When someone you don't know reads your book

Jay Huguley

We write in solitude (although sometimes during Nanowrimo I hunker down in a cafe with a friend and we try not to talk to each other while we write on our laptops). It's a solo flight with our own imagination. And yet, the whole time, we're thinking and hoping that there will be people reading these words someday.

I have to report it is heart-stopping to see someone you don't know reading your book... (and heartwarming to see someone you do know). I owe huge thanks to Walking Dead actor Jay Huguley for instagramming himself reading a galley of my novel. He saw a post by my publisher about my book and responded, and of course they jumped on sending him a copy. It was incredibly generous of him to post that photo. And for me: a new experience. I've never seen a stranger reading my book.

An old writers group friend once said he knew he'd "arrived" when he was boarding a plane and, walking down the aisle, saw someone holding his novel. I've never had that happen to me. The closest was when I used to write a history column for a newspaper in Oakland called The Montclarion. I sat one day having coffee in Montclair (yes, I know, the newspaper title doesn't totally correspond to the neighborhood spelling; I've tried not to let it bother me) and saw someone at the next table reading my column which had a mugshot associated with it. After a bit he turned to me and said, "This is you, isn't it?"

That was a thrill, for sure, but seeing Jay relaxing on his sofa with his hand splayed over Lizzie's face: that was electrical.

Jay plays William Moody in the upcoming film Lizzie. Moody was an attorney for the prosecution, trying to get Lizzie convicted (unsuccessfully). He appears in my novel. Here's a little snatch:

He showed the courtroom Miss Lizzie's shoes, stockings, dress and skirt. Bridget did not like seeing a man holding up such personal items. The stockings still held the shape of Miss Lizzie's calves and instep; it was as if Miss Lizzie herself was lifting her skirts to show the world her legs.

Thanks again to Jay for the experience that feels like somewhat a culmination of my whole writing process. I wrote words, they were seen, they were digested.

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Interviewing Pixar's Inside Out creators

Last month, I had the intense pleasure of a phone interview for Oakland Magazine with Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera, the director and producer of Pixar's Inside Out (they both have Oakland/Piedmont ties). I found the movie to be an extraordinary, moving film far deeper than what children might be able to garner from it. Its target audience basically is parents, a thesis which Docter and Rivera agreed to. Yet don't let that stop you from bringing your kids; there's enough there to entertain and amuse as young as five years old.

Due to the article wordcount I wasn't able to include all the great things they told me. I'll add one here. Jonas Rivera said that his favorite part of the movie is a short scene where Joy doesn't want Riley to go to sleep and they put on their favorite song and "she skates along with her. It's an impossible relationship; it's the only time they're on screen together." Riley doesn't even know Joy exists...it's a poignant thought that the single most important aspect of her young personality is unknown to her.

I watched a special media showing before the official release date with friend and fellow historical novelist Erin McCabe, and boy, were we both sniffling, as was the entire audience. Friends who cry together stay together, right? I watched again later with my family, and noticed more the second time. For instance, I had noted that Joy has blue hair, but it didn't really register until the second viewing. Joy must always be tinged with sadness, because the remembrance of joy is the remembrance of something we once experienced and can't ever again in the same way. Which reminds me, I really need to read Proust sometime.

My article begins, "Pixar’s magic: making the events on the big screen somehow related to our small, foible-filled lives. And this year’s offering Inside Out proves that enchanted formula works again, but this time to a degree that leaves audience members in tears of reflection." Read the full text at Oakland Magazine's website.

. . . .
P.S. I previously interviewed Brave's filmmakers and got to visit the much-vaunted Pixar campus in Emeryville, California. Read that post here.

P.P.S. One more tidbit. I felt the film may revolutionize how people think about thinking. For instance, if we have concrete ways of thinking about emotions, it might be easier to say, "I'll let Joy take the helm and push Anger aside." I asked Docter and Rivera if they intended that, as a bit of self-help for viewers, and they pshawed me. "No, we're just trying to entertain." Sure.:)

Donner Party Later On...

