A Southern Missive

Another beautiful and absolutely fascinating writer I met at my recent Jefferson, Texas author’s event was Melanie Wells. She graciously consented to a short interview. Here is her response to the starter questions I like to use to get to know authors. A photo of Melanie and her book cover is below also. You saw her earlier in an earlier post–she was the fiddle player for Trish Murphy. You can learn more about Melanie at her website: www.melaniewells.com

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
1. Your favorite author(s) and book(s)

I love Harper Lee and Truman Capote, who, ironically, were childhood friends. In Cold Blood is one of my favorite books ever. It’s just so beautifully written and such a heartbreaking, tense story. I read a book recently called West with the Night by Beryl Markham, who knew Isak Denisen in Africa. It’s one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. It made me want to go to Africa and fly planes. I also love Anne Lamott and David Sedaris. I love irreverent humor.

As to fiction – I don’t read that much fiction anymore. I do like Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich – I get compared to both of them a lot.

2. What is the most significant thing as a writer that you learned in writing this book?

This was a tough book to write. I had migraines the entire two years I was writing it. And there were issues at the publisher, because during the writing of this book, my publisher Multnomah was sold to Random House, and none of the authors really knew at the time whether that was good or bad news for us. It turned out to be great news for me. I was lucky. But I guess the writing of this book was mainly about perseverance and about letting the story be what it is. I’m always aware that if I think about sitting down to “write,” I can freeze up. It just sounds so daunting. But if I sit down and think, “Okay, let’s tell this pick up the story and see where it goes,” I enjoy the process much more and don’t seem to get stuck.

3. What are your favorite lines in the book? I love the following passage about Peter Terry:

The thing with Peter Terry is, his booty isn’t cash or Social Security numbers or flat-screen TVs. What he’s after is your mind. And your soul if he can get it. But honestly, your soul is just the bonus round. His eye is on your serenity. Your peace. Your sense of safety in the world. If he can lift those precious little items off you and toss them onto his pile, he’s pulled off a job unlike anything you’ve ever read about over a morning cup of coffee or seen at a ten-dollar movie.

Naturally, intensive care is Peter Terry territory. You sit there, staring at your loved one, in the company of strangers who are also staring at their loved ones. And you’re surrounded by the architecture of suffering—monitors, pumps, bags, needles, tubes. You can feel the skin being ripped off your illusions. Flesh covers veins and veins web through organs and muscles and bones. And they’re all stuck together with the fragile, electric sinews of sensation, of movement. It’s the perfect disguise, this farce of wholeness.

And the parts, they all break so easily. When you’re sitting there, staring at your loved one, the one with the broken parts, you can’t believe any of it ever works at all.
And then, as you pace between beeps and alarms and rhythmic whooshes of air, you hear the whispering and the murmuring. You peek around the curtain, where rosaries are fingered with confident intention, where heads are bowed, where hearts are turned upward because it’s the only possible option. And the atmosphere of hope in the place is overpowering.

Then you realize hope is all there is. There’s nothing else to live on. The rest is just parts and a jump-start.

4. News: Recent or future author events?

My Soul to Keep comes out February 5, so the events are just now starting to ramp up. I’ve got a book signing in my hometown of Amarillo, TX on Feb. 16, and signings booked throughout the spring around Texas. I don’t know about out of state events yet. We haven’t started booking those. When you’re from a huge state like Texas, you could do your entire tour here and not hit the whole thing. Watch my website www.melaniewells.com for news and updates.

5. What else do you have in the works?

I’m re-writing a manuscript I finished years ago, called The Permian Game. It’s a great story, but I’m a better writer now than I was when I wrote it, so I’m giving it the spit and polish before I let my agent put it out there. I’m hoping also the Dylan Foster series continues. That will depend largely on how this book My Soul to Keep does out there.

I also own and run a psychotherapy practice – LifeWorks counseling associates, in Dallas (www.wefixbrains.com) and try to play my fiddle as much as I can. I sit in occasionally with my friend Trish Murphy’s (www.trishmurphy.com) 70’s cover band in Austin called Skyrocket.  (www.skyrockettheband.com). So I stay pretty busy.

Book Tour News:

Yesterday, I spoke at the Midwinter Librarian’s Conference and signed books and set up school and public library programs through the afternoon. The weather was horrible, I had car trouble (dead battery, which I’ll have to resolve Monday) and had to hitch a ride to the conference. Last night, I locked myself in my hotel room and wrote for about eight hours. I entered the Booklocker 24 hour short story contest they offer every quarter and I enter four times a year. The story I submitted was entitled, “Little Rose and the Confederate Cipher.” I had until noon today to email the story in, but I managed to get it done by about midnight. Here was the topic mailed  at noon yesterday that all competitors were expected to base their stories on:
“She always kept the object safe and close to her. Mama made
her repeat the promise over and over again during those last
days. “I will never show it to a living soul. I will never
show it to a living soul.”

