Oronte Churm has posted the winners of the Little Truths Writing Contest over at his superblog. Click through and see if you’ve won! Churm and I want to thank all of you who entered the contest and visited to read over the last two weeks. It was great fun!

Here is a photo of the Little Truths judge, Steve Davenport:

Many thanks, Steve, for all your work and the great, quirky comments you left on the winning entries! Again, to all of you, you rock, and it was a pleasure to read your work!

Agents and publishers interested in contacting my guest or reading his manuscripts: OChurm@aol.com

My guest today is not the only one hanging around LitPark who goes by a pen name. But today he is stepping out from behind the mask.

If you are a regular reader of McSweeney’s, you know Oronte Churm as the author of “Dispatches from Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University” – an anatomy of being a teacher, writer, husband, father, and son. In short, it’s about a whole life’s education, which never ends. Churm is also busy writing for Inside Higher Ed, where he keeps a creative nonfiction superblog called The Education of Oronte Churm. He’s been a contributing editor for Adjunct Advocate, writes for World’s Fair, a Seed Media science site, and has a piece in Mountain Man Dance Moves (McSweeney’s Books).

So what’s the story of the guy behind the pen name? Well, if you click over to McSweeney’s, you can read the beautiful essay in which he reveals his true identity. It’s an essay that made me tear up again and again because it touches on almost everything I’ve been struggling with these past many months as I’ve tried to edit my book. That he manages to weave stories of ghosts, his dying father, porn star Ron Jeremy, and salvation into this one story shows why he’s my kind of writer and my kind of friend. I hope you’ll find the time to read it.

But first, while you’re here, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Churm, who is also my friend, John Griswold.

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What made you use the name, Oronte Churm, to begin with? Why didn’t you want to use your real name?

John Warner, the editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, asked me in 2005 to write a column about being an adjunct lecturer at Illinois. He said I could use a pen name, since I’m not on the tenure track and don’t have that job protection. Neither of us knew, I think, what I might have to say, or whether anyone would frown on it. But I was also trying to finish a literary novel and wanted to keep humorous bits separate from the rest of my intended writing life. As it turned out, I’ve tried to do more with my dispatches than I think John expected from me—never waste a good publishing platform, my mother always said—and he’s been terrifically supportive of their oddity.

The pen name is a combination of two characters’ names from the Henry James story “The Real Thing,” which I was teaching at the time. I liked the sound of them together; Oronte is floral and Churm is muddy, a comical combination. The story questions who or what is “real” in art and life, and those questions seemed pertinent to my situation as college teacher and writer.

You allude, in the McSweeney’s piece, to some people being angry about the pen name. Can you say more about that?

In a dispatch called “On Apophasis,” I revealed that an editor at a big-time publication told me, nearly apropos of nothing, that if I wrote for them I couldn’t talk about the Iraq War. I heard later that her boss, the editor-in-chief, was quite upset with me and felt it wasn’t cricket to hide, as he viewed it, behind an assumed name. It made me wonder what satisfactions he imagined having, if only I’d used my real name. Duel at dawn? Trying to get me fired? Standing in my front yard yelling epithets? He and his shop all knew my real name anyway.

To me, a pen name can easily be the same as a surname, even if it doesn’t speak to geography. If the writing is clear, thoughtful, or even frequent, the “real” aspect of the writer’s being will out. Besides, even pseudonymous writers can be denounced, and most have e-mail. Writers have never been as accessible as they are now.

Talk to me about how it feels behind the mask.

It feels great. It feels like bunnies, like lilacs on a spring night, like good whisky and smiting one’s enemies. It feels like the 1938 Carnegie Hall performance of “Sing, Sing, Sing” with the tom-tom beat of Gene Krupa and an unexpected and miraculous piano solo by Jess Stacy. Step back here a minute, Friend, and I’ll show you what it feels like.

Any downside to wearing a mask?

We all wear masks and change them according to the social situation. Usually we feel each to be “true,” even when one contradicts the one before it. A pen name is no different. I see nothing unusual about being Churm; it’s simply my persona for a certain context and is invisible to me at that moment.

I guess you won’t truly be able to answer this till you’re officially outed and start getting feedback, but do you expect you’ll feel free? Naked? Like Oz when he’s discovered behind the curtain, and people think, Oh, I thought he’d be bigger?

I’m actually a giant of a man, lewd and bulging, but comfortable in my existential skin. If someone can’t handle my nakedness, he can always avert his gaze.

Why now? What has happened or changed in you that you would rather be John than Oronte?

As Churm, I’ve amassed considerable nonfiction work, and I’m proud of it. I want to unify my two writing lives, if only to aid in further publishing and getting a tenure-track gig. Anyway, I’ll continue to write as Oronte in several venues, including at Inside Higher Ed, where I’m signing on for another year. Churm, c’est moi.

Come on over to my place, The Education of Oronte Churm, and read more on pen names in the Digital Age.

Want to say anything about McSweeney’s, or some of the other folks you’ve written for?

I can’t say enough about the impeccable taste, keen intelligence, and boyish good looks of Internet Tendency editor John Warner. Also, I had dinner with Dave Eggers once, and I’ll just say this: The man can eat the hell out of some chocolate cake.

I’m very grateful to McSweeney’s for everything, including introductions to some great good friends and opportunities for other work. The dispatches led to my being a contributing editor at Adjunct Advocate, and a year ago Inside Higher Ed hired me as their first Blog U. writer. (There are now five of us.) IHE’s editors, Doug Lederman and Scott Jaschik, are incredibly supportive and have also let me try anything I wished, from an interview with a Special Forces chaplain to long essays about my emotional connections to Vietnam, where I was born. Somewhere in there I talk about teaching, too. Lately I’ve been hanging with the scientists at The World’s Fair, a Seed Media science blog. I ask them if they intend to blow up the world, and they tell me I’m funny.

I’ll put it out there that I love McSweeney’s, too. There’s a good many people over there I consider to be like family. But let’s get to the contest because I know my readers want to win this money so they can buy more books.

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The Little Truths Writing Contest:

Your submissions to the contest go right here in the comments section. Enter as often as you like!

In honor of Oronte Churm’s revelation of his real name and previously undisclosed location, his online friends are sponsoring a short writing contest with big-time prizes.

Write a creative nonfiction story or essay, 75 (seventy-five!) words or less, in which someone reveals something, is unmasked, or comes to a new understanding. (This is most of literature, by the way.) We call these “little truths.”

Our friends at Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction permit submissions ten times longer, but we like their standards for our contest:

Clear, concise, vivid prose—memoir, journalism, or lyric all welcome. Memoir and narrative are best told with scenes and detail, not explanation, and even the personal essay form benefits from image and sensory language. Bernard Cooper suggests that short nonfiction ‘requires an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens, so to speak, until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.’ We agree.

Here is a little truth, exactly 75 words long, from Somerset Maugham’s notebooks:

We were sitting in a wine shop in Capri when Norman came in and told us T. was about to shoot himself. We were startled. Norman said that when T. told him what he was going to do he could think of no reason to dissuade him. “Are you going to do anything about it?” I asked. “No.” He ordered a bottle of wine and sat down to await the sound of the shot.

Mr. Maugham is currently dead and therefore ineligible to win this contest, so send your own little truth along. Enter as many times as you like! Post entries as comments to this posting by midnight, Friday, March 7, 2008. By entering the contest, you agree to allow Inside Higher Ed to re-post and archive your entry at their site, though all rights revert to you.

Entries can be funny, sad, ironic, hip, morose, hopeful, or anything else you want them to be, but they should be both true and True.

The judge:

The judge will be Steve Davenport, Creative Nonfiction Editor of Ninth Letter, and Associate Director of the Creative Writing Program at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Steve’s first book, Uncontainable Noise, won Pavement Saw Press’s Transcontinental Poetry Prize. More importantly, he may be the basis for the character-foil “Rory” in Churm’s dispatches and blog.

The prizes:

Grand Prize is a $100 VISA Gift Card, courtesy of Inside Higher Ed, your online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education, and the proud home of The Education of Oronte Churm.

First Prize is courtesy of McSweeney’s: A $50 gift certificate to the McSweeney’s store, where you can find everything from magazine subscriptions to books to tattoos to the original circus t-shirt.

Second Prize is courtesy of featherproof books, a young indie publisher based in Chicago, which publishes perfect-bound, full-length works of fiction and downloadable mini-books. Get two featherproof novels of your choice and one of their “reusable, rewritable, rarely regrettable” letterTees.

Third Prize (two to be given) is the debut album of Les Chauds Lapins, Parlez-moi d’amour, courtesy of the hot little bunnies themselves.