NOT the Breens

The latest issue of the East Bay Monthly (out of Berkeley) contains my article about J. Ross Browne, a famous-but-lost-to-time author who dined with members of the Breen family after their rescue from what is now called Donner Lake. His imagination got the best of him and he imagined his hosts as blood-thirsty cannibals, which is actually very sad when we consider that they were not ghouls but people pushed to the outer limits of hunger.

How can any of us predict how we would act in the same circumstances? The urge to live is strong, and the Donner Party people lived under the hope that rescue was imminent if they could just hold out one more day. All accounts show how desperate and shamed the people were who had to partake in human flesh. Definitely not their first choice!

The article can be found here.

One unexpected bonus of this article is that I was contacted via email by a descendant of the Breens. She very graciously and diplomatically pointed out that the photo that ran with the article, identifying Patrick and Margret Breen, was not in fact of a photo of them. I thanked her profusedly, offered to collect an oral history, and let her know that I would pass the information along to the magazine. The magazine will be running a correction. In the meantime....I'm so excited to have had email contact with someone with a true connection to the Donners. She is my version of a celebrity!

J. Ross Browne's lithograph of a sperm whale hunt

The photographs and illustrations that ran with the story (including a great lithograph of a sperm whale surfacing, about to be harpooned: J. Ross Browne's harrowing stories of whale hunting inspired no less than Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick)  were under the magazine's art direction, and it'd be hard to fault them for using that photograph. That photograph is circulated everywhere with the misidentification of the couple depicted; it reminds me of another situation, in which a portrait has been repeatedly shared on the web as depicting Mary Bliss Parsons. It's not. There are no known portraits of Mary Bliss Parsons, my ancestor accused of witchcraft on at least two occasions. Here's my blog post about that particular situation. 

Anyway, I think it's important to remember that some people's lives continued after the disaster in the Sierra. Marysville, California, for instance, is named for Mary Murphy, another Donner Party survivor, and many went on to become important town leaders wherever they settled. Louis Keseberg: another matter.

Speaking of other matters, my friend Lynn Carthage's book Haunted: The Arnaud Legacy launched last week, and I've been watching her progress with interest. The book is a young adult neo-Gothic thriller (a fancy way of saying "haunted mansion story") and I highly recommend it.

Members of local Historical Novels Society help Lynn Carthage launch her novel. From left,
Erin McCabe (I Shall Be Near to You), Susan Spann (Blade of the Samurai),
Jennifer Laam (Secret Daughter of the Tsar), and Lynn Carthage.
Three other HNS folks were at the reading but unfortunately departed before
photo time: Mark Weideranders, Kathy Boyd Fellure, and Pam Munn.

Oakland Tribune blurb

In today's Oakland Tribune, reviewer Kathleen Geib says:

Mailman serves up vivid description, sparkling prose and a Gold Rush prostitute as scrappy as Scarlett O'Hara.

I like the reference to Scarlett. I love GWTW and I believe the melodrama of the movie has somewhat cheapened what is an incredible historical novel. I have always loved how unashamed Scarlett was--if she needed to steal her sister's fiance to put food in everyone's mouth, so be it. If she had to trick Rhett Butler into thinking she's rich so he'll marry her, so be it. I was definitely inspired by this headstrong heroine.

And there's more... throughout my novel Nora uses unconventional expletives. I had a great time making these up (and I have a list somewhere of the ones I had to cut...an agent who once represented the book thought it was overkill, rightly so)... my favorite is "Donkey's funeral!" I could just picture the sad circle of donkeys in the middle of the dusty street, looking down at their fallen comrade.

I think I was inspired by an expletive Scarlett uses: "God's nightgown!" The idea of the old-style big-bearded majestic God feminized by wearing a frilly 1800s nightgown; it just cracked me up. I still don't know if that was a typical irreverent exclamation or if Margaret Mitchell made it up; whichever, I was charmed.

I also remember my nana saying "Well, good night!" as her own interjection of surprise or disbelief.

Colorful language is so pleasurable... I once worked for a boss who would coin things on the fly while talking on the phone. I recall him calling someone a "son of a sea biscuit."

