Gail Bowen

On July 23^rd I’ll be launching the 12^th Joanne Kilbourn novel, “The Nesting Dolls”, at an event called LOVE, Saskatchewan 2010 at Harbourfront in Toronto.  The title ‘LOVE, Saskatchewan 2010’ has the bounce and fizz appropriate to a summer celebration of Canada’s easiest-to-draw province.  That said, a phrase that juxtaposes the words “LOVE” and “Saskatchewan” sets the teeth of our province’s writers on edge.  We know that at some point in any interview we give, we’ll be asked “If you’re any good, why are you still in Saskatchewan?”

Saying that you live in this province because you love it will brand you as a hopelessly hay-chewing stubble jumper whose interview should be truncated immediately if not sooner.   Here are some answers that should buy you enough interview time to at least mention the title of your book.

1. Saskatchewan’s  landscape is a powerful motivator.  A scholarly book a few years back suggested that in a world where the landscape is horizontal (read ‘flat’) and human beings are vertical, we are driven to write (a) because we’re terrified at being the tallest thing around and hence a target for the gods or (b) because we’re thrilled at being the tallest thing around and hence clearly the gods’ darlings.

2.  Saskatchewan editors are famous for being both excellent and kind.  Like all writers, our province’s writers embrace the cliché that editors are generals who comes down from the hills after the battle is over to shoot the survivors.  But we know that, beginning with Caroline Heath, editor-in-chief of Grain and founder of Fifth House, Saskatchewan has been blessed with editors who shoot only when it is absolutely necessary and then with hearts full of sorrow for the pain they are about to inflict.  Saskatchewan writers appreciate that.

3.  The logistics of life are simpler here. When I get ‘the works’ at Holt Renfrew in Toronto – a luxury I am able to afford only because my daughter’s friend, Michael, a cutting-edge stylist at Holts (hair pun #1) never forgets that his roots are in Stockholm, Saskatchewan (hair pun#2)--I dedicate the entire morning to choosing an outfit that’s Holts-worthy, figuring out the subway route to Holts from wherever I’m staying and afterwards finding a place to have lunch that’s worthy of my hair.   Here in Regina, it takes 10 minutes for me to brush my teeth, pull on my jeans and walk to Chantal, the stylist at Head to Toe.  With an early appointment, I can leave looking as good as I’m going to ever going to look in time to hear my oldest grand-daughter play her clarinet solo at the spring recital, pick up some groceries and still have time to walk the dogs and work on a chapter before lunch.

4. Necessity truly is the mother of invention.  Whatever you’ve heard about Saskatchewan winters is true, but multiply the horror factor of 10.   When you’re heading into the second month of minus 40 temperatures and the wheels on your car are square and the streets are either (a) impassable because of snow or (b) impassable because of sheer ice, it’s wise to retreat to the basement and curl up with a warm computer.  You’re not missing anything. Your friends haven’t been good company since Halloween and it’s too cold to have an affair.  Stick with your manuscript.

5.   In a province whose population is slightly over 1,000,000 the concept of 6 degrees of separation is ludicrous. In Saskatchewan 2 degrees of separation is the norm. Everybody knows everything about everyone, and ours is a story-telling culture.  Research in Saskatchewan means buying a guy a beer and listening.

6.  Any province that can nurture writers as diverse and brilliant as Lorna Crozier, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Maggie Siggins, Sandra Birdsell , Louise Halfe, Yann Martel, W.O. Mitchell, Sharon Butala, Robert Calder, Anthony Bidulka, Gary Hyland, Randy Lundy, Trevor Herriott, David Carpenter, Maria Campbell, Sinclair Ross, W.O. Mitchell, Robert Currie, Louise Halfe, Dianne Warren, Suzanne North, Jo Bannantyne-Cugnet, Robert Currie, Connie Gault, Alison Lohans and Lois Simmie has magic in its ecosystem, and even bad writers are smart enough to know that it’s just plain dumb to mess with magic.

Last weekend I taught a course in fiction writing at St. Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, Saskatchewan.  The monks are in the Order of St. Benedict, and they are a hospitable group.  Of course, any order that gave us Benedictine – half of one of my favourite drinks—knows how to welcome guests. The monks appear to have a puckish affinity for existential humour. In the bathroom just inside the entrance a hand-lettered sign over the toilet instructs: Hold Down the Handle Until Everything Disappears.  

For the second time this summer, Ted and I were in a dormitory together. After 42 years of marriage, Ted is still a fun guy to sneak into a dorm room—especially when the church bells toll to summon the faithful to ponder their sins. 

There were 16 people in my class – twice my usual maximum and four times the ideal number for a weekend course.  That said, I wouldn’t have traded one of them.  We were a disparate group:  a family physician, a true crust punk, a lawyer, a crime reporter, two retired teachers; two men who are currently teaching; three students of St. Peter’s College and a nice sprinkling of people who were simply interested in writing.  I wish we’d taken a class picture.

Because of our numbers, we decided to have a two hour class the first night, an hour and a half class every morning, then spend the rest of the day in one-on-one interviews.  Evenings were for wine, cheese and readings. 

As someone who has spend her adult life teaching, I’ve always been fascinated by how groups come together.  Perhaps because we were sleeping in dorms and eating together, we were quick to bond.  We laughed a lot and the students learned a lot—not just from me but from one another.  The first night people were reluctant to read from works in progress, so I read a chunk from “The Nesting Dolls”. The next night – perhaps because my first reading had already pleasured them enough, the students were eager to participate.    Without exception, they were sensational.

We opened our classes in the morning with Elmore Leonard’s rules for writers and the responses other writers had made to Elmore Leonard’s rules. 

At the end of our last class, I read the rule that I felt was the most important at the It comes from writer Helen Dunmore:  “Don’t worry about posterity – as Philip Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed, “What will survive of us is love”.   I think perhaps our weekend together at St. Peter’s had already taught our little group that lesson.

One of my best memories of the Mystery Writers Retreat at Saltspring is of the morning when William Deverell and I talked about the writing process. Because Bill’s beautiful wife of 50+ years and my wonderful husband of 42 years were in the room, Bill and I were forced to be more honest than we might otherwise have been about how we write.

