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December 2, 2015December 2, 2015

Q&A with Shann Ray, author of AMERICAN COPPER

“Daily, men descended into the earth, going where no man belonged, taking more than men deserved, their faces wracked with indifference, their hands dirtied with soot from the depths of the mountain.” ~ From AMERICAN COPPER

On Tin House, Dorothy Allison writes that, “Place is emotion. . . .Place is people.” Shann Ray is an author who masters this theme in much of his work. His debut novel, AMERICAN COPPER, is a story in which characters are tied greatly to the Montana frontier by industry, birth, or ghosts from their past.

In the very first line of AMERICAN COPPER (quoted above), we are carried into the heart of the landscape as well as the story of Evelynne Lowry and her father, Josef. Along with Evelynne and Josef, Ray introduces us to William Black Kettle (a Cheyenne), and Middie (a bull rider and fighter who longs for a sense of home), and he spotlights a difficult truth: all men hate; how they respond to this hate is what determines their end. Here is where Ray shines, as his writing pulls at the reader to find compassion for even the most violent of characters.

I have hosted Shann Ray before and am honored to have him visit again to talk about AMERICAN COPPER. I’m giving away a copy of his new novel as well, so drop your name in the comments by Tuesday, December 8th, for a chance to win.

Now, welcome Shann Ray.

CC: You live in Spokane, Washington but grew up in Montana, and much of your writing focuses on or is set in Big Sky Country. What is it about Montana’s landscape that inspired you to write this story about Evelynne Lowry and the men who surround her?

SR: So good to be with you here at your marvelous site again, Christi! I do love Spokane, and I’ve loved teaching leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University for the past 20 years, but my home of soul is Montana.

I wanted to write a love song to Montana, to those resplendent landscapes, to the rivers, the sky, the stars, and to the people. I hoped to honor the great women of my life, my mother, my grandmother, my wife and three daughters. I know some great women! These women have formed me, made me more compassionate, a deeper man, a better man, and hopefully a man they feel deeply loved by… a man who is a reflection of the fierce, courageous, and artistic ways of living they embody.

In Montana’s landscape, I do think of the land and sky as feminine, as a place of great beauty, as well as a kind of power that can never be controlled, and that calls to us in a beloved way to become more true to one another, and more willing to sacrifice on behalf of the beloved. I’ve lived throughout Montana, from the Northern Cheyenne reservation in the Tongue River country in southeast Montana, to the high plains north of Miles City, to the heart of the Beartooths and the Crazies, massive mountain ranges that touch the sky. I’ve spent time in the far wilderness of the high country, walked within the rivers fishing, and grown quiet in the darkness watching the stars. I’ve traveled the world, through Europe, Asia, and Central America. I’ve never found a place more beautiful than Montana. There is something elemental about being anchored in beauty, or Beauty.

My heritage is Czech and German and a mix of other tribes. My time on the Cheyenne rez was a time when my heart was changed for the better by so many Cheyenne friends. These things anchor us to one another, and though I doubt many things and doubt the existence of an afterlife, I hope in it as well, and I wonder, and this is something that continues to anchor me as a writer and more importantly as a husband, a father, and a son. Anchored in what the Czech presidents Masaryk and Havel might have called ultimate Being. Our own being, individually and collectively, anchored in ultimate Being through our experience of this in everyday life, especially in the context of the wilderness that exists around us, within us, and between us. That wilderness can be fraught with racism, genocide, and the farthest reaches of human evil.

Often, throughout human history, we descend into our own worst sense of humanity. And yet, we also rise. In this context ultimate violence can be transcended by ultimate forgiveness, by ultimate restoration, and ultimate atonement. American Copper, set in the beauty and violence of the Montana landscape, asks questions of those ultimate concerns, about desolation and hope, about despair and consolation, and finally about love.

CC: The characters in AMERICAN COPPER are rich in truths as they push their way through heartache or disappointment towards redemption–for some, in money; for others (though I suppose for them all, really) in love. And even in the most violent of men, like Josef & Middie, we find reasons for compassion. Writing stories, mining the history of our characters, is a process full of twists and turns, many that even the author can’t anticipate. As you wrote about Josef and Evelynne, or Middie and William Black Kettle, where there any surprises that unfolded onto the page?

SR: The surprises of life and art, both for shadow and light, and for that elusive middle or balanced ground of well being, give me joy as a writer, and help me seek to open the characters more so that we can meet them on more intimate levels. There are so many twists and turns, I agree! Add to that how many revisions each set piece of a novel goes through (for me it is hundreds, and I love this slow meticulous and detailed process of patience with prose, narrative arc, character development, and the rise of the novel’s interior movements toward cohesion among chaos). Then add in the ways my writing mentors and friends’ reads of the early novel help it come to a more full place.

