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A Book Recommendation & Guest: Patricia Ann McNair

The Book

“Our actual Mission is to use stories to build community. It’s not just about creating good stories; it’s about employing those stories to connect people to one another.” ~ Amanda Delheimer Dimond, in Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck

Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck is a collection of stories originally told to a live audience on the 2nd story stage. While there is something quite powerful about listening to a story read out loud – about the effect of the words as they circle the air and settle into our ears, our mind, our hearts – the stories on the pages of this anthology carry as much weight as I imagine they did on stage.

As Dimond says in the quote above, stories serve to connect us. Pick up this book and find yourself in these pages: in a moment between father and daughters that doesn’t go according to plan but unfolds in perfect succession; or at a funeral when everyone knows the truth but no one speaks a word. One of my favorite stories, written by Patricia Ann McNair, speaks to the power of place, how, whether we leave a place whole or broken, memories settle deep within us and urge us to return.

The Guest

I’m honored to host Patricia here, where she writes about confined spaces and moments of reveal and the journey it takes to reach the crux of our story.

Driving the Story
by Patricia Ann McNair

On a long car trip to Montana from Chicago with a friend I barely knew, I told her about how, when I was seven or so, my mother made me return a shoplifted lipstick and a tiny plastic doll to Woolworths. The embarrassment was meant to steer me away from a life of crime, I think. I told my friend the details: my mouth so dry I squeaked I forgot to pay for these; the doll’s dress marked by my moist palms; my mother in front of the store in the car with her window down, the smoke from her cigarette lifting into the blue suburban sky.

On the same trip, my friend told me about what it was like living with her schizophrenic brother. About each of the once-loved family cats buried in the backyard by her father after their deaths of old age mostly, but sometimes of something else, some feline disease.

When I met my half-brother for the first time he was in his fifties, I was in my thirties. And we drove over the backroads of inland Maine, up and down the mountains, past freezing streams. It was autumn, 14 years after the autumn our father died. He told stories about growing up without his father; I told stories about growing up with mine. With ours.

On a car trip in Vermont in the late summer of 2000, a man from England told me about his life in London, his art, the coal miner grandfather who helped his mother raise him after his father died in a military accident when he was five. I told him about the trip I took to Cuba just months before, about my quiet life in the city with my cat, about my impending divorce. The man’s name is Philip Hartigan. We have since married.

So what is it about car trips that compel passengers to tell one another stories? Is it the closeness, perhaps? How being trapped in a small space for some time makes it near impossible not to want to fill the empty air between you? Radio stations come and go as you follow the curves of the highway; talk is better than static. There is only so much music you can agree on. With that audience so close by, how can we not want to share something, to reveal something? They have to listen. It is their only option.

It is this car-journey-story-impulse that led me to the telling of “Return Trip,” my essay in the anthology Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck. Philip and I were on the road for hours, returning to a place that had become important to us. We’d made the trip other times, and each time we learned a bit more about one another.

I don’t want to tell too much about what is in this essay; I am hoping you will pick up the book and read it. In brief: September 11. Woods. A cabin. Students. A cat. My mother. Writing. Dunes. Fall leaves. Love. Death. Place. And the piece, finally finished to be read/told on stage before an audience, came to me like stories do when we are telling them: in bits and pieces, with tangents and sidebars and strange connections. As Philip and I drove to a cabin in the woods some years after the first time we made that drive, I couldn’t help but remember what happened here along the way. And here. And here. And when we reached our destination, I had to write it all down.

It might sound like this was an easy process, a quick one—just capture the moments on the page. Ha! Writing is rarely that easy for me, and I sometimes wonder if a piece is ever really finished. This one, “ReturnTrip,” took a few years. I wrote the first draft(s) in two weeks. That is, two weeks of daily writing, four hours at a time. I shopped it around. It got rejected. I put it away. I came back to it. Tweaked and tinkered. Put it away again. Then, when it came time for me to prepare a piece for 2nd Story, the wonderful Chicago-based live reading and storytelling series, this was the one I came back to. Why hadn’t it been successful before? What did it need? One of the really interesting things about 2nd Story stories is that nearly all of the stories told have a very visible point of discovery, some might even say an epiphany. A place in the story when the teller finally understands the purpose of what she is telling, and the audience can, too. I think, up until I was working on the essay for this particular reading, I did not really know what the story was about. I knew what I was telling, the events of the piece, the happenings. But I had yet to discover its “aboutness.”