Next reading: Tonight! Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007. Reading at Books Inc. in Alameda, 7:30 p.m., 1344 Park Street, Alameda. 510-522-2226

She's light as a feather

but stiff as a board.

Here's a tour at the St. Denis basilica, looking much like a slumber party seance. Unfortunately, all in rapid French, so I could only pine for information.

I'm back home in Oakland, still somewhat fighting jet lag five days later. It's great to be back; went to an A's game yesterday, walked down to my neighborhood cafe today, saw a movie at the Parkway last night, walked in the redwood forest... some of my favorite Oakland things to do.

And now that I have reliable access again, I am supplementing old posts with the photos intended for them, and adding a few more.

Kismet

Yesterday I was out photographing various Oakland landmarks that had been saved through efforts of Oakland Heritage Alliance members. Here’s a startling one: City Hall itself!

After the Loma Prieta earthquake, there was a strong push to knock it over and start over. Luckily, our gorgeous Beaux Arts building got the seismic retrofit it deserved.

I was photographing these buildings for the Oakland Heritage Alliance newsletter, which I lay out. It's OHA's 25th anniversary, so I was trying to get images to illustrate a looking-back kind of article. Since Friends of the Oakland Fox, the group working to re-open the fabulous old Fox Theater which has been abandoned for decades, was an OHA offshoot, I decided to take pictures of the Fox façade.

Façade only, since the front is barred with chain link fence. I’d only been inside the theater twice, for very abbrievated looks.

So I was there holding my camera, peering through the fence, when I discerned a live human behind it, sitting in a chair. Upon seeing me, he rose to his feet and walked to the gate, saying, “You’re here to take photographs? Come on in.”

He was treating me like he was expecting me!

Although it crossed my mind to pretend I was whoever he thought I was (which always works in movies), I decided to come clean. “Are you expecting a photographer?”

“Yes.”

“Someone from a newspaper, media?”

“No, a preservation group or something.”

“Oh. It’s just a random coincidence that I’m here taking pictures of the Fox. But I wonder… is that preservation group the Oakland Heritage Alliance?”

He wasn’t sure, but he was kind enough to let me inside anyway. I was blown away by the luck of my timing, to be there holding a camera when he expected someone holding a camera….

So for the third time in my life, I entered the cavernous and gorgeous Fox Theater, built in 1928 and moldering since the 1970s. The 4,000 or some odd seats are all gone, so the auditorium is vast and curved and empty. On either side of the stage are two gigantic Buddha statues. Back when the Fox was operational, incense would burn in the figures’ laps and their eyes would glow. One statue’s eyes glowed ruby, and the other’s emerald.

The theater was very dark and of course my flash didn’t serve to light the space, so the interior shots didn’t work. But here are some shots of the dazzling Art Deco entrance, where the ticket booth used to stand. The marquee and blade (the long vertical sign) were very badly deteriorated, and in 2001 the city paid to have them professionally restored, so they beam brightly at night although the Fox itself is still pretty dismal. 

The Friends of the Oakland Fox just kicked off a capital campaign to get the theater restored enough to hold performances there, sort of a placeholder until the whole thing can be restored. Even just this stopgap restoration, called the Ruins project (i.e., keep the theater as a ruin, but operational) is supposed to cost $27 million! I’ll be making a donation once I get my advance, and you should too!

Offbeat Xmas Part I: “Unhappy Hellidays”

Alan and I drove from Oakland to Las Vegas (8.5 hours) in the hopes of finding a Christmas that matched our moods this year. 

Our first choice was the ghost town Bodie, but it sits off the highway on a 10-mile dirt road that is ostensibly covered in deep snow, so we changed our destination to Portland, Oregon. Then we got the weather reports that Portland was just as deluged with rain as we were, so we decided to hit our old friend Las Vegas.

We had a pretty noneventful ride down the length of California. Near Barstow, I saw a sign for a ghost town called Calico, which got me in a frenzy of excitement. I could get my ghost town after all! Alan promised we’d hit it on the way back [insert ominous oboe sounds….]

