Joan Wolf Interview

     I’m extremely honored to have author Joan Wolf as a guest on The Novel Road.

    Joan has had 45 books published over the course of her 35 year writing career. The New York and the Washington Post Bestseller lists know Joan well. Her current passion, Christian Romance, added to a packed backlist of Historical Fiction and Contemporary Romance puts Joan in the ranks of some of the most successful authors around.

 

    The first non-picture book she ever read was Black Beauty, and spent most of her childhood reading horse and baseball stories. As a teenager, she loved romantic suspense: Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, etc. As a young woman, she became a huge fan of Georgette Heyer and of Dorothy Dunnett’s "Lymond" series. She swears, "I must have re-read those books a hundred times". Thru the years, she found herself turning more and more to books of a spiritual nature. Gary Wills’ book "What Jesus Meant" has had a profound effect upon her life.

    A former high school English teacher and Yankee's fan, she splits her time between working with her husband at their church's food pantry and writing.

Please welcome, one of the icons of the Romance Novel genre, Joan Wolf

Joan Wolf

Me:  What was the first thing you ever wrote that told you “I can do this?”

Joan: My story is the tale of a desperate housewife.  My husband and I had just moved to Connecticut with our new baby.  I had quit work (that was what we did back in the day), I knew no one in my new town, and I was lonely and bored.  I picked up a few books that were on the best-seller list (these were the days of Rosemary Rogers and Katherine Woodiwiss) and I read them.  I had taught literature and creative writing to high school seniors for a number of years, so I thought, O'kay, I’ll give this a shot. I can work while the baby’s napping.  It seemed a much more interesting project than cleaning the kitchen floor.

           

      I set my book in the regency period not because it was about to become the hot new thing in romance publishing but because I was a huge Georgette Heyer fan and I knew both the historical and the social scene of that time.  I had only the vaguest idea about what kind of a plot I might come up with. To be perfectly honest, I was surprised when I actually managed to write a whole opening chapter.  I hadn’t written anything except term papers since the time I tried to write a book about a horse when I was a kid. Then I wrote another chapter, then another.  Wow!  I was a writer.

           

    Selling the book proved to be a whole other story. I mailed it off to publishers on my own for almost a year, with no positive results. Once I even got my manuscript back with someone’s vacation pictures stuck in the middle.  Finally some kind soul told me I needed an agent. I got the first one I tried and she sold my book (The Counterfeit Marriage) and got me a contract for two more.  Interestingly, it sold to NAL, a company that had previously turned it down when I sent it on my own.

Me:  Christian Romance is a rapidly growing market.  What do you think has spurred the growth?

Joan: Christian Romance has always been popular in Christian book stores, but I think its surprising growth into the wider book market has been spurred by regular romance readers who just got tired of the heavy sex, vampires and werewolves that seem to populate most romance novels these days.  I know I got sick of it, and that’s one of the reasons I turned to Christian romance.  It offered me a chance to express my own faith while telling an emotionally and psychologically rich love story about human beings.  The New York publishing houses are no longer giving women this kind of romance and these readers are discovering that Christian romance does.  I think that’s why it is growing so quickly and I also think it will continue to grow as the word spreads: This is what readers are looking for in a love story.

Me:  In two sentences “Hook” for your new book.

Joan: The book I have coming out in July from Thomas Nelson is called A Reluctant Queen, the love story of Queen Esther, and the title says it all.  It tells the story of a sheltered Jewish girl who becomes the wife of the Great King of Persia, saves her people from annihilation by the evil Haman, and finds the love of her life in her exalted (but lonely) husband.

Me: How strict are you when it comes to staying true to your outline?

Joan: What outline?

Me:  If you could have lunch with any Author you choose, from throughout history or today, what would you want to talk about?

Joan: I’m sure I should name someone exalted, like Shakespeare or Jane Austen or Dante.  Well, maybe not Dante; I don’t speak Italian let alone medieval Italian.  But, truthfully, I would adore to have lunch with Dick Francis.  I have been a horse lover all my life and I’ve read every single one of his books - some more than once.  Naturally, I’d want to talk about horses - and maybe writing (a little).   I’m quite sure he was the most delightful man and I was truly saddened when I learned of his recent death.

