THE MISSION: TO MEET SHERMAN ALEXIE

It WAS a dark and stormy night. But I’m not going to say that.

It was a Chicago night in late October. The cold rain made the roads slick and slowed everyone down. It was getting dark around five-thirty already and the menacing clouds made the sky even darker.

We were on a mission. The destination: the Harold Washington Library in downtown Chicago. The tools we had: a 1989 Dodge Caravan with a broken transmission. The countown: 57 minutes and counting. We were determined to see Sherman Alexie.

Sherman Alexie, one of our great Native American writers, has a remarkable biography. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation near Spokane, Washington. Learned to read by age three and had read The Grapes of Wrath by age five. He received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for his collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, published in 1993. Since then, he’s been writing brilliant works of both fiction and nonfiction, inspiring Native Americans and the rest of us to work for our dreams. To not be afraid to dream.

"If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing." — Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket. . . . Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace." — Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)

So now you understand why we would fight traffic to get downtown during rush hour. As anyone who lives in Chicago knows, getting from A to B can be quite an adventure. Having a car sometimes makes the travel easier. Sometimes not.

David picked me up from work at five sharp and we hit the road. Traffic was crawling along slowly, but the reading and interview didn’t begin until six so I thought we had plenty of time.
It took us almost an hour to get downtown and onto Michigan avenue, where we sat in traffic for ten minutes before turning off to find a parking lot. We found parking fairly easy for $10. It was six o’clock so we walked fast, huddling until my big clear umbrella.

The Harold Washington Library is huge and beautiful. We found the doors and made our way to where it looked like people were collecting. We were then told that the room was filled to capacity and they weren’t letting anyone else in to see Sherman Alexie.

Heartbroken, we wondered what to do. The “man in charge” told us that we could come back in an hour for the book signing. So we decided to get a cheap meal at the Dairy Queen and come back. Sometimes there’s nothing like greasy fries and soft serve ice cream to mend the heart.

We walked back to the library, chilled and damp by the time we reached our destination. We wandered a bit, trying to find the exclusive room. We followed the flow of traffic going in the opposite direction and found ourselves in a large, theater-like auditorium. I was amazed that this room had been filled to capacity. I spotted several groups of teenagers and students. We stood in a weaving line, leading up to the front where Sherman Alexie was sitting at a small table. We could see him smiling and taking pictures with his fans.

Apparently, everyone had been given a ticket with a number on it so that you had to get in line in numerical order. It took us about fifteen confusing minutes to figure this out. We didn’t have a number because we hadn’t been able to get in. We were accosted by librarians for not standing in the right order and I was afraid that they might call security. Worried that we were making a scene, I was about to abort the mission. David held fast though and, overhearing our predicament, a teenager gave us his number.

When we finally reached the front, I shook Mr. Alexie’s hand and told him what a pleasure it was to meet him. He was charming and funny even after a recorded hour-long interview and signing books for half an hour. We told him our story and he said he was sorry we were “outted.” He then wrote, “Sorry you were outted” and his signature in my copy of Reservation Blues.

I walked away on clouds. I had just met and spoken with a man of greatness. Maybe some of it rubbed off on me.

Literary Update

Tis the beginning of the holiday season and winter is already nipping at our noses. I wanted to take a moment to share some wonderful news with you.

The first official reading of Cast the First Stone was a brilliant success. Thanks to all of you that were able to come. (You can read all about it here.) The next event may be at The Book Cellar in November. Details will be announced as soon as they are finalized.

On my ever active blog on Open Salon, I interviewed author J. Adams Oaks, blogged about the idea of Princess Leia being a feminist icon, and wrote a humorous post about my experience with H1N1 as a pharmacy tech. I was interviewed about my take on feminism here. CTFS was reviewed by Ashley’s Bookshelf and by Open Salon’s Stim. (A huge thank you to both of them!)

Very soon I expect to be downshifting from promoting CTFS to finding an agent/publisher for my second book, Invisible Elephants. I have almost completed the second rewrite and I believe will to ready to send out by February. This is a very nervous-racking process for me, so I will definitely appreciate all of the emotional support I can get.

As the holiday season approaches, don’t forget to check out the CTFS shop and the DeRosaArt shop. There are some wonderful gift ideas there.

Thank you again for all of your support. I couldn’t do this without you.

