Speaker 1 00:00:57 Hello, you are listening to Right On Radio on K F A I. That's 90.3 FM and streaming Live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie Harvey. On tonight's program, Josh Weber talks with Carla j Hogan about her latest novel Muskeg in 1922. Hazel and Theta are young and in love, but that love is savagely interrupted by a police raid at a Savannah speakeasy. Hazel avoids prosecution by moving as far away from theta as possible, eventually finding peace on a remote island on the Minnesota Canadian border. When Theta suddenly appears 15 years later with her 12 year old son, Hazel must make a potentially dangerous and life-changing choice.
Speaker 2 00:01:37 And on Josh Weber,
Speaker 1 00:01:39 Then in the last part of the hour,
Speaker 2 00:01:41 <laugh> in the last part
Speaker 1 00:01:42 Of the in, in this part of the hour.
Speaker 2 00:01:45 This part of the hour, I show up and talk on right on radio. We'll feature one of our legacy interviews, join us as we do a deep dive, and the archives play one of our favorite interviews from the past. All this and more. So stay tuned to right on radio. And here we are on right on radio. I'm here with Carla Hagan in studio. Carla has a reading for us. She's gonna do at top the hour. Carla, whenever you're ready.
Speaker 3 00:02:23 Thanks, Josh. This is from the beginning of my book, uh, Hazel Andthe, who Annie introduced RF speakeasy, and this is in Hazel's voice. She took another sip and glanced around to make sure people weren't looking at them, hard to break old habits, but nobody was paying attention. So she took in the room, clinking glasses, murmur voices, notes from the piano and clarinet smell of seafood and perfume. The soft chair she would've sunk into if she hadn't been so antsy. She realized that the dancers, the people sitting at the tables, everyone in the kitchen and the bar were women. Some dressed as men with hair cropped or pulled back. Others in short dresses that clung to their bodies and left their legs. Free musicians were the only men and pretty much everyone smoked between the steam from frying shrimp and the cigarette haze you could barely see at the next table.
Speaker 3 00:03:25 One woman sat another woman's lap. Arms are wrapped around each other kissing passionately. See, theta said, we're not the only ones. But instead of relief, Hazel felt fear trickled on her spine. All her life. She'd hidden who she was. Now in this nightclub of women, she felt naked, like the things that kept her safe had flown away. The diner, the creek mil, the daily specials, all her brothers and sisters. She was just an odd girl as the papers called them. And the only one who knew her was Thea. Let's go somewhere else. She said, this place makes me nervous. We just got here that have placed her hand over her. Hazels. There's spots like this all over New York, Paris, San Francisco. Hazel marveled at her young shining face. Yes, but we're in Savannah. We could run away that has said, live together where no one knows us.
Speaker 3 00:04:22 How about the diner and Milt that had looked at her through thick lashes. Milt's, a swell guy, maybe let you get divorced. Hazel didn't even know anyone who was divorced. Rich people did it or so she heard, but they lived in a different world besides, she didn't want a divorce mil. He was her best friend, the only one in the world who understood all the parts of her. Why on earth would I do that? She had no desire to plunge into a world she didn't know. I never been to those places. I never been anywhere but here. Couldn't they stay in Savannah? Couldn't that keep coming to the diner? Milt wasn't around that much, and she never asked him why. Just as he never asked her what she did when he wasn't there. The h and m was a haven, and she loved it even more.
Speaker 3 00:05:12 Now that that was part of it. She never felt so warm and safe and loved. She didn't wanna think of changing anything right now. She took Feds hand, let's dance. They got to their feet and that it giggled. All right, who's gonna lead you? Hazel Set. I'll follow. I can't eat a thing. The piano player saying is a clarinet woman. Melody over and under him, got those crazy blues. Hazel lay her head on that, his shoulder, breathing in clean dress and warm skin. Let's dance all night. She whispered, let's not sit down. That had turned up Hazel's face, and they kissed right in front of all those people who weren't watching. Anyway, 4, 5, 6. Who knows how many songs they dance to sway together. Hazel eyes closed that his body pressed against hers. Notes vibrated through her to the ends of her fingers, the dance floor.