Me: You have a love for Historic Fiction. I really enjoy your "time" in the sixth century. When did you come upon your love for the Arthurian Ideal?

Joan: When I was in high school Camelot was playing on Broadway and a boyfriend took me to see it for my birthday. Richard Burton played Arthur.  I fell madly in love with him and thought Julie Andrews was insane to have looked at anyone else. After crying my eyes out at the theatre, I read everything I could get my hands on about Arthur. I read Mallory, of course, and the other medieval Arthurian tales, but what really began to intrigue me was the historical Arthur. 

   It sparked my imagination to think that a leader from deep in the dark ages could have left so strong an imprint that legends sprang up around him.  That is why The Road to Avalon is set in the final days of Celtic-Romano Britain and I portray Arthur as the savior who kept civilization alive by turning back the waves of Saxon invasion.

Me: My favorite subject – Editing. Talk about editing your first book. Also, how did you know when to stop?

Joan: Alas, when I edited my first book I kept changing adjectives and adverbs until I thought I had the right ones. Now when I edit, I take things out.  Adjectives, adverbs, sentences, whole paragraphs - gone forever.  In truth, I rather cringe when I look at my early stuff.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why the match is perfect?

Joan: I have been very fortunate in my agents. Every one of them has really loved my books and has been committed to selling them. I would never have done as well as I have as a published author were not for excellent agents. My present agent, Natasha Kern, is the one who introduced me to the Christian Romance market. She’s been a huge help; I’m new to this genre and she knows just about everything.

           

Me: Heroes, have they gotten too perfect?

Joan: Every hero has to have a problem (an emotional or psychological problem, not a plot problem) he needs the heroine to help him deal with.  A man who is sufficient unto himself is not the stuff romance is written about.  He can be the most gorgeous hunk in the world, but he’s gotta have a flaw somewhere.

Me: If you got a blank check to write about anything and it’s guaranteed to be published, what would the subject be?

Joan: This is so easy for me to answer. I have been working on a book about Mary Magdalene that I just love. I have written the first two parts and my agent, Natasha Kern, is very excited about it. It’s a very different slant on Mary’s story, starting with her childhood and showing how the events of her life caused her to become the woman whom Christ regarded as one of his disciples. 

   I think women especially would love this book; it has a very feminist cast to it.  I have become quite entranced with Mary myself, and I look forward to delving back into her world.

Me: The publishing industry is going through an evolution. How are these changes effecting you and what would you advise new authors to do?

Joan: Is it evolution or revolution? No one knows.  All we know is that publishing will never be the same. This is good and bad.  The old model of books shipped and books returned was ridiculous. There has been an increasing problem with shelf space in the stores - rows and rows of best sellers block out the chance for a new author to get a spot. The mid-list is almost gone. We just have to hope that what is coming will give new opportunities to new writers. I think it will.

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Bryan Russell Flash Fiction

                                                     

                                    Reunion

                                     By Bryan Russell

      The two naked men nodded hesitantly to each other. They stood in line, not wanting to move. Neither were entirely certain how to hold themselves, but fatigue dulled nervousness, and accumulated fear overshadowed shame. This nakedness was just one more thing. They tended to hold their hands in front of themselves, out of politeness. Their ribs were clearly visible in pale, taut skin, the bones arching toward each other,
meeting in the hollows of concave chests.

 “Are you from Budapest?” one man asked.

 “Yes,” a second man said. “And you?”

 “Yes, I lived on Egyesules Street.”

  The second man blinked, a light kindling in his eyes. “Is it so? I, too, lived on Egyesules Street. Out past the park.”

 “We were near the boulevard. That’s where my home was. We had a beautiful garden.”

 “Yes, yes, I know the area. That’s strange. Do I know you?”

 “I don’t think so,” the first man said. “I don’t recall you, though I thought I knew most of the people on the street. Yes? My family was there for many years.”