As for specific surprises, it was not until late in the work that I felt Josef’s character moving more toward naturalism and a vast understanding of Nature alongside his capitalistic and charactistic darknesses. I also did not see Evelynne fighting him so fiercely until her strength of soul became more apparent to me. With William Black Kettle his joy for Evelynne, so effusive and generous, surprised me. And with Zion, I thought he might be less afraid of women, but at each turn, his fear cast him into an abyss from which he found it hard to recover, though I see him as one of the most courageous of all for his martyrdom in the end with the Blackfeet man.

Mentors, revision rounds, and more and more reading all develop surprises in me that are triggered each character. All this helps me try to generate a multi-layered foundation of compassion for each of them. Human complexity has such refreshing beauty. Even our evil, though it is deplorable and it harms us so very much, can with grace become a conduit toward the most profound truths of love and humanity. We see it all over the world: The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, the restorative justice practices in Colombia, the reconciliation ceremonies led by the Cheyenne over the Sand Creek Massacre, and the Nez Perce over the Big Hole Massacre. Love is quieter, but I believe, more powerful in the end.

CC: One of my favorite essays of late is Brian Doyle’s “Sensualiterature” on Creative Nonfiction, where he talks about the way writing lights up our senses: “the curl and furl of paper, the worn and friendly feeling of pocket-notebooks” and “the dark moist smell of ink and the rough grain of dense paper.” What is it about literature, the reading or writing of it, that pulls at you?

SR: Brian is brilliant! How true, and how good it is to hold a book in your hand that you know will change your life forever. With certain authors for me this is a certainty: C.D. Wright, Michael Ondaatje, bell hooks, James Welch, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, these and many, many more. I carry those books like precious stones in my hand. I harbor them in my coat pockets, and find places of solitude so I can disappear into those books, I savor and cherish them, and read them again, and I plan dinners where we can all talk about them and how they transform us.

Yes to the curl and furl, yes to the warm and friendly! I carry small sheaves of paper with me wherever I go, sometimes pressed into a book, sometimes folded into a pocket, and I write poems or prose passages on them and collect them and try to revise them a thousand times to see what shape they might take.

The whole process is like body-floating in the Yellowstone River in southwest Montana outside Livingston, no life jacket, no innertube, no boat, just your body floating the river a mile at a time, completely absorbed, in love with the body of the world.

CC: I love hearing what other authors are reading these days. Are there any books you would suggest (or insist) we pick up sooner than later?

SR: Oh my goodness, these recent ones have just about taken the top of my head off: Lila by Marilynne Robinson, Coming Through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid both by Michael Ondaatje, Deepstep Come Shining by C.D. Wright, The Ploughmenby Kim Zupan, and Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.

CC: Now that you’ve transitioned from your more recent book of short stories to this novel, what bit of wisdom can you pass on to other writers who are moving from the short form to long?

SR: Stay the course. The long form is also intricate and precise in it’s way. There is a temptation to let things get looser, to not pay as much attention to the prose or the depth of the tapestry you are creating, but stay the course and tighten it down to its most refined and beautiful form. Each of the books listed above have done just that, and my heart feels better for it. Thanks Christi, for how you inspire us to read and to live, in deeper ways.

Poet and prose writer SHANN RAY’S debut novel AMERICAN COPPER is published by Unbridled Books and renowned editor Greg Michalson, formerly of the Missouri Review. Shann’s collection of stories American Masculine won the American Book Award and two High Plains Book Awards, for Best Story Collection and Best First Book. American Masculine was selected for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference prestigious Katherine Bakeless Nason Literary Publication Prize and appears with Graywolf Press. A licensed clinical psychologist specializing in the psychology of men, he lives with his wife and three daughters in Spokane, Washington where he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University.

Visit Shann Ray’s website to read more about his books. And, don’t forget to drop your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of AMERICAN COPPER. Deadline to enter is Tuesday, December 8th, high noon.

February 25, 2015February 23, 2015

Q&A with Judy Strick, Author of Kingdom Come, CA

A powdery pink glow infused the garage, and the door to the house closed behind me. To my utter astonishment, all the things I thought had been shipped off to the Salvation Army shimmered before me, resurrected from my past. the room was filled with quivering echoes of my childhood…. ~ from KINGDOM COME, CA

Judy Strick’s debut novel, KINGDOM COME, CA is a story about uncovering a past thought to be carefully stowed away, in both the literal and figurative sense.