Bill is a hermit.  He has a cabin on their property where he goes when he’s working on a book. It seems that Bill enters a kind of parallel universe when he steps over the threshold of his writing space. Teckla says he is not to be disturbed and that when Bill’s working, she ceases to exist.  Like any couple in a long and successful marriage they have accommodated themselves to an arrangement that from the outside seems daunting.  Teckla is involved in politics and has a large organic garden that she works and enjoys. When Bill emerges with a completed manuscript, they resume their life together.  He’s a fine and prolific writer and it’s apparent their marriage is a solid one, so obviously Bill’s approach works for him.

I need to have Ted and the kids around when I’m working.  My writing space is a sunny porch off the second floor front bedroom of our house.  I never am without a dog when I write—most often, they’re both here.  Over the years, I have shared one corner of my built in desk with my grandchildren.  They have craft supplies there, and when they’re of a mind to, they cut and paste and draw. They all come upstairs after school to fill me in on the days’ events.  When my daughter comes home from work to pick up the children, she wanders in too and we gossip for awhile, and sometimes we have a glass of wine together.  I am not nearly as prolific as Bill, but I manage to get done what I need to get done, and like Bill and Teckla, Ted and I are content.

The point that both Bill and I made with the writers at Saltspring is that while all writers have the same tools at their disposal,  the conditions under which each of us writes most effectively are personal.  Bill needs silence and isolation to enter the world that he creates through his writing.  I need to feel connected.

One of our dogs is a bouvier.  Bouviers are family dogs in a very literal sense – they need to be with their human families.  To punish a bouvier, all you need to do is close the door between them and you. I think that I have bouvier blood. I can’t write with a closed door.  

All of us who gathered at Saltspring the week of June 6^th for the Mystery Retreat were book people:  writers—published and emerging--an editor and an agent. We talked about books constantly—how to write and edit them; how to market them; the ‘elevator pitch’ or how to pitch your book to an agent in less than 60 seconds. Everything we talked about was pointed towards a single goal:  shepherding the promising manuscript on your desk through the journey that would deliver it, handsomely printed, glossily covered, utterly irresistible, to the “New and Noteworthy” front table of bookstores all over North America. 

The six of us who worked in books collectively had at least 120 years of experience in the business.  We all loved books.  We all believed in writers.  Certainly the group of emerging writers who gathered on Saltspring were as good, as hardworking and as determined as any professional writer I’ve ever met. It was a great experience. We learned from one another; we laughed a lot; we formed relationships that we all hope will continue. Much that was valuable came out of our week together; yet the overwhelming message we all came away with was that the book business was in serious trouble and that,contrary to what I had always believed, these days even a fine manuscript may not find a publisher.  It was grim news, underscored by the fact that after she returned to her office after our week together, Dinah Forbes, who edits Peter Robinson, Bill Deverell, Maureen Jennings and me (among many others) had been laid off after twenty years at McClelland & Stewart.

It was difficult to find a silver lining in all these clouds and yet when I visited Orca Books in Victoria I found one.  From the outside, Orca doesn’t look very corporate.  It’s an old house, painted bright yellow. The area out back, now a warehouse for Orca’s books, was once the building where cows were milked. Across the street from the company is an old painted bus that looks as if it might have played a role in Tom Wolfe’s novel the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  Behind it is a well-run organic farm.  All of this is a stone’s throw from downtown Victoria.

Inside Orca, there are people everywhere.  It made me think of the story of the Old Woman who lived in the shoe who had so many children she didn’t know what to do.  But even if their office is a cubby-hole on the stairwell or a desk cheek by jowl with that of another employee, everyone at Orca knows exactly what they’re doing—more importantly, to my eyes at least, they appeared to be happy with their work.

Orca publishes books for children and young adults.  I was there because my new Charlie D series for adults with literacy challenges is one of Orca’s new ventures.  Bob Tyrrell and Andrew Wooldridge, who own and run the company are low key, affable, respectful of their writers and of those with whom they work.  They are also very, very smart.  They move slowly and surely, and they’re successful.

The Happy Yellow House is a good place to be.  I wonder if it might provide a useful model for those who care about the future of books.

1.  How would you summarize your book in one sentence? 

     “The Nesting Dolls” is about the potency of secrets and the redemptive power of love.

2.   How long did it take you to write this book?

      Two years, but during that time I also wrote a children’s play about the last of the Galapagos tortoises and a short novel for adult readers with literacy challenges. I also attended 186 recitals/badminton games/track meets and Christmas concerts in which our grandchildren played roles of varying significance and success.

3.  Where is your favorite place to write?

      Truthfully, Anglin Lake in Northern Saskatchewan. The lake is pristine with a large population of loons that still feel at home around non-invasive humans, and every day birds drop by the feeder outside the window where I write.  

3.  How do you choose your characters’ names? 

     For close to twenty years I’ve had people bid at charity events for cameo roles in my books.  I think by now I might have raised about $50,000 for organizations like Oxfam, many cancer societies; literacy groups—in general just groups that I believe in. This year’s crop will include characters whose names were purchased by donors from Grandmothers 4 Grandmothers and Camp fYrefly a place where gay/lesbian/trans/ and other teens can feel comfortable being themselves.

4.   How many drafts do you go through?

     I’m a Virgo.  Don’t ask, because even though the books in question, are already published, I’ll feel compelled to do a final polish.

5.    If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?

      “Charlotte’s Web”.

6.    If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?

      Six of my books have become made for tv movies starring Wendy Crewson. I thought they were great. I ask everyone reading this to write to CTV requesting more – Ted and I have modest plans for our old age. We would like to make them less modest.

7.  What’s your favourite city in the world?

      Regina.

 8.  If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask?

      W.B. Yeats.  I would ask him how he could have written a poem as brilliant as “Among School Children” with the lines that always stop my heart by their beauty.  “O body swayed to music.  O brightening glance/How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

 9.  Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what kind??

     When I’m having a difficult writing day, Glenn Gould with the “Goldberg Variations”.  The rest of the time, whatever strikes my fancy—from Green Day to Renee Fleming. I listen to Glenn Gould a lot.

 10.  Who is the first person who gets to you read your manuscript?

My husband, but only after it’s been sent to my editor. Ted and I’ve been together for 42 years and I have plans for the next 42 that don’t include me being sullen because of an ill-chosen metaphor.

 11.  Do you have a guilty pleasure read?

      I’m an Anglican. We’re not massively into guilt.

12.  What’s on your nightstand right now?”

      “The Emperor’s Children” – Claire Messud (a re-read because I just finished her earlier novels and was dazzled.)