I have a friend who tells stories that he thinks sometimes go on too long. (Hi, Ted!) I don’t agree with him; I enjoy his anecdotes greatly. But often at some time during his telling, he says: My point—and I do have one—is… Here’s the thing—“Return Trip” needed a point. My point is… After some years, I finally figured it out. My point.

I’m not gonna tell you what is here; you gotta read it. But below is a little taste of what fueled the piece.

Back in the car, with my mother. We are driving through woods turning colors, and she is asleep. It is the last driving trip we will take together and I want to tell her something. Stories. Something. I want her to tell me what I don’t yet know. My point, Mom, I would say if she were listening, and I do have one.

I do.

Patricia Ann McNair is the author of The Temple of Air, her own collection of short stories that has received much recognition, including the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Awardee in Prose, Finalist Awardee for Midland Society of Authors, and Finalist for Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. She’s received four Illinois Arts Council Awards and was nominated for the Carnegie Foundation US Professor of the Year. McNair teaches in Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing Department. For more about McNair and her writing, visit her blog.

Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck releases from Elephant Rock Books on November 12th. Watch the book trailer here.

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Welcome, Ilie Ruby, Author of The Salt God’s Daughter

 

If you’re a mother and a writer, you know how hard it is to make the writing happen. Some days, I’m lucky to get the skeleton of a story down on paper. Other days, I’m grateful to rewrite my to-do list. Plenty of those days, I’m up until midnight. Because balancing motherhood and writing is a daily challenge for me, I love to hear from successful authors who accept that challenge head on. And, win.

Ilie Ruby is one such author. Her new novel, The Salt God’s Daughter, has received lots of praise and attention. I’ll post my review of her book next week. But for now, Ilie stops by here today and shares with us how one mother writer makes it all happen.

Welcome, Ilie!

~

You know those color-coded schedules for families? Those charts that hang on the walls of people’s kitchens? Those have become our saving grace. I’ve had to become a very organized person, which is not at all the way that I used to be.

Internally, I was always incredibly organized in my thinking, for example when creating a novel it was easy and natural for me to remember where all the pieces fit. But externally, I was always very free-flowing and spontaneous. Three little kids later (with myriad activities and educational requirements)—I don’t have a choice but to become organized in my life as a mother.

The only way I get any writing done is to schedule my writing time in some rather strange hours—at night. I just love to write at night and I start after the kids go to sleep and then I write for four hours or so. This works for me because I am a natural night owl. 9pm has always been the high-point of my day and when I’m the most energetic and creative.

Now, I bet you want to know about sleep—when do I sleep? I’ve learned is that I don’t require as much as I thought. I’ve learned that my body is stronger than I ever knew. I always thought that as you got older, you became more frail. For me, it has been quite the opposite. In many ways, I feel younger today than I did ten years ago—healthy, strong, creative, and yes, organized!

Thanks for having me on your blog, Christi!

Ilie Ruby is the author of The Salt God’s Daughter and the critically-acclaimed novel, The Language of Trees, which was a Target Emerging Author’s Pick and a First Magazine for Women Reader’s Choice. She is also a painter, mother to three, and teaches writing in Boston.

About the Book
Set in Long Beach, California, beginning in the 1970s, The Salt God’s Daughter follows three generations of extraordinary women who share something unique—something magical and untamed that makes them unmistakably different from others. Theirs is a world teeming with ancestral stories, exotic folklore, inherited memory, and meteoric myths.

For more on her book, read Stacy Bierlein’s review and interview with Ilie at The Rumpus. You can also visit Ilie Ruby’s beautiful website, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her Facebook page.

Interested in Mother Writer swag? Click the Mother Writer image above (and thanks to E. Victoria Flynn for providing the link).

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Rob Riley, on Finding Our Way to Writing

Today, I welcome Rob Riley, whose book, Portrait of Murder, was released by Orange Hat Publishing in February 2012. Rob shares about the journey to becoming Writer, Author.