Princess Leia, Feminist Icon?

As I’ve alluded to in earlier posts, I didn’t have many female role models while I was growing up. Feminism was a bad word in our home. Women were expected to be supportive to their husbands, good mothers, and take care of the home. Wives were told by God to obey their husbands. My dad was most definitely the head of the household. To him, feminism was a weapon of the devil to destroy families and marriages. This was actually a common view among American Christians in the 1980’s.

“Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” -- Pat Robertson

(Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Can you imagine anyone saying that? Out loud? The whole sentence is absurd.)

My father was very strict about what kind of secular influences we were exposed to, but he loved science fiction. Star Wars: A New Hope was the first movie I remember watching. I was in awe of the visuals of outer space, the music that stirred my sense of adventure, and the lead heroine, an intelligent, passionate, and courageous woman, who didn’t take orders from anyone.

When I saw Princess Leia’s courage in the face of Darth Vader, I was in awe. Every single time I watched it, which was about once a year. I identified with this woman who was struggling for freedom in an oppressive environment. She stood up to her father (obviously, she didn’t know Vader was her father, but still…) and refused to betray her beliefs. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Princess Leia wasn’t the normal damsel in distress. She wasn’t just a beautiful woman. She had tenacity and grit. At the climax of the movie, I was a little disappointed that she stayed behind while the men went out in their fighters to destroy the Death Star. I vowed to never be the one to stay behind. I wanted to be right in the middle of the action.

I was one of the nerds that went to see all three original films when they came out in the theater again in the 90’s. I was one of the nerds that was crushed by Episode I: The Phantom Menace. It didn’t have the same raw energy, the wonderful characters, and the sense of awe that the original three films contained.

Later, I learned more about Carrie Fisher, the woman who has had to live in the shadow of her most famous role. Carrie Fisher is bipolar and—for those of you who aren’t familiar with this mental condition (I don’t like calling it an illness)—being bipolar is a very difficult challenge to overcome. I describe it as being emotionally acute. Being bipolar is a daily struggle and it makes relationships even more difficult to maintain. Her marriage with her soul mate, Paul Simon, ended after several years and her second husband (with whom she had a daughter) left her and came out of the closet.

Carrie Fisher never gave up though. In the years since her iconic performance as Princess Leia, she wrote several best-selling books, fiction and nonfiction, and has had cameo roles in film and TV. Carrie Fisher has a brilliant sense of humor and received an Emmy nomination for her cameo in the second season of 30 Rock. Currently, she is performing in the one-woman Broadway show Wishful Drinking, which is based on her best selling novel.*

I know that for many, Princess Leia is a sex symbol. The unattainable and perfect woman. For me, Princess Leia is my feminist icon. She was my first (and pretty much only) female role model for feminism until Lois Lane. (Yes, I realize that they’re both fictional characters.) In a male-dominated universe, she stood out as a force to be reckoned with. Tough, smart, and outspoken, she typified everything that I wanted to be.

*http://carriefisher.com/?p=14

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/televisionawards/emmys/2008-09-15-carrie-fisher_N.htm

Interview with Author, J. Adams Oaks

Last week I posted about my (very exciting!) first official reading at Women and Children First. I opened for a brilliant author, J. Adams Oaks, who read from his debut novel Why I Fight. I was so impressed by the captivating novel (which I devoured in about two days) and with J. that I asked him if I could interview him.

Tell us a little about your novel, Why I Fight?

Well, let’s see, it’s my first novel. It’s considered Young Adult and geared toward reluctant male readers. It’s about a boy named Wyatt Reaves who lives on the road with his traveling salesman Uncle Spade. Wyatt’s a quiet, kind soul who is just looking for his place in the world. He’s very tall, over feet by the time he’s in his early teens, so his uncle takes advantage of that and trains him to be a bare-fist boxer.

Fighting is not admired in my social community, but it was a common and acceptable experience when I was growing up. What inspired you to write a story about a kid that starts fighting for money?