When a new family moves into an old abandoned house near recluse, Ruby Wellman, Ruby isn’t pleased. And when the neighbor’s son makes a strange connection with her, one that pulls at her memories, she is even more unsettled. Set in Southern California, KINGDOM COME, CA is steeped in landscape and mysticism and speaks to what happens when we finally let go of the past that grips us.

I’m honored to host Judy Strick today to talk about her book. And, there’s a book giveaway! Drop your name in the comments at the end of the post for a chance to win.

CC: On your website, you write that inspiration for Kingdom Come, Ca arose out of an incident with a “wandering print” (a cool story in itself, by the way). How did you decide on the story’s setting?

JS: I have a thing for small towns. I lived in Rapid City SD when I was very young. I harbor vividly strong memories of small town life, although perhaps it was not even a small town in those days. But that’s the way I remember it. Memory is slippery. As a child I visited Kanab Utah, and recalled it as the perfect archetypal small town until I went back as an adult to find it nothing at all like I remembered: what I found was a non-descript stuccoed town of very little charm; Perhaps at this moment in time it’s changed and is charming. Who knows?

CC: The strange connection between the protagonist, Ruby Wellman, and six-year old Finn is immediate, intense, and unmistakeable. And, it opens the story up to two plot lines–that of Ruby as she wrestles with her past and of Finn as he struggles with his own secrets. When you set out to write the novel, who came to you first, Ruby or Finn?

JS: Ruby was there first. She lived in Van Nuys, Ca and like the current Ruby, was scarred in an accident. Ruby #1 was so badly damaged that she wore a burkah- Finn was in my mind, somewhere. When Ruby #2 moved to Kingdom Come, Finn showed up, of his own accord, with his sea-glass green eyes.

CC: Your creative career has passed through several mediums: from art, children’s books, and screenwriting to novels and short stories. Do you still dabble in art or other genres?

JS: I tend to be somewhat obsessive-compulsive about what I’m working on. When I stopped being an artist I walked away cold. I never even doodle any more. I wish I had walked away as easily from lousy relationships, as I do from work that no longer works.

CC: What are you reading these days?

JS: I’m almost finished with Rick Bragg’s biography Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story. It’s wonderfully written, and a fascinating study of “The Killer,” and even more so of the Southern roots of rock ‘n roll.

CC: What piece of writing advice do you turn to most?

JS: To just keep doing it and doing it and doing it until you finally figure out what the hell it is you’re doing. I worked on KINGDOM COME, CA, for four years. It taught me so much, to keep pushing, and going for perfection, as you define it.

Judy Strick is a native of Southern California. She holds an MFA from Otis Art Institute, and in a former lifetime was a fine artist and then a toy designer. She studied screenwriting at AFI and fiction writing at UCLA, and has spent the last 10 years honing her novelistic skills. Kingdom Come, CA is her debut novel. She lives in Los Angeles with her 2.5 dogs.

Visit www.judystrick.com, where you can download (for free) her new short story series Living on the Fault Line: Tales from L. A.

Don’t forget: drop your name in the comments by noon on Tuesday, March 3rd, for a chance to win a copy of KINGDOM COME, CA, courtesy of Darlene Chan PR.

December 31, 2014December 31, 2014

Q&A & Giveaway with Editors, Cheryl & Eric Olsen, Best of Books by the Bed #2

Always on the cusp of a new year, we see lists of the “best of” with titles of books published or read or reviewed in the last twelve months. Cheryl and Eric Olsen have taken the idea of best of’s one step further. They’ve compiled an anthology of posts from their blog series, Books by the Bed. They’ve given readers a mega-list of 250 books, from classics to the contemporary, as recommended by 28 different authors.

I’m honored to host Cheryl and Eric today. While this is a longer post than usual it’s well worth your time. Not only will you read about their series and the book, but you’ll get a taste of the kinds of essays found in the anthology, as Cheryl and Eric discuss their own stack of books by the bed. Plus, there’s a giveaway (and who can resist a giveaway), which you’ll learn more about at the end of the interview.

Now, welcome Cheryl and Eric!

CC: I love the idea of authors sharing their current reads or favorite reads or books that settle them in for the evening, not only because I discover a list of must-reads but because these essays are like tiny impromptu book club meetings–full of insight into the magic that makes for a good story. What prompted you to begin this series on your blog, and what do you love most about it?