Speaker 3 00:06:09 Just big enough for the two of them. No, not the dance floor, the little bubble that held them, which she wanted to stay in forever. Sometime later, maybe hours, maybe less Hazel, her a sound like the beat of the music, but louder like a drum against the door. Go away, she thought. But the beat turned into pounding. It would not stop. She opened her eyes. That is still held, but the noise grew louder and louder. And then people started to scream, raid, raid the door, bent inward like rubber, although she was sure it was made of wood. Then a foot in a black boot kicked through it and hung there like a magic trick in a theater. She laughed. But that a huster, we've gotta get outta here now. Hazel's belly turned to ice. How has to be a back way? Hazel grabbed her hand. I spotted one when we came in beside the kitchen. They could barely move through the mass of women all trying to escape. Then the door with a boot crashed onto the dance floor in the place filled with policemen, ears splitting whistles, nobody leaves.
Speaker 2 00:07:23 Very good. That was a wonderful reading from Muskeg by the author Carla Hagen. What we just heard right there was beginning of the end for young love that's gone awry when a police crackdown happens and a Savannah speakeasy. 15 years later, we find the heroin of our story. Hazel running a fishing resort on a remote island near the Minnesota Canadian border. When her past catches up to her when her former lover Theta arrives with her 12 year old son. She also brings an angry husband in a posse of detectives. Detectives fiercely tracking her. This is Carlos' second novel following Hand Me Down, my Walking King. A winner of the 2012 Midwest Independent Publishers' Award for literary and historical fiction. Carla is a retired attorney who practiced law as a public defender, then as a prosecutor when not riding. She swims bikes, hikes, travels, studies, languages, and co-host the weekly program Kudo Zone, a Latino every Friday from two to 4:00 PM on k i. Carla Hagen, welcome to right on Radio.
Speaker 3 00:08:24 Thank you, Josh. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 00:08:26 The title of the novel, as I just mentioned, is muskeg. It wasn't a term I was familiar with before reading your book, what is a musk keg and what is its significance to the story?
Speaker 3 00:08:37 So muskeg is really an entity. It's the, um, as I put in the, the epigraph. It's, um, uh, comes from the cre word and the Ojibwe words for Pete. So the Cree musk kick an Ojibwe mush, ke meaning grassy bog. And it is a word that people in Northern Minnesota use for peat bogs, in fact. Um, so it's it when, when you, we talk about in Muske, we're talking about kind of the phenomenon of peat and also the bog and also what's in the bogs. It's kind of an embracing term. I didn't know that it meant Pete. I didn't know what Pete was. I grew up there in this, in this border country, lake of woods right across from Rain River. So, um, very, very remote. We didn't have television until I was about 14, something like that.
Speaker 2 00:09:30 It's very expansive though too, if I remember right, what it says in the Hepo graphic covers like 1.2 million kilometers, I think of round can. Is that right? I don't It is a lot of space.
Speaker 3 00:09:39 There's a lot of space, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:09:41 That muske covers. Yes. So you mentioned, yeah, so this background, the word muske is Cree
Speaker 3 00:09:47 In
Speaker 2 00:09:47 Ojibwe, cre and Ojibwe. And I, I just know in your bio how you have a background of studying languages. Can you talk about your interest in languages and where did that come from?
Speaker 3 00:09:58 From the time I was a teeny, teeny little girl, I can remember, um, I was always interested in the way people said things. And I would ask my mother, why, why, why did she say that word that way? And my mother would, I don't know what she said, but I, I remember sitting under the kitchen table as she would be with her sisters or friends or something like that. And they'd be talking and I'd be sitting there not only to soak up the stories, which I loved, but I'd be just taking note of the way people said things, which I thought was very interesting. Um, and for example, like my aunts always talked about if they'd gone out somewhere, there was a, there was a tavern, a dance hall, a honky tonk basically called the Green Lantern. And they said, well, we were, we were out to the blue lantern.
Speaker 3 00:10:44 We was out to the blue lantern or the green lantern, whatever it was the other day. And anyway, so I always found that interesting and I wanted to learn other languages. I was just intrigued. The only, well in my, my, um, my paternal grandma came from Norway, never met my grandpa, died before I was born, but she helped raise me. So I was hearing Norwegian constantly. And um, although I wasn't that interested, I was interested in French and made my mother buy me books in French to try to teach myself. And she'd take me cross serve French, some of her French Canadian friends, just if I could practice. And so I've always just been intrigued. It's like a lens into another culture. And I, I love different sounds. I love the architecture of it. I love kind of everything about other languages.
Speaker 2 00:11:31 Do you think languages, sorry, this is a, it's always sidetracking for your, for your book here, but my last question, I swear that's muske. Do you think languages changes your ideas of how you think about the world around you?
