. Eden is the place before the sin, the place we are trying to get back to. This too is what they’re waiting for.

The devotion Mary shows for her husband is fierce and steadfast, and is one that would be difficult, if not impossible, for many spouses. What drives Mary’s strength and determined commitment to her suffering and slowly dying husband?

There’s a saying I’ve always like–it does come from my Marine days, and it was spoken about the Marines on Iwo Jima. You’ve probably heard it: “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.” You would be surprised what people are capable of when placed into extraordinary situations. Mary’s situation is most certainly extraordinary. The extent of her husband’s wounds, and the choice she is asked to make, none of this is everyday stuff. However, I don’t think that her devotion, which I would certainly characterize as fierce and steadfast, is quite as extraordinary as many of us might think. Mary rises to the occasion as so many of us are often called upon to do.

Through Waiting for Eden, what did you wish to tell readers about war?

I don’t consider Waiting for Eden to be a book about war; it is a book about grief and one that I hope will resonate for those of us who’ve ever struggled to let go of a person we’ve loved. What I prize about fiction is that it isn’t trying to tell us anything. When I wrote this book, I felt something as I put down this story on the page. If you, as the reader, feel any fraction of what I felt for these characters then the transfer of that emotion is the goal; it is what I hope you would take away from this book, as opposed to my telling you anything about a certain subject.

In the final pages of the book, Eden is pleading for the end of his life to finally come, and his wife makes a surprise decision that also affects his best friend, the narrator. Can you tell us (without spoiling the end) what they are all really waiting for?

I don’t want to spoil the end, so I’ll simply say that there is a common love that three of them share. Through that love they hope to be made whole, to return–at least in some small way–to their lives before the original sin.

Do you have your next book project already in the works yet?

My next book, Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning will be out in May 2019. It is a piece of nonfiction which deals with my time in both Iraq and Afghanistan, expatriate life in Turkey, and my coverage of the Syrian Civil War. I am also finishing a novel set in Istanbul, where I used to live, and it is scheduled for release the year after that.

Elliot Ackerman will be at Lemuria on Monday, October 22, at 5:00 to sign and read from Waiting for Eden, which has been selected one of our November 2018 selections for Lemuria’s First Editions Club for Fiction.

Author Q & A (Southern Splendor)

By Guest Author

On September 26, 2018

In Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 23)

A shared interest in preserving a part of the South’s complex history, as expressed through its grand plantation homes of the antebellum years, has led three Southern historians to author their own definitive examination of many of these notable properties–with an eye toward explaining exactly why saving these “fragile relics of history” still matters today.

It took Marc R. Matrana, Robin S. Lattimore and Michael W. Kitchens–the authors of Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South–nearly five years to merge and expand their collective research into this joint volume, published by University Press of Mississippi. The book explores nearly 50 restored or preserved homes built pre-Civil War.

Matrana, a physician at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, is an active preservationist and historian and has authored Lost Plantation: The Rise and Fall of Seven Oaks and Lost Plantations of the South, both by UPM.

Lattimore, a resident of Rutherfordton, N.C., is a high school teacher who has written more than 25 books, including Southern Plantations: The South’s Grandest Homes. He was honored with North Carolina’s Order of the Longleaf Pine, one of the state’s most prestigious recognitions, in 2013.

An Athens, Ga., attorney and historic preservationist, Kitchens has authored Ghosts of Grandeur: Georgia’s Lost Antebellum Homes and Plantations. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Non-Fiction in 2013.

The book includes nearly 300-plus photos and dozens of firsthand narratives and interviews surrounding properties that have been restored as part of the historic preservation movement led by the South since the 19th century. Today, they say, only a small percentage of the South’s antebellum structures survive.

As co-authors of Southern Splendor, you all live in three different Southern states–how did you all get together to collaborate on this book–and have you worked together on previous books or other projects?

Robin S. Lattimore

Lattimore: We had all three written and published other books on antebellum houses in the past. We became friends first, because our paths often crossed when doing research, and then collaborators on this shared project because we respected each other’s work. Being from three different areas of the South actually served to provide greater depth of knowledge and experience to this project. The most gratifying part of making the decisions on which houses to feature in the book was being able to highlight some lesser-known properties alongside iconic treasures.

What is the goal of this book?

Lattimore: Our greatest hope for this book is to draw attention to the significant work done through the years by individuals, families, non-profit organizations, corporations, and others in restoring and preserving the South’s antebellum homes, many of which had once been in dire straits. The South’s antebellum architecture is being lost at an alarming rate due to neglect, fire, and increased residential, commercial, and industrial development. Ultimately, we hope that this book increases awareness of what we stand to lose if more historic homes are not preserved.

In Southern Splendor, you acknowledge that the South’s plantation homes represent a culture and lifestyle that was “made possible by an economic system that required the forced labor of enslaved people.” In what ways does your book examine that reality of Southern history?

Lattimore: As cultural historians, we are aware that plantation houses are at the epicenter of a complex web of human relationships that have shaped the social, economic, and political heritage of the South for generations. This project allowed us an opportunity to explore and celebrate the contributions made by African-Americans to the architectural heritage of the South, not just as laborers helping to construct grand plantation houses, but also the artistry and craftsmanship that people of color contributed to create these architectural masterpieces.

The book showcases antebellum residences in your home states of Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina, as well as half a dozen other states, including Mississippi. How were the homes from Mississippi chosen?

Marc R. Matrana

Matrana: We wanted this book to be a real celebration of preservation to showcase the fact that even the most destitute property can be saved from the brink of destruction if people care about it and decide to dedicate resources and efforts towards a project. We tried to find properties that had a strong preservation story behind them, like Beauvoir in Biloxi, which was almost destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. That historic home has since been meticulously restored to its former glory and the grounds, presidential library, and other facilities are better than ever. Or like Waverly (near West Point), a unique plantation home that was fully restored by the Snow family.

How did you become interested in this enormous task of preserving and restoring Southern antebellum homes?

Michael W. Kitchens

Kitchens: The path to becoming more than passively interested in preserving the South’s antebellum architectural treasures is somewhat different for everyone. However, I think I can speak for all three authors of this book by saying that our respective interests first arose when we visited some of these homes years ago. Visits turned into quests to read as much information about the homes as we could find. Reading turned into research; then research turned into a desire to share what we learned about the homes and histories with others by writing about them. All the while, each of us has become involved in activities and organizations whose purpose is to preserve the South’s historic structures. We hope that our efforts to record the histories of some of these homes may inspire others to take up the cause to preserve what we have left.

Could you briefly describe the main architectural styles of these homes? What inspired their designs?