 “Mine, too. Mine, too. How old are you? I cannot tell in here.”

  Everyone in this place became indistinct after awhile, features blurring, age creeping over each face regardless of years. Everyone here was centuries old, vast lifetimes washing quickly through their veins.

 “I am thirty-five. And you?”

 “I am thirty-six,” the second man said. “It’s so strange. I don’t recall you. And yet we must have seen each other, yes?”

 “So many years on the street. Playing as a boy. Playing football at the park. Many boys were there. Did you play?”

 “Yes, I played. I wasn’t very good. If I looked up I tripped over the ball. If I looked down, everyone yelled at me for not passing.”

 “I was pretty good, though not as good as my friend Bodo. He was a very good player. Very good.”

 “I remember him!” the second man said. “Yes, he was very good. I remember that. I remember playing with him. What has happened to him, do you know?”

 The first man looked away and said nothing. They were both silent for a time.

 “You had a garden, you say?” the second man said. “I must have seen it. Walking on the street, I must have passed it by.”

 “It was beautiful. I worked very hard on it. The garden was already very nice when we bought the house. I was struck by it. That is why I picked that house, I think. I had always liked the garden. Even as a boy, walking to play football. Isn’t it strange? You were there, too. Playing football. Walking past the garden. I think I improved it, though. The garden. I read a lot of books, taught myself. Every spring I would go out planting.”

 “Yes, I think I saw that garden. A beautiful garden. Was there a little stone wall? Yes, a little stone wall. And beautiful flowers.”

 “Thank you.”

  A guard walked by and the men stopped speaking. Their eyes followed the guard. The whole line of naked men quieted at the passing of the booted feet. The bare feet of the naked men stopped their weary shuffling, still as mortuary statues.

  The second man nodded slightly once the guard had passed. “I think I remember you. I didn’t recognize you at first, but I do now. Did you have an older sister? A sister named Myrta?”

 “Yes, that is me.”

  The second man opened his mouth to speak, but closed it, fearing the silence that would follow his question. He nodded, thinking of the street, the garden, the games boys played, the girls they admired. He could smell the roses, the blossoms on the little tree. “There was a tree,” he said. “You had a little tree, with blossoms. They smelled lovely.”

“Yes, that’s the place,” the first man said.

  The second man wanted to ask what kind of tree had blossoms that smelled so sweetly. He knew little of horticulture. But the guard was returning and the whispered voices were silenced.

 “Juden!” the guard yelled. “Jetzt, jetzt! Schnell, schnell!”

  The line started moving, the naked men shuffling forward.

 “It is good to see you again,” the first man said, his lips barely moving.

  The second man nodded. “Sholem.”

 “Schnell, schnell!” the guard yelled.

  The naked men walked into the chamber. The second man was still thinking about the blossoms. What were they? He would have to ask. The memory of the blossoms struck him so sweetly, so keenly, the fragrant taste of them hanging in the air. They would fall in graceful arcs, spinning slowly down to new resting places, gathering in pale drifts amidst the insubstantial ghosts of old petals. Petals, a spring snow atop the green, green grass.

Short Story Saturday: Norb Vonnegut

                                            

Insider Trading: ‘Tis the Season

         By Norb Vonnegut

                                                 

   After returning from three strip malls, Phoebe Jenkins kicked off her shoes first thing. Right there in front of the kitchen sink. She was exhausted from the holiday crowds—all the pushing and shoving, the occasional hip check or two. Her swollen dogs were screaming for a break.

   I’ll try again tomorrow.

   Phoebe sat at the kitchen table, afternoon shadows sweeping the room, rambling thoughts her only companion. She had not bothered with the overhead lights. She was too busy warming up and savoring her cup of coffee—one sugar, heaps of cream, piping hot the way she liked it.

  Tired or not, at sixty-six Phoebe was enjoying retirement. Sure, there were times when she missed teaching. She loved her eighth graders, even when they got out of hand.

   But truth be told—retirement gave her more time to shop. Daily opportunities to spoil her grandson rotten. Too bad today’s Christmas expedition ended in defeat.