Speaker 3 00:11:41 Oh God, yes. Yeah, I really do. Because, because it is like a lens and it's a, or a portal, if you will, into another culture. And I think even, I remember, um, when I li in being in Mexico once, after I'd left there, I'd come back. I lived there about five years and I was visiting, um, a little village in, she's in my then husband who was an anthropologist. And where they speak when the Mayan languages, it's called Al and one, one of the like 30 some discrete mind languages. And I was learning some words, and I loved the way it made me form sounds as real sounds like they're called wounded consonants. And I was just fascinated. I just thought I'd never heard of wounded consonants before. And I, I like the idea of it and yeah, it just makes your mind, I'm study Arabic now, which really kind of turns your mind around
Speaker 2 00:12:39 You just reminded me. So I just came back from a trip in Ghana. And so besides English being the main language also, it's, um, tree,
Speaker 3 00:12:47 Tree, tree,
Speaker 2 00:12:48 Tree. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But the thing is what you just talked about, which was really hard for me is to, even now it's hard for me to nail, is the tree is almost like a ch sounds like a
Speaker 3 00:12:56 Yes.
Speaker 2 00:12:57 Tree.
Speaker 3 00:12:57 Tree, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:12:58 And so, um, yeah, definitely helped me be more acclimated to where I was at the time. This is the second book you've written, but it's also the second book in your planned Minnesota Canadian border Trilogy. Your interest, where does your interest for the Minnesota Canadian border begin? You just mentioned grow up with your grandmother. It was nearby the lake of the Woods area is that
Speaker 3 00:13:19 Lake of the Woods County, near Lake of the Woods. And, um, yeah, I grew up in this place that was impossibly remote for the, the United States. We had no radio except at night from the United States, only radio from, from Canada, large Winnipeg, when we finally got a radio channel, or rather TV channel, so we could actually have TV in the town. Um, it was from Winnipeg. And, um, so I, and I, I found all that really interesting, even growing up. And it's a very beautiful place. It's, it's so remote. It's so different from anywhere else that it felt special. Even when I was growing up, we were incredibly isolated. Like the nearest town of any size was Bemidji, which was a hundred miles south. Winnipeg was our biggest city. That was about 150. Um, and so I, and I, I think it just growing up in a place like that, and, um, I think it just seeps into your dna, you know, it certainly did for me, the water, the trees, the way the air smells, the way Muang smells when it's burning, which it does ever fall. Um, and so even though I've, I've spent years in Mexico, I've traveled and lived lots of places. I speak other languages, but I always seem to come back to Lake of the woods. Maybe down the road I'll be, I write in my poetry. I, um, I veer more. But yeah, when I'm writing prose and I'm writing a novel, I just keep coming back to Lake of the Woods. It's like very fertile ground for me.
Speaker 2 00:14:48 Besides the Lake of the Woods, is there any other connection between Muske and Hammi, Downy, walking King? Do they contain similar themes or the same characters between these works?
Speaker 3 00:14:57 Oh, definitely. Yeah. In fact, hand walking King is, um, the fiction, a fictionalized account of the forest relocation of people who are living in these teeny tiny towns in the bog, just little villages. But they, um, you know, they didn't have cops, they didn't have ministers. They were kind of, uh, they could bootle Allie one, which was a lot. And, um, but they were, it wasn't productive land. The government, the federal government, Andrew Volted, who also authored Prohibition, which was a disaster of course, uh, authored a bill called the Judicial Ditching Act, that at, in its aim was in Lake Luz County to drain the bogs, which is impossible. You can't drain a bog. And so they dug some ditches that were largely, you know, futile. But the people who lived in these villages were taxed. They had taxes to pay, and they couldn't, they couldn't, they were just assistance farmers in the Depression. And so the government altruistically moved them out of there onto better farms, but people really didn't wanna go. So it was a real legend in my hometown. It was left a bitter taste years after. So that was a setting of the first book. And this bog, the bog setting is that same bog. There are a few people left in this little place, and they're, um, and they, um, they figure heavily into the novel.
Speaker 2 00:16:23 When's the last time you visited? Uh, the Lakes of the Woods area? August.
Speaker 3 00:16:26 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:16:27 You still, you still go back to it?
Speaker 3 00:16:29 Oh yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, I, my, my family, my brothers and I and my husband and sisters-in-law own our family house, which is just up the road from Lake the Woods. Now we're very tied to it.