Kitchens: The predominant architectural style in the South before 1861 was the Greek Revival style. Entire volumes are dedicated to explaining why this particular style was so loved in the South between 1820 and 1860. Many believe that Southerners saw themselves as being philosophically true to the Greek’s democratic ideas and chose the style to reflect that self-identification. However, an equally plausible explanation may be that the Greek Revival style was the prevailing style in Europe, particularly in England, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when explorers were discovering Greek ruins across the Mediterranean. In the 1850s, the Italianate style became increasingly popular with Southerners as it allowed for asymmetrical designs which departed from the strict symmetry of Greek Revival designs.

Finally, Gothic Revival designs found their way into many corners of the South, harkening back to some of Europe’s great public and private architectural treasures from the Renaissance. The casual observer would be astonished to discover the wide variety of sizes and styles of antebellum architecture utilized in the South before 1860. It was far more diversified than just what we see in fictional film mansions such as Twelve Oaks or Tara.

A great deal of detail about these homes is included in “Southern Splendor”. How long did this project take, including the research?

Matrana: The book was a natural progression from the authors’ previous books, including my “Lost Plantations of the South”, Kitchens’ “Ghosts of Grandeur”, and many works by Robin Lattimore, including “Southern Plantations” published by Shire. We have each been separately researching Southern plantations for decades, each amassing large collections of materials, references, photos, etc. We started talking together about a collective project about five years ago and pitched the idea to Craig Gill at the University Press of Mississippi in the summer of 2014. We’ve been working on putting the book together ever since.

Tell me about the stunning photography in the book. How many photos are included?

Kitchens: The authors worked hard to select for this volume photographs which would not only illustrate the homes but evoke for the reader the raw beauty and majesty of these structures. There are over 270 color photographs and nearly 60 black and white photographs in Southern Splendor. It was our hope to illustrate how close some of these historic dwellings came to being lost forever. Many have already been lost to everything but memory. Some of the black and white photographs simply illustrate how a home looked decades ago. A few of these images date from the 1860s, and many of the black and white photographs were taken from the Historic American Buildings Survey which recorded the homes in photographs taken in the 1930s and 1940s.

But perhaps the most stunning photographs are color images showing the homes in their current state of restored splendor. Many of these photographs come from the authors’ private collections. Some photographs were donated for use in this book by the current owner of the house or museum. Still other images were provided by professional photographers retained by the authors to capture for the readers of this volume the most artful and stunning images possible. It is our hope that the readers enjoy these images and are inspired to visit and support the preservation of these and other historic structures.

The book states that many more of these historic homes are losing their battles with deterioration and decay than are possible to restore. In your estimation, what are the numbers, approximately–and why does saving these homes matter to us now?

Matrana: At the height of plantation culture, prior to the Civil War, there were almost 50,000 plantations in the South. Not all were associated with a grand mansion, but most were family estates. Today, only a few thousand plantation homes survive, and each year dozens are lost to fires, neglect, intentional demolition, etc. Hundreds of these homes are at risk today. Some sit in woods or fields rotting away, waiting for someone to rescue them from demolition by neglect.

Collectively, these structures represent our past–the good and the bad. The buildings were often constructed by slaves and provide real tangible evidence of slavery, a piece of our history which we surely must not forget. They provide a physical link to the past, which can never be restored once it is lost. As we’ve shown in Southern Splendor, restoring such homes can be an economic boom for local economies while simultaneously providing balanced education to the public about our shared history.

Marc R. Matrana and Robin S. Lattimore will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, October 2, at 5:00 to sign and discuss Southern Splendor.

William Boyle’s ‘Gravesend’ dazzles with depth of characters

By Guest Author

On September 24, 2018

In Mystery

By John M. Floyd. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 9)

When failed actress Allesandra Biagini returns from Los Angeles to her Brooklyn neighborhood following the death of her mother, she finds that nothing much has changed in the past eleven years: it’s still a place she both loves and hates. And that’s a feeling shared by most of the people she knows.

Gravesend is a glum, gritty, depressing place on the wrong side of the Brooklyn tracks—but it’s also an old, close-knit neighborhood with a small-town feel, where everyone knows everyone else and everyone else’s business.

What the gossips don’t know is that Conway D’Innocenzio, one of Allesandra’s former classmates and the stock boy at the local Rite Aid, is planning a murder. Sixteen years ago, troublemaker Ray Boy Calabrese was convicted of the hate-crime killing of Conway’s brother, and now that Ray Boy’s been released from prison, Conway intends to get even.

The problem is, he finds that he can’t bring himself to do the deed, even after years of nursing the grudge, and it’s this cowardly failure to act—along with the fact that the regretful Ray Boy no longer seems to be a threat to anyone—that forms the basis of the plot.

Other players include Eugene Calabrese, a troubled fifteen-year-old who idolizes his Uncle Ray Boy and fancies himself a gangster; sweet but reclusive Stephanie Dirello, who has always admired Allesandra and secretly longs for Conway; and bartender Amy Falconetti, a Flushing native and Allesandra’s love interest, who also appears in Boyle’s recent novel The Lonely Witness. There’s even a local mob boss, Enzio Natale, and his deadly henchmen.

Nothing about any of these people is predictable, and it’s a testament to Boyle’s talent that by the end of the novel most of their lives intersect in a way that’s both perfect and unexpected.

William Boyle’s writing has been compared to that of Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and Dennis Lehane, and for good reason. Similarities include a mastery of setting, pitch-perfect dialogue, and detailed, suspenseful plotting.

Gravesend has all of these, but its biggest strength probably lies in the depth of its characters and the fact that there is so much conflict at every turn, and on many levels: dead-end jobs, discrimination, dysfunctional families, broken dreams, and of course the ever-present street crime and violence. And the neighborhood itself plays a huge part in the story.

In one paragraph we’re given a look at it through the eyes of Allesandra, on her way home: “She strained to see down to the avenue. Old ladies with shopping carts. Chinese men blowing on hot coffee in doorways. Others with plastic bags, talking on cell phones, texting, looking down. The sidewalks were wet where storeowners had hosed them down. Garbage flitted around, paper bags and rotten fruit, and she swore she could smell it all the way up in the train.”

In this novel Boyle has given us the best of all literary worlds: complex characters, a gripping story, and an elegance of language not often found in crime fiction. In addition, it’s a story that portrays Italian-Americans in a way that seems far more real and believable than what we’re accustomed to seeing on the page and the screen—probably because Boyle is himself a product of the neighborhood where the book is set, and knows it so well.