20120818-222953.jpgThe instinct to write novels has been within me since my earliest memories. It didn’t take form for a long time. I was a sports fanatic – football, baseball, basketball, high school letterman’s club. Academics? I didn’t even know how to spell the word until well into adulthood. (I kid; had that one nailed by age 20, at the latest.) But my imagination knew no depths, nor did it ever take a break. I loved all forms of entertainment, played the clarinet, and read books, all when the mood came upon me. Undisciplined? Absolutely. But I was unwittingly planting the seeds of what would eventually be a breakout lunge toward writing crime fiction novels.

It was a circuitous route. At age 19 I became a police aide for the Milwaukee Police Department, became a sworn officer at age 21, and immediately began working as an undercover narcotics agent. Seven hectic years of doing that led to a promotion to detective, investigating major crimes. My supervisors always said that I wrote excellent reports. They actually recruited me to do sensitive investigations because of my skills. Busy though I was, I always found time to read: Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Hammett. I was always drawn to classics of that era. And I came to think I bet I could do something like that. I began thinking of my own story ideas.

But I was a police detective, and was making a living. In my early 30’s I investigated the murder of a fellow police officer, and friend. My partner and I arrived on the scene a couple minutes after  his radio call for help. He was dead where he lay, in an abandoned pool hall, as was his killer. We were there for hours, with a dozen additional officers helping us process the scene. You could have heard a pin drop. For me, it was a pivotal moment.

That kind of experience puts gadgets in a budding writer’s toolbox. There were other similar ones during my career, but that was the worst. That one hurt.

During that time – not coincidentally, I later realized – I signed up for a correspondence writing course, writing short stories. I wrote about 20 of them, and some very patient instructors broke me in with line editing, and character and plot development. I got nothing published, but I got more than my money’s worth.

In 1994 I joined a novel writer’s workshop. The instructor was a man of high achievement in both the writing and the teaching worlds. He had 40 novels published. Lived in Dubuque, Iowa. I lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 175 miles apart. I drove to his home and back on one Saturday of each month for the next 13 years. Wrote six complete novels, each one edited by my writing “coach,” (we were not allowed to call him teacher) and critiqued – sometimes almost savagely – by my workshop classmates. None of them were published, although several hundred rejection notices showed that I was trying.

During that time I wrote five days a week, two hours a day. My coach was rigid with his instructions on my schedule. Too much writing at one time will drain you, he said. I did what I was told, and was eventually told that I was “a darn good writer.” Six unpublished manuscripts in your desk drawer leaves you with doubts, but I was determined never to quit.

The first three books were supernatural thrillers. Who could have figured that? It was simple. I was still a cop, and I needed an escape. And I’d always loved horror books and movies. Good ones, not the modern day hacker/slasher type. When I retired from the police force in 2001 I switched to my bailiwick, police procedural fiction. Crime mysteries, to be exact. The change had been unexpected: One day I began reading Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, a story about Philip Marlowe, a cynical, wise acre detective telling a first person account of how come and why he was so cynical, and such a wise acre. That was all it took.

I switched genres. The next three books are about private investigator Jack Blanchard, a former Milwaukee police detective who left the department in a huff, to do his own, lone wolf style investigating of myriad legal matters.

Portrait Of Murder.
Dead Last.
Unto The Father.

Portrait Of Murder was published earlier this year. The next two are patiently waiting their turn.

Rob Riley lives with his wife, Mary Lynne, in southeastern Wisconsin. He spent thirty-two years as a Milwaukee police officer: seven years doing undercover narcotics investigations and twenty-two years as a major crimes detective. Writing and reading have been lifelong passions, and he began by writing short stories more than thirty years ago. Of course, police work provided both the inspiration and insight for his PI mystery novel, Portrait Of Murder. Two additional novels in a series that features his main character, Private Investigator Jack Blanchard, have been completed. The author may be contacted at  rob.riley101@yahoo.com.

About the Book:
PI Jack Blanchard is hired by his close friend to find his missing sister, who has a long history of drug addiction. Blanchard has little trouble finding her, but subsequently becomes entangled in an investigation that links the past murder of her drug dealer; the current murder of a top City Official – and a mind bending expanse of government corruption that involves the police department, and leads directly to the Mayor’s office. With disparate sources providing help – a prison inmate who had been an eye witness to key events, and Juanita Velez, head of the Social Services Department – PI Blanchard comes upon a twisted tale of criminal behavior and multiple murders, and a shocking conclusion that no one could have anticipated.

Portrait of Murder is available for purchase on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle.

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