A Writer's Path

I’m fantasizing about floating in a sensory-deprivation tank like the one featured in the 80s sci-fi/horror film, Altered States. (No LSD or ketamine, thanks.) Let me explain.

In days gone by, you could retreat to a windowless room, ignore any phone calls, and invite the Muse to visit. Today, more extreme measures are required to find what I call the Imagination Zone. Creating a painting, a poem, or a piano sonata requires a lengthy stay in that inner world where imagination flourishes. It takes a lot of effort to get there, and once you’re there, the slightest interruption can pull you right back out again. Window views, ringing phones, and small children were bad enough, but those pale in comparison to the siren song of the Internet. News! Shopping! Social Media! A surfeit of distraction and stimulation lies only a click away.

There are writers, artists, and musicians who retreat to remote cabins to escape the myriad distractions of modern life. Others banish Internet connections from their offices and studios. Some of us strike a bargain, setting aside specific times during the day to check e-mail or read the news.  It takes prodigious amounts of self-discipline to manage this, day after day, and for me, it’s often an uphill battle. Hence the appeal of that sensory-deprivation tank, just for an hour or two.

I can’t help wondering about the effect this nonstop distraction and stimulation will have on future generations. Will our imaginations atrophy like unused muscles if we don’t use them on a regular basis? Will our inner worlds become wastelands—places where the wellsprings of creativity no longer flow? And what will that mean for art, music, and literature?

My novel, Yard Sale, is available from Amazon.

The werewolf howls at the door. Instead of running, you invite him in for a tumbler of single malt. At least you do if he’s Jake Marlowe, the star of Glen Duncan’s new novel The Last Werewolf.

As the title indicates, Jake’s not just any werewolf—he’s the last of his kind. Jake is smart, sexy, and self-aware, and even though he’s been targeted for extinction, you keep hoping he’ll dodge that silver bullet with his name on it.

I’m not a big fan of horror novels; most tales featuring vampires, zombies, or werewolves are either aimed at young readers or come off as entirely too campy for my taste. But The Last Werewolf takes the horror genre as we know it and blows the doors off.

Jake’s narrative of his final days is laced with great prose, clever literary references, and incisive cultural observations. It’s also chock full of raunchy sex and graphic violence.  Jake does, after all, kill and eat people once a month, and in between, in human form, he has an almost limitless libido. If Duncan occasionally gets carried away, I can forgive him because he makes magic on the page.

At one point in the book, Jake quotes Susan Sontag: “Whatever is happening, something else is going on.” I can’t think of a more apt description for The Last Werewolf. Even as we’re absorbed in Jake’s flight from his assassins, his close calls with the vamps (who have their own agenda for him), and his steamy sexual encounters, Glen Duncan forces us to think about friendship and love, about the nature of humanity and the beast that dwells within us all. And that, as the reviewer for The Guardian put it, “makes the case for literature.”

My novel, Yard Sale, is available from Amazon.

This week I saw Bristol Palin’s “memoir,” Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far.  My initial reaction was entirely personal: A twenty-one-year old, whose celebrity career was launched by her teenage pregnancy, landed a book contract when I couldn’t? Then I recalled that Rutgers University recently paid Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi of TV’s “Jersey Shore” $32,000 to speak on campus. As if that were not outrageous enough, several weeks later Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison received only $30,000 for the commencement address she delivered at Rutgers. That put my snub by the publishing industry into perspective.Snooki and Bristol Palin are merely the latest examples of our cultural obsession with celebrities and stories that are trivial, titillating, and downright trashy. When those two intersect—as they often do—it’s a home run for the media. And for the rest of us? Dismal proof that, as Neil Postman put it in the title of his 1985 book, we are in grave danger of Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Postman compared George Orwell’s vision of the future in 1984 with that shown by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. Postman believed that Huxley, not Orwell had it right. “What Huxley teaches,” wrote Postman, “is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate.” Postman goes on: “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Handwriting. Wall. Enough said. My novel, Yard Sale, is available through Amazon.

The body on the table just beyond the glass is that of a young man—twenty-three, I later learn—who was found hanging in his closet. One of the autopsy attendants has already made the Y-incision and pulled back the layers of flesh, fat, and muscle. Next, she picks up the saw and begins cutting away the ribcage to expose the organs beneath.

The body is systematically emptied, the organs inspected, weighed, and measured. When the necessary samples have been taken, everything goes into a black plastic garbage bag that is tied shut and placed back inside the chest cavity. The incision is closed with heavy thread in large, looping stitches.

I watch two more autopsies, so several hours have passed by the time I finally emerge into the gray half-light of a dreary morning. I think about what I have seen and heard. The utter slackness of the body in death. The whine of the Stryker saw cutting through bone. The perfect slices of glistening liver.

I also think about the old Hasidic saying: “Everyone must have two pockets so that he can reach into one or the other, according to his needs. In his right pocket are to be the words ‘For my sake was the world created,’ and in the left, ‘I am dust and ashes.’” As I walk to the car, I wonder when that young man who hung himself forgot about the words in his right pocket and read only those in the left.

What I’m reading this month: Dennis Overbye’s Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality, and Katherine Darling’s Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School.

My novel, Yard Sale, is available through Amazon.