At its core, Gravesend is a realistic and compulsively readable story of mean streets, neighborhood bars, wanna-be gangsters, former schoolmates, revenge killers, Italian and Russian mobsters, and working-class people struggling to survive.

It’s a powerful novel, one that the reader will remember long after it’s finished.

John M. Floyd is an Edgar Award nominee and the author of the upcoming book The Barrens. He and his wife Carolyn live in Brandon.

William Boyle will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, September 26, at 5:00 to sign and read from Gravesend.

Author Q & A with Stephen Markley

By Guest Author

On September 17, 2018

In Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 16)

Described as both a murder mystery and a social critique, Stephen Markley’s Ohio speaks with revelatory discernment about the direction a new, post 9/11 generation of Americans faces.

Set in the fictional small town of New Canaan, Ohio, Markley’s moving debut novel conveys the angst of a region in decline–thanks to the realities of an economic recession, the tragedy of opioids, and the calamities of war in Afghanistan and Iraq–as witnessed by four former high school classmates. When the friends, all in their 20s, gather in their hometown one fateful summer night in 2013, the evening ends in a shocking culmination that no one expected.

Each of Markley’s main characters brings along a mission for this evening, as they collectively struggle with private secrets and regrets–including alcoholism, drug abuse, lost ambitions, relationships gone astray, and personal doubts.

Through Ohio, Markley addresses forgotten pockets of the nation’s “rust belt” that inherited the disillusionment of racial hostility, environmental uneasiness, foreclosures, and political standoff.

Stephen Markley

A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Markley is a screenwriter, journalist, and the author of two previous books: Publish This Book: The Unbelievable True Story of How I Wrote, Sold, and Published This Very Book and Tales of Iceland, a humorous “memoir and travelogue of an American experience in Iceland.” He lives in Los Angeles.

Ohio is a complicated and gripping tale. It’s an ambitious novel that took you five years to write. How did you do this?

Ha. Sometimes I’m not even sure. I think I always had this raucous, ambitious novel in mind, and I had the components of something really interesting, but it was a long process of figuring out how those components worked together. I certainly owe a great debt of gratitude to my agent, Susan Golomb, and my editor, Cary Goldstein, as well as a number of other readers who gave me the feedback that helped me craft the final version.

You were a teenager yourself when the events of 9/11 shocked America. How did it affect you and your own friends personally?

That’s hard to say because it didn’t really in the moment. We lived far away from New York City and the Pentagon, and while what happened was certainly spectacular in terms of the images and the shock, the most important legacy of 9/11 for my generation was the widespread failure of our political institutions in the aftermath.

Decisions were made and policies were put into place that will be with all of us for the rest of our lives, and here I’m not just talking about two disastrous wars that have grown into a permanent global counter-insurgency operation, but the domestic consequences of surveillance, xenophobia, and a national security-industrial complex that bends policy to its whims and which as citizens have almost zero democratic control over.

Ohio, your first novel, came about after your studies at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Tell me how your Iowa studies paid off in your efforts to become a novelist ,which you have described as your “only ambition.”

I arrived at Iowa after floundering for several years as an utterly unsuccessful freelance writer, so just the relief of paycheck, health insurance, and the basic stability of housing was enough to give me this burst of creative energy. On top of that, the teachers I worked with and my peers were just so consistently brilliant, hilarious, interesting, and inspiring that even if I’d produced nothing in those years, I would still view them as some of the best of my life.

Have you been surprised by the acclaim the book has garned, especially since this is your first novel? It has even been described as “generation defining.”

I know this is annoying to say, but I’m trying to ignore all of that as best I can and just enjoy Simon & Schuster footing the bill to send me around the country on a book tour, which I’m using as an excuse to see almost everyone I’ve ever loved or cared about.

As for the generation thing, I tend to think my generation of writers will be defined by the huge range of diversity in voices and storytelling styles that comes from the rather recent institutional realization that human beings other than straight white guys also have fascinating stories to tell.

Your writing style is unique, and it reads like you are talking to exactly one person (the reader) face-to-face. Tell me about how the signature form has developed.

Oh, that’s as much a mystery to me as anyone. I think all writers are just amalgamations of every influence they’ve ever claimed and, even more so, all the ones they can’t remember. You have to keep in mind, even though this is my debut novel, I’ve been working at this writing thing since I was probably 5 years old. At age 34, I feel like it took a lifetime to get this thing out there.

Since the town of New Canaan is patterned at least loosely from your own hometown, did you experience the same thoughts and feelings as your characters? Was there the same sense of despair? Are things there better now?

That’s complicated because New Canaan is not really my hometown, which has its own stories and politics and oddities and troubles and brave, wonderful people.

But it was the sensation of growing up there that I wanted to get across. Tim O’Brien talked a lot about this in (his book) The Things They Carried–sometimes to get at the truth, you have to make up a story.

With this powerful debut novel under your belt, do you think you may take a more upbeat approach on your next book–or do you have another book planned yet?

I’m always working on two or three things at once, but I’m feeling a little precious about those projects right now. I’m probably not quite ready to say them out loud in case they vanish.

Author Q & A with Drew Williams

By Guest Author

On September 10, 2018

In Science Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 9)

Although The Stars Now Unclaimed is his debut novel, Birmingham’s Drew Williams makes a distinction about his new sci-fi book: “It’s my first novel to be published,” he said. “It’s nowhere near my first novel to be written.”

He explains why this difference matters, if only to himself.

“I remember hearing in a TED Talk a while back–and I’m not going to go look for it, so apologies to the speaker if I get this wrong–that it takes 10,000 hours of practice at anything before you can become truly ‘proficient’ at it; I’ve been chipping away at my 10,000 hours since I was a teenager, and believe me: readers can debate now whether I’ve reached ‘proficiency’ with The Stars Not Unclaimed,’ but the stuff I wrote back then was nowhere near it!”

Fortunately for Williams, The Stars Now Unclaimed is claiming a lot of attention among sci-fi and other readers–which works out well, as Stars is only the beginning of the series he has already planned for his newly minted characters.

Described as “a massive, galaxy-spanning tale of war, betrayal, friendship, and the kind commitment people make to a better future even at the cost of their own lives,” this future world is packed with strong characters, intense battles, and just enough trepidation to capture the attention of readers of all ages who love thrillers in any form.

The series is, as they say, another story–or actually, quite a few more stories. Boldly titled The Universe After, the collection will introduce its second volume A Chain Across the Dawn in May.

Tell me about yourself. The bio on the book flap is pretty bare bones–you got a job at a bookseller because you applied on a day when someone had just quit! You don’t like Moby-Dick. We want more! Tell us about Drew Williams.