Speaker 2 00:16:40 Tied to the land. Yeah. Muske opens with a protagonist, Hazel and a girlfriend Theta at a queer friendly speakeasy in Savannah. You do something impressive with Muske. You, you can contextualize the history of queerness in America 100 years ago, while also normalizing gay relationships for a contemporary reading audience by having the story be set in the past. Was this something you were, you thought about while you were writing the novel?
Speaker 3 00:17:08 So I ended up thinking about quite a bit. Um, Hazel and Mini, who's her partner when that arrives 15 years later, as you were describing in the intro, uh, were secondary characters in the first book. They're the two mothers of Rose, who's one of the main protagonist and hand me down my walking cane. And they were always a couple, they were always lesbians, but I didn't know their backstory. And I wrote this book to write their story. And the story of Little Roy, who's a selectively mute, uh, Fiddler got traumatized mute, basically. And so in doing that, I had to do a lot of research on what it was like for gay people back in the twenties. A lot of women would, would marry, like for example, Hazel was married to Milt, who was also gay. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they were good friends. They were, you know, it was, it was a really good arrangement.
Speaker 3 00:17:59 A lot of women would do that. Um, and also in my little town when I was growing up in the region, I would be aware of couples living together, like a couple guys or a couple women, usually older, you know, some so-called Norwegian bachelor farmers. And my mom, who was really ahead of her time and, uh, <laugh>, she'd say, well, honey, they're probably homosexual. I mean, she didn't use the word gay back then. She said, that's just how it is. And, um, I think that, you know, nobody was really out per se in my hometown, but it's a place that's so remote that people really have to get along. They have to get along to survive. Right. And so there's a fair amount of tolerance. Um, there are several openly gay couples in my hometown right now. And, um, but I think back then it was just, it was just what they call in, in Spanish, a it was a secret. Everybody knew, you know, everybody knew it. But it was just kind of part of the landscape,
Speaker 2 00:19:05 Something that's peculiar with the way you wrote this story. And its kind of just actually, it kinda builds upon what you's talked about is when the, when the, when the red happens at the speakeasy, the press and the police, they don't acknowledge that the characters are homosexual. They just, I think that maybe, and I think one of the headlines and the press has said that there was women dressed in like men, but that's probably the extent of it. And then Fay's attorney refers to, to her and Hazel as having the disease. And they'll, and the characters themselves only talk about themselves as just being different. I think Miling says that just they're kind of people. And I thought that was interesting because it's like they're, there isn't a cultural consciousness that enables them to shape their identity of being gay. I was wondering if you could talk about that.
Speaker 3 00:19:49 Yeah, and to the extent I know, I, I wish sometimes there could have been a fly in the wall back then and just overhear everybody's conversation. But, um, I think especially in places like maybe Savannah, it's not like New York City where you have a, a gay, maybe underground culture, one of the major cities and of course up in the Canadian border, right. Um, I, I don't know exactly how they refer to themselves, but many, many women were called odd girls. And, um, there were probably some other words for them too. But yeah, I mean, the, the implication was that saying perversion or girls dress like men, um, that, that kind of, that they were, they were saying a lot with that. Like, that was, that was how people were referred to.
Speaker 2 00:20:33 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:20:35 I think one of my characters actually says the word dyke in here. Yeah. It's, it's that his husband. Okay. Yeah. He's, um, yeah, he's not a nice man. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:20:46 I would, uh, I like to think that some of the events in this book would be part of a bygone arrow. However, I, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the Saturday shooting that happened at the nightclub in Colorado Spring. It's called Club Q. There's obvious still, there's still hostility towards the, the LGBTQ community. But the one positive thing I had wri Muske is it made me realize there is more protection, I guess, from law enforcement. There is more support from publications, from news outlets and more support from the general public compared to what we have 1922 for this community. I was wondering if you could, what your thoughts were on this.
Speaker 3 00:21:20 Well, that's certainly true. Um, and absolutely you, if you were gay, lesbian, queer, you had to hide it because it wasn't social acceptable unless you're in a very specific little enclave. Um, but I think, I think one of the differences that I see, and again, I I, I didn't live back in the twenties. My mother was born in 23, and I, believe me, I read all and heard all the stories I could possibly hear, but, um, you didn't have a certain segment of Republican, right? I was gonna say the Republican party <laugh>, that's, I guess that's fair. You didn't have a political party or kind of a group of people who were demonizing gays and lesbian. It wasn't even something people really talked about that much. Right. They were after communists, reds, anarchists, you know, it was the time of the, the Palmer raids and, um, of Jack Reed and, uh, the people living in Greenwich Village who were indeed anarchists and communists. And so they were more interested in that. I mean, now their new bugaboo is GT lgbt. Yeah. Just, just stumbled over LGBTQ Yeah. People. Yeah. Um, so yeah. Um, it's been, it's their, their flames that did not need to be fan. And it's horrible. It's a tragedy. Not that, not that's ever been easy for people who are gay, lesbian, or queer, believe me, are trans. But, um, yeah, now it's like there's an open season on them, it seems from the Republicans.