      “Solar” Ian McEwan

      “The Uncommon Reader” Alan Bennett  

      “Innocent” – Scott Turow

13.   What is the first book you remember reading?

      “Madeline” by Ludwig Bemelmans

      When our daughter named our first grand-child, Madeleine, and I read our grand-daughter the ‘Madeline’ books, I felt as if I’d come full circle.

14. Did you always want to be a writer?

      Probably, but I’m a Virgo, so I became a university professor first.

15.  What do you drink or eat while you write?

      I start writing at 5:30 a.m. At that point I drink herbal tea. I have one cup of good coffee in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Both are rewards.  When I stop writing I have a glass of vermouth before dinner. That’s my ticket to perdition—no more writing till the next morning at 5:30 a.m. 

16.  Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper?

      Laptop and pen and paper. As a Virgo, I seize every moment and that means hard copies to work on.

17.  What did you do immediately after hearing that you were being published for the very first time.

      Nothing. I’ve often been saved by ignorance.  My first publication in “An Easterner’s Guide to Western Canada/A Westerner’s Guide to Eastern Canada” was a fluke.  I wrote my submission at the request of my first two children’s godfather. It was fun.  It was published, and I figured that was it. After that, it became more complex.

18.  How do you decide which narrative point of view to write from?

As a feminist, wife, mother, grandmother, academic and political person, my POV was a no-brainer.  I wanted to write from the POV of a Canadian woman in mid-life who realized she lived a privileged live and wanted that life for others.

19.  What is the best gift someone could give a writer?  

      A cleaning person and a copy of  “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White’.

Last summer when I was WIR at the Toronto Reference Library, I went to some stellar book launches.  My friend Jeffrey Round’s launch at Charlie Pachter’s Moose Factory Gallery last June was a stand-out.  The Moose Factory Gallery is open to the public and if ever you’re visiting the AGO in Toronto, the Moose Factory is steps’ away. It’s filled with Charlie Pachter’s work--lots of images of the queen and her moose together and apart, and many other provocative and rewarding pieces. Fittingly for a hot event, Jeff’s launch was held on the hottest night of the year.  The Moose Factory is a large space, but people (99% of whom were gay) were cheek to cheek (and mighty handsome cheeks they were).  The food was tasty and the wine was so plentiful that I don’t honestly remember whether the book being launched was Jeff’s mystery “Death in Key West” or his literary novel, “The Honey Locust”.  Whichever, Charlie Pachter made certain Jeff’s book got one great send-off, and that’s all any writer ever hopes for.

A.S. Byatt’s launch of “The Children’s Book” at Harbourfront was more sedate.  Ms. Byatt was interviewed on-stage by Eleanor Wachtel and the most shocking moment came when Ms. Byatt said she found the entire Bloomsbury Group ‘tedious’.  The people who admire A.S. Byatt tend to be the same people who admire the Bloomsbury group. Our collective gasp of horror at Ms. Byatt’s apostasy still echoes  along the lakeshore in front of Harbourfront.

I’ll be reading at Harbourfront on the weekend of July 23rd. That occasion will be the book launch for the 12th Joanne Kilbourn novel,  “The Nesting Dolls”. I hope we’ll have fun, but I promise no gasp-worthy moments.  

At the luncheon where we had the exquisite parsnip soup with our friends, I mentioned that in “The Nesting Dolls” my protagonist, Joanne Kilbourn, is making chicken soup and among the vegetables she throws in the pot are parsnips. When my editor read the manuscript, she vetoed Joanne’s parsnips, saying they would sweeten the soup in a distinctly unpleasant way. I stood up for my parsnips, saying I added them to MY chicken soup, and if it was good enough for me, it should be good enough for the fictional Joanne.  My editor and I didn’t come to blows over this, but only because we were half a continent apart.

Our hosts at the parsnip soup luncheon aren’t writers, so they were taken aback at the scope of an editor’s duties.  They had assumed that editors simply clean up grammar and spelling. My friend, Clare, who also works in publishing, was at the lunch and she and I were and quick to explain that an editor’s duties go far beyond reminding a writer that ‘accommodate’ is a very accommodating word because it can accommodate two sets of double consonants.

A useful job description for an editor is that she saves a writer from him or her self.  An editor corrects errors of fact; plot contradictions; stylistic excesses and garden variety slovenly writing. I could write several books about the editorial suggestions that have saved my bacon.  However, instead of celebrating the people who’ve been paid to edit me, I’m going to thank the readers who discover the misstatements and factual errors that slip through the cracks. 

I’ve learned a great deal from readers.  My children’s godfather, Dr. Roy Crawford, who taught poultry genetics and breeds dogs, cats and other critters, leapt on a scene in one of my novels where a vet named Dr. Roy Crawford identifies a tortoiseshell cat as a male.  This is apparently not a genetic possibility.  Many alert readers noted that in another novel, Joanne sought spiritual help by walking through the doors of Holy Rosary Cathedral but when she left the church, it had mysteriously become the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. An Anglican all my life, I mentioned that communion involve a belief in transubstantiation – this is not so for Anglicans, and many readers correctly took me to task for that.  I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

I’m always grateful when readers point out contradictions or just plain weird stuff in my work. Last week, I had a letter from a Ph.D at UCLA who had read all eleven of the Joanne Kilbourn novels within a period of a month and had caught a huge error about when exactly Joanne Kilbourn met a character who plays a significant role in several of the novels.  I’m planning to bring this character back in the novel I’m currently working on, so when I told her how much I appreciated her help, I meant it. 

All writers owe a debt to their editors and their readers.  That debt does not extend to omitting parsnips from a recipe that he or she knows will be vastly improved by that vegetable’s sweet and nutty flavour.

This time last year, I was twelve days into my term as Writer in Residence at the Toronto Reference Library.  It was one of the happiest experiences Ted and I have had.  In retrospect, I realize how fortunate we were. Peggy Perdue, the librarian with whom I worked most closely, was lovely, smart, funny and immensely helpful. The writers who came to me were, without exception, pleasant and eager to learn.  And we found the perfect place to live.

I grew up in Toronto and went to U. of T. but it’s amazing how much a city can change in 40+ years.  We visit Toronto often, but visitors aren’t knowledgeable about the safety of neighbourhoods or the availability of public transit.  An old university friend suggested I check the ‘accommodations’ ads in the U. of T newspaper.   We found a main floor flat on Hamilton Street that was exactly right for us: clean, affordable and very central—right on the edge of Chinatown.