   Bam, bam, bam came the knock at Phoebe’s door, reverberating through her modest home like angry thunder. The pounding burst a cache of happy memories that could have lasted well past her afternoon coffee.

  I have a doorbell, you know.

  Phoebe cracked open the front entry, leaving the heavy chain in place. Crazy things were always happening in her neighborhood. And it paid to be careful. She eyed two men, their suits rumpled, their ties loose. They reminded her of Jack Webb and Harry Morgan from the old Dragnet series.

  “May I help you?” Phoebe asked.

  “I’m Agent Fletcher, and this is Agent Dixon.”

   He even sounds like Jack Webb.

   Both men flashed their badges, and Fletcher added, “We’re with the FBI.”

   “Is something wrong?” she asked, immediately forgetting the assault on her front door.

   “Are you Phoebe Anne Jenkins?” asked Fletcher. “Mother of Todd Jenkins?”

   “Is my son okay?” She grew anxious in that fraction of a second.

   “He’s fine, ma’am.”

   “Oh, thank goodness.”

   “We have a search warrant. Will you let us in?”

   “What’s this about?” Phoebe stammered, unhooking the latch.

   “We’re asking the questions,” snapped Fletcher. “Were you at the Staples on Tuckahoe Road this morning?”

   Dixon’s eyes darted round the room, soaking in the family photos. It was like he needed to touch everything in sight.

   “Why, yes.” She was growing more alarmed by the second. “How do you know?”

   “What was the nature of your visit?”

   “Nature of my visit,” Phoebe echoed, thinking cop talk sounded very serious indeed. “I was looking for my grandson’s Christmas present. Have you seen the toy helicopter that Staples is advertising?”

   “Did you speak with the manager?” Fletcher asked, ignoring the choppers.

   “I asked him for help.”

   “Help, Ms. Jenkins?”

   “It’s Mrs., may the lord rest my husband’s soul. And the manager told me they were ‘sold out,’ Officer Fletcher.”

  “It’s Agent Fletcher.”

  “The store received one-hundred-and-fifty helicopters last week,” she said, trying to be helpful. “That means they’re selling twenty-one a day.”

  “Did you tell your son?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you planned to tell him?” persisted the agent.

  “What’s this got to do with Todd?”

  “We’re asking the questions,” Fletcher repeated. “Did your son pay for this info?”

  “Why would he do that?” Phoebe felt herself growing defensive.

  “Did you proceed to the Staples on Central Avenue?”

  “They were sold out, too,” she confirmed.

  “What were you doing at the Staples in Scarsdale?” pressed Fletcher. “That’s three in one day.”

  “My grandson will be heartbroken if he doesn’t get that helicopter. But Scarsdale was sold out. Can you believe it?”

  “Right,” acknowledged Fletcher in an odd tone, somewhere between empathetic and scoffing.

  “Is Todd in some kind of trouble?”

  “Do you have any receipts?” he asked, plowing forward, indifferent to her question.

  “I told you. The helicopters were sold out. Central Ave. sold two hundred since Monday, and Scarsdale another two fifty over the last eight days.”

  “Smells like channel checks.” Fletcher exchanged glances with Dixon, his face knowing, his voice full of accusation.

  “Channel checks?” Phoebe wanted to help these men. They were FBI after all. But she didn’t like them. Not one bit. “I was looking for a toy. Not a television.”

 “This is classic mosaic theory.”

 “What’s this got to do with art projects?” she asked. “I was trying to get the skinny on helicopters.”

 “You’re good,” Fletcher said, the cynicism clear in his voice. “No wonder your son’s hedge fund is so successful.”

 “I still don’t understand what you want from me.”

 “The game’s over,” he growled.

 “What game?”

 “You’re feeding inside info to your son,” charged Fletcher. “Numbers from one store. Numbers from another. They don’t sound like much. But put them together, and they add up to an unfair trading advantage. Did the employees say anything else about their store sales?”

 “Just what I told you. They can’t keep those helicopters on the shelves.”