Let’s see. I grew up right here in Birmingham–Birmingham, where we stare across the border at Atlanta and think “that could have been us, you know, if we’d really wanted it to be”–so I’ve been a native of the Deep South all my life; there’s just something about it, you know? Sure, the heat might be bad, and the humidity might be worse, and sure, in Birmingham specifically you have to reckon with a pretty terrible cultural legacy of institutional racism and basically being the villain in every story Yankees tell about the South, but there’s something about the people down here–just nicer, I think. More interested in what’s going on around them than wherever they think they’re supposed to be next.

Drew Williams

As far as my education goes, I left that part of the book flap because I didn’t want some kid to try and emulate it. The reason I needed that bookseller job was I’d dropped out of high school a few months before, so my education pretty much was the bookstore! Everything I know–and I don’t just mean about being a writer–I learned from books of history or psychology or from well-researched novels. It means I can hold forth exhaustively on a weirdly broad range of subjects–but there are also some really basic things that I can completely blank on.

I assume you have always been a science fiction fan. What sparked your interest in the genre? Who is your favorite sci-fi writer?

I literally do not remember seeing Star Wars for the first time; I do not remember–spoiler alert for, you know, a nearly 40-year-old film–ever watching The Empire Strikes Back and not knowing Darth Vader was Luke’s father.

The same goes for novels: I come from a family of, well, nerds, so both my father and mother read to my brother and me extensively when we were children, and they didn’t stop at kids’ books. One of my very first memories is my mother reading To Kill a Mockingbird to me–omitting some of the more graphic details of the nature of the central crime, most likely–whereas my father was more prone to just read to us whatever he had lying around at the time, whether that was Clive Cussler, Dave Duncan–look him up kids; a great many of his earlier works are out of print, but as far as I’m concerned he’s one of the preeminent fantasy authors of our time–or Arthur C. Clarke. Dune was the first “big deal” sci-fi novel I read myself, and I followed it up with a hopscotch path though Heinlein, David Feintuch–another unjustly overlooked sci-fi great–and even Kurt Vonnegut.

What prompted you to make the main character female? Did you find that to be more of a challenge?

That’s one of those things, honestly, that just happened: I sat down to write this novel, and there she was–I never had a single doubt in my mind that she was supposed to be anything other than female. I do think there’s something more interesting about the central relationship in the novel being more about a sort of pseudo-maternal connection than the parental one that might have arisen if I had made the lead male, that there’s a certain assumed vulnerability, a sense of not just protection but fostering of emotional growth that might not have been there otherwise, but honestly, that’s just me back-filling: I can’t claim to have don that on purpose.

As far as writing a female lead being a challenge goes: I think a great deal of how a person writes–consciously or otherwise–is defined by what we consume, in terms of narrative, whether that’s books, films, video games, whatever. And again, going back to my parents: I was never told to make a distinction as a child between “boy books” and “girl books”–I read both The Hardy Boys and Sweet Valley High. They were all just books, they were all just stories.

That’s a habit I’ve carried into adulthood–whether a book has a male lead or a female lead makes no difference whatsoever in my interest in the novel–and I think having read a great deal of literature with female leads makes it easier to write something with one.

Explain more about the “pulse” in The Stars Now Unclaimed, what it actually was, and how it chose which planets to send back in time.

Getting into some of those answers would be getting into spoiler territory for later books, but I’ll do my best!

Basically, the pulse in an unexplained cosmic event that swept through the universe about 100 years before the novel is set. With no apparent sense of purpose, it set about affecting almost every planet in the galaxy, affecting each on a slightly different scale.

So you might have one world where no technology more complex than steam-power can operate–a world stuck, permanently, in the Industrial Revolution–and another still fully capable of making spaceships and advanced artificial intelligence and jet-packs.

The reasons for that concept, honestly, were structural rather than metaphorical: I wanted a very broad canvas to play with, one where I could have wild spaceship battles in one scene, and forgotten, almost post-apocalyptic city-scapes to wander through in the next.

Your book includes a lot of battle scenes. Did you, like many others, find yourself intrigued with the action of the Star Wars space battles?

Star Wars is absolutely–no question, No. 1 with a bullet, full stop–the single most influential work of art in my life. I learned so much from those films, not just about narrative and storytelling, but in terms of who I am, and I think the appeal of Star Wars can be boiled down into a single concept that comes from Star Wars: even when things are wildly different, people are just people.

Those films have always succeeded in marrying eye-popping-ly beautiful imagery, alien and exotic and imaginative, with deep-seated human desires and conflicts.

I think the action sequences do the same thing. Yes, they might involve laser swords or giant walking tanks or an ancient monster that’s nothing more than a mouth buried in the sand, but they’re still about a man, trying to rescue a friend; about soldiers, trying to do their best to fight a desperate rear-guard action so their fight can go on; about a son, trying to find the man his father once was inside of the monster he’s become.

I very much tried to do the same thing in The Stars Now Unclaimed, to root the action, no matter how outlandish or insane, in who the character were.

Star Wars and other “space operas” seem to illustrate how good eventually overcomes evil. Is there a deeper meaning, or message, to your novel?

Two answers come to mind with that: the first is the theme of The Stars Now Unclaimed itself, which I think can be summarized with the concept that “even grief can be turned into good ends.” The second–which is slightly more germane to your question–is how I would summarize the theme of the entire series, which is “so long as parents try not to pass their won sins on to their children, the world can become a better place.” So long as we continually struggled to raise our children into people better than us–and to give them a world better than that which we inherited–there is no doubt in my mind that good will overcome evil, because evil is a thing that thrives where empathy has failed. Even if we don’t always succeed in that goal, it’s the trying that matters, I think.

Now that you are a published author, you’ll always be asked about what project you have coming out next. Can you tell us?

Book two, of course! I don’t think I can tell you much more than that, or my editor will skin my alive, but I will say characters are meant to grow, and change, otherwise there’s on point in writing a sequel.

Drew Williams will be at Lemuria today on Monday, September 10, at 5:00 to sign and read from The Stars Now Unclaimed.

Author Q & A with Lisa Patton

By Guest Author

On September 3, 2018

In Fiction, Southern Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 2)

Sorority recruitment (that still translates as “rush” at most Southern universities) can be a pivotal time for freshmen college women, but is probably approached with more reverence, tradition, and passion at Ole Miss than perhaps any other campus–anywhere.

And that’s where bestselling author Lisa Patton, a Memphis native, current Nashville resident and graduate of the University of Alabama, chose to set her newest novel, Rush.