Our block of Hamilton Street was a mix of gentrified duplexes and homes that had been in Chinese families for a very long time.  The gardens of our gentrified neighbours were stellar – the plantings were thoughtfully coordinated, so that from the first warm day to the first frost, something was always in bloom.   

My favourite garden on the street belonged to my neighbour, an old Chinese lady who sat on her porch every morning saying her rosary and watching the rest of us go about our business.  When Ted and I arrived on Hamilton Street, her front lawn was covered in inverted vegetable crispers from old refrigerators. Beneath these portable greenhouses, my neighbour’s bok choy plants flourished, safe from the ravages of insects or raccoons.  When the bok choy grew too large for their crispers, she built an intricate system of garrisons for her plants out of bricks and oven racks.  Again, they were able to flourish in safety. In Ted’s and my two month stay on Hamilton Street, our neighbour harvested one crop and began another.

Unable to communicate verbally, she and I developed a ritual. Every morning when I came out of the house she would come down the walk with her rosary and she and I would marvel at her garden.  When it was time for me to leave, she would take my hands in hers and together we would say ‘bok choy’.  

For lovers of grandchildren’s recitals, this is a season of plenty.  Friday morning we went to our grand-daughter Madeleine’s band recital.  Each Grade 6 French immersion child studying clarinet in the Regina Catholic school system played the same number.  It’s called ‘Minuet’ and the same pianist accompanied each child.  The children acquitted themselves with varying degrees of proficiency; the pianist was very good, but my grand-daughter noticed that by the end of the first morning the pianist’s smile had grown tight and there were many, many Grade 6 French immersion clarinet students still to come down the pike.  Madeleine got a first in her class; I hope the pianist got the biggest martini ever made.

Saturday we went to the strawberry fair – the major fund-raiser for our cathedral.  A portion of the funds comes from the sale of flats of strawberries driven in from a place where the weather is kind.  The weather is never kind when the strawberries reach their destination in front of St. Paul’s.  Saturday, we had snow/mixed with freezing rain. Saskatchewan strawberry fair weather.

At the white elephant sale, I suffered an attack of the 70’s and bought  blue mountain pottery.  Proving that there is a caring God, someone beat me to the clay cooker, the fondue pot and the collection of kitchen witches.

Saturday afternoon we went to the Met HD production of Armida.  Six tenors, Renee Fleming and New York fries.  Transcendent!

Saturday night, Madeleine’s dance class performed for an inner city fund-raiser.  She wore makeup and was incredibly mature.  By the time she and her sister got back to our house for the night, the makeup had worn off and so had the maturity.  We watched the Food Channel and the kids ate bad for them cereal, as they frequently do on Saturday nights with us.

Sunday night we had dinner at the home of our former bishop and his wife.  A couple of years ago, they moved out of their large gorgeous family home into a trendy condo over a store downtown. They invited us to their housewarming and I repaid their kindness by using their condo as the scene for a particularly nasty murder in “The Nesting Dolls”.  The moral to this story has something to do with the wisdom of allowing a writer to cross your threshold, but you’ve probably already figured that out.

My friend, Mary, died last week.  I met her in 1968, and we never lost touch. One of the privileges of keeping friends close over a period of years is that you get to see the arc of their life:  what they were like when you knew them first; how they dealt with the joys, the slings and the arrows, and finally, how they faced death.

When I met Mary, she was 27 and I was 25.  Ted and I were living in an old farm in Blucher: raising chickens, growing vegetables, brewing bad beer, discovering the not inconsiderable pleasures of an outhouse.  Mary and Marshall had their beautiful home on University Avenue. Even then, it was filled with beautiful pieces that Mary made by hand.  Mary and Marshall gave elegant dinner parties and had New Yorker cartoons in their downstairs bathroom.  They were the most sophisticated couple we’d ever known.  They even had a child—a nice one.  Marshall and Mary were, in every way, grown-ups.

The Gillilands and the Bowens began a series of collaborative lunches with another couple and an occasional guest chef.  By this time, the candied violet excesses of the early 70’s had come to dominate cuisine.  We were the Gourmet Generation. We began to compete with one another—our dishes grew more elaborate. We outdid one another in our search for rare ingredients, rich and complex sauces and brilliant presentations that never quite looked the way the illustrations in Gourmet promised and made us cranky when we finally sat down to eat.   Mary watched all this with her bemused Mary look. Then she volunteered to bring the centerpiece for our next gourmet lunch.  The centerpiece Mary brought was a clown’s head that she’d made out of a cabbage, a carrot and some other humble vegetables.  We got the point.  We scaled back on the Julia Child and started having fun again. 

Mary was always fun—even when life was not going well for her.  Once she was in the midst of the kind of personal crisis that comes to us all. To help her over the bad patch, Sean made Mary breakfast in bed; his beverage of choice was blueberry Kool-Aid.  When it comes to beverages, blueberry Kool-Aid is pretty tough to beat, but when Mary came to my house, I did my best.  I poured our bottle of Beau Sejour sherry into our snazzy German decanter and got out our finest wine glasses.  Mary’s and my conversation that afternoon was very serious, and we were both very emotional.  When she stopped talking and stared fixedly into her glass of sherry, I thought perhaps she’d had an epiphany. 

In a way, I guess she had. What Mary discovered in her glass that grey afternoon was a toenail – and not a new one. It was the kind of toenail that might have been aging in a bottle of Beau Sejour for a very long time.  Mary fished it out and held it up. “There’s a toenail in my sherry,” she said, then she grinned. “Things have to get better after this.”  And amazingly, they did.

Like everyone who knew her, I have thousands of memories of Mary, but there was a phrase she used that I believe captures her.  Once at one of our long-ago lunches, Mary’s eyes had been larger than appetite. I offered to take her plate, but she stopped me.  “In my family we had an expression, Mary said. “‘Thee took it.  Thee eat it.’”

Many things ended up on Mary’s plate that she didn’t choose.  She and I had both had breast cancer. No one chooses that, but Mary handled her diagnosis and the endless complications she faced after the initial diagnosis with intelligence and unwavering courage, grace and humour.  The last years of Mary’s life were filled with difficulties that most of us would have found insurmountable.  Mary didn’t.  The emails she sent about Marshall’s last illness were characteristically Mary. She never took refuge in euphemism when truth was called for; she never wallowed in self-pity when she could enquire about our lives.  Mary loved life and she lived it well.