 Dixon was holding a framed photo of Phoebe’s grandson.

 “Can’t you please tell me what’s wrong?” she pleaded, snagging her grandson’s black-and-white from the agent’s hand.

 “Let me paint the picture,” Fletcher barked with Jack Webb’s staccato inflection. “Your son runs a hedge fund—”

 “He’s good at math,” she interrupted.

 “You spent the last four hours at three different stores. You didn’t buy a thing. No receipts. Zip. But you spoke to the manager at each one. My agents say you were asking all kinds of questions. You’re throwing around inventory numbers left and right. And we think something’s rotten.”

 “Oh my lord,” Phoebe exhaled. “Were you following me?”

 “Let me ask you something,” demanded Fletcher, pouring it on now. “You like to shop, right?”

“What else is there to do?”

 “She’s probably working for one of those ‘expert network’ rings,” observed Dixon, pursing his lips and shaking his head left to right.

 “What ring?” Phoebe was confused.

 “You’re an industry specialist,” Fletcher charged. “You better level with us. It’ll go a lot easier for you. And your son.”

 “Tell me what to do,” she gasped, fear taking over, her voice rising. “I’ll cooperate. Anything.”

 “Does your son pay you for this info?”

 “He takes me to lunch.”

 “Hah! I knew it,” the agent triumphed. “Do you use email?”

 “Doesn’t everybody?”

 “Okay that’s it,” Fletcher said, turning to Dixon. “Get the team in here now.”

 Dixon hustled to the front door, full of purpose. Things were heating up. He whistled all loud and screechy through his front teeth. He signaled for reinforcements with his index finger.

 A dozen FBI agents swarmed through Phoebe’s house. Armed with cardboard boxes, they packed up her computer and her answering machine. One agent—a young, earnest, living ad for talcum powder—snagged a takeout menu from her kitchen.

 “I think we’ve got something here,” he informed Fletcher. “There are phone numbers scrawled next to the Hunan beef.”

 Phoebe was stunned, speechless, her eyes wider than the saucer holding her cup of coffee.

 “You need to come with us,” instructed Fletcher. “We’re taking you to White Plains for more questions.”

 “May I get my shoes?” she asked, her voice listless, her demeanor beaten and zombie like. “My purse, too?”

 “Go get them,” Fletcher instructed Dixon. “Make sure she’s not hiding anything.”

Kennedy Foster Interview

The Novel Road Interview: Kennedy Foster

 

  Times change, in both date and circumstance. Certain genres are held as emblematic of society or culture and weather with the ages, yet remain a vital link to who we are and in some cases, why we will forever be.

  The American Western is an icon. Those that are talented enough to place an entry into its ranks know, and dream of, the open sky and vast prairie. They know the land.

  Barbed wire is no stranger, just as a horse’s nudge is that of a friend. Ranch and farm life is what drives and reveals them. I know many of them, and have yet to find one without callused hands or twinkle in the eyes.

  My guest today, Kennedy Foster, is a person that knows the land. Her offering, the novel, “All Roads Lead Back To You” is well suited to take its place with the great Western works. It shows a page turned, to that of the modern ranch, and retains the sinews of its Western heritage nobly. It reminds us too, that the Western isn’t solely the purview of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The Great Northwest is as Western as they come, you just get to add four or five feet of snow to the formula.

   

    "This book will stick with you as you think about all the challenges and changes of contemporary cowboy life, like immigrant issues, pest control, inheritance, breeding practices, water rights, lifestyle choices and the unending labor. Its mild romantic subplot will thrill western lovers. A good book club selection, it includes a readers' guide. " --Romantic Times (4 1/2 Stars)

How about a little background?

    Kennedy Foster was born in Detroit in 1944 and raised in the Army.  Her father was a career officer, so she ‘followed the gun’ to Germany, to Virginia, to California, to Washington DC, to Kansas, to Alaska, back to Kansas, to Pennsylvania, back to DC, and back to Germany.  She attended six elementary schools, three high schools, and two colleges, finishing her BA at Grinnell College in 1966.  She wrote poetry and short stories, which were published in school literary magazines and made her mother proud but did not otherwise attract attention.