Written with amazing attention to detail and as much humor as heart, Rush takes readers behind the doors of the of the school’s fictional Alpha Delta Beta house, where the newest pledge class fights for civil justice for their house staff despite opposition from the sisterhood’s scheming house corp president. Along the way, a handful of diverse characters slowly reveal their own secrets, fears, and hopes as their lives are linked together.

Lisa Patton

Before her writing career, Patton worked as a manager and show promoter for the historic Orpheum Theatre in Memphis and as part of the promotion teams for radio and TV stations in the Bluff City. She later worked on album and video projects with Grammy Award-winning musician Michael McDonald.

It was a three-year stint as an innkeeper in Vermont that inspired her first novel, Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’Easter, which was followed by Yankee Doodle Dixie (both featured on the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Bestseller List); and Southern as a Second Language.

The mother of two sons, Patton and her husband now live in Nashville.

Rush–an eye-opening inside story about life in an Ole Miss sorority house–is so full of spot-on details about the young women who go through recruitment, or “rush,” and the houses they call their campus homes, that it’s hard to believe you weren’t a student at Ole Miss yourself. Why did you choose to write about Greek life at the University of Mississippi, and not the school you attended–the University of Alabama?

I went back and forth about which campus was best for the setting. Both universities are historical and breathtakingly gorgeous, but I ultimately chose Ole Miss because the town of Oxford provided a more colorful backdrop to the story. Many Ole Miss graduates hail from Memphis, and as a native Memphian I love including my hometown in my novels.

During my writing process, Eli Manning received the Walter Payton Humanitarian of the Year Award. I’d read that he and his wife, Abby, are well known philanthropists, and I though they would be perfect bit characters for the story. In truth, through, Rush could have been told on any Southern campus. Ole Miss won because it’s a darn good place to be! And quintessentially Southern.

Researching this book must have been fun! How did you find out about so many details of the secrets of sorority life at Ole Miss–like the name of the popular dorm, the schedules for rush week, the size of the sororities, etc.?

Goodness knows I tried. I spoke with several Ole Miss current students and recent graduates. I interviewed Ole Miss alumnae, Ole Miss housemothers, and a former Ole Miss housekeeper. The research was the best apart about writing Rush. I got to know many strong, wonderful women. Through our many phone calls and texts, I came to love and admire each of them and now call them my friends. In the last three years, I’ve spent a great deal of time on the Ole Miss campus. I honestly think of myself as half Rebel!

Your characters are plentiful, and very well developed–and many have secrets they’re trying hard to overcome. How were you able to create so many characters with their own stories to tell, and then weave them into the plot so well?

I was determined to give my characters complexity. So I gave thought to my own life and the lives of other vulnerable women I know, and analyzed what makes us real. We all have flaws, both moral and psychological, whether we want to admit them or not. So, after creating my characters, I talked with each one of them and asked for complete honesty. I took notes, as if I was their therapist, and learned all about their secrets! That might sound crazy, but it’s true.

Weaving them together was the easy part. Making the decision to finish the book was another story all together. When you take a stand for something you believe in with all your heart, resistance throws every fiery dart in its arsenal your way. I almost quite before Rush was born.

There are a lot of heartaches and problems facing the main characters–and keeping up with them is made much easier by how you structured the narration, which changes with each chapter, giving readers multiple first-person accounts of what rush and sorority life are like, filtered through each person’s point of view. Is this a writing technique you’ve used with your other books?

I’ve never written a book with multiple points of view before, but I felt it was a necessity for Rush. I wanted to give my readers an in-depth peek into sorority life, whether they were Greek or not. Cali is my 18-year-old freshman from small-town life–Blue Mountain, Mississippi. Memphis-born Wilda is an Ole Miss alum and mother to Ellie, who is rushing and living in Martin Dormitory. And Miss Pearl is the housekeeper of the fictional Alpha Delta Beta sorority house and second mom/counselor to the sorority sisters. When the story opens, they don’t know one another, but all that changes quickly.

At the center of the story is “Miss Pearl,” who practically runs the sorority house, and has for 25 years, but her chances of being promoted to house director are threatened by the racist attitudes of another character. Why this dominant topic, and why now?

I’m that child of the 60s and 70s. That little Southern girl who was bathed in motherly love by a woman who worked as a long-term housekeeper and cook for my family. Then I left for college and received a similar love from the women who worked in my sorority house. When I went back for a visit 38 years later, I noticed that much was still the same with regard to the house staff.

Some of the workers, men and women, spend decades of their lvies in these positions. It never once crossed my mind to inquire about their pay, their benefits, or their opportunity for promotion. When I discussed it with my sorority sisters, they agreed that it was an unfortunate oversight. We, as sorority women, are strong leaders. We are philanthropic and compassionate. WE strive to make things right. I’m hoping readers will get to know my characters, learn about their lives and understand their worlds better. My prayer is that Rush opens the door to discussion and is ultimately, perhaps, a vehicle for change.

What was your own sorority experience like at the University of Alabama?

It was one of the best times of my life. I made friendships that have lasted for decades and will last until I take my final breath. Whenever I look back on our college days, when we were all together, I get teary. Not only was it fun, maybe too fun at times, but it helped cement the values I’d learned in childhood and carry them with me through adulthood. I learned the importance of philanthropy, service, and leadership, and that’s only the beginning.

You began your career as a music producer and eventually became a full-time writer. Tell me about how that came about–and how you believe your writing has progressed through the years.

Because of my deep love for music, I was always attracted to jobs in the music industry. For many years, I worked for Michael McDonald of Doobie Brothers fame. He was the one who encouraged me to finish my first book and I, fortunately, took his advice. I wrote by the seat of my pants for the first three novels, but for Rush, I made a detailed outline. I also studied books on the craft of writing.

Do you have another writing project in the works now?

I do, thank you for asking! It’s a story about two teachers. Set in Memphis, it’s told in current day and looks back to the 1930s. Few people alive today remember a time when teachers couldn’t be married. It’s actually the first book I wanted to write but knew I needed more experience. I’m finally ready.

Lisa Patton will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, September 5, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Rush.

Acclaim for ‘The Stars Now Unclaimed’ by Drew Williams

By Hunter

On August 21, 2018

In Science Fiction

A strange vision of the future in which all of existence is affected by a an expanding calamity known only as “The Pulse,” which degrades technology and sends entire planets back to the stone age while leaving others completely untouched: This is the world of The Stars Now Unclaimed, a new novel from Drew Williams.

Our protagonist, who goes unnamed for the majority of the book, is tasked with ferrying super-human children back to the mysterious organization for whom she works while also dealing with the growing threat of a faction of zealots who are obsessed with uniformity and bent on enslaving all life in pursuit of forced peace and order.