In Mary’s obituary Sean and Bernie alluded to that perfect piece of material Mary was always seeking to complete her quilts—the piece that would bring all the disparate colours and shapes into something that would unify them and make each piece more beautiful and more connected than it was alone. At the risk of sounding hopelessly cheesy, I think Mary had that perfect piece in her back pocket all along. It was her.  

On this earth day, I am recycling a piece I wrote earlier today for this year’s Bloody Words’ program.  Bloody Words is a gathering of mystery writers and mystery readers. This year it will be held in Toronto from May 28 to May 30^th.  It’s a neat weekend and if you’re interested being part of it, visit http://www.bloodywords2010.com/bw2010-reg.html

I think the piece below is self-explanatory.

*     *     *

On being the first Guest of Honour (Canadian) at the first Bloody Words

It was hot—sidewalk-meltingly, armpit-drippingly, lung-searingly hot, and the Arts and Letters Club established in 1908 to house “a dynamic community of men and women for whom the arts is an essential part of life” and site of the first Bloody Words was not air-conditioned.

My speech was long – very long.   I am a Virgo and I took my assignment as the inaugural speaker very seriously.  I prepared a speech that offered a comprehensive history of the mystery from Aesop to Jane Tennison, with long and loving stops along the way to discuss (at length) Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy Sayers, Hercule Poirot, Raymond Chandler, Lew Archer, Mickey Spillane, Sara Paretsky, Charlie Salter, Benny Cooperman and Kate Henry.  After that, I turned my attention to the future of mystery writing in Canada.   

There were no chairs in the room in which I spoke.  The audience, bludgeoned by the heat and by my endless drone, grew glassy-eyed, pale and faint, but I had been asked to speak and speak I did. 

After I took my bow, Bloody Words took a turn for the better.  That weekend at The Arts and Letters Club we all experienced the “good conversation and the companionship of kindred spirits” that the Club has offered since its founding.  It was a great beginning. 

          Gail Bowen – April 2010

I have always had a fondness for diners.  A new one opened in Regina in last week – it’s called Mercury and the ambience is 50’s: red leather booths, lots of windows and a plainspoken menu.  My friend Stefani and I had breakfast there on Friday. I’ve known Stef since she was a student at the J-School here; now she’s CBC’s legislative reporter. She’s smart, funny, thoughtful and a great animal lover. She’s looks like Courtney Love when Courtney Love used to be beautiful.   

Stef is great company. She and I have a healthy reverence for gossip, but we also attack large topics. Friday we talked about how we’d both changed our positions on the nature vs. nurture argument. Then we moved onto the importance of self-knowledge and the damage people who lack self-knowledge do to their own lives and the lives of others.  Good diner talk.  If Mercury had a jukebox that played Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party”, our breakfast would have been perfect.

Friday, I received the cover for “The Nesting Dolls”.  My son-in-law posted it on my blog, and I’ve had heated response: a friend says it makes her think of vampire babies; another friend says its reminiscent of the Battleship Potemkin; it makes me think of Rosemary’s Baby. I’m the only who’s read the book, so I can tell you that we’re all wrong.  So far the number of people who love the cover is larger than the number who are iffy about it. I’ll keep you posted. For the record, I like it a lot.

Friday night we had old friends for supper.  He’s a scientist and she’s involved with the wacky world of books, so our conversation was wide-ranging.  We all four are food-lovers. Jean and Gordon grow wondrous vegetables in their garden. Every summer they have a communal garlic party – a potluck affair to which you can bring whatever you choose as long as garlic plays a significant role in the dish.  Brilliant, huh?

Ted and I have grown passionate about the Met HD operas at our local Galaxy Theatre.  The only problem is there aren’t enough of them, so I’ve ordered some DVDs for us.  Saturday afternoon – right at 12:00 (opera time on the prairies if not in NYC), Ted and I sat down with our french fries and Diet Coke (opera fare on the prairies if not in NYC) and watched Thais with the gorgeous Renee Fleming—an experience as close to heaven on earth as I can imagine.

Later my friend Peggy came over to return the manuscript for “The Nesting Dolls”.  She’s the only person besides Ted, my editors at M&S and my agent who’s read the manuscript and she was enthusiastic.  Of course, it’s difficult not to be kind when the writer is six inches away from you with her lip quivering, but Peggy said all the right things, and I choose to believe them.

Sunday, our son Max put together our new bbq while we were at Church and our son-in-law Brett fixed a glitch with our computers.  Then all of us had bacon and pancakes and went outside to play.

A fine and varied weekend, I think.

Imagine spending a week with some of Canada’s top mystery writing minds: picking their brains, learning their techniques, and getting the how to’s of writing a successful mystery novel.

In this inaugural residential workshop, some of Canada’s best mystery experts will guide you through the crafting of writing crime fiction. You will work on your own manuscript in progress in one-on-one sessions with faculty advisers and attend group presentations by faculty and guest speakers.

You will be paired with a faculty adviser, who will have seen a sample chapter and outline of your manuscript. The adviser will act as your editor and guide, providing you with daily feedback and work assignments.

Each morning you will listen to presentations on writing skills, mystery specific strategies, and the basic rules for writing in this genre. You will work on your own in the afternoon, with twice-daily feedback from your adviser, to apply what you have learned to your manuscript. In the late afternoon, we will have informal chats on topics reflecting your particular interests.

In addition, the faculty will discuss the different subgenres within the category of mystery, the role of the editor and agent in the publishing process, self-publishing, and the steps to getting published.

At the end of the week, four selected participants will be asked to read from their manuscript at an open mike session to which the public is invited. Moderated by well-known mystery author William Deverell, this event will also feature readings from other faculty and guests.

This workshop is designed for writers who have completed or nearly completed a manuscript within the mystery genre. You will be required to submit a sample chapter and an outline with your application.

The retreat is located at the Cedar Beach Resort (http://www.saltspring-accommodations.com). All lectures and group work will take place at the resort, although there will be several off-site events. Evening meals, as well as morning coffee and muffins, will be provided. Participants will be expected to make their own arrangements for other meals.

The resort has laundry facilities, a swimming pool, a hot tub, and other amenities. Each cabin contains a kitchen, and some have additional features. SFU has reserved a block of cabins at the resort. Accommodations are based on single, double, triple, and quadruple occupancy. If you know one or more people interested in attending the retreat and would like to be in the same cabin, please make your reservation as soon as possible. The accommodations cancellation date is May 1, 2010.

Please contact Suzanne Norman at 778-782-5241 or pubworks@sfu.ca for additional information.