  She married a Grinnell professor, who turned out to be the right stuff.  Because academics were extremely peripatetic in those years, the family traveled a lot, from Iowa (where her sons John and James were born), to California, to Maryland, and finally to southeastern Washington state.  During this period, she “rode a lot of borrowed horses, and wrote in borrowed styles,” having developed a transient’s habit of re-inventing herself in each new place. 

  In the Northwest she struck root, a delightful sensation.  She gave up fiction, took writing jobs of various kinds, grants, financial development boilerplate, newsletters.  At 45, she discovered a vocation to teach. She has taught English as a second language, basic writing, and basic college skills at Walla Walla Community College since 1988.

  About the writing of her first novel, she says, “We had a sabbatical in Scotland, up in the north, Aberdeenshire.  Six months in a bed-sit, freezing blast off the North Sea, dawn at nine, dark at three, no job, no acquaintance, and my life’s companion in the library from breakfast to teatime. So I had to write the book.  I felt like the dog in the Faulkner story who knew if she were going to keep on calling herself a hound, she would have to tackle the bear.”

  Kennedy Foster lives in Walla Walla with her husband Edward, an indeterminate number of cats, and not nearly enough horses.

   

 I'm honored to introduce you to, author Kennedy Foster: 

Me: Give me a two-sentence “hook” describing “All Roads Lead Me Back to You”.

Kennedy: Okay.  It’s a story set in the ranching country of Washington state,   about two people from opposed cultures who instinctively recognize each other’s quality and eventually, through shared work, come to value, support, and love each other.  It’s also about the work itself.  How’s that?

Me: Contemporary Northwest Fiction?  I have to complain about this choice of description on your website.  To my mind, you have written one of the better Westerns (Modern) in recent memory. The level of attachment to your details, as well as their factual base, makes this a remarkable debut novel. Talk about your research.



Kennedy: Well, research. It’s looking and listening, and remembering.  For regional writing, the material is all around us.  You can’t be obvious about collecting, though; if you go around with a notebook and pen at the ready, people around here will think you’re working for the brand inspector or the water-master, they’ll clam up.  Anyway, you’d accumulate too much stuff; it’s what sticks, what resonates that you want:  certain revealing gestures, looks, turns of phrase that twang in your mind.  Numbers, you can always get off the internet, and I suppose every writer cherishes his/her posse of experts for questions like, “Should Standfast invest in a calf-table instead of hiring round-up help?” (To which the answer was, “Not for fewer than seventy animals.”)



Aberdeenshire



Me: You wrote a Western in Scotland.  Your sabbatical took you far from home and  inspired you to write All Roads Lead Me Back To You". Did your trip give you a unique clarity or helpful distance from your subject?

Kennedy: Not as far as you might think. Like everywhere in the USA, Walla Walla is a melting-pot (at one time there were, I think, nineteen nations represented, everybody from Finns to Fijians, all with their own social halls, newspapers, and burial societies), but the bass-note is Scots-Irish-Welsh.  So to go and live among Celts was to return to the source of that practical ingenuity, extreme physical hardiness, and crazy optimism that signalized our pioneers.  And they’re still around, a type of guy (male and female) who will stop and help you change your blown tire in the snow and jury-rig your broken trailer-hitch and convoy you into town and call you ma’am the whole time. And he/she will do it for anybody, even one suspected of being an illegal alien, or a liberal. And so, my first extended stay in Scotland kind of opened my eyes: “Oh, so that’s where that comes from.” Yes:  optimism, cheerfulness.  It goes against the stereotype, doesn’t it? But in my (admittedly limited) experience, Scots are mostly only grim when the English are stealing their real estate.  It’s the weather that’s dour.

Me: The level of “mind’s eye” detail in your writing is extraordinary.  The reader can quite literally feel Alice walking out into the dark and snow on the very first page.  How do you decide on the level of detail to include?