A quick look at some of the other reviews of this book will give you a few basic impressions: exciting action, big space battles, explosions, and lots of fun sci-fi bits. While the book does have all of that, I feel like there is a lot more to discuss. This novel is an epic space romp, with cool ships and interesting alien cultures, but it is also a thought-provoking look at the effects of war on both civilization and the individual, a rumination on the nature of technology and how it affects and defines societies at large, and a look at what it means to be sentient in the face of losing all of the advancements that make us “civilized.” The book is, however, not without humor. The ongoing teenage tropes of the young character Esa, the fed-up sarcasm of the main character, and the witty on-board voice of her spaceship, Scheherazade, keep the story from becoming too serious or heavy.

I’m not ashamed, I geeked out over this book. I love fiction set in big, complex worlds, especially sci-fi and fantasy, and The Stars Now Unclaimed checked every box. With every additional location, alien race, and technological advancement introduced, I found myself updating a little encyclopedia in my head, and coming back to reference it later. There’s something about that quality that lends itself so well to the genres that I love, that perhaps that is why I love them, and this book is a great representation of that.

All that said, I loved this book, and I am certainly looking forward to the rest of the series that seems to be set up by the ending (fair warning to readers, there is a slight cliff-hanger). If you love science fiction, or just want to try something new, pick up a copy, available as of today.

Drew Williams will be at Lemuria on Monday, September 10, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from The Stars Now Unclaimed.

Ed Scott’s story in Julian Rankin’s ‘Catfish Dream’ is essential and hopeful reading

By Guest Author

On August 7, 2018

In Civil Rights, Southern Culture

By Ellis Purdie. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 5)

In our divisive times, we must recall those moments when the worst of the American experiment was overcome. Though prejudice in America remains, it has not had the final say in every situation.

Too often it takes years, but right can triumph over wrong. In Catfish Dream, Julian Rankin delivers one such story, covering the life of Ed Scott Jr. and his struggle to farm in the face of systemic racism in the Mississippi Delta.

Scott and the black community, in nearly every facet of their existence, were burdened by the obstacle of white supremacy, even into the post-civil rights era. The author focuses particularly on how blacks were held back in their attempt to create businesses in which whites held monopoly. Thus, the book is a fine source for understanding how racism endures even when laws are abolished or changed on paper.

The book begs the question of how someone manages to make a life for themselves when their context has always been against them. Scott proves inspiring for his unparalleled work ethic and refusal to quit.

For every period in Scott’s life, barriers were set up to keep him and his community from the success whites enjoyed. As a boy, Scott is thrown into an educational system bereft of adequate funding. In the military, he and his commanding officers are denied the same treatment as white soldiers. As a farmer, he is forbidden success.

However, Scott uses these opportunities to stand up to authority, finding leverage in peaceful resistance from the moral high ground. Rankin’s coverage of Scott’s life, from childhood to war and beyond, is accessible and often thrilling.

Some of the book’s most powerful moments come when Scott’s previous experiences transfer in a later fight for justice and equality. When finished fighting for both democracy and his own civil rights in Europe, Scott brings the battle back home. The dangers of World War II amply prepare Scott for situations such as the march against hate in Selma, Alabama.

In one of the most powerful sections of Catfish Dream, Scott takes his skills as a quartermaster to those putting their bodies on the line in Selma. When the marchers get hungry, Scott serves them with food by driving a truck of water and sandwiches, feeding as many as possible from his truck bed.

In such passages, food and Scott’s cause intersect beautifully, reminding us of the goodness and hope that exists even in our darkest days. They drive home the truth that food and the human spirit work together, a truth Scott embodies in every page of Rankin’s work.

Catfish Dream centers around Scott’s becoming the first nonwhite operator of a catfish plant in America. As a black man, Scott was treated differently than whites in his attempt to establish a livelihood. White fear of Scott’s success leads to a full-scale assault on his ambitions.

When whites drive Scott out of rice farming, he goes into catfish. This decision brings about its own problems, however, when white agribusiness calls in Scott’s loans, taking away his entire operation. Rankin reveals how this move is based strictly on race, as white farmers also in debt continue in their work.

Rankin keeps the narrative moving in prose that reaches the heights of excellent creative nonfiction: a must when covering the ground of history, politics, and biography all at once.

Catfish Dream leaves the reader wishing they had known Scott. Fortunately, Scott’s words and person are rendered with clarity and charm in this fine book. As Rankin proclaims, “…he didn’t live by the expectations of others. . . .He spoke truth to power.” We would do well follow him.

Ellis Purdie is a graduate of The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. He lives with his family in Marshall, Texas.

Julian Rankin will be at Lemuria on Thursday, August 9, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Catfish Dream: Ed Scott’s Fight for His Family Farm and Racial Justice in the Mississippi Delta.

Rankin will also appear at the Mississippi Book Festival Aug. 18 as a participant in the “Delta Dawn and Dusk” panel at 4:00 p.m. at State Capitol Room 113.

Author Q & A with Julia Reed

By Guest Author

On August 6, 2018

In Nonfiction, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 5)

Mississippi’s Julia Reed, a columnist and author of six previous books, has blessed her fans with yet another salute to the South, this time with South Toward Home: Adventures and Misadventures in My Native Land, a collection of essays culled from “The High & the Low,” her regular column in Garden & Gun magazine.

A Greenville native, Reed left her hometown at 16 to attend Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C., then went on to Georgetown University and American University.

Her time at Madeira became the basis for two essays in South Toward Home, subtly named “Grace Under Pressure” and “Good Country, Bad Behavior.” Those essays, she explains, are about her high school years at the school and “and about how my murderous (true story) headmistress inadvertently kick-started my journalist career.” Other essays tend more toward the familiar, and cover such Southern topics as alligator hunting, summer camp, and the Delta Hot Tamale Festival.

With a foreword by Jon Meacham, the book earns points for Reed’s role as “one of the country’s most astute and insightful chroniclers of the things that matter most.”

Julia Reed

Reed began her career in the Washington bureau of Newsweek magazine and later worked in New York as an editor and writer for Vogue. In addition to writing for Garden & Gun, she contributes to Veranda and the Wall Street Journal‘s WSJ magazine.

Do you have plans to move back Greenville from New Orleans? I’ve heard you’re building a house in Greenville.