She cried about Mama less now, not as much as she had
before. She was missing Mama now as she did each night when
she removed her scuffed shoes. She then carefully peeled the
gray sock off her foot, and waited for the familiar object
to fall out. Nothing happened. Panicked, she quickly turned
her sock inside-out. It was gone.”

This topic seemed a little longer than previous one, but I thought it had grand possibilities. (I do wonder who comes up with these convoluted topics though) I may post the story I wrote once winners are declared in 3-4 weeks.  Here is a rule a writer should have about writing competitions: Write it, submit it, and forget it.  Though one feels pressure in timed competitions like this, that may be a good thing. And even if don’t win, I’ve written another good story.  I’m going to try to discipline myself to enter at least one contest every month.

The Sinking of the C.S.S. Alabama

Though I usually don’t recommend videos, here is a short and well-made one I found that should interest any Civil War student.

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1350221628&channel=6516

This morning I’m packing up and heading back to Monroe. Hopefully the car will start.  The rest of the day will likely be spent with chores. February is right around the corner. If you check my calendar on my personal website rickeypittman.com you’ll see that I’ll be very busy.

At Kathy Patrick’s Girlfriend Weekend, I met Rosemary Poole-Carter. I’d already mentioned her in a previous post. I found her extremely talented, bright, beautiful, and a depth that is captivating. Another writer described her in this way:

“You would know Rosemary anywhere. She is the girl at school who stared out the window while a story played in her head; the teenager who cast her unwitting boyfriends as characters in her dramas; the mother who rocked and read to her children and wrote while they slept; the novelist and playwright who still daydreams, holds her loved ones, writes into the night, and appreciates parallel structure.”

Her work includes the novels WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, JULIETTE ASCENDING, and WHAT REMAINS and the plays MOSSY CAPE, DEATH BEHIND THE TABLOIDS, INCONVENIENT WOMEN, and THE LITTLE DEATH. You can read more of her here at her website: http://www.poole-carter.info/ Here is a recent photo of this fabulous author.

WOMEN OF MAGDALENE

The women of Magdalene are dying and no one seems to care, least of all the haughty Dr. Kingson, director of the genteel ladies’ lunatic asylum.

After years of serving as a wartime surgeon for the Confederacy, Robert Mallory is accustomed to soldiers missing limbs. At the Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum, he learns that the women are missing pieces, not of their bodies, but of their lives. As Robert comes closer to understanding Kingston’s part in the cruel treatment and sudden deaths of certain patients, Kingston abruptly sends him away. Robert must escort a patient, Effie Rampling, to New Orleans, and the journey transforms them both.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
Your favorite author(s) and book(s)
My favorite playwrights are Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams, favorite poets are Tennyson and Yeats, and favorite 19th century novelists are Austen, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, and Twain. Modern novelists I deeply admire include Barry Unsworth (MORALITY PLAY, SACRED HUNGER), Ian McEwan (ATONEMENT, SATURDAY), Paul Scott (THE RAJ QUARTET), and Muriel Spark (LOITERING WITH INTENT, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE).
What is the most significant thing as a writer that you learned in writing this book?
I learned to trust in the power of my own imagination—to feel with someone else from another place and time. This book dosen’t easily fit a genre or a niche, and it met with some resistance from a few publishing professionals before it found a wonderful home with Kunati Inc. and gratifying responses from reviewers and readers.

Some lessons I re-learn with every writing project are the importance of mapping out a character’s journey and the value of patience.

3. What are your favorite lines in the book?

A number of lines are dear to my narrator’s heart or are revelations of his character and conflict. I don’t want to give too much away. My novelist friend Karen Harrington chose the lines below as her favorite, and I think the idea they express is one with which many of us can identify.

Reflecting on the deprivations of wartime, Robert Mallory thinks: “Some felt naked without their accustomed finery, furnished homes, rich food and wine, elegant entertainments. Some felt bereft of ordinary comforts–I was one of those. But I was also free, invisible, as if the only evidence of my existence were in the tasks I performed, the services I rendered to others. When I stopped work, I disappeared.”

News: Recent or future author events?
March 12 - 15, 2008, I plan to be in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area for some bookstore signings and a couple of television interviews.

My drama, THE LITTLE DEATH, is scheduled for production by Eclectic Theater Company, October 10 – November 1, 2008, at the Odd Duck Studio in Seattle.

5. What else do you have in the works?

My novel-in-progress, like much of my other work, combines Southern history with Southern gothic. This one, set in late 19th century Louisiana, deals with sexual obsession and deceptions within a marriage and without.

Also, I have plans in the works for a new play—a ghost story, in collaboration with Rik Deskin, artistic director of Eclectic Theater Company.