 Faculty

Gail Bowen is widely known for her mystery series featuring Joanne Kilbourn, a university professor, sometime political columnist, and wife, mother, and grandmother. The first six books in the Kilbourn series have appeared as made-for-television movies with worldwide distribution. The Nesting Dolls, the 12th book in the series, is being published by McClelland & Stewart in August. In June 2008, Reader’s Digest named Bowen Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist. Bowen has had plays produced at Regina’s Globe Theatre, the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, and The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.

Margaret Cannon has been the crime fiction columnist for the Globe and Mail for over 20 years. She replaced the late (and great) Derrick Murdoch, whose encyclopedic knowledge of mysteries was unsurpassed. Cannon, the daughter and granddaughter of mystery fans, read her first mystery novel, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, at the age of seven. She has never looked back. She taught courses in crime fiction and popular culture at York University for 19 years and began her writing career in 1979 at Maclean’s magazine. She often speaks to groups on various aspects of crime writing and loves to advance the cause of Canadian crime writers. In 2003, she was awarded the Derrick Murdoch Award by the Crime Writers of Canada.

Dinah Forbes was born and educated in England. She has been an editor at McClelland & Stewart for many years and is currently executive editor in part responsible for McClelland & Stewart’s crime fiction program.

Linda L. Richards is the founding editor of January Magazine, one of the most respected voices for books on the web. She is also the author of five novels, including Death Was in the Picture, published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. Richards was born in Vancouver and lives on the Gulf Islands. She loves talking about books and authors and enjoys working with writers to help them reach their goals.

Guest Speakers

Carolyn Swayze is one of Canada’s top literary agents, representing fiction and non-fiction. She established her agency in 1994, when W. P. Kinsella persuaded her to leave her law practice and sign him as her first client. Her background included a previous life as a freelance writer, (humour, business, and literary fiction), a novelist (a genre mystery published in 1977 in the US and a literary novel, publication of which was aborted when the Canadian publisher declared bankruptcy in 1984), and a rather scholarly biography, published in 1987.

Michael Slade, in real life, is a criminal lawyer. He has acted for both the defence and the prosecution in more than 100 murder cases. He argued the last death penalty case in the Supreme Court of Canada. From Headhunter (1984) to Red Snow (2010), Slade is the author of 14 bestselling mystery thrillers. Visit the Morgue at his website: www.specialx.net.

Moderator

William Deverell won the $50,000 Seal Award for his first novel, Needles, which drew on his experiences as a lawyer. He has published 14 further novels and one non-fiction book, and has won the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing in North America and two Arthur Ellis Awards for best crime novel. He wrote the screenplay Shellgame for CBC TV drama; created its series Street Legal, which has run in more than 80 countries; and wrote the screenplay for a feature film based on his novel Mindfield. His 2008 novel, Kill All the Judges, was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. His latest novel, a political romp, is Snow Job. Please visit his website at www.deverell.com.  

Yesterday I had two nice writer moments.  The first came when a courier delivered a box containing my author copies of “Love You to Death”.  There is something both satisfying and terrifying about looking at a finished book and knowing that, for good or ill, the book is now on its own.  I have seen some very old manuscripts with the epigraph “Go litel boke…” as part of the frontespiece.  I always remember that poignant farewell when I get my author copies.

The second nice writer moment came when I did a very long TV interview at our university bookstore.  The interviewer was intelligent and thoughtful and we talked about both “Love You to Death” and “The Nesting Dolls”, the new Joanne Kilbourn that will be published in August.  He asked, as many interviewers have, if Joanne is me.  After we discussed that question, he asked where Charlie Dowhanuik, the first person narrator-protagonist of “Love You to Death” came from. 

Charlie is an interesting guy. He’s a late night radio talk show host who’s smart, edgy, vulnerable and empathetic.  It’s not often that I can identify the genesis of any of my characters with accuracy.  Most often the people in my novels and plays start with a fusion of bits and pieces of people I’ve met, heard about or read about and then they become something new altogether.

But Charlie began with one specific man whom I met on a train 12 years ago.  My husband and I were going to Vangroovy (as my kids call it)—Vancouver as the rest of us call it.  Our train had stopped to take on new passengers and the first person in our car was an extraordinarily beautiful young woman.  Behind her, was her boyfriend, a young man with a birthmark that covered half his face like a blood mask.  He was wearing a t-shirt that said “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”.  When he saw me looking at it, he said “Do you want to see what’s written on the back?”  I said ‘sure’. He turned, and I saw an ad from a beer company.  When he faced me again, I realized that I had misread the message on his shirt. In fact, it read “Beauty is in the eye of the Beer-holder”.  “Great shirt,” I said.  “We both laughed, and that was it.  A 30 second encounter. . .

But that young man with the horrific bloodmask stayed with me.  He knew that everyone who met him would have to deal with his birthmark.  The T-shirt was a strategy, a way of dealing with the elephant in the living room.  He charmed me as he had obviously charmed the beautiful young woman who got on the train with him.  There was something in this young man that I didn’t want to lose.

In “Burying Ariel,” the sixth of the Joanne Kilbourn novels, Charlie Dowhanuik made his first appearance.  In this novel, we learn about his tragic relationship with the woman he loved.  Charlie appears in the some of the other Kilbourn novels, but he has a large role in the 10^th Joanne novel, “The Endless Knot”.  I liked Charlie and I had plans for making him a continuing character in the Joanne series.

When CBC asked me to write Canada’s entry for the World Play Project – a project in which 8 public radio stations from 8 English speaking countries contribute a play—Charlie D, a radio host, seemed like a natural choice.

Two Charlie D plays were broadcast by CBC – both more than once.  Last 24^th of May weekend, the radio play that eventually became “Love You to Death” was broadcast.  Later that week, I received a note from Bob Tyrrell telling me about the Raven series. I had always wanted to write something that would engage people like some of my students at First Nations University—adults who needed to master skills but who needed to be drawn in by someone like them – someone who dealt with prejudice every day of their lives and who understood anger.

Charlie D was a natural.

As those of you who read this blog know, on weekdays our four year old grandson, Ben, comes here after school.  At 4:30 while his sisters are either playing badminton on the front lawn or making nachos out of Triscuits, Balderson’s cheddar and whatever spices and herbs come their way, Ben and I go upstairs to sit on the treadmill; drink vermouth (me), apple juice (Ben); watch The Young and the Restless and play “Go Fish”.   