Speaker 2 00:22:52 Mr. Robert John Williams is an attorney at law who works on behalf of Thetas family and relocating Hazel, as I mentioned, your bio in a past life, you're once an attorney yourself. Is Mr. Williams a character of someone you knew in a legal field? Are they, I was kind of curious how that person formed in your mind.
Speaker 3 00:23:11 So he is kind of a character of, um, I'd say a good old boy attorney. You know, he knows a prosecutor and Chris is a small place too. He knows a judge and he doesn't really approve. He definitely doesn't approve a hazel cuz she's both lesbian and, um, working class. But he doesn't really approve Athe either. And, um, thinks that she's kind of a pervert. And so he'll do the deal. He kinda holds him in arm's length and lets him know he doesn't approve of them, doesn't like them at all, but tells 'em both. They should be grateful.
Speaker 2 00:23:40 Is that a personality you'd find often within the legal profession, someone like, or is it, this is completely just a fiction?
Speaker 3 00:23:46 I would not have found people like that in my part of the legal profession. I was first a public defender in Hennepin County, then a Hennepin County attorney. I will say when I first began practicing, and I'm not gonna name names here, although I think this guy is long dead, but <laugh>, I started practicing as a public defender in 1987. There was a judge on the bench, and if any of my old public defender friends out there are listening, they will know who I'm talking about. Who was really, really retro. I mean, there were some old, old school guys who would smoke cigars in chambers, and thank God that, you know, we now have, you know, but there was one who was really, really mean, and he was particularly mean to our clients who are, who are sex workers, who are prostitutes. He would insult them from the bench.
Speaker 3 00:24:28 I mean, I, I've, you know, I, and many people have had to stand up for our clients in a way we didn't, never thought we were gonna have to against the very judge. And he was actually, he was one of the few judges that was voted out at some point. But yeah, he was horrible. He was really horrible. Wow. Um, so yeah, I've seen a few people like him, but, um, thank God a lot more women were coming on the bench and yeah, I don't, he was the one, the one that was sticks in my mind.
Speaker 2 00:24:58 The structure of Musk is, it's nonlinear, it's broken up with in different parts of Hazel's life that I think it works better at complimenting her story by seeing the before and after intermingled, I think. Did you sit out to write mosque this way? Or is this something that changed over time? That
Speaker 3 00:25:15 It changed Actually, when I first set out to write it, I wrote her story in the twenties and I jumped ahead to the thirties. And, um, when the women in my writing, one of my writing groups, I'm in a novel writing group, and she said, well, it's like you've taken two books and pressed them together. And I said, Bonnie, it's a terrible thing to say, Bonnie, if you're listening, you know, I appreciate that. Um, but it was, and so, um, actually I was up at Lake of the Woods with some of my other, uh, writer friends in my, uh, woman in my writing group. And I, um, went into the garage. We all had our separate little spaces, and I just started mixing things up. And I did 19 22, 19 36 or 37 actually. Um, and I realized that was the only way it was gonna work until it finally all, even out into work in 1937. But I realized otherwise it was like two books and I didn't want two books. I wanted one book.
Speaker 2 00:26:08 I wanna talk, I wanna ask you this really quickly, we're almost outta time here, but the, the time here. So the character, um, a Theta mentions her name as like Theta Barra the va. Yes. A well known selling film actress are selling films. Something I'm a cile, so I was like, oh, this is really cool. Is is really interesting. Are selling films something you're interested in or was that something that just came up in your research while writing the book?
Speaker 3 00:26:29 Well, I knew about the name Theta in my, in my, um, imagining her, her name was like Theodore, but she hated that name. So she was called Theta. Um, not particularly Silent films, but I'm definitely into film. And, um, I thought, thought was real, you know, it would make a lot of sense that that would be a nickname for her.
Speaker 2 00:26:47 And my last question, Carla, your next novel is as I believe tentatively is tell right now into the storm. Yes. Can you tell us a little about what it is and when we expect to see that released?