Kennedy: That’s an acute question:  the level.  Obviously, there are the extremes.  Too little and, the reader thinks, “Where the hell are we and what’s going on?” Too much, and he/she yells, “Awright, awready!  Get on with it!” But in between—hmm. 

  First, you wouldn’t want to state your theme, your deep purpose in writing, baldly and straight-out, because then you’d have a polemic, not a novel.  So instead you need to include observations that point the reader in the right direction.  For example, if you think that work is the saving of the world, then you might demonstrate with a lot of small details the good effect of steady work or a certain kind of work on one character and the bad effect of no work or no necessity for work on another.

  Second, in building a character, again you don’t want to come right out and say, “X was a complete stinker.”  That may be your opinion, but the reader would probably rather form his own (one of the delights of reading, after all), and besides it’s too simple to be true; humans aren’t all-one-thing right through, or over time.  But you can kind of “off-shore” your development of a character by letting him interpret details that you would want to put in for narrative purposes anyway.  For instance, if you want to show that your guy who’s seemingly as rough as a cob has a more complex inner life than other characters suppose, you can arrange for his take on an early snow, which is going to be a factor in what happens next, to be kind of meditative or poetic.

 
  And then it’s the accumulation of such details that gives the character depth and roundness.

  Actually, I think the trick is not to get in the reader’s way.  I don’t want the reader to be conscious of me at all; I want the writing to be transparent; I want the reader to be in the story.  So when, in editing, I come on something that seems to say, “Look how clever I’m being,” I generally take it out.

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  "Foster's own experiences as an ESL teacher and resident of the area enhance the authenticity of her debut novel, which is told from both Alice's and Domingo's perspectives with a wealth of descriptive detail and insights into social issues rooted in the realities of immigration, labor, and property law."-Booklist

                                         

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Me: You get to have lunch with any writer you like, from throughout history or today.  Who would you invite, and why?

Kennedy: And where? In Walla Walla, in New York, in Delhi?  And who’s paying?

  Okay, my two favorite living authors are Jane Smiley and Vikram Seth. 

  Jane Smiley writes the most entertaining domestic essays I’ve ever read.  And among many splendid novels, she’s written the best horse story ever, Horse Heaven.  It’s so crafty, it’s delicious.  There isn’t a weak scene in it, not a line of dialogue that sounds forced or cliché.  I can’t say enough about it; in fact, I can’t say anything else about it except that I wish I’d written it.  Plus, she’s a midwestern girl, my kind, and I’d like to know what she’s doing with her horses right now.

  Vikram Seth wrote A Suitable Boy, which I bought because I’m interested in Indian writing in English.  Then I bought about six more copies and sent them to my nears and dears.  Wow.  First of all, it’s huge, and secondly, it gives you an idea what a truly multicultural society looks like up close.  Though I don’t think that’s the real purpose of the work, just a bonus.  I think A Suitable Boy is about love in its infinite variety, which “age cannot wither nor custom stale.”  It’s just tremendous and I don’t know why it hasn’t been made into a film, unless it’s that a film version could not possibly do it justice.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why you two are a perfect match.

Kennedy: My agent is Janet Reid at FinePrint Literary.  She’s from Bend, Oregon, which is a bit like Walla Walla:  dry-side agriculture, interesting geology, and a lot of whoop-‘em-up history. But she lives in New York now, and I know she misses her horses montones.

  The writer Craig Lesley brought us together. She liked my first book; that’s one thing that makes us a good match. Another is that she’s extremely well-read and very articulate, so if there’s something in a draft that she thinks should be changed, she can say exactly why. This is excellent because, although I don’t object to changing things, even quite major things, I need a rationale.  ‘Cause a reason indicates a direction.

Me: Talk about editing your work.  How did you know when to stop?