I will still keep my treehouse of an apartment in the Garden District of New Orleans. But I am indeed building a house in Greenville that is almost finished. It’s across a country road from the pasture where I used to keep my horse. It’s a slice of Delta heaven–I’m calling it my Delta Folly–and I’ve long had the dream of building a place on that spot. I can hardly wait to be in there with my hound dog Henry. Of course, I’ve already planned a kajillion parties.

Your new book is a collection of essays you’ve written about the South, including Mississippi. What do you hope readers will take from them?

There are plenty (of essays) about Mississippi, and especially about the Delta, since that’s always been “home” to me. But as Jon Meacham says in his foreword: “Her canvas is the whole South, stretching from the dives of New Orleans up through her beloved Delta and winding up, naturally, in the northern reaches of Virginia, at the Madeira School for girls.”

What I hope people get from them is a view of the South in all its complicated, sometimes embarrassing glory. I cover everything from Scotch whiskey to the lowly possum and a lot of stuff in between: our food, our music, our fun-loving proclivities, our tendency toward committing a whole lot of mayhem in the name of the Lord. One of the things I hope people take away from the book–and one of the things we might should teach the rest of the country, especially in these increasingly fraught times–is the crucial importance of being able to laugh at oneself.

The title of your book, of course, invokes memories of Mississippi writer Willie Morris’s North Toward Home. Tell me how the title of your book fits the theme of this work.

Willie was born in Yazoo City, not far from where I grew up, so of course I knew of him, even as a kid. I was still a kid when North Toward Home came out in 1967, but not long afterward, I read my parents’ copy and I knew, even then, that it was the kind of memoir every writer should aspire to. Willie, like so many of us, went north from Mississippi to make his fame and fortune, to create a life and career.

I had a wonderful, rich life and career as a journalist in Washington and New York. But after a while, I missed my native land. When I returned home for visits, I’d rent the biggest car I could find in Memphis–even though in those days there was a plane from Memphis to Greenville–roll down the windows and blare the air, and breathe in that inimitable Delta scent of soil and pesticide. I swear it was like heaven. One of my favorite drives remains that route from Memphis, much of which is on Old Highway One, the road that hugs the river parallel to Highway 61. Eden Brent has a terrific song about that road called “Mississippi Number One.”

Anyway, I finally moved back, as did Willie before he left us, so South Toward Home seemed appropriate as a title and an homage of sorts.

The humor in your writing is unmistakable, and it gives a lighthearted nudge to encourage fellow Southerners to laugh at themselves while considering a wide and diverse range of topics in South Toward Home–including the use of grits as a weapon, the mixture of lust and politics, and the merits of taxidermy, to name a few. How did you develop your keen sense of humor, and learn to shape it into your writing in the form of personal “life lessons,” often in the face of sobering circumstances?

Well, as I said,, we’ve long had more than enough reason to laugh at ourselves, so it’s a useful skill to have. Plus, there’s just a lot of stuff down here that’s flat out funny. I mean, in one of the book’s chapters I talk about a New Orleans socialite who not only planned her own funeral, but attended it–with a glass of champagne in hand. She was seated onstage at the Saenger Theater, a cigarette in one hand and champagne in the other while people went up to pay their respects–or just plain ogle. The photo of her dead self, living it up, made the front page of the Advocate. If I wrote that as fiction everyone would say it was too over the top. You literally can’t make this stuff up.

There’s another essay about the Mississippi coroner who declared one poor man dead–except that he wasn’t. They figured out he was alive when they saw movement in his leg just as they were about to pump him with embalming fluid.

As my friend Anne McGee said at the time, “That gives some new urgency to the phrase ‘Shake a leg.'” We almost fell over we started laughing so hard. What else is there to do? Life is pretty funny, and laughter is really, really good for you. It’s an infinitely better choice than the alternative.

I also had the good fortune to be raised by very funny parents who had very funny friends. It’s like not knowing what real Chinese food tastes like until you finally go to Chinatown–or something like that. I thought everybody was funny until I left home, and then, sadly, I found out otherwise.

In what ways would you say being a Mississippian has shaped your life and career positively; and in what areas would you say we still have a way to go?

I have a baseball cap that says, “American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God.” It was given to me as a joke, but it’s sort of on the money. I am especially grateful that I was born in the time and place that I was–the Greenville I grew up in was a cultural hotbed, full of writers and artists and lots of goings on. We had a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, which is still there, thank goodness. During that heyday of journalism, talented reporters came from all over the country to work for Hodding Carter. I decided that seemed like a pretty good way to make a living.

Plus, my next-door neighbors Bern and Franke Keating wrote a took pictures for National Geographic. I loved the idea of having a magazine send me around the world to learn stuff and I got a lot that when I was at Vogue. I went everywhere from Los Angeles to London to Paris to Manila to Moscow and Kabul. And I saws many, many miles of America on various presidential campaign buses and trains. I was really lucky in my career–I had a blast.

As for how far we have to go, Mississippi has done a pretty good job lately at facing down some our more shameful and horrific ghosts. When I come to Jackson to sign at Lemuria and again for the Book Fest, I want to make a lot time to experience the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, which I hear is amazing. But we should not allow ourselves to get complacent on that subject, ever.

And, of course, we have a whole lot more work to do on a lot of fronts. In one of the essays in the book, I make reference to our abysmal record in nutrition and education by saying that at this point we should just print up bumper stickers reading “First in Fatness, Last in Literacy.” That is actually not funny. Now that I’m going to be a homeowner in Greenville, I look forward to getting more deeply involved in the community and its many needs.

What can you share with readers about your appearance with Garden & Gun editor-in-chief David DiBenedetto at the Mississippi Book Festival this year?

Dave and I have done events like this a couple of times before. We love each other and we love to laugh and yack with each other. Our conversation onstage is not unlike the conversations we’ve had in various bars around the South.

Do you have other writing projects in mind at this time?

Next spring, my eighth book, Julia Reed’s New Orleans, a cooking and entertaining book that is a companion volume to Julia Reed’s South, will be published by Rizzoli.

Julia Reed will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, August 8, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from South Toward Home: Adventures and Misadventures in My Native Land.

Reed will also appear at the Mississippi Book Festival on August 18 in conversation with Garden & Gun editor David DiBenedetto at 12:00 p.m. at the Galloway Fellowship Center.

Author Q & A with Jo Watson Hackl (Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe)

By Former Lemurians

On July 10, 2018

In Oz: Middle Grade

Interview by Clara Martin. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 8)

In Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe, you’ll find a ghost town in the middle of the woods in South Mississippi, a girl named Cricket, a cricket named Charlene, and a poetry-loving dog. They’ve got eleven days to find a mysterious room painted with birds, and thirteen clues will lead them there. Combine the Mississippi Wild, a Walter Anderson art mystery, and a young girl who is taking a chance on herself, and you have Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe, great for kids (and adults!) ages 8 and up. You’ll laugh, maybe cry, and have a lot of fun reading this book. In an interview with author Jo Hackl, she talks about her inspiration for this story, and what it means to be a writer for children, writing about a place like Mississippi.