Winners will be announced at The Education of Oronte Churm the week of March 10th.

Good luck!

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Bio for the man behind Oronte Churm:

John Griswold’s short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in journals such as War, Literature & the Arts, Mediphors, Palo Alto Review, and Natural Bridge, which nominated his story “Transcript of a World War I Veteran’s Narrative” for the 2001 Pushcart Prize. A piece on the Midwest will appear in the next issue of Ninth Letter, and an appreciation of poet John Balaban in the next issue of War, Literature & the Arts.

John was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and grew up in Southern Illinois. He served as an Army deep-sea diver, earned a BA in English and philosophy, and worked as a corporate writer for several years. His MFA is from the University of Miami, Coral Gables, and since 2000 he’s taught undergrads creative writing and literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

His novel, A Democracy of Ghosts, and a collection of essays based on the dispatches are under submission to publishers. He’s currently working on a memoir, tentatively titled How We Become Men.

Agents and publishers interested in contacting my guest or reading his manuscripts: OChurm@aol.com

Today I want to introduce you to David Habbin, a tenor with one foot in opera and the other in pop, and Robin Lerner, a songwriter who stuck with her notebooks full of poetry and lyrics until she found herself writing for singers like Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Luther Vandross, Bette Midler, and Patti LaBelle. These two combined their talents (along with music composer, Tommy Lee James) to create the beautiful and haunting “Morning Song,” which will be the focus of this interview.

Right now, the song is only a demo, but you can listen to it by clicking the link beside the photograph. And, FYI, the more you click on it and give it high ratings, the sooner it will be available!

Click here to play “Morning Song” on YouTube.

I find collaboration a fascinating business, and I hope you will, too, as you hear about the origin of these lyrics, the way one artist impacts another, and the power of the internet to bring these two together.

Now, if you’re a regular here, you know very well who I’m going to talk to first… the writer! Behind most of the actors and singers you love is a writer with a drawer full of rejection slips and a many-decade journey to become the unknown that (s)he is today. Time to bring Robin into the spotlight!

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(c)Robin Lerner all rights reserved

When you write a song, do the words come first, or the music?

These days, the music usually comes first. When I first started out, it was more lyrics and then the music. But since I collaborate with other songwriters so much now, we always start with the music. Sometimes I’ll have an idea for a chorus, a title or a phrase – or maybe even a sketch of a verse – and we’ll weave a chorus around that – but for the most part, it’s music first.

Describe your life as a songwriter before you made it.

It depends really how you define “made it.” It took me twenty years to be able to make a living by songwriting alone, which is how I define it. Before that I always did other things to earn money. In the early days, I had many “day jobs” when I lived in New York City. I worked mostly as a production coordinator for music (jingles) or film production companies. I’d do my songwriting at night, after hours, or on the weekends. It was what I’d look forward to every night after work. Sitting at the piano and writing songs into the wee hours. I’d get home from work at around 7:00 or 8:00 pm and work on music until 1:00 or 2:00 am. Then back at my day job by 9:00 or 10:00 the next morning. And lots of late nights at the music clubs in New York when I wasn’t at home writing – which were always inspiring.

When I moved to LA in 1986, I worked mostly as a screenwriter, writing animated musicals for kids for different film studios (which I often got to write the songs for as well). I’d gone to film school at NYU so that was my background. And in the early, early, days in New York I worked as a waitress, typist, secretary, receptionist… Anything I could to earn money. I even drove a horse and carriage in Central Park one summer for a week. My rent and expenses were very low (believe it or not) when I lived in New York. I had it down to a science, how to survive on $1200 a month.

What doors were opened for you that changed your career, that took you toward success? And did you recognize the change that was coming?

Really, the most important door that opened for me was when my good friend Doc Pomus encouraged me to pursue only songwriting and give up singing. I had never really separated the two before, and he very kindly, at the beginning of our friendship, indicated that I might be better served, pursuing a career solely as a songwriter for other singers, whereas before that had never occurred to me. He had, at a certain point in his own career given up singing (although he was actually a very well known and revered blues singer for a long time before actually stepping into his songwriting shoes, and had been performing and recording for quite some time, unlike me), and I took his advice to heart. He turned me onto my first publisher, Marv Goodman, at ATV music in New York, who in turn, hooked me up with his many staff writers, and before long, I was getting cuts with other artists.

Did that originally feel like a blow to be told to give up singing and only focus on songwriting? Was there a period of loss or of fighting his advice to you? And what has happened to your singing? Did you find an outlet for it, even though it’s no longer a career focus?

Regarding the singing, it was a bit of a blow, actually. It wasn’t something I was really trying to pursue professionally. I didn’t perform in clubs or anything. I wasn’t trying to get a record deal. I was mostly just writing and singing my own songs in college (writing end titles to friend’s movies as favors, as I was in film school) and things like that.

My voice had always been a vehicle to showcase my songs to other people as it was very expensive in those days to record demos and hire singers, so I was always singing and accompanying myself on guitar or piano. It was before everyone had computers and pro tools. You actually had to go into a studio and record with a band to tape! (What a concept…) The unfortunate thing was, I did become incredibly self-conscious about singing in public for years. To this day I don’t perform in songwriter in the rounds, or if someone asks me to get up at a club, I won’t do it. It’s really stupid as I sing all the time while writing with other songwriters and my singing doesn’t bother me (or anyone else) at all, for that matter. Plus, I sing all of the rough vocals for all of the singers I hire to sing my demos in the studio, and it’s still really my primary songwriting instrument for writing melodies.

But to be honest, I’m not a great singer. And I think, by telling me to forget about the singing, Doc was trying to save me years of pain. As a singer, he’d been incredibly let down by the record business and I think he never really recovered. He must have thought that being a singer was something I was pursuing and he tried, in his own way, to spare me the indignity of it all.

How does a song go from your notebook to a singer? How do you present a song to a singer? And what happens to those songs you love that are still in the notebook?

Lyrics in a notebook become a song in the songwriting process. The song then gets demoed, and that said song gets presented to a said singer through a publisher and an A & R person at a label, or perhaps, a manager. The songs you love that are still in the notebook have the opportunity throughout time to become incorporated at any given moment, into another song.

I have a stack of books that I lug around with me to every writing appointment to this day with notes, and lyrics, from up to 10 years ago. My baggage, my luggage, has become a standing joke amongst my peers. That I cannot travel without this heavy load of books. We always joke that my Indian name is “Walks with Baggage.” One would think in the age of computers I could somehow import it all onto a disk or something but no… I have to have the tactile… The actual notebooks at hand… Always… While writing… I flip through them as if an idea will leap forth. And the funny thing is… It does… I have some ideas from a long time ago, and others from not so long ago, and it doesn’t matter. Everything gets used eventually.

Do you notice any trends in the songs you’ve written that have had the most commercial success?

Well, I guess one could say I’m best known for my “unusual” lyrics. Songs like “This Kiss” and “She’s My Kind of Rain” were a bit off the beaten path for country music at the time. “It’s centrifugal motion, it’s perpetual bliss, it’s that pivotal moment”… I don’t think country music had ever seen that many syllables strung together like that in a country chorus before… We definitely started a trend. And in some hardcore country music people’s minds, it wasn’t necessarily a good trend.

“She’s the sunset’s shadow… she’s like Rembrandt’s light… she’s the history that’s made at night.” That’s pretty different for country music, too!

It was really a miracle that the song ever got on the radio at all. And, of course after that, there were lots of imitators. Martina McBride recorded a song straight after Faith, called “I Love You” that tried to replicate what we had done in “This Kiss.” I think it went to number one as well. I think because I started as a poet in New York I tend to be a poetic lyricist. The songs I’ve had the most success with were all unique lyrically. Also I love lots of syllables. My very first single on the radio in 1983, by Jermaine Jackson, was called “Sweetest Sweetest.” It was an R & B song with lots of syllables.

Tell me about Morning Song. How did this song come to you? Show me a little bit about the process of writing it. Did an image come first? A particular line? The chorus?