Given the influences floating our way, we often ponder the metaphysical.  In addition to being Ben’s grandmother, I am one of his Sunday School teachers.  This week was Holy Week, so it was not surprising that Ben’s thoughts turned to large questions. 

As I was trying to keep track of the game and of who was stalking Lauren on TYATR, Ben’s mind was on other matters.  “You’re very old, aren’t you Mimi,” he said.

“I’m not young,” I agreed. “But I take pretty good care of myself.”

“Still you are going to die,” he said.

“Yep.”

“I’m not happy about that,” Ben said.

“In that case, I’ll try to put it off for as long as possible,” I said.

The next day, as he tends to when he plays cards with his grandmother, Ben was having phenomenal luck.  On The Young and the Restless, the situation was looking dire for Lauren. Ben’s mind was, once again, on larger matters.  “Here’s what I’m going to do when you die, Mimi,” he said. “I’m going to put you in that sandpile in my backyard, and every day I’m going to water you.”

It was an interesting concept.  “So what do you think watering me every day will do after I’m dead?” I said.

Ben shrugged.  “Who knows?” he said, then he drew his favourite card – the Ace of Spades.    

Last night I gave a speech to a group of men and women who write and publish biographies of people who’ve shaped the city of Regina. I’d agreed to do this talk sometime last fall, when the end of March seemed at least 6 years away.  Of course, the end of March arrived just when it always does, and the speech was due. I’d just finished the final edits for “The Nesting Dolls”.  The weather was finally gorgeous. I didn’t want to work.  I wanted to go out and play.  However, a promise is a promise and so I set to work.

I once read a bleak description of the art of biography.  The writer said ‘every biography begins with a cradle and ends with a grave’. Somehow, I didn’t think those words would have my audience rolling in the aisles. Fortunately, I’d been reading “The Inner Voice”, soprano Renee Fleming’s biography, and she said something that I thought I could build on.  She wrote that children who are given a daily dose of the arts learn how “to imagine a better world and then create it”. 

Regina is not a city of natural beauty.  Someone (it might have been me) once said that Saskatchewan is the plain, flat-chested sister of the beautiful and voluptuous Alberta.  The original name for our city was “Pile O’ bones”.  There’s not a tree here that wasn’t planted, but it’s a lovely city because of a decision made over a hundred years ago and built upon by subsequent generations.  In the centre of our city is 120-hectare man-made lake; it is surrounded by 930 hectares of parkland development, and it’s a knockout.

Wascana Centre figures in every single one of the Joanne Kilbourn novels.  In the course of the 12 novels, Joanne has lived in two houses: both have been within a two-minute walk from the creek that runs into Wascana Lake.  I, too, live within a two minute walk of the creek. Regina is on a migration path, so we have an amazing number and variety of visitors in spring and fall; we also have beavers and muskrats and great public art and fireworks and flowering trees and waterfalls and places to fall in love and out of love.

We have all this beauty because, to paraphrase Renee Fleming, Regina has had citizens who knew how to imagine a better world and then create it.  Yesterday I really would have preferred going for a walk to staying cooped up in my office working on a speech for the biographers.  But a promise is a promise.  Besides if it hadn’t been for those visionaries, I would have been walking on the bald prairie.  

This afternoon a young lawyer with whom we’d had dinner sent me two recipes I’d asked for.  One – for a warm mushroom and spinach salad is straightforward. We’ll have it on Thursday when friends are coming for dinner.  The other—for fresh rolls – is great but it looks finicky so I’ve already forwarded it to our son who is a drummer, an arborist, a masters’ student in public policy and a cook who can be flattered into making something as finicky as fresh rolls when we have a family dinner.

I like recipes.  My memory for many things is less than stellar, but I remember the person from whom and the occasion upon which I acquired every recipe I have.

I’ve been cooking for over 45 years now.  Not surprisingly, many of those who gave me recipes have joined James Beard, Julia Child, Laurie Colwin and the other great cooks who continue to be part of my life long after theirs have ended.  When I look at my aunt’s elegantly handwritten recipe for Mazola oil cake or my uncle’s assertive script describing EXACTLY how to make Cherries Jubilee or Harvard Beets, these two dear people are with me again.

But recipes are more than a family album, they’re also a record of how we lived.  My recipes are a sociology of the changing role of women. I have dozens of cookie recipes that came from the mothers at the lake who all summer long would begin baking on Monday mornings, so that when the fathers returned from the city on Friday night, every possible cookie they might have lusted after during the week was only a finger snap away.  I have a dozen recipes for the spaghetti sauce,  Jamaican chicken, beans and rice, gazpacho and Greek hangover soup that I cooked endlessly when I was an undergraduate. I have incredibly complex recipes for the six course meals that we used to serve during the seventies when every meal ended with liqueurs and every woman with pretensions had several full length hostess skirts in her wardrobe. I have dozens of the recipes that I cooked when I was doing graduate work and teaching and our kids were growing up – meat loaf, mac and cheese, pot roast, chicken Diablo, lasagna and the recipe for the birthday cake of choice for each member of our family.

Tonight Ted and I are having one of our favourite dishes.  It’s one no child would ever dream of eating: angel hair pasta with caviar, lemon zest and melted butter.  It’s from the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, but if you want the recipe, just drop me a line.  

6.  Write Everywhere. 

James Philips points out that while many writers go to coffee bars, as a parent, he has learned to make use of the time available by pulling out his laptop at hockey practices, dance classes and TaeKwonDo.  

Me too.  I always carry a folder with a chunk of work that I can edit by hand if I find myself on long drive (with Ted driving); cooling my heels in a doctor’s waiting room or sitting under the dryer at the hair stylist’s.  It’s amazing how much work you can get done in the cracks. Those 20 minute periods waiting for kids to finish playing hockey or perfect a new technique at Fada Dance add up.  Use them wisely, and you’ll surprise yourself.

7.  Rewards and Consequences:

Laurie Finstad Knizhnik says, “I do deadlines, and I’m a bitch about those.  Make them, or suffer the consequences.  I tell myself I’ve got two weeks to get to the next stage or else.  If I’m not there I work late.  When I get there, I celebrate.

I’m with Laurie.  As a writer of mystery series, I have deadlines.  To keep everyone happy, I produce a novel every two years. That means having  a solid first draft of a new novel on my editor’s desk 15 months after the last novel was published.  Once the novel’s at my editor’s, her deadlines become mine.  The rest of my writing (short stories, theatre pieces, my new Rapid Read series) is tucked into the spaces available.