Frederick Busch said it best: “Research: I love it. It keeps me from having to do the tough work of writing the book.”

I researched topics as varied as the Forest Service’s organizational chart and the historic 1998 fire at Vail for Yard Sale, my first novel.  At every turn, there was something more I had to know before I could put words on paper. Like most writers, I milked that for all it was worth. But finally the day arrived when I knew I was postponing the real work, the tough work, of writing the book.

I find myself in much the same position as 2011 begins. I’ve spent months studying relativity and quantum mechanics. Thanks to my son, Dr. J. Trevor Mendel, I’ve picked up a few basics about dark energy, the mysterious force behind the accelerating expansion of our universe. Shifting gears, I observed three autopsies and talked with cold case detectives at the Sheriff’s Department in Oakland County, Michigan. I am grateful to my friend Jeff Bouchard for those truly memorable opportunities. I even took a defensive handgun course because the new book is a murder mystery, and who knows, gunplay might be involved.

After almost a year of research, I think I’ve postponed the tough work about as long as I can. As I begin putting words on paper, I’ll post monthly updates on my progress. I hope you’ll check in to see how Schrödinger’s cat, dark energy, and a ten-year-old missing person case come together in my new book.

Yard Sale is available at Amazon.

Why a ski town? That’s what lots of people asked over the years about the setting for  Yard Sale.

For me, that decision was simple. As an avid skier, I know a lot about ski towns—places as different as Val d’Isère, France and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  And yet Val d’Isère and Jackson Hole, and every other ski town I’ve been privileged to visit, also have a lot in common. First, snow! Despite the rise in artificial snowmaking, ski towns are still dependent on Mother Nature’s largesse, and climate change is further complicating that situation. The weather—or lack of it—is always the hottest topic in town because everyone’s livelihood depends on it.

Ski towns are also small towns, and small towns have a unique dynamic that bigger places lack. Oh sure, you get the warm fuzzies when you know pretty much everyone at the grocery store and the coffee shop. But there’s also the less pleasant flipside: there are no secrets in a small town. For a writer, that automatically creates all kinds of interesting scenarios. It’s a stew with only a few ingredients, and someone’s always stirring the pot.

Finally, and perhaps most important, ski towns—and resort towns in general—are often the scenes of environmental battles. It’s more than a case of people resisting change; serious issues are involved. These kinds of places are unique and beautiful, but the very features that draw people to them also make them attractive investment prospects. Their natural beauty becomes a commodity for sale to the highest bidder, which means there’s always a conflict simmering. As a fictional setting, that makes a ski town a home run, as far as I’m concerned.

Yard Sale is available through Amazon.

The environmental intrigue in Yard Sale involves allegations that a Forest Service employee enjoys an overly cozy relationship with the ski area. The specifics in the book are fictional; those kinds of allegations are not. Those allegations aren’t new either. In one of the most famous environmental cases of the last forty years, the Sierra Club alleged that  Forest Service officials had put their own interests and those of the Walt Disney Company ahead of their responsibilities to the public.

In 1969, the Forest Service okayed a $35 million dollar ski complex planned by Disney in the scenic Mineral King valley of the Sequoia National Forest. Six months after Disney got the green light, the Sierra Club filed suit to halt the proposed development. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court, and the Sierra Club lost.

But the story didn’t end there. As a result of the lawsuit, the Forest Service was forced into a seven-year environmental impact study on the Mineral King project. By the time it was completed, Disney had decided to abandon the development. More significant still, as a direct result of the case individuals gained the right to sue over environmental laws if they could show that failure to enforce those laws would harm them in some way. Conservationists across the country celebrated.

In writing Yard Sale, I used the Mineral King case as the basis for Elaine McKenzie’s misgivings about the relationship between the ski area and the Forest Service. I detailed  Disney’s role and that apparently made the editor nervous. After much internal debate, I decided that the case, while interesting, was not necessary to the plot. But readers of Yard Sale know that I did not let Disney off entirely.

Yard Sale is available through Amazon.

Conventional wisdom says that first novels are usually autobiographical. Conventional wisdom isn’t always right. Unlike Elaine McKenzie, the main character in Yard Sale, I have never been a single parent, and I have sons, not daughters. There are, of course,  elements in the story that reflect my personal experience.

On a spring afternoon when I was seven, my oldest sister drove away to do some research at the library. She never returned. A car ran a stop sign and killed her a just a few blocks from the library. In the years that followed, our family unraveled. When I was fifteen, my father, unable to shake the depression that had dogged him since my sister’s death, committed suicide.

I learned the most important lessons of my life at an early age. Never assume you know the plot of your own story because control, as Hart Cameron tells Elaine at one point in Yard Sale, is just an illusion. Take nothing for granted—not your family, your health, or your financial security. Finally, even though we don’t have complete control over the events in our lives, we do control the choices we make relative to those events.

The characters in Yard Sale face unexpected events and tough choices. Elaine is forced to choose between doing the right thing and doing her job, and then between her job and her daughter. Hart must choose whether to live, merely survive, or quit the field altogether. And Elaine’s daughter Nicole has to choose between the good-girl path she’s always taken and a walk on the wild side. They all learn valuable lessons from their choices. I hope you find their struggles interesting and entertaining.

Yard Sale is available through Amazon.