CHERYL: As soon as we started running the excerpts from We Wanted to Be Writers about the writers’ bedside reading, it became clear we were onto something. We’d hit a responsive chord with book lovers.

Of the hundreds we’ve run in the past four years, every author has commented on how fun the posts were to write. In addition to providing a constant source of great book recs, many read like compelling short stories or themed creative nonfiction, delightful on multiple levels. I especially love writers admiring each other’s craft and accomplishments. Fans maintain the pulse of a book’s success. But few joys are as pure and treasured as unsolicited praise from peers.

I love providing a forum for positivity in an arena that isn’t always supportive, especially for developing writers. I still invite contributors, but now I get queries as well. And it feels good to add to a creative writing student’s or other emerging wordsmith’s list of publications.

ERIC: We have floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in our living room, where we keep all the books I want our guests to think we read all the time, the “serious literature,” the Faulkner and Hemingway and Plath and all that sort of thing, even poetry, and the “classics” of course, the Greeks, plus lots of serious contemporary stuff, the sorts of novels that get reviewed in The New York Times and New Yorker. But speaking only for myself here, since Cheryl really does read serious literature (and all the time), I must admit I keep the stuff I really like to read by the bed, the murder mysteries and political thrillers and tales of skullduggery and betrayal, plus some scifi now and then, the stuff that would never, ever, in a million years, get reviewed in the likes of the New Yorker.

Thus when I was doing interviews for We Wanted to Be Writers, ever curious about what others are reading and cognizant of the fact that the books we keep by the bed can sometimes be more “intimate” or “revealing,” I started asking the writers I interviewed what books they had by the bed at that moment.

At the time, I asked just for the books. I included these “snapshots” as little boxes throughout the text: books by John Irving’s bed, for example, or books by Sandra Cisneros’ bed. The books by her bed at the time, by the way, included biographies of Zelda Fitzgerald and Jackie Kennedy’s cousin and aunt. “They seem like locas,” Sandra said, “but they’re women who’ve been ostracized, who couldn’t take care of their money and ended up poor. They’re made to look like eccentrics, but I see these fragile old women as being vulnerable and preyed upon. Hell, I could turn out like this!” John had by his bed at the time Robert Stone’s Fun With Problems, T. C. Boyle’s Wild Child, Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, and Gail Godwin’s Unfinished Desires.

I probably had more nice comments about these lists than anything else. So, when we launched the website, we continued the feature but also invited the writers to tell us a bit about each book.

CC: One of my favorite essays in this book comes from Tom Titus, in which he writes, “My books are various explorations into the idea of Place, that little spot in the universe to which we have attached ourselves and connect with on all levels.” Connection. That’s what I think stories are for us, whether we read them or write them or simply talk about them. Which essay in this series speaks to you the most?

CHERYL: Choosing a favorite from the 30 guest posts in our second annual collection from the Books by the Bed series is a daunting task. They are, after all, the “Best Of” the series. But for sheer entertainment value and breadth of reading interest, I pick Kitty Sheehan’s contribution. An unabashed lover of all things New York, she starts with Mary Cantwell’s Manhattan Memoir, or as she describes it, “The Devil Wears Prada meets ‘Mad Men’.” Neil Young’s—yes, THAT Neil Young—Waging Heavy Peace also makes an enigmatic appearance, along with other unexpected fare, including Marilyn Johnson’s The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. Kitty ends the literary romp with “a Joan Didion and a Nora Ephron. Isn’t that the rule?”

ERIC: I got something out of each essay, but Matt Debenham’s strikes a particular chord as he talks at some length about his interest in comics and graphic novels, and lists several authors of note. I’m presently working on a script that I have no illusions will ever make its way to film, but which could possibly form the basis of a graphic novel, or so l tell myself — I’ve been nagging my son to do the illustrations, as he’s a very good illustrator and has done the artwork for a couple graphic novels already. I’m not sure he finds the prospect of working on anything with the old man all that appealing, but I keep at him. Maybe someday. Anyway, I’ve been exploring some of the titles Matt lists and it’s been very helpful. Matt also talks about some books about writing, which I always enjoy learning about. Claire Lombardo’s thoughts on re-reading also spoke to me, as I’m also a re-reader.

CC: So, what books are on your bedside table?

ERIC: Speaking of re-reading, I have right now only one book by my side of the bed, Robert Harris’ The Ghostwriter. It was originally titled The Ghost, but when the book was made into a film titled “The Ghostwriter,” the publisher shrewdly reissued the book with the new title. During my career as a hack writer, I did a little ghostwriting myself, and so when Harris’ novel came out in 2007, I grabbed a copy and read it at once. It’s a good story, though I found it a little short on the sex and violence.