I know this is going to sound funny, because I’d heard other writers talk about this happening and chuckled to myself, but the story told me it had to happen. I listened to Wyatt and he led me in that direction. I really didn’t want to write about fighting. In fact, I tried to get around it. I wrote scenes where Wyatt just carried on with his uncle without the fighting, without the income and the only answer to that, if I stayed true to both characters, was that Uncle Spade would have ditched Wyatt if he were useless. So I had to learn about fighting. I’ve never been around fighting before—I grew up in a middleclass academic family—so I had to interview some folks and read up on it. But now, I consider that part of the fun of writing, exploring the possibilities of the world you’ve created!

I am personally very drawn to both reading and writing coming of age stories. Why did you write a coming of age story?

Okay, to be fully honest, I didn’t think that was what I was writing. I balked at the suggestion by my agent that she wanted to try to sell my book as Young Adult because it was a coming-of-age story. I really hadn’t been paying attention to that section of literature while I was writing the novel and had no idea how much it had exploded and expanded and become so diverse. I’m so excited to be included in that group now, of course. The thing that’s so much fun about coming-of-age stories, for me, is that they are such a vital, dramatic and universal part of any person’s life. We all have one to tell. So even if Wyatt lives on the road and fist fights, there is still something there for any reader to empathize with if they see through the details to the emotions and struggles behind it all.

One of the things I loved about this novel is that it feels like the main character is talking directly to me. How does this writing style make the novel stand out from other books?

Thanks! I’m glad you felt that. I guess I’ve always written first-person narrators very close to the bone. And even more so with Wyatt; it’s what makes him truly unique, I think: his voice. My amazing editor, Richard Jackson, really worked with me to hone that voice. One of the first things he asked me when we started working together was, “Who is Wyatt telling this story to?” My answer was, “A stranger on a bus…. That’s the only way he’d be willing to admit to it all.” Richard’s response was, “Well, that’s not what you did. So let’s get to work on that.” My heart sank, but then began the first of three completely new drafts that forced me to check what why said to that stranger: Would he admit to killing animals? Would he swear? Would he lie? And how long would a stranger listen? It was a truly intriguing process and something I’ll use on the new novel I’m working on as well.

Sometimes when I’m writing about a character, I listen to music that I think my character like. What songs would you want as the soundtrack to Why I Fight?

Okay, what I imagine on the soundtrack to WHY I FIGHT is not necessarily what I’d listen to while I wrote, but what I remember on the radio on road trips when I was a kid: classic rock, glam rock, heavy metal, all the stuff Uncle Spade would listen to, you know, because Wyatt certainly never got to have control of the radio. What I listened to while I wrote was things that made me feel the words, but were in no way connected to the story. You’re going to laugh, but I listened to a lot of Brazilian music, like Samba and Bossa Nova. I didn’t know the words, but they were like poetry. I also listened to a lot of old jazz, like Billy Holiday and Louis Armstrong. I’ll have to try that with my next novel, listen to what the main character is listening to.

I don’t know about you, but I have about three different stories whirling in the back of my head while I’m currently working on one. Are you working on another novel now?

Yes, the new one takes place in Spain, so I’ll try listening to Flamenco and gypsy music to get into main character. I lived in Madrid for almost three years and so I’m finally writing about what it’s like to create a home so far from home. But, I’m like you; I’ve always got a bunch of things floating around in my brain while I’m working on the book. I have to have a few short stories going or they’ll become like flies buzzing in my ears.

I always like to hear about the beginning of an individual’s career path. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Well, I first thought I should be a cartoonist, but I wasn’t that good at the drawing. I do come from a long line of storytellers. But I remember writing stories even in elementary school. I used to write a paragraph on a note card and pass it to my friend Kathy Atkinson, then she’d write the next paragraph and give it to me. Also, my grandmother told me that for every story I mailed to her, she’d write down one of the stories from her very interesting life. I never got any of them in the mail (and I was pretty ticked about it) even though I kept mailing her what I’d written. And then, when she died, we found a notepad on her desk full of handwritten stories, and on the top of the first page it said, “For Jeffrey.” I guess writing has just been something I knew I would do.

I like to end my interviews with a ridiculous question. If you were a mythical creature, what would you be?

Ooh, that’s a good one! The first one that popped into my head was a griffin. That’s the eagle/lion, right? I would want to fly and be cool and ferocious. Ew, but I don’t think I want a beak. So maybe Pegasus. A winged Palomino. There we go. I’m good with that.

Thanks so much to J. for letting me interrogate him.

Please check out his book. You won't regret it. (You can read the first chapter here.)