We arrived in Vegas just after midnight on the 24th, which means we checked into our nondescript, non-strip, non-casino hotel on Christmas Day itself. 

Christmas Day included some random gambling (craps being our game), looking forward to that evening for the first event that would mark this as an Offbeat Christmas. : the Unhappy Hellidays exhibit at MTZC. MTZC is an art gallery that advertises “No wine, cheese or children.” Here’s the description that attracted us:

"Unhappy Hellidays" (First Friday 12/2/05 - 1/2/06) - Not everyone embraces the Hallmark spin on this time of year. MTZC's disturbing December exhibit is a group show that allows no fewer than 23 artists (each with their own coal-filled sweat-sock nailed to the mantle) to explore the depths of cynicism & misery some people experience during this month with the highest suicide rates. FREE

We enjoyed such pieces as the Last Bath, a photograph showing a woman’s legs in a bath of blood, and the row of yucky sweat socks nailed to the mantel. When we arrived, one of the socks had already been filled by Santa, with a flyer illustrating sexual acts. Cybele, the co-artist of this latter piece with Mark T. Zeilman, is shown here in front of it in her holiday evening gown. 

Get ready for the Oakland connection: Cybele used to live in Adam’s Point! I can’t explain her terrible oversight in choosing to leave Oakland, but she was wonderful and it was great to talk to her.

We also really liked a piece by Lorraine Leslie, pictured at the top of the post. A Dia De Los Muertos-esque Santa pulls a sobbing, terrified little girl onto his lap. The painting is framed with a “candy cane” that is smeared with blood. Lorraine was there too, and she wore a t-shirt that read, “Waste your life. Be an artist.”

Also present was Michael Kruis, who owns the gallery next door, and Brian Paco Alvarez. We had a great time with these guys and their eggnog; it was the perfect way to spend this particular Christmas evening. Here’s a picture of, from left, Cybele, Michael, Brian doing an Imitation of Christ, Lorraine and Alan.

We were so glad we went to this showing. For all the times we’ve gone to Las Vegas, this was the first time we ever connected with real people (other than the dealers’ perennial “Where you folks from?”) who actually live real lives there.

It was also the night we got some terrible, terrible advice [oboes sound again].

Next time: Alan gives blood in Las Vegas.

. . . . .

Unexpected goodbye

Here’s a post I never, ever expected to make: my dear friend Debi Echlin has died unexpectedly.

I first met Debi in 2000 or 2001. She was doing the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk, and I met with her to interview her for a Montclarion story. I went on a hike with her and her dog Molly—and soon enough we were hopelessly lost. I didn’t mind a bit: the conversation was wonderful, Debi was incredible, and it was a great excuse not to go back to the office. After finally plummaging through the woods, we found a trail that finally led us back to the car, rueful and laughing. We had a meeting of the minds that day and became fast friends.

Debi was the owner of Second Edition at the time, a new and used bookstore. Later, she bought out her two partners and changed the format of the store to stock only new books, changing the name to A Great Good Place for Books. The name apparently harks to a book that provides a model for “great good” meeting places for community—something Debi took seriously with her store. It wasn’t just a bookstore; it was a place for people to come together. It’s no surprise that the store launched and supports dozen of book clubs. 

When my Oakland Hills book came out, Debi staunchly supported me, giving the book prime placement in the store, on the front left corner of the table as you first enter. It was also on the cashier’s counter. What an amazing, supportive friend she was.

I confided in Debi things that many of my friends don’t know. As a mentoring, loving personality, with wisdom and depth from years of being on this planet as a good person, Debi encouraged my confidences and in turn shared with me some of her battles and hopes. I loved her and can’t believe she’s gone, so irreparably taken from us. And when I say us, I mean myself in my own selfish craving for my sweet, fiery-haired friend again, and us: Montclair, Oakland, the community, the booklovers. 

I wish I had the chance to take just one more hike with her. I had been thinking of calling her for just that purpose earlier on the day I got the news. And we had talked of going to Ireland in the new year together: a gift of her time I will never get to enjoy. How great to have one last ramble over the hills with her, with Molly jingling away in her dog collar. I miss you, Debi.