Kennedy: I used to think that editing would go from big to small, like in a school essay where first you read for logic and the most persuasive arrangement of ideas, and then for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  Not at all.  Grammar-spelling-punctuation goes on all the time, every time I read the piece, or any part of it, for any reason, and I read it a lot.  For one thing, when I start work on it each day, I read back what I wrote the two days before.  For another, I think of other stuff to put in, so the right place has to be found and its effect there compared with other possible locations.  For a third, I sometimes sit bolt-upright in the middle of the night thinking, Holy Toledo!  I’ve got So-and-so burgling a house on Monday and getting arrested for it the previous Tuesday!  Or I write a phrase that sounds familiar, check back, and find I’ve used it six times already.

  But that’s easy stuff, really.  It’s when somebody else, like Agent Janet or the editor at Pocket Books, has a problem with something I feel is integral or central or just plain swell that I have to get right down and lay right to, as the pulling-horse people say.  For example, in the first draft of All Roads Lead Me Back to You, I wanted to demonstrate the ceremonious quality of Mexican Spanish, so I translated the tú-form, the informal “you,” as the old English informal “you” which was “thou.” So, for example, Domingo would say in Spanish to Socorro, “Art thou scared, Coco?” Well, Janet and Abby Z at Pocket Books both said, “We get it.  But after a while it gets in the way of the story.”  Which I couldn’t quarrel with, and besides, I realized that it wasn’t a good device because when Spanish-speakers use “tú”, it doesn’t sound odd and archaic to them like “thou” does to us. But it was all through the novel, so fixing it was quite a job. Thank you, Bill Gates, for the Edit function.

  I guess the short answer is that I know to stop editing when the book goes to press.

Me: Tell us about your next novel? When can your fans expect it?

Kennedy: I can say a little bit about it.  It’s about seven-eighths done.  The story follows some of the characters from All Roads and introduces some new ones.  It contains a couple of cameos of real-life people. The horses come through okay.

  Janet hasn’t seen it yet. 

Me: Life-experience in the writing process:  what advice can you give writers on its importance?

Kennedy: Life-experience is the raw clay, but what you make of it is something else.  If it isn’t, you’re writing autobiography. Between actual history on the one hand and self-indulgent wish fulfillment on the other lies the territory where readers trust the writer to know the way. So in matters of fact, you’d better be sure, or make sure; otherwise, you look like a schmoo. 

   But life-experience doesn’t get imported whole into fiction very often, I’m betting; in fact, it’s kind of like a stew, with every spoonful a recombination.  My friend the short-story writer M. M. Liberman told me that he once saw a cashmere overcoat left on a seat in the subway, and then later had an encounter with the Argentine Nobelist Jorge Luis Borges.  The two things happened six or seven years apart, but they came together in his imagination like puzzle pieces as the crux of his wonderful story “Posala’s Coat.” 

   I don’t know what else to say about this except, “Never throw anything away.” I mean experiences, not notes.  Well, notes either, come to think of it.

For example, my sweetheart and I eating Chinese one night last week, a slightly tipsy lady in the next booth declared, “I have this dog Emily.  She’s a Chihuahua. When she was born, the vet gave up on her.  I said, ‘Oh, that dog will live.’ That was three years ago.”  I’m keeping this.  I know it means something, but I don’t know what. I’m waiting for the next piece of the puzzle.

Me: I became quite attached to the tenor of your writing style. What authors have influenced your writing voice? 

Kennedy: Sadly, everybody. The last author I read, always.  I have to guard against this.  In the course of my writing life, I’ve done bad Kipling, bad Faulkner, bad Hemingway, really terrible Katherine Anne Porter, bad David Foster Wallace, most recently bad Patrick O’Brian. A chameleon, and not a very skillful one. ( I even did a spell as Ayn Rand, which brought me out in hives; I think it was the politics more than the prose, though.)  I suppose it comes of traveling around as an Army brat and needing to fit in.  Explanation, not excuse.

  Some voices are so attractive that you just wonder, “How does he do that?” and want to give it a try.  But I emphatically do not want to write like anybody; no writer does.  On the other hand, an extremely individual style calls attention to itself in a way that distracts the reader from the story:  also not good.  There must be a happy medium in there somewhere.

           Interesting questions, Mr Morrison.  Nice talking with you! 

                                          - Kennedy Foster

Walla Walla, Washington