Speaker 3 00:26:58 Mm, sometime next year, hopefully. Okay. Uh, I should say that Kelly MIRIs, um, my, my publisher is gonna be reissuing hand me down my walking can early next year, and I have to finish writing the, the book. I realized that because I, I'd done, uh, some of the secondary characters, I had to go back to my original characters from hand Me Walking can just kind of wrap them up. And, um, so I'll be going back to particularly Rose and Amel who are, uh, mention in here. There, there's some misses from them in here, but they're big stars in the first book, and he's a photojournalist and she is a writer, and they're gonna go to the Spanish of war because that's what, um, progressive writers and photographers did back in the 1930s.
Speaker 2 00:27:48 This has been my time talking with Carla j Hagen about her book Muskeg. Carla, thanks so much for being here
Speaker 3 00:27:53 With us. Thank you, Josh. Thank you Annie.
Speaker 2 00:27:55 And now this,
Speaker 4 00:29:29 All right. Read Ferrell Coleman, welcome to write on radio. Go ahead.
Speaker 5 00:29:34 Uh, okay. Chapter one, Monday night. Some people swallow their grief, some let it swallow them. I guess there's about a thousand degrees in between those extremes. Maybe a million. Maybe a million million. Who the hell knows? Not me. I don't, I'm just about able to put one foot before the other to breathe again. But not always. Not even most of the time. Annie, my wife, I mean my ex-wife, she let it swallow her hole, and when it spit her back up, she was someone else. Something else. A hornet from a butterfly. If I was on the outside looking in and not the central target of her fury sting, I might understand it. I might forgive it. I tell myself I would, but I'd have to forgive myself first. I might as well wish for Jesus to reveal himself in my so view mirror, or for John Junior to come back to us. At the moment, my wishes were less ambitious ones. I wish for the 1138 to run Cona to be on time. I should have wished for it to be early.
Speaker 4 00:30:48 Very good. You've been listening to re Ferrell Coleman reading from his new novel Where It Hurts. He is the author of many series, including the Mo Prager series and the Gulliver Dowd series. He took over writing Robert b Parker's, Jesse Stone series. He is a poet and teaches at Hofstra University in New York, and has won the Anthony Audi, Barry McAvity and Shamus Awards, and has been nominated for the Gum Shoe and Edgar Awards. Reid Ferrell Coleman, welcome to Write on Radio.
Speaker 5 00:31:22 Well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 00:31:24 Tell us a little bit about the story and, uh, and who Guss Murphy is,
Speaker 5 00:31:30 Uh, the story. Well, since I always start with character, let me start with Gus. Sure. Uh, Gus is the kind of guy I think we'd all love for a neighbor. He's a kind of guy. When he's shoveling, uh, the snow out of his driveway, he shovels his neighbor's driveway, not because he thinks there's a reward for him in this life or the next, but because he was raised to think it was the right thing to do. Uh, he's a retired Suffolk County, New York policeman, a uniform policeman who has everything he wants. He has a lovely wife, a good marriage, two almost grown children, a nice pension, a house that's paid for and the rest of his life to enjoy all those things. And as most people who have the things they want, he thinks he understands how the world works, how the universe works. Um, and although he is no longer a believer in God, he does believe that the universe is, there's, there's reason in the universe he believes all that stuff until the moment he doesn't. Uh, his son, uh, John Junior dies of a heart defect playing basketball and blows his whole world, his whole world view and his family apart. And we picked the story up two years later, when is working in a kind of CD hotel by a Long Island MacArthur Airport. He drives the courtesy van just because it gives him something to do, and he lives at the hotel as well. So that's where the story picks
Speaker 4 00:33:12 Up. Okay. And you said that you start with characters. So I'm curious, uh, that got me to thinking, I've talked to a lot of mystery writers over the years, and a lot of them outline their stories before they start, but some of them don't. And I'm curious which approach you take.
Speaker 5 00:33:27 I've never outlined a thing in my life.
Speaker 4 00:33:30 <laugh>,
Speaker 5 00:33:31 The closest thing I I ever do to outlining is making a grocery list.
Speaker 4 00:33:35 Oh, okay. Yeah. I I'm kind of that way too. I don't really like to outline. I like to see where the story is gonna take me. And, uh, and, and yet a lot of mystery writers feel like we need to know who, who the bad guy is and, and what the final solution is before we can start on the process of bringing the reader through all the hoops to get to the, to the end result.
Speaker 5 00:33:57 Well, I've never been a plot. True. All, I think plot is important, don't get me wrong, but I've never been a plot driven writer because I believe two weeks after