Where are you from, and where do you live now?

I was born on Keesler Air Force base in Biloxi and moved to the real-life ghost town of Electric Mills when I was eleven. I now live in Greenville, South Carolina, but still have deep ties to Mississippi. Most of my extended family lives in the state and I get back whenever I can.

Do you do anything else besides writing books for young readers?

Jo Watson Hackl

My husband and I have three children who keep us very busy. I also practice corporate law (part-time), operate outdoorosity.org, a free resource about nature, and volunteer in the community. I’m working with a local school to develop a cross-curricular plan of instruction to use Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe to teach art, creative writing, geography, math, literature, science and social studies and to help the school incorporate nature into the school day. Together we’re building a flower fort, just like the one in the book, that will be used as a reading space.

In your own words, what is Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe about?

Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe is about learning to take chances on yourself. The story takes readers on an adventure with 12-year-old Cricket and her companion, a field cricket named Charlene, through an overgrown ghost town in Electric City, Mississippi, to solve a thirty-year-old clue trail in search of a secret room that may or may not exist, all to try to win back Cricket’s run-away mother.

Cricket must use her wits and just a smidgen of luck to live off the land in a Mississippi winter, survive sleet storm and snake-bite, and work to solve an increasingly baffling clue trail left by an eccentric artist with a logic all his own. Along the way, Cricket meets the reclusive last resident of the ghost town, enlists the help of a poetry-loving dog, and takes up a touch of grave-robbing. These experiences awaken Cricket to the possibility of finding strength in the most unlikely of places—within herself.

“The woods smelled like a hundred and fifty years of dark. A goose-bumpy ghost-town kind of dark.” This is Electric City, Mississippi. An abandoned electric lumber mill town, where honeysuckle vines grow around pillars that used to prop up houses, and weeds push through a sidewalk, left right in the middle of the woods, and it is where Cricket makes her makeshift home while she searches for her Mama.

You actually lived in Electric Mills, Mississippi, the inspiration for Electric City. Can you talk about what it was like to grow up in a place that was neither here nor there? A ghost town, of sorts?

Growing up in a ghost town made every day interesting. The real town still has a few houses, but I made the fictional town empty to make it better fit the story. Growing up, I loved exploring the woods, walking the old sidewalks, and searching for signs of the people who used to live there. Many of the things that people had planted in their yards–rose bushes and daylilies and privet bushes–still were there, even though the houses were missing, and I tried to imagine the houses that had once stood where toppled-over pillars and thick thorny rose vines now reigned.

Can you tell our readers what a doogaloo is?

A doogaloo is a coin that the mill used to pay its workers. I am happy to say that I have a real doogaloo from the original town and I kept it propped on my desk for inspiration as I was writing the book.

Explain how the presence of art, nature, and the creative process are intertwined in your book. Cricket says, “And if you’re going to last any time out in the woods, you’d better get comfortable with whoever it is you are.” What is your own creative writing process? How did you start writing Cricket’s story?

I absolutely believe that art, nature, and the creative process nourish each other. Writing the book, I surrounded myself with art of all kinds, visited galleries and museums, and talked to visual artists. I also spent a lot of time in nature and my home office overlooks our woods so that I can be close to nature even when I’m inside. I started writing Cricket’s story in my head back when I was a child exploring the woods. As I grew older, I knew I wanted to write and I knew I wanted to set the story in the ghost town. In a lot of ways, Cricket’s advice about the need to get comfortable with whoever it is you are applies to my writing process. I had to learn to take chances, to try things that might not work, and to write the scenes I was more than a little scared to write. I brought my whole self to the process, vulnerabilities, quirks and all, and tried to create an experience that would draw readers into Cricket’s world and make them feel like they were right there with her.

Cricket is in search of her mother by way of a “Bird Room,” and clues that lead Cricket closer to this mysterious room painted with all kinds of birds, trees, and flowers, painted by a man named “Bob.”

Please explain why you decided to use Walter Anderson and his “Little Room,” as inspiration? Do you have a favorite Walter Anderson painting? If so, please share!

I am a life-long fan of Walter Anderson’s work. He drew from direct observation of nature and his quick, efficient line-work captured the essence of whatever he was drawing or painting. As Cricket says about the fictional artist “Bob” in the book, “some pictures weren’t much more than thin pencil strokes. But they showed more than I could ever say in a lifetime about a raccoon or a dragonfly or a duck.” My favorite Walter Anderson piece is the “Little Room,” where he captured the beauty of a day on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Walter Anderson used the light from the windows to illuminate the paintings, beginning with sandhill cranes and a rooster at dawn, as the sun moved throughout the day. This was the inspiration for the “Bird Room” in my book.

Of course, writing about serious subjects doesn’t mean there cannot be humor! I loved the moments of comedy in your book, particularly the opening scene in Thelma’s. What was one of your favorite scenes to write?

Great question! One of my favorite scenes to write was at the end when, without giving anything away, Cricket finds herself in the middle of Aunt Belinda’s trailer with Aunt Belinda and her suffocating hairspray and hidden tattoo. The pastor and the entire and the whole youth group are there as Aunt Belinda tries to hide the fact that she accidentally left Cricket in Thelma’s Cash ‘n’ Carry even though she told the whole town that she suspected foul play. Let’s just say that Charlene, the cricket, plays a leading role in adding some humor to the situation.

As a writer from Mississippi, what does it mean to write about the South, the place you grew up, and incorporate art, nature and family? Why do you think young readers will enjoy Cricket’s story?

I think that Mississippians have a unique sense of connection to place. The land where I grew up is a part of me, and I wanted to share that with readers. I also wanted to combine art, nature and the importance of family, no matter who your family is. Young readers have told me that they’ve enjoyed being part of Cricket’s world, experiencing the woods, exploring the ghost town, and using their wits to solve the clue trail. One of the great things about being a writer is that, if you can figure out a way to work a really cool thing that interests you into the book, you can do it. Without giving away the clue trail, I worked a lot of really cool things that interested me into the book and I hope that readers enjoy solving the trail as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Jo Watson Hackl will be at Lemuria on Thursday, July 12, to sign and read from Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe. Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe is Lemuria’s July 2018 middle grade selection for our First Editions Club for Young Readers.

Tag: Author Event (Page 9 of 15)

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