The story involves a British writer ghosting the memoir of a now-out-of-office prime minister, Adam Lang, a very thinly disguised Tony Blair (in the movie played by Pierce Brosnan, who brings a nice creepiness to the role). The tension in the story circles around accusations that Lang, who while in office post-9/11 had been sucking up to the criminal organization known as the Bush presidency, had committed crimes against humanity by ordering the abduction, imprisonment, and torture of British citizens believed to be part of Al Qaeda — see, I told you he was a thinly disguised Tony Blair….

Anyway, the other day I was channel surfing and stumbled on a showing of “The Ghostwriter” and watched a few minutes, long enough to remember that I had a copy of the book. So that night I started reading it again, in part I think because of the recent report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the CIA’s crimes against humanity, much in the news right now, and the horror I feel realizing that still another Bush could end up in the White House. Suddenly, Harris’ story seems very au courant (and please do excuse that bit of French, but I was just reading the latest issue of The New York Review of Books, also by my bed, and something seems to have rubbed off).

CHERYL: Full disclosure: the cover of Best of Books by the Bed #2 was shot in our bedroom; it didn’t take much to stage the stacks—the books were already there. Most of the titles rotate regularly, but a few are constant because whether or not I dip back into them, just their physical presence is comforting or inspirational or emotionally satisfying. Oregon writer Kate Gray’s Carry the Sky is at the top of the permanents. This debut novel wowed me in unexpected ways and continues to impress months after my initial reading. Vivid characters abound and the two young teachers who narrate are GOOD and flawed and unique and achingly needy as they deal with bullying, racism, homophobia, and other big topics without a hint of pathos. The language is exquisite, the imagery lyrical. I think this is an important book and I hope it finds the audience it deserves.

I never would have selected The Gods of Second Chances on my own; it, like Carry the Sky, was sent to me by Laura Stanfill of Forest Avenue Press (an imprint I now wholeheartedly endorse!). Dan Berne’s saga of an Alaskan fisherman raising his granddaughter while her druggie mother serves her prison term drips with authenticity—and fog and rain and hail and sleet and . . . nails setting big time.

Now I See You, Nicole C. Kear’s startling memoir about adjusting to a degenerative retinal disease diagnosis at 19 that would render her blind by the time she was the mother of young children is simultaneously devastating and hilarious. It takes readers into uncharted territory with snark and profanity, self-deprecation, tenderness, and wisdom.

The Age of Desire, The French House, and Off Course are always nearby as reminders that more years of writing can translate into richer perspectives with no loss of energy. The respective authors, Jennie Fields, Don Wallace, and Michelle Huneven are friends and former classmates for whom I have tremendous respect and admiration.

Have You Seen Marie? is the latest by another friend and classmate, Sandra Cisneros. It’s a beautifully illustrated little book for adults about a missing cat (and of course much more) written to help Sandra come to terms with her mother’s death, select excerpts sent when my mom died. It’s a blazing testament to the power of words.

Another small book that spoke volumes at the right time is Susan Tepper’s From the Umberplatzen a novel in 48 flash fiction segments. It convinced me to continue writing the short short stories I find so intriguing.

I met Fred Setterberg online. We went to one of his readings, discovered we’re practically neighbors, and that he and Eric share an astounding number of similarities in background and childhood experience. His Lunch Bucket Paradise: A True-Life Novel chronicles with insight and humor a transitional period in California history that shaped us in immutable ways.

David Corbett is a dynamite crime writer neighbor-cum-friend whose latest—The Art of Character—should be on every fictionist’s reference shelf.

Until recently, I hadn’t read much poetry. Since starting ARCology, a series to introduce new releases that might otherwise take readers much longer to discover, I’ve received a steady stream of poetry collections from small presses. One of my favorites is Terri Kirby Erickson’s A Lake of Light and Clouds, a wonderful quirky assortment of everyday subjects rendered extraordinary. It serves as an instruction manual for improving one’s visual acuity. And mood.

To win a copy of Best of Books by the Bed #2 (courtesy of Cheryl and Eric), simply drop your name in the comments below. The giveaway runs until Tuesday, January 6th, noon. To read more about the book and purchase your own copy, click here.

You can also follow Eric and Cheryl on Twitter and on Facebook to stay abreast of all the great things they’re doing at We Wanted To Be Writers.