Interview with the Historical Fiction Book Club

Interviewer is Candy Little of the Historical Fiction Book Club:

Are you a reader/writer? 

I was an avid reader before I wrote The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood, and remain one, although when I'm actively writing it's difficult for me to read books of a similar genre. Fortunately, there are no other historical fiction novels dealing with this time period and area of the U.S. I think that will soon change.

What are your fondest memories of reading? 

My childhood was lonely in New Mexico and the winters were long and cold. Our adobe home was heated by a free-standing gas appliance in the back of the house, so no warmth reached my room up front. Mom got a little portable electric heater which we put on a chair next to my bed. I read by the light of its toasty red beam late into the night and was transported to another world. I lost all sense of physical boundaries, of time and discomfort, and fought sleep. Even after the book ended, I walked around in a dream, still captured by its spell. Writing The Sandoval Sisters did much the same thing. The characters spoke to me, weaved their magic behind my eyes while I was making grocery lists or carpooling.

What are some of your favorite authors and books? 

I don't limit myself to one genre, but in the historical fiction category I prefer a variety of settings and time periods. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, The House of Spirits by Isabelle Allende, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley is nonfiction, but a huge influence. I own every book written by Antonia Fraser. Anne Rice's A Cry to Heaven and Feast of All Saints.

If you could describe what writing/reading means to you, how would you do so? 

Writing is a declaration of independence for me. It's an acceptance of the gluttonous fantasist which not only nourished my youth, but threatened to carry me off permanently. There were times when I questioned my sanity back then, only I put it in plainer terms, “What's wrong with me?” 

In those days I dreamt symphonies and technicolor adventures where I vanquished my fears (the enemy of creativity) and was loved and appreciated. That dream world was so real that I slept for 14 hours or longer, so important to me that when I was forced to go to school it was as if I sleepwalked through the halls, and barely noticed the stares or heard the jibes. Yeah, I was bullied (see the author's writing on Bullying here here and here.) 

In college, I used behavior modification to reduce my fantasy life. Fifteen minutes of study would net me forty-five minutes of daydreaming. Gradually, the ratio was reversed, until the day arrived when I daydreamed no more. Instead, I set goals and met them with a ferocity that had never been present in my life. I established a successful business, married and had children. Thank goodness I still read and took classes: anthropology, oceanography, astronomy, marine biology. 

After listening to my mom tell the story of our maternal ancestors, the Sandovals, I signed up for an Introduction to Fiction class at UCLA. Fantasies reentered my life; I put out the welcome mat for them. Woohoo! Only now I write them down, give them structure, and share them with readers all over the world.

Which book do you think was best adapted into a movie? Why? 

Two movies pop into mind, not so much for the sameness of book to movie, but for how the movie organized the material: The English Patient was a complicated book in terms of time jumps. The cinematic adaptation made those transitions seamlessly. I enjoyed both the book and film, but I'm glad I saw the movie first. The Hunger Games was a page turner, but I felt the movie developed character better. Been a while, but The Name of the Rose was made into an accessible movie.

Why do you like to read/write historical novels? 

I'm a lifelong learner, and while my high school history teacher bemoaned my lack of devotion to history (in the classroom), historical novels have sparked my curiosity for more history, and I've gone on to research the “facts” on my own. I've also developed preferences for how I like time periods and settings and wars and such to be written. I don't like the facts thrust at me in an intrusive fashion.

Write your favorite quote and explain why you picked it? 

Two quotes at the beginning of The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood:

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
Willa Cather

Memories play a huge role in my novel, and in my life. As Oratoria says on the first page, “Which are the more true, the memories then or those simmered over time?”

No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.

Luis Valdez

American Progress, John Gast, 1872

Manifest Destiny

In my research, before I had even decided to write a novel, I was trying to find an answer to why cultural and ethnic antagonisms existed in Santa Fe, to why I had been bullied. So, I read some history and learned more about New Mexico and America than I'd ever imagined. But my goal was not to indict anyone, just to understand. There is a worldview expressed by the Sandoval sisters and it's been shaped by my experience and what my research revealed.

Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself? Are you married? Any kids? Where do you live? 

I'm married and we raised two sons. We have a happy empty nest in Los Angeles that we've filled with a dog, a cat, and two quarrelsome parakeets.

Congratulations on your awards, Sandra!

The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood
Best Historical Fiction and Best First Book.

BULLY: The Unwritten Social Contract to Grow Some Balls

          I saw Lee Hirsch’s documentary Bully Thursday night with a group of fellow volunteers from WriteGirl. We mentor teenaged girls through their writing. After the movie we sat in the lounge and talked. We all agreed that the parents and school officials in the movie were often clueless when dealing with bullies, and that this most likely mimicked real life.

          The implication is that failure to stand up to the bullies is, well, failure. The bullied know it and so do all the bullies and the multitude of youthful bystanders who are just grateful to stay under the bully radar. In movies, we root for the underdog who finally finds his courage and his fist (Crispin Glover in Back to the Future; Carrie; Mean Creek; Heathers). The victim’s predicament is summed up in homilies: kids will be kids; water seeks its own level; the pecking order; dog-eat-dog.  It’s the predominant philosophy rampant in not only the families, but especially the Vice-principal and the school counselor in Bully. Even the best friend of a victim who resorted to suicide says on camera that he was bullied until he challenged his torturer.

          This happened to my son when he was four: He came home from a small, private pre-school with a huge bruise on his shoulder blade. Over the next few days, more bruises appeared. I talked to the head teacher/administrator at the school. The kids were learning their alphabet and each student was assigned a letter according to their name. My son’s letter was “E” for Eric. Turns out another student named Edward didn’t want to share the letter, so he was pinching my kid on a daily basis. The teacher said she’d talk to Edward about it. The bruising continued. I talked to the teacher again and she pointed out Edward’s father, who was dropping him off. I approached him figuring he’d tell his son to cut it out, you know, share. Be nice. Edward’s dad showed no emotion when he told me that my son should learn to stand up for himself. The term “grow some balls” remains vivid in my memory. I moved my child to another school.

          Most people don’t have this option and find it difficult to deal with school officials. The scene in the movie where the vice-principal essentially shuts down the parents who have come to her for help in protecting their son is infuriating. One can only assume that this experience is pervasive in the communities that these schools serve. But it’s not limited to just rural towns in the South and Midwest.

          A Darwinian survival of the fittest mentality pervades much of American society and the solution offered by Bully is to teach our children not to meekly stand by and allow a fellow student to be bullied. Will this make the defender(s) a target? Yes. That’s why the emphasis is that they organize and act as a group. Is the movie enough to make a change in the schools?

          Bully’s message will positively affect a few students, but it’s their parents who need to hear it and embrace it. Only if the parents model and reinforce non-bullying behavior in their offspring will this problem be eliminated in our schools and in our society. In the movie, the school officials said the behavior was normal and that “nothing is gonna change.” If the parents are not involved, I couldn’t agree more. Think about when and if you’ve ever advised your child not to get involved. And then think again.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.  ~Maya Angelou

 Bullying and the media here.

Let the Right One In

St. Martin's Press, 2007

Loneliness plays an important part in coming of age stories. Toss in brutal bullying of a latchkey kid, single moms, a nondescript – read soulless – apartment complex, an assortment of teenaged glue sniffers, drunks, and other layabouts living on their disability benefits and you have the makings of a contemporary take on the usual outsider story.

Add a bleak, wintery landscape and a pedophile, Hakan, who moves in next door to the 12-year-old protagonist, Oskar, with his “daughter” of the same age, and you might have a predictable story. Except that in John Lindqvist’s “Let the Right One In,” the girl, Eli, is a vampire.

A series of gruesome murders occur and Oscar compiles newspaper clippings in his scrapbook. This is not morbid behavior. The story is set in 1982 and the Nintendo Entertainment System hasn’t been invented yet. Anyone who has played a video game knows that plenty of slaughter happens on the screen. Parents reading about Oscar’s scrapbook actually wish their kids would turn off the video games and read about murder in the newspaper.

Hakan is to Eli as Renfield was to Dracula, only with a sick twist. He worships Eli, but it’s his sexual compulsion which drives the truly horrific, and the sickly comic, aspects of this story. He supplies her with blood . . . at a price, but his ineptitude leads to his capture. Even here, Eli takes pity on him, but her sympathy leads to a further twist in the story and Hakan becomes a zombie with an erection. This is new in vampire lit. It is also social commentary. Hakan is a pedophile who will never be rehabilitated, much less killed.

These three are the fulcrum around which the intersecting stories of a multitude of characters converge. The chapters are short and the author feels free to jump into all his character’s minds as they aimlessly head for disaster. This is author as God, but Lindqvist doesn’t disappoint. Even the short chapter where we’re in the mind of a squirrel is well-written and packs a punch at its end. Don’t misread my words – I loved this book. It’s every writer’s dream to be able to get away with these POV shifts. Only a good plot and an author who knows where he’s going can do it.

These twists wouldn’t be enough if they weren’t contrasted with the everyday terror of schoolyard bullying, leading to the eternal question of who is more violent, the humans or the vampire?

The friendship between Oskar and Eli is tender and nonsexual. There is a gender-bending aspect which underlines their bond, and is a further contrast to the adult lives around them. Like some alternative Charlie Brown Cartoon Special, all the adults are marginal or missing. Those that are present are shadowy losers, except the gym teacher (go figure), and he provides only minor optimism. That arrived toward the end of the book so I knew more bad stuff was going to happen to Oscar.

Just when I thought he’d solved his problem with the bullies, they come back in force. In my heart, I was rooting for Eli to appear and save Oscar, and you will be too.