8.  Procrastination is Process…Until it isn’t. 

While they acknowledge that experienced writers understand the value of a break to free up thinking, the writers contributing to the Canadian Screenwriter piece are frank about the dangers of the Internet.  Alex Epstein says it is ‘one big baited trap.’   Others acknowledge the seductive powers of Scrabble, Hearts, online poker, or blogs. 

I have many sins, but procrastination is not among them. Perhaps because I have combined full time work, motherhood and writing for most of my writing life, I am so relieved when I finally get to my laptop that I don’t waste a second.  That said, online Scrabble does sound like fun.

9.  Just Keep Typing

I like what Elan Mastal says.  “Even if I’m in a suck-mode that day, I can fix it later. The point is to crank out the pages.  That’s the only way to write anything good.”

I agree.  Hemingway talked about keeping the well primed and that means never stopping before you’ve left yourself something to work with. 

10.  Oooo…Oooo…You Make Writing Fun

“I would generally rather be confabulating than having dinner in a nice restaurant,” says Alex Epstein as he celebrates the pleasures of writing with his partner.  It does indeed sound as if Alex and his writing and romantic partner, Lisa, have fun, but I can’t imagine writing with my husband. A  thousand years ago, when we were in graduate school together, I asked Ted for his honest opinion of a paper I had written about Northrup Frye.  He told me.  In forty-one years of marriage, he’s never made that mistake again.

I’ve never belonged to a book club.  To be honest, no one ever invited me to join one.  Perhaps because, like the little match girl, I’m always on the outside looking in, book clubs fascinate me.  I once met a New York psychoanalyst who belonged to a book club comprised solely of other New York psychoanalysts.  Their reading list was restricted to fiction that dealt with psychoanalysts. My editor at M&S spends her working life editing people like me, reading manuscripts and going to meetings about marketing and publicity. She thinks about books 16 hours a day, but she belongs to a book club.  Our need to discuss what we read with others is clearly a powerful one.

Friday night, I had dinner with a six-woman book club: two of the women are lawyers; two are visual artists; one is an advocate for people dealing with employment issues and one is an academic.  My novel “The Brutal Heart” was the book under discussion, and our host had gone to great lengths to create an atmosphere conducive to good talk.  Before dinner we drank the Blue Sapphire martinis that in the novel, Joanne and Zack drink on Zack’s birthday, and our main course was the paella that is the favourite dish of Joanne and Zack’s daughter, Taylor.  Dessert was the ganache to which Joanne is partial.

The members of the club were all close readers, and their questions were excellent, but what intrigued me was how at dinner we moved from discussion about specifics in the book to larger questions about our own lives. 

Two examples:  Joanne and Zack’s daughter Taylor is 14 and she is a prodigy.  Her birth mother was a brilliant artist, and Taylor inherited her mother’s talent and her passion for making art.  I told the book club about a talk I had with Darrell Bell, himself a talented artist and gallery owner.  I asked Darrell whether he would ever have a show for a fourteen year old, and after a long and thoughtful conversation, he said he didn’t feel a fourteen year old had the life experience to say anything original in her art.   The question of whether Darrell was right or wrong got us through the appetizers, the paella and a large quantity of excellent wine. 

Perhaps because of the excellent wine, the next question evoked passionate discussion.   One of the plot lines in “The Brutal Heart” involves high-end prostitution.  The question of what successful married men are seeking when they use an escort service led us to the larger question of intimacy in marriage and that led us to a discussion about whether sex is always a bartering tool in a relationship. Exploring that question got us through the ganache.

The next day one of the women in the group sent me pictures she had taken of herself reading “The Brutal Heart” when she was in France and Corsica in February.  I was thrilled. It was almost like being in a book club.  

SAVING LONESOME GEORGE  has a cast of four:

JESS: a boy who, except for his squirrel, Charlie, is alone in the world

H.D.: a cool kid, who loves his wheelies and is expert at the art of hacky sack

HYACINTH MACAW:  a bird-like woman of great beauty, flickering intellect and penetrating vision/MAD ESMERELDA BRILLIANT:  the villain.  A pirate with warm feelings for her Cumbrian red squirrel, Fancy Frank, but no respect for endangered species.  – these roles are played by the same actor, a fact that fascinates our young audiences.

SWEET SOLOMON BUNCH:  a pirate in the wrong profession

*     *     *

I’ve lost sight of the number of workshops our play has received.  I think 8 is probably a fair guess. Perhaps because I’m a writer, I’ve always believed workshops are intended to help writers tighten and strengthen the script.  Others may have different ideas, but this is my blog.

Here’s what happens in a workshop.  The director, the actors and the writer sit around a table.  Each of us has a script. Sometimes the director will ask the writer if there are particular concerns or questions she might like to have addressed after the reading. Sometimes we just barrel on in. The actors read through the script without interruption. Everyone makes notes.  We take a break and then the director describes the form the workshop will take. Some directors prefer to have the actors phrase all thoughts about their characters in the form of a question:  (“I wonder what Mad Esmerelda Brilliant’s attachment to her squirrel reveals about her sexuality?”) Sometimes actors are simply asked to raise their own questions or concerns about their characters.

I am making this process sound incredibly dry and tedious.  It is anything but. A good workshop is filled with tension and laughter.  The actors build on one another’s comments; they reject possibilities or are ignited by them.  They tell dirty jokes, and because they’re actors, they tell them well. They try out dialects and increasingly wilder readings of lines.  Then when the entire workshop threatens to float away like a bunch of wayward balloons, the director asks questions designed to give the writer control over all these new and shining possibilities.   

Accepting my premise that there have been 8 workshops for “Saving Lonesome George”, 32 actors have brought their ideas to these characters.  Two directors have helped shape the script but only my name appears will appear as the playwright.   I’ve never felt this was quite fair.  And so, as Carousel’s “Saving Lonesome George” prepares for its maiden voyage, I thought I’d  set the record straight, and acknowledge the talent, wisdom and generosity of all the theatre people who have contributed to the script. 

The script, of course, is just the beginning. There are designers of costumes and sets and lighting; stage managers and prop managers. People who turn on the lights and turn them off.  People who make arrangement for venues. People who create the study guides that help teachers use theatre for young audience as a starting point for further learning. People who keep all of us running on time.

Theatre is a journey.  Those four words have become a cliché, but they are the truth.  At the end of any journey, we are changed by what we have seen and by what we have learned from our travelling companions. This is just to say, I’m grateful to mine.