I was in Nashville writing with one of my favorite collaborators, Tommy Lee James. We’ve been co-writing for around ten years and have had lots of cuts together. Even a # 1 with Tim McGraw (“She’s My Kind Of Rain“). Anyway, we’d been asked to write something for Josh Groban and so we were messing around on the piano with some ideas. Tommy wrote this bit of music which eventually became the music to “Morning Song“. I’d been watching the news coverage of the Natalee Holloway disappearance in my hotel, and being a mother of a teenage girl at the time, I was riveted. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Tommy had two daughters as well, and I just identified so much with Beth, Natalee’s mother – the lyrics just poured forth – I wanted to give her something. Something that would make her feel better. A coping mechanism. A ray of hope. Some solace. And that was the best I could come up with. Tommy and I have a very unique writing process. He rarely questions me. We sit in the room together while he runs through a litany of musical ideas, all of which I assiduously tape. I then go back to my hotel room, light a ton of candles, and see which bit of music inspires me. Then a lyric, usually presents itself in its entirety (over the course of an afternoon) at which point I run back to Tommy and say, “what do you think?” He almost never asks me to change one word (which probably accounts for my repeat business with him) and then we just demo the song and have our people run with it. “Morning Song” was really another way of saying “Mourning Song”. But I thought it was too sad to call it that.

Do you know if Natalee Holloway’s mother has heard this song? And if so, has she responded?

I don’t think Natalee’s mother has heard “Morning Song“, no…

Hmm. Maybe she’ll stumble across this interview and get quite the surprise.

I’d love to hear about the first time you and David came together with this song.

David and I have actually never met. He lives in England and I live in Los Angeles. It was through his representatives that the song was presented to him.

Any words about David’s interpretation of your song, and how it is to hear him sing it?

David sings it beautifully and I love that he was moved enough by the music and lyrics to tackle it. Obviously, it is a song about loss, and resonates on that level with anyone who has experienced profound grief around that particular subject.

Do you strictly write for individual singers now? What happened to that original interest in screenwriting?

The last screenplay I wrote was called “Princess of Thieves” and starred Keira Knightly. It aired in 2001 on ABC’s “Wonderful World of Disney.” It was the only screenplay I’d ever written that wasn’t a musical.

For the last two years I’ve been working on a musical for the stage, based on the movie “Officer and a Gentleman.” We just had our first staged reading of it in April of this year in New York and it went very well. We plan to workshop it in Melbourne in the fall of 2008 and open in the fall of 2009.

As for country and pop songwriting, I tend to write more with artists for their albums these days. I wrote a lot of Jennifer Hanson‘s new album with her in Nashville (it’s being released early next year on the universal south label) and also some songs with an artist from the UK named Ben Montague that I have hopes for.

I’ll look for them! Any inspiration for struggling artists and writers?

PERSEVERANCE, PERSEVERANCE, PERSEVERANCE…

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Wow. I sure do like Robin! And I hope my LitPark readers will join me in paying more attention to writers behind the songs we love.

Okay, so now we have lyrics (and a melody by Tommy Lee James). Let’s meet the (dare I say, delicious?) singer and see what happens on his end.

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(c)David Habbin all rights reserved

After being a part of a successful group like Amici, what part of being a solo artist is the most exciting or appealing to you?

After being one of a group there are so many ways that the whole process would differ but I think one of the most appealing to me would be that the whole body of work on an album represents you and you alone. What I mean is that there is nowhere to hide – you are solely accountable for every song choice and every performance. It’s a more vulnerable feeling, of course, but ultimately I think it’s a more invigorating and satisfying feeling.

Any trepidation about being alone on stage or recording alone?

No, I don’t have any feelings of trepidation about being on stage alone and I love being in the studio so I relish not having to go for a ‘tea-break’ during someone else’s vocal session.

Any areas specifically that you want to pursue?

As a music fan I am still moved by so many styles of music from Led Zeppelin to Vivaldi so there’s no shortage of inspiration. That said though, I don’t want to be weird and wonderful for the sake of it. It’s a case of finding material that sits well with the voice. All I really hope for as a singer is to make a recording that takes a listener on an emotional journey.

In answer to your question though, I look forward to exploring the ‘pop’ genre as well as re-interpreting music from the classical canon. Original music is the lifeblood of the industry so I would love to record an album of entirely original material, and to tour, of course. The interaction you have with the audience when performing a live concert is extraordinary and exhilarating, and I love that. But I also want to continue to pursue my acting on stage and in film and television. I am planning a visit to the States in the near future to continue to explore further avenues.

Tell me the process of people bringing songs to you, and how you go about choosing them?

When choosing a song I simply let a piece run by me a couple of times and, if I begin to feel a connection, it’s an obvious call to make. It may sound over simple but I just have to ‘like it’. At this stage it’s not just a case of people bringing songs to me, it is also me and those working with me, seeking out material that I think may suit my delivery and then asking the songwriters if they would allow me to make a demo of their song. Songs have also been presented to me by songwriters at varying stages in their own careers. The remarkable thing about having Internet these days and being contactable through sites like MySpace and YouTube is that you can be in touch with so many varied artists around the globe and information can be transferred in a matter of seconds. So the whole process of sourcing new material is so much easier than in the past.

I understand that you and Robin have never even met.

No. We haven’t. But again, that’s the great thing about the Internet. The tracks were sent to me “electronically.” I have recently done a demo of another lovely song that Robin wrote the lyrics to, that we will be putting up soon, where I did the vocal in London, and the producer Stephan Oberhoff, who is also one of the co-writers along with another great American songwriter named Marsha Malamet, is doing the final mix in his studio in Los Angeles.

Fascinating how the internet has facilitated such an international collaboration! Can you tell me something about how you take something as personal as a song and someone else’s lyrics and make it your own?

This process only really happens for me when I begin to demo a song. Sometimes you may like a song but when you try to sing it, it just doesn’t happen for you with your voice so you may put it to one side. As far as “making it your own” is concerned, that’s one of the ‘magical’ parts of the process for me. The voice responds and moulds itself to the words and the tune and you find yourself thinking, “Oh yeah, so THAT’S what I would bring to this song.” To use an overused phrase, I guess it’s an “organic process” in this respect.

What was it about Robin’s song that first struck you?

That’s easy to answer. The first thing that struck me about Robin’s song was the melody of the chorus. It’s got desolation… it’s got yearning… it’s got pain… it’s got resignation. It’s poignant and sparse and beautiful. I initially thought it was a guy singing about losing a partner.

I know you have your own story of grief, having lost your infant sister. Do you remember anything about your family’s grief and how they moved through such an unimaginable loss? I also wonder if you have a sense about how you are different because of what your family went through?

By the time I was cognizant of what my family had endured through losing a child some years had passed so the rawness was over. I imagine that having two other children was a help to my folks but my mother often says that, despite being a cliché, it’s really only time that heals.

I think my life has been affected by what happened by making us a close-knit family. I have an older sister and I think that both she and my mother have been highly protective of me as the younger sibling. On a more ethereal level I perceive that feeling that my sister is “out there somewhere” has given me some sense of spirituality that I may not otherwise have felt.

To see David Habbin sing with Amici, click here, and then, if you’re so moved, leave a comment!

How did the idea for the “Morning Song” writing competition come about that Charles Shaughnessy is sponsoring?

When I first put this rough demo of “Morning Song” on my MySpace page, I loved the song, but wanted to see how my fans would react to a different musical direction than what they were used to from me. After learning what Robin’s intention was behind her beautiful and moving lyrics, I very much wanted people to not only hear the song, but to know the story behind Robin’s lyrics.We then thought about taking the demo of the song into one more dimension of media, just as a test. Photography is a hobby of mine, so we decided to do a slideshow interpretation of the song, with mostly photographs of mine, as a combination of my memories, and the story behind Robin’s lyrics, done as a backdrop to the vocal. Then we put the video up on my YouTube page and waited to see what happened.People began to write to me to tell me how the song, the lyrics and the photos had affected them and how they were relating in different ways from experiences in their own lives.Charlie is a friend and has been an avid supporter and proponent of my music and my venture into solo projects. I had told him about this, and he decided to write about the video on his MySpace blog.He has held writing competitions on his website for many years. We were all getting such touching and heartfelt responses, that he decided to take this idea one step further.What he felt was that “The greatest gift that we do get from loss is that it leaves us looking for and finding the good, the positive, the strength and the ability to move forward in spite of everything. When we lose something or someone valuable in our lives, that often results in being the one thing that inspires us to recommit ourselves to living life to the fullest.”

“Morning Song” is haunting with a very sad subject matter, so we were honoured that he wanted to use the video I did of “Morning Song” and the story behind Robin’s lyrics, as an inspiration for a writing competition on his website, that emphasized how we do turn sad things around in our lives, how something positive can come from loss.

I’d very much like to include my readers in the writing contest inspired by “Morning Song.” What are the rules and when is the deadline?

That would be great, Sue. Thank you and thanks for your interest and the interview. It was a pleasure to be here. You can find all the written rules here and watch a little video explanation that Charlie and I did “together” about the contest here. The deadline to enter is Sunday, 17 February.

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David’s bio:
(c)David Habbin all rights reserved

Though DAVID HABBIN now calls London home, this critically renowned tenor hails from Ringwood, England. David’s musical career began with him performing and writing in rock and pop bands. That came to an end when he went to study musical theatre and acting at the Mountview Theatre School in London, while simultaneously studying vocal training with International operatic tenor Jon Andrew.

David received critical acclaim when he performed over 600 times in the role of Tony in West Side Story, directed by legendary librettist, playwright and co-creator of West Side Story Arthur Laurents, in the original West End UK revival and on the tour.

He then continued his operatic training at the Royal Northern College of Music. He has performed as Marius and Combeferre in Les Miserables at the Palace Theatre, acted in a British feature film and performed with various opera companies in the United Kingdom in roles such as Alfredo in La Traviata, Ernesto in Don Pasquale, Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, Alfred in Die Fledermaus, Fenton in Falstaff and Lt. Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly.

In 2002, David became a founding member in the internationally acclaimed classical pop crossover group Amici Forever. This multi platinum, multimillion selling group, that have enchanted people from around the world with their inspiring and unique sound, scored phenomenal success with their debut CD The Opera Band and their follow up CD Defined, along with impressively received tours in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

With Amici, David has performed in many charity concerts including “The Prince’s Trust” for HRH The Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle, “The Make a Wish Foundation” at Blenheim Palace, and appeared on “The Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy” in Los Angeles. They were invited by the Queen to sing at the Royal Albert Hall for ‘The Festival of Remembrance,’ performed in front of 500 million viewers at the Champions’ League final at Old Trafford, supported Dame Shirley Bassey on her 50th anniversary stadium tour, performed on the live broadcast of the Miss World 2006 finals which was broadcast to over 2.5 billion people worldwide and sang for Prince Harry at Berkshire’s Prince’s Polo.

To celebrate the return of The Olympic Games to Greece after 100 years, BBC TV commissioned a new piece that was used throughout the entire BBC Sport coverage of The Olympics called ‘Olympia: Eternal Flame‘ recorded by Amici and performed before 70,000 in June of 2004 in The Mall to close the Athens Olympic Torch Ceremony.

Amici was also honoured to be the act chosen to perform at the World Premiere Party of the film, Phantom of the Opera for 1800 VIP and celebrity guests including Andrew Lloyd Webber and the cast of the film and headlined the ‘Luciano Pavarotti Tribute’ British Red Cross Royal Gala Ball. In 2005, with Amici, David recorded a PBS Television Special at The Harvey Theatre in New York City that was later released on DVD called ‘Amici Forever – in Concert.’

For further information on David Habbin:

http://www.myspace.com/davidhabbin
http://www.youtube.com/davidhabbin
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0352134

Robin’s bio:
(c)Robin Lerner all rights reserved

A native of New York, ROBIN LERNER graduated from NYU film school and moved west, to pursue her songwriting and screenwriting careers in sunny Los Angeles. Merging her love of musical theater and film, she created numerous animated musical features for Disney, Amblin, and Warner Brothers, working with composers Galt MacDermot (“Hair”) and Frank Wildhorn (“Jekyll and Hyde”), and producers, Steven Spielberg, and Cameron Mackintosh. As her songs found success in the pop world with Sheena Easton, Chaka Khan, Carly Simon, Patti LaBelle, Jermaine Jackson, Take 6, and Luther Vandross, Lerner signed with Maverick Music in 1996 and started traveling back and forth to Nashville.

In the past 10 years, Lerner’s songs have been recorded by great country artists such as Randy Travis (“Out Of My Bones,” #1), Tim McGraw (“She’s My Kind Of Rain,” #1) and Faith Hill (“This Kiss,” #1) . In 1999, “This Kiss” was awarded single of the year at the 1999 Academy of Country Music Awards, and was named ASCAP Song Of The Year. “This Kiss” was also nominated for a Grammy and went on to win Song of the Year at the 2000 CMA‘s.

In 2002, Lerner returned to her film roots penning the screenplay “Princess of Thieves,” which aired on ABC’s “Wonderful World of Disney” and starred Keira Knightly. Since then she has collaborated with Nashville artist Jennifer Hanson, on her new album for Universal South, which is being released in early 2008. Her song “Safest Place To Hide” appears on the current Backstreet Boys album, and Bette Midler performs her song “September” (a ballad which reflects on the actions of 9/11) every night in her ongoing “Kiss My Brass” tour. She is currently writing a musical for the stage, based on the film “Officer and a Gentleman,” which had it’s first staged reading in New York in April, ’07. It is being workshopped in Sept. 08 in Melbourne, and opening in Sept. 09.

Robin has her own publishing company, Massabielle Music, and is represented by Whitney Daane at Mighty Isis Music in Nashville and LA.

For additional information on Robin Lerner please visit:

http://www.myspace.com/robinlernermusic
http://www.youtube.com/robinlernermusic
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0503642/

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Thank you Robin and David! You’re both lovely, and it was great to have you here! Thank you Charlie and Janelle for providing amazing support behind the scenes! Now, enter that contest, everyone – and good luck!

What have you learned from losing something or someone important to you?

This question covers the whole gamut from death of a loved one to being dumped to losing your belongings in a hurricane to losing family members to mental illness to having your doctoral dissertation disappear because of a computer virus. Loss. And more specifically, I’m looking for stories in which you’ve gained something positive – whether it is about hope, strength, or a lesson learned. Surprise me.

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This week is a little different than usual. You can answer here, as always. Consider this your brainstorming. Your rough draft. But if you want to be a part of the contest, you’ll have to answer over here, at Charles Shaughnessy’s place. Charlie is going to give you more detailed rules:

Please enter! This is a great opportunity to find a whole new realm of readers and exposure for your writing. And remember, to be officially entered in the contest, you must send your answer to Charlie and not to me – good luck!

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Wednesday, I have two special guests, singer David Habbin and songwriter Robin Lerner. Together, they will discuss their collaboration on Morning Song. Please stop by and join the conversation!

*To read or add to the 160 comments on this post, click here. And thanks for visiting.*

Steve the dog on summer vacation.

LitPark goes on summer vacation beginning today, and I have a few things to wrap up before my link-to-Tommy-Kane contest winner, Laura Benedict, gets a moment to shine.

Some interesting end-of-the-season stats: The single search phrase that brings the most people to LitPark is “Daniel Handler.” And if people didn’t spell and mispell his name in so many ways, the winner would be “Peter de Seve.” The photo that brings the most people to LitPark is Josh, half-in-drag. The highest number of clicks to LitPark come from my MySpace page and second from Neil Gaiman’s blog. Some of the creepiest people find LitPark in their search for Ritchie‘s street address. And the spam filter has bagged over 4,000 porn links.

Oh, right, my answers to the Questions of the Week (I’ll keep it short today): My phobias are snakes and very small spaces. This seems to include sleeves, which is why I’m almost always in a tank top, even in the winter. Favorite Hendrix tunes are Crosstown Traffic and Little Wing.

Thank you to everyone who lurks and plays here, and particularly to those who answered the Question of the Week: Simon Haynes, Nathalie, lance reynald, Colin Matthew, amy, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, PD Smith, Michael D. Williams, Alexander Chee, Richard Cooper, Lori Oliva, Betsy, Aurelio, Nicole, Kimberly, Rachna Vohra, Alexi Lykissas, Robin Slick, Anneliese, Laura Benedict, Lee, Ric Marion, Michael, Stephanie Friedman, Gail Siegel, A.S. King, bruce bauman, james spring, Mark Bastable, Sarah Bain, billie, Carolyn Burns Bass, and Jody Reale. And to Tish Cohen for hanging out with us.

I’m off for the summer – to Montana (to see my brother) and France (just because). Mostly, I’m finalizing my book for St. Martin’s while Mr. Henderson is building me the coolest office ever – you have to go through my wisteria tunnel to get to it! I’ll leave the comments open so you guys can hang out here or post announcements as you like. Have a great summer. Write lots. And play lots. xo

Okay, here’s Laura. Her piece is brilliant, but you’ll find that out soon enough. (And thanks to Pinckney for doing the html on this one. And then thank you even more hugely to my O. Henry award-winning webmaster, Terry Bain, for translating that code to something Mac-friendly!)

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Meet Howard Richard Baugh, my grandfather. Born in 1904. A civil servant, stamp collector, constant reader, diabetic, yellow-dog Democrat. Certainly not a murderer. I wont say that he was a peaceful man because I remember him angry, often, mostly over baseball and politics or the lateness of dinner. Though he was always gentle with me.

I never set out to write about anyone in my family. They are too tender, too charmingly insecure, and I dont want them angry with me. Maybe I thought that my grandfathers being dead made it okay. Maybe.

Amanda Cockrells spring writing workshop at Hollins University a few years back was about writing from place, something Id done frequently, but unconsciously. So I wrote about the first place I knew: the house I was born into, where I lived the first two years of my life with my mother and grandparents while my father was overseas.

This is how the house lives in my dreams: I dream of its basement, of the shelves and shelves of canned goods stacked behind cracking window shades hung to keep the dust from them, of the well-swept concrete floor where my mother said she roller-skated as a child, though I can hardly imagine anyone wanting to play down there, of the off-season clothes hanging like human shadows in zippered bags from the ceiling. I dream these thingsreal things that I knewbut there is something else, a dream-thing: the secret room at the bottom of the stairs.

I was, perhaps, ten the first time I had the dream. My grandmother leads me down the stairs to show me the door, and though she doesnt say anything, I know that its important. There is a hallway behind the door, and three rooms. The rooms are identical, painted a peaceful blue, each with a single, white bed over which hangs a large crucifix. My mother is in one room, lying on the bed with her eyes closeddead or sleepingand my grandmother shows me herself lying in the second room. Neither of us is afraid, and I am unsurprised. But I know what is waiting in the third room: the bed is empty, but I know it is for me.

Is it any wonder that I would write about this house that lives so vividly inside me? My grandfather is a part of that place, inseparable from it. My grandmother, too.

They puzzled me. They ate almost every single meal together. But they slept in separate bedrooms and spent most of the day apart: he went to the library, the post office, the grocery or to whatever discount store had something useful on special. When he returned, he would write down every single penny spent in a ledger. My grandmother? She cooked, she read, she watched soap operas, she cleaned. Sometimes she went to bingo, taking me with her (beginning when I was five or six) to the smoke-filled church hall where she would give me a single card to play.

But there was tension, and isnt it always tension that motivates us? There was a distance between them, something that went unspoken. I didnt find out until I was in my thirties that my grandmother had been married before, to a young man who died when his appendix burst after being sent home from the doctors office, undiagnosed.

Everything Id ever wondered about my grandparents fell into place with this piece of information. I cant know what their relationship was really like. Perhaps they had resolved her past between them, early on. Perhaps they were just exhausted from my grandfathers raucous snoring. Perhaps it was the lack of air conditioning in the house. Perhaps it was all in my head. But the tragic/romantic explanation appealed to the drama queen in me.

What better way for me to make sense of their story than by making it my own? My first efforts at fictionalizing that ineffable tension were weak. Im not good at literary nuance, that artful play of language that telegraphs emotion rather than broadcasting it. I need the broad stroke: nascent fears become murderous impulses, small irritations become grand jealousies. And so, H.R. Baugh, a man who liked control and who lived an ordinary existence filled with everyday frustrations, became a murderer. My grandmother, a smart, reticent woman became the repressed romantic heroine who was so desirable that she incited violence. I love that juxtaposition of reality and fantasy, the inherent conflict. I dont think my grandfather was truly capable of murderbut the anger and conflict I witnessed (or imagined) as a child lodged somewhere deep in my brain. A writers brain makes some startling rationalizations.

It took six major revisions before In A White House, a story of domestic discomfort written for a literary workshop, became The Erstwhile Groom, a story of broken hearts and multiple murders. It was a turning point for me, an acceptance of my vocation as a thriller writer. It is a gentle pieceas murder tales go. As I wrote in my regular myspace blog recently, my current writing is populated by rougher characters: the angry heroin addict with a thing for his sister, the childless woman whose grip on reality is tenuous at best, the twin succubi, the faded rock star who slides, effortlessly, into murderous madness. But I think I would have to draw the line at putting twin succubi in the same scene with a character who bears even a slight resemblance to someone I loved with my childish heart. The Erstwhile Groom will appear this summer in Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, a wonderful magazine of short stories featuring mystery and murder, but very few incest-driven heroin addicts.

I dont think Im finished with my grandparents, or their house. I sure hope they dont mind.

Laura Benedict’s debut novel, Isabella Moon, will be published in September by Ballantine Books, with a second thriller to follow in 2008. Her short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine and a number of anthologies. In October, Press 53 will publish Surreal South, a short story anthology she co-edited with her husband, Pinckney Benedict. For the past decade, she has also reviewed books for The Grand Rapids Press (Michigan) and other newspapers. She lives with her family in rural southern Illinois, a lonely, enchanted sort of place that offers excellent inspiration for writing thrillers. Visit her at www.laurabenedict.com, or read her regular blog on her MySpace page.

A while back, I ran a contest, using one of Neil Gaiman’s baby photos, and said the first person to guess who it was would win an interview with me.

Honestly, I run these contests because I like any excuse to play. But something else happens and that is you can be surprised by the depth and grace of people you didn’t know were reading your blog. So today, I want to introduce you to Daryl Darko.

Daryl is a writer, photographer, and sometime anthropologist. I knew right away I’d find something interesting about him because his website featured Syd Barrett, who created one of my all-time favorite albums, The Madcap Laughs. But very quickly, as we were talking about his work (including an intriguing ghost story set in the town he knows best), what grabbed hold of me was Daryl’s struggle with bi-polar disorder.

He is brave and generous to share his experience with depression, so I hope you’ll let Daryl know you heard his story.

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These photographs all represent recent work done in the last 45 days. They are part of a 365 day long project I am doing in association with a group of people on Flickr where we all shoot and display (at least) one self portrait photograph a day.

Tell me about your name.

I’ve been a fan of horror films since I was a child. The scare I got when I was six years old from watching “The Haunting” stuck with me all my life as a source of entertainment and introspection that I’d never be able to shake. I never became fanatical about collecting horror-zines or anything like that, but rather I had a deep respect for the inner process I went through while watching film-stories that dealt with, what I considered to be inner matters of personal transformation. People that were monsters or had to deal with physical manifestations of monstrous spirits were champions of some sort. They had qualities worthy of study.

Daryl Darko is taken from the film title/character Donnie Darko – a schizophrenic teenager that has psychotic episodes that make him believe the world is going to end on a very specific date. Which it then does, on the day he dies.

This is a question about the bipolar disorder . . . Can you put me inside your shoes for a bit? I’d like to see how it feels to be in the world with this, and how it is to be a writer with it.

Being bipolar, to me, is like having a noose tied around my neck. I’m not quite as bad off as Eli Wallach’s character, Tuco, was in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when he balanced precariously on the back of a rickety wooden cross (with his hands and feet tied) in a cemetery with a noose that his nemesis, Blondie (Clint Eastwood) had put around his neck. My hands are finally free in that I have found a proper balance of medications to use which essentially allows me to loosen the tightness of this diseases grip on me. I am not mincing my words, Susan. Being bipolar has brought me closer to not only giving up on my dreams (and life) but it has, at its worst made me incapable of even making the simplest of decisions.

The wonder of bipolar is being able to experience vibrant polar opposites of emotional states. I get to be really excited about things and I also get to experience powerful sadness, or in clinical terms, depression. I can’t really tell you in terms beyond what my own experience is what it is like for writers that are bipolar to experience this condition, except that there are periods when we feel like we can finish writing that book and that there are times when we could care less about it. Establishing a continual experience of middling moods is what we are made to believe is normal and what we must be to participate in the world. To do this, I have fought to become able to use the minimum amount of medications possible for me to stay in touch with my creative insights and energies and to avoid falling into decimating depressions. Only this past year (out of the eight since I was diagnosed and put on medications) have I become successful this way.

If you were to write about a character who was bipolar, what would that character want to express more than anything else? In what ways does s/he feel inhibited or caged? And if someone could cure the bipolar disorder in a day, what would the character miss?

Cured in a day? What would she lose? Have you seen the new t.v. show HEROES? There are characters that have their memories erased. I think being cured of this disease would be similar to that state; where there would be a huge part of the individual’s identity removed which made it possible for them to remember who they were and what they were about. I don’t want to be any better than I am now. In fact, there was a time about two years ago when I was dipping in and out of pretty intense depressions and I remember saying to a friend that I “didn’t want to be well”. That I “enjoyed the darkness” I was in because of how it fueled my creativity. During that phase I did a lot of the creative, imaginative structure building of the novel that I am writing. And I did it through actually being my character; existing in her depression.

I admire you so much for tackling these questions. Plenty of LitPark’s readers are struggling with depression, and I think it helps when people realize they’re not alone.

Can you tell me (if you want) what things were like before the medicine, and how others reacted to you?

Heheheh, *really big grin on my face now*, wow! What a memory!! Oh my goodness was that a great year. 1998. The year I was to complete my bachelor’s degree in anthropology at UC Santa Cruz. Part of the bipolar awakening in me was my becoming able to decide to go back to college in my mid-30′s.

My uncontrolled manic mind created some powerful delusions of grandeur; particularly that I believed that I was capable of going on in my studies to not only become an M.D. but to also earn a Ph.D. in medical anthropology. There was a problem, though, in that I couldn’t pass my first year college math or science classes. I imagined and talked up such a story amongst my peers that only I knew this truth; that I had zero mind for numbers and calculations. I was actually a visionary, not a scientist.

Luckily, during my second year at UCSC a class about James Joyce was being offered. My first knowledge of where my own natural abilities in crafting words laid came when I was fifteen years old in a creative writing class. How I had gotten away from the dream of becoming a writer to pursuing a path into professional medicine in what were now my late thirty’s I cannot fully tell you without writing a(nother) book. I had lived in Dublin, Ireland during the decade of the country’s worse depression (the 80′s) and could sympathize with being a down-and-outer on Dublin’s dusty streets. Being instructed to read ULYSSES from cover to cover for this class was a welcome wake up call.

Suddenly I started to change my curriculum at school. I stopped thumping my head against chemistry and pre-calculus books and started to take writing and literature classes. In fact, I got so off track with my study of anthropology that when I could have graduated with the rest of my class I was missing units to fulfill my diploma requirements. I had to stay for one more semester to finish my last anthropology course.

That became an impossible goal that I to this day have not fulfilled. That summer I took a playwriting course that broke my spirit. Now I can’t remember this in exact detail but there was some sort of spiritual process I went through where I measured all that I thought about against some hallmark of judgment that I considered to be ~god~. I did this with the pursuit of the medical career too. I would channel my thoughts into an epiphany experience where basically, I would say “God? Is this the right thing for me to do?” My method of how I measured these questions and answers, I can’t explain right now because I don’t remember how I did it. I don’t/can’t do it anymore. It was not giving me right or logical answers though because how on earth could I have become a doctor?!

So I was writing this very esoteric play during the summer session about these local Santa Cruz young people that would go out to this grove of trees where it was said that The Holy Virgin had appeared. And we would act this out in class. The writing of the play, the drama, the interaction with my classmates, my professor… it all was real to me. (Later, part of my diagnosis was that of being schizo-affective; that of having psychotic episodes mixed in with the bipolar.) I began to believe that I too was seeing The Holy Virgin in the woods near my home. And I wanted to lead the others to see her. But before that confusion fully manifested, I had an epiphany.

See, I somehow got this idea in my head earlier on that my doings would lead me to spiritual awareness. Higher awareness. Actual enlightenment. And this particular day, deep in thought/meditation/wonder about this play I was writing and the pursuit of enlightenment via the path of “writing”, I realized that I would never achieve the goal. It happened in a split second while I constructed a brilliant outcome for the plot of the play; I reached the pinnacle, stood up straight, looked around and saw that I was still in the very same small, dark room of my own self that I had started out in. And then I collapsed.

I fell into the most miserable depression I had ever experienced in my life. There were other factors involved too. I had been in an eight month long relationship with a professor from the anthropology department and her job had just ended, causing her to move away. This was tragedy enough on its own because I had never had such a complete relationship (mental and physical) with a woman ever before in my life. And so I went on to develop a pretty good drinking ability… I did start school again in the fall but I didn’t make it through more than five weeks before I had to completely drop out. Yeah, I really ruined it badly.

Anyway, what people thought of me? I don’t think I’ve ever known what people really think of me because I don’t get close enough to people to ever hear them express their opinion. I’m very independent and it is really hard to get close to me. I have had very few close friends in my life and spend a lot of time alone. I have made an effort since I was a teenager to subtly stand out differently from the crowd, not caring what others think of me. Yeah, that’s my answer.

What was the event that led to a change? How did you go from the most miserable depression in your life to feeling like you have the bipolar controlled as well as you do now? What helped and what didn’t help to turn things around?

It has been a very long process, Susan. Eight years. Most of which were lived in hopeless abandon. When I was first diagnosed with this disease my condition must have scared my doctor very badly. So much so that she overmedicated me to put out my flames. The first two years of being medicated were almost like being in a coma. The things I remember most were that my driver’s license was taken away and I had to be driven anywhere I had to go (which was basically doctor appointments). I developed a myriad of health issues during those years from the excess of 50 pounds that the Depakote added to my previously virile 190 pound frame (like high blood pressure and constant swelling of the ankles) and problems with my liver from the Lithium. Overall the worse problem was the agoraphobia that set in. I had never been so shut off from the outside world as I became during this time period. Afraid to actually leave my house for anything but doctor appointments.

Ok, but I don’t want this to sound like any old bipolar confession that you could read on any support site. There was some thing that saved me during those darkest years and please, at least don’t laugh out loud when I tell you this. It must have been one of the most base instincts of the human spirit that was sparked in me but I developed a craving to be told stories. Almost like a child. I crawled into a cocoon of an inner sanctum and fell under the spell of television serial dramas. In particular it was the series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” that won most of my attention. During the years when Buffy was first being aired, the F/X channel bought rights to the show and started to play reruns while the show was at the height of it’s popularity. Fans could watch four episodes of Buffy a day; two hours in the morning (7-9am) and two hours in the afternoon (4-6pm). I had nowhere to go, nor anything much better to do so I fell into a deep fascination with this, and other quality television shows.

There was an healing that I experienced during this time of obsessive devotion to these programs. A lot of emotions that I had kept buried seemed to become real to me in such ways that I was able to contemplate my life more deeply than I had been allowed to before. Having this time off and being spurred to look at the long process of my life, and imagining inwardly that I was feeling emotions that these stories imitated worked for me. A sort of self-therapeutic treatment via video literature.

And that is the key of what kept my own creative inspiration alive. I started to discover my own story that I needed to tell. To write.

If you knew there was someone out there suffering the way you did, what would you say to them?

Listen to your body. Especially if you are on meds. Don’t believe that you have to do everything that one single doctor tells you. If you don’t like the results of the care you are getting find another doctor. I know that can be hard. My insurance is state sponsored and I can’t go to just any ol’ doctor that I want. So I’ve literally battled with my doctor (for nearly three years now) to get him to really listen to me and consider my wishes when it comes to trying different medications and dosages.

(Okay, I jumped right into talking about doctors and meds as if any or all readers of this would already be under treatment. If you are depressed or suffering symptoms that make you think you may be bipolar, do not be afraid to seek professional assistance. Get help before things get as bad as they did for me.)

Also, educate yourself. Read as much as you can about these conditions to determine whether you are correct in assuming you are bipolar or not. Do not be shy about asserting your knowledge before the professionals. If you are really sick, get someone to advocate for you (i.e. go with you to your appointments and speak for you). I have never been able to do this. I tried and ended up destroying a very old friendship in the process, but that is another story.

Find something you love in life and hold on to it. I lost a lot of things when my crash came and that ensuing heartbreak is more of what crushed my spirit than anything. Having to leave Santa Cruz, not being able to live by the ocean or be in that youthful, artistic, healthy community anymore really was a loss. If you feel like you have lost everything? Find something new, no matter how small it is and become fascinated by it. The crawl back to life may seem eternal but it can be done.

Now, tell me about this mix of anthropology and photography and writing. Have you found a way to put these interests together? What’s your hope about what you might create in the next five years?

I want to create things that no one has thought of or seen in exactly the same way before. Studying anthropology gave me insight into storytelling in different ways than I had known before. Anthropology is pretty much a social science that tries to reflect truthful biases about those aspects of society studied. I learned research techniques of observation that enable me to view life and the world with less prejudice than I used to harbor. But I am not in love with academia, and truthfully, due to the continual grip this illness has on me, I cannot say that I would make a suitable or reliable field researcher.

And I think this is where fiction has slipped into my mixture of how I want to relate (or report) my view of the world to the world. I don’t want to lie or create lies. I want to tell the truth but I want to share it in ways that are born of my spirit. I think memoir has become tired and less vital, even in just this last decade. Although, my stories will be and are of my life.

So, I am on a path of continual self-discovery and my methods of expression are still in development. Even now, while I am enrolled in college courses learning how to do digital art, photography, and web design I am envisioning new ways to get out what I want to say. It’s a personal evolution. I am not simply a writer of short stories/poetry/fiction/novels.

Ok, here is what is on the board right now. I have this wonderful novel of a story in my heart/mind and I’ve got a notebook full of ideas and research written out. Just a few months ago I discovered the personal voice of the narrator that I want to tell the story through. So now, in this one very creative photography class that I am taking we are planning on creating zines. And the brainstorm I am having is to use this project as a building block in the process/development of my novel. Did I tell you that I’ve already titled my novel? “Burnt Bone, Stone, and Manzanita. A Young Woman’s Descent into Madness”

I want to make my zines be chapters, graphical novel-like scenarios of what the book will actually be. And see? I’m learning how to design web sites now too using Dreamweaver. (Such an apropos title for software, isn’t it?) I can make both hard copies to mail out and electronic copies to link to my blog and leave floating mysteriously on the web for people to discover.

Whether this could turn into an ongoing serial or not, who knows? By five years from now it would be wonderful if I could have the full text of my novel written and ready to send to a publisher.

With Deirdre Evans-Pritchard, who was a guest professor in the anthropology dept. at UCSC.

What would you consider the most awesome stroke of luck if it came your way?

The most awesome stroke of luck would be becoming able to afford to live in Santa Cruz again. It is a magical place to me. I would be in a community of artistic-minded people like myself, I would be near the sea – that gives me so much rejuvenation, and who knows, maybe I’d find love again.

Why do I have this feeling good things are about to come your way? Thanks so much for being here, Daryl!

Okay, before I get to the Weekly Wrap, I have to show you the coolest thing. I got a note earlier this week saying that my 6-word-memoir (yes, six words) was selected for an anthology that’s put out by HarperCollins and Smith Magazine. Maybe Huffington Post is involved, too, though I’m not sure about that.

My six words were: “Mistakenly kills kitten. Fears anything delicate.”

The person who contacted me asked for a bio photo but said she preferred something creative. So I asked my pal, Brian – you can see him in the “3 Trees” link to the right – if he’d draw me. Here’s how to make me cry:

Brian, you are totally and absolutely the coolest!

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Okay, on to the Weekly Wrap. How fun was that to hear stories of all your various hairdos throughout your career. I was ready to show the changes in my hair, but when looking through my photo albums, I discovered I have only had two looks:

Long with bangs (I’m on the right – this was back in college) . . .

(and for some inexplicable reason, I used to powder my face like a geisha)

And currently, medium with bangs (this summer, South Africa) . . .

Here’s a quick little hair story from my college years, and then it’s time for the weekend . . .

I had a date with my professor. We were going to see the play he directed; I didn’t know it was a date until he added, “Wear the red dress.”

I had already said yes, but now was determined not to wear the red dress because…of all the professors I wanted to think of me as hot…he was not one of them. The dress he liked was tight, uncomfortable, and unfortunately the only one clean. My favorite dress was made of denim with a round skirt that came down to my ankles. The hem was frayed. In the summer, I wore nothing underneath. In the winter I wore thermals and combat boots underneath. It suited most occasions, and with tights and smaller boots I made it suit this one.

With my dress still damp from washing it in the sink and then sneaking it into someone else’s dryer at my dorm, I left my room in time to meet him around the corner, as he had requested. I carried a book but forgot my key. (I always carried a book, to look casual and preoccupied because being “non-plussed” was “in” that year.)

My hair was long, down to where my back dipped inward, and when I left my dorm, my hair got caught in the door, and I was locked there. So I read, waving occasionally to people I knew and asking them in a non-plussed way if they knew where the R.A. was.

I was eventually released. And even with the delay, I was nearly on time for the date. When my professor put his hand around my waist, it was damp. He didn’t look proud to be walking with me. I regretted immediately not wearing the red dress, realizing I preferred to blow him off rather than vice versa.

*

Thank you to Neil Gaiman for sharing the history of his hair and just for being Neil Gaiman and making us all swoon.

(Oh, come on. I know you wanted to see that photo again.)

And thanks to all of you who answered the Question of the Week: Simon Haynes, josh kilmer-purcell, Sarah R. Roundell, Ric Marion, mikel k poet, Tish Cohen, Robin Slick, Betsy, *Joe*, Aimee, Lance Reynald, Richard, Kaytie, Aurelio, Carolyn Burns Bass, n.l. belardes, Terry, Juliet, Jason Boog, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Megan, Mark Bastable, Claire Cameron, Alexander Chee, patry, kim teeple, Jon Armstrong, Julie Ann Shapiro, Jordan, viciousrumours, and J.D. Smith.

*

Blurry cell phone photo of Sue and Kenny gossiping at House of India last night.

Don’t forget, now, I’m no longer blogging on the weekend, so I’ll see you Monday for another Question of the Week. A few quick things and then I’m off. First of all, thank you to my Indian-food-on-Thursday-nights friends – Kenny, Ritchie, Candy, Mike and Mike and Jim and Jon Rose and Aida, missed you Kathy. And to my Friday Chinese-school folks – I’m bringing donuts tonight, sorry, but you really don’t want me to cook. Thank you to The Beat and Journalista for linking LitPark! And finally – remember I ran a little contest a few weeks back? And remember how Daryl was the first to correctly identify Neil Gaiman’s baby photo? Well, I was planning to post my interview with him today but it became far too interesting and important for such a small space. So as soon as I can shuffle some things around on my blog schedule, you’ll meet Daryl properly. We’ll be talking about bi-polar disorder.

Truth or Dare with my contest winner!

Last week I ran a little contest with a mystery prize attached, and today, my winner HEATHER PENA, has agreed to play Truth or Dare on my blog. I adore her for this! She also chose this from my gift bag: a gift certificate for $1,000 off her next private jet booking!

So meet this fascinating person who shared with me that she’s writing a memoir and that she used to twirl the baton in high school. (Don’t think I let that drop when I came up with my dare!)

TRUTH: What’s the hardest thing about writing a memoir?

One of the most difficult aspects with writing a memoir is the subject = ME. It’s all about Heather Pena and her little deviant and secretive ways. I knew that writing a memoir would be a difficult task because what you are really doing is peeling away the skin and going back to a time that you quietly locked away in a vault. I knew one day I would have to face my experiences – eye to eye – but I thought a therapist would help me do that. Ha. It’s a lot cheaper than seeing a therapist I have to say. There is a lot of passion, hurt, love, lies and the reality of growing up involved in this. I am still in this world trying to figure it out. However, I closed a chapter in my life – and it’s hard to go back to it and try and relive it. In particular when writing about my relationship with my family and the details involved with that. It’s funny because I can write for hours and hours but then never open up my laptop again for weeks. It’s a hard task. Nobody could prepare you for. Not even your therapist.

TRUTH: What motivated you to write it – what single revelation or incident did you want to explore?

I have a deep love for memoirs. They are probably the only books I read – which I realize I have to open up a little bit – but it was James Frey’s “Million Little Pieces” that triggered my interest. I love his writing style and it broke all barriers that I thought writing was about. Call me naive – but I had in mind that writing a book was about describing butterflies right down to their very essence. Not exactly, but you get what I mean, I hope. Ha. I like raw. Give me a good raw, real book any day. The first paragraph of my memoir that I submitted to the Memoirist Collective website on Myspace – I really dug into that experience of racing down the Vermont road induced with alcohol and drugs. I didn’t care about a goddamn thing then. I was a lost girl who got wrapped up in her own shit – and put many people in danger as a result to it. I wanted to explore the absolute oblivion I felt. I have all these locked up emotions inside – and the best way to get inside of that is to write. I wanted to explore why I did the things I chose to do and why I felt the need to hit the highest notch. I was a tornado and as I write about my experiences I also feel so much pain for what I’ve done to other people whether if it was friends, family, strangers, or myself. It all left a dent inside of me. That is the true essence of my story. Feeling those raw emotions. Reality.

DARE: I dare you to send me a baton-twirling photo that represents both who you are now and who you were back in your twirling days.

BAM! Mission Complete.

TRUTH: Tell me where you found your new baton?

After my pottery class at Ruby’s Clay Studio in San Francisco’s Castro District – I had an idea to make my own baton by visiting the local hardware store. Special thanks to Cliff’s Variety Hardware store on Castro Street – I was able to find a thin steel rod and two pieces of rubber the ones you can find to keep up your shower curtain – and I stuck them to each end. Ta-Da! You got yourself a baton. It worked. The boys behind the counter trimmed it for me – and even twirled my new baton. It was a hit – all for under $6.00. Not bad. Not bad at all.

TRUTH: What’s the craziest dare you’ve ever done?

After a night of crazy talking to a local musician in Vermont and hyping it up to her that I play a mean guitar (which is a lie). I was dared to go on stage one night while she was performing at a local bar in Burlington, and before I knew it the musician put her guitar straps around my arm and I stood in front of about 100 people. My college friends sat in the back laughing and cheering me on – all knowing damn well I can’t play a single chord. What made it worse is that the musician was rooting me on and so I just made up chords. I also thought it would be a brilliant idea to add my fake Spanish – which I did. The musician never spoke to me again, and I don’t blame her. It was a horrible dare to take. It was horrible of me to lie, I know. I was punished though – because on my way back to the table I took a sip from a wine glass and I guess I threw back the glass too fast and I ended up knocking my front teeth and I chipped my tooth. I never got the tooth fixed. It’s still chipped. Sorry K.Q. if you’re reading this.

TRUTH: Who are your favorite writers – not the cool answer but the truthful answer about who you buy time after time?

James Frey, Bret Easton Ellis, Augusten Burroughs, and when my boy Frank Daniels gets published – I am going to continue to buy all of his books. He is an amazing writer. Are those answers too cool’?

TRUTH: What 3 things hurt you most?

1 – My habits

2 – Self Doubt

3 – My relationship with my father

TRUTH: What 3 things make you happiest?

1 – My Novia. All of her.

2 РSlinging espresso at the Someday Caf̩ (Davis Square, Boston).

3 – Camping at Squam Lake, NH with my Boston buddies and skinny-dipping.

TRUTH: If you write a break-out book, what act of generosity will you do with your newfound fame and money?

This question is too surreal for me to answer. Um . . . I would throw a huge party for every person who has influenced me and believed in me. As a thank you. I just want to give it all back. I would most definitely give back to the community and be a mentor to young aspiring writers. Really, all I want to do in this world regardless if I find fame and money – I just want to see people smile and have a good time. You need a buck? Here . . . you can have a buck. I will walk today. Oh, and on that note – I’d make sure all the people who ride the 67 Bus from Bernal Heights to the Mission have a damn bus pass. The transportation in San Francisco is too expensive and people can’t be walking up and down these hills! That’s a side note though. *shrug

TRUTH: Ask yourself the one question that you wished or was afraid I’d ask, and then answer it.

Q: Boxers or Briefs?

A: Boxers.

PENA’S SHOUT OUT:

Check out my friend Rachael Cantu’s music. She will have you skipping down the street later tonight.

Claire Cameron and The Line Painter – the road to publication.

If you’re here to read the note from Douglas Preston…
Please click here. There is an update at the end of that post, and I thank you for the interest in his story.

What about the baby born in the car?
In personal news, I mentioned over the weekend that two writers were driving in their Saturn on Saturday morning when their new baby boy was born. I’ve been given the okay to announce the news, so…. Congratulations to Sarah and Terry Bain for the baby I’ll always think of as Baby Saturn, whose head was born at 1st and Stevens at 6:49 a.m. and whose body was born at 4rth and Stevens at 6:50 a.m. You can send congratulations via Terry’s blog, or you can simply buy his book as a way of investing in diapers and chew toys for little Saturn (Terry may or may not post the baby’s real name on his blog–I’ll leave that up to him).

A quickie about Crash.
I was kind of rooting for Capote, but what a great thing to see such unexpected joy in the faces of the winners. And I’m happy for Sandy Bullock, who, when I was a kid, used to corn-row anyone’s hair at the local pool as long as they brought their own bag of those little colored rubberbands. She’d sit with her legs wrapped around you and braid for hours until it was done and you looked as ridiculous as a flat-chested Bo Derek.

Introducing Claire Cameron.

And now, for the only news I actually planned to share today–an interview with a debut novelist at HarperCollins–a warm and humble new mother: Claire Cameron, author of THE LINE PAINTER (HarperCollins, Spring 2007). We’ll talk about the road to publication.

But first, can you give my readers a little background on you?

I was born and raised in Toronto. After University, I worked as a mountain and river guide in Oregon. I moved to San Francisco, decided I need to grow up, and took a job with Pearson Plc in academic publishing. I moved to London, UK in 1999 where I now live. I am writing full time. My husband, son and I are moving back to Toronto in the spring.

Where in England are you living? My husband grew up in Gerrards Cross and went to Wellington College for boarding school.

I live is London, in Islington. I’m sure I’ve been to a lovely pub in Gerrards Cross. I remember it looking just like how you imagine England is supposed to look. [Editor's note: Perhaps she's referring to The Three Pigeons?]

Tell me about your book THE LINE PAINTER. A brief description…

It’s about a woman, Carrie, who goes on a road trip. When her car breaks down, Frank, who paints the lines on the road gives her a lift. She is trying to reconcile her past and gets tangled up in his. If I had to give it a label, I’d say it’s literary suspense.

My editor recently said it had a touch of film noir, or the style of old Raymond Chandler novels. I would be flattered if I weren’t too nervous to accept compliments about it.

How did you first get the idea for it?

Part of me has always wanted to be a musician (specifically, a rock star — like maybe the female version of Motorhead?). [Editor's note: Did she just plug Motorhead..?! I love her!] I set up a home studio and was recording songs, one of which was called Painting Lines. Meanwhile, I was also having a bit of a career crisis. I was working in academic publishing and enjoying it in many ways, but I didn’t feel like it was my life calling.

So, I was trying to record the Painting Lines and I realised it sounded really bad. I’m actually a pretty awful singer and a hack on the guitar. I had this moment where I got so frustrated and had a minor freak out. I guess I realised a gig at Wembley stadium wasn’t coming my way anytime soon.

After I calmed down, I still really liked the idea of a line painter. I sat down and started to write.

When in the process did you find your agent, and can you tell me how you found that person and how many partials/fulls until you struck a match?

I started submitting in the UK first. I got a listing of all the agents and looked online at their clients for good matches. I looked at the acknowledgements in books I thought were similar or enjoyed as authors often thank his or her agent. I also had a theory that newer agents were more likely to be taking on clients. I submitted to 15 agents, got 5 requests for the full manuscript, 3 were quite interested, but they all ended up saying I needed to do another draft. No cigar.

I had a rule that I would send out another query everytime I got rejected. At the time of the last rejection, I was in Toronto for a wedding. I saw that Denise, at The Bukowski Agency, had opened up her list and was taking submissions. I decided to give her a try. She took me on, provided that I do another draft. I was very lucky to find an agent willing to work with me. It’s a rare thing.

For all my research and theories, I think there is a strong element of chance in finding an agent. With fiction, it often comes down to personal taste, something that is impossible to predict.

What was the book submission process like, and what did you do during the wait?

My agent submitted the manuscript and booked meetings with interested publishers soon after. I met with the publishers in the space of a week and took offers on the last day. It happened quickly, which was merciful. It was kind of like ripping off a band-aid, you hope it happens quickly so you don’t have to agonize.

It’s not over though. I am polishing a final draft, then my agent will submit to publishers in the US and UK this autumn. I just realised this undermines my band-aid analogy it’s going to be slow and painful after all.

So this was in Canada? Can you say more about the meetings or how the submission process might be different in Canada?

The submissions process and my publisher are in Canada. As I was born and have a base there, my agent started with getting me a publishing deal in Canada. When I finish this next draft and have bound galleys in September, she is going to sell in the US, UK and other markets.

I don’t think the submissions process is too different in Canada from the U.S. Any difference is probably more to do with how various publishing houses are run. The meetings gave me a chance to get a sense for how each publisher works, everything from a brief view of the editorial work needed to how they might sell and market the book. I think the publishers were eyeing me up at the same time. I am sure they wanted to know how open I was to suggestion and how I speak for my book.

What’s it been like working with an editor? Have you had to make big or unexpected changes to your book?

I write in a very taut, sparse style and I knew I needed an editor who wouldn’t push me away from that. My editor, Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins Canada, has commented on things like character consistency and pushed me to sharpen some of the dialogue — all things I agree need work.

The biggest rewrite I did was with my agent before my book was submitted. She asked me all the really tough questions I didn’t want to hear, meaning I had chickened out and not addressed them in the first draft. In retrospect, I think I needed her vote of confidence to dig a bit deeper and try to make my book really good. It’s a scary thing to try.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

My writing is most influenced by songwriters who tell stories, like Will Oldman, Bruce Springsteen, a guy named Simple Kid in the UK and Neil Young.

My favourite authors change all the time, but Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Charles Bukowski and Kurt Vonnegut are constants.

And what are you working on now?

I’m working on a short story called Old Queenie. It is set on Owens Lake, which is a lake that was drained completely dry by the L.A. aqueduct in 1926. The main character is a man who loses his dog. It is about trying to find a home I suppose — something that’s on my mind.

I know some other HarperCollins people read this blog, and I hope they contact you here at your website and say hello. Thanks for coming on, Claire.