Archive | Writer

Patty Hearst in the Attic

Do you remember Patty Hearst? This would be in 1974 or 75. She was the newspaper heiress who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. I know, it really sounds like fiction but honest, this happened. The Symbionese Liberation Army—the SLA—was a group of persons dedicated to committing very public acts of violence, with the […]

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Sheet Music

I grew up not allowed to sing.  My father was a jazz musician all his life. He started playing professionally when he was 15, and was still doing that two or three weeks before he died, at age 86. He was a perfectionist, very critical, highly respected in his community, the west coast traditional jazz […]

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Magic

My mother, Marguerite, was very bright, absurdly literate, pathologically insecure, and a poet. As a young mother she gradually became aware that her first and most loved child was a psychopath, and believed that recognition of his defect would destroy her life. She could lose everything she loved most, both her son and her husband. […]

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Interview Questions: St. Johns Memories

These are the interview questions for when I ask people for their St. Johns memories. What year were you born? Were you born in St. Johns? Or when did you arrive here? Have you lived here all your life? Or where else have you lived, and at what ages? Where are your parents from? When […]

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The Interview Strategy

For that perfect day job that I recently quit, I became adept at interviewing people. I learned how to prepare a detailed, thorough list of questions in advance. I learned how to keep the interviewee happy about talking to me, and how to control the conversation so the person doesn’t wander off into long stories […]

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Maybe It Never Happened

In addition to its being set in a place where I personally did not grow up, my new story also includes incidents that never happened to me. This means that I have to go find people who did have these experiences and ask many, many questions. How did it happen? What, exactly did you do? […]

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Research at the Blow Fly Inn

I am doing research for my next book. Like my completed book, _Like Light from Stars_, this story takes place over multiple generations in a place with which I am familiar—in this case, St. Johns, where I have lived since 2005. However, that is not exactly several generations’ worth. I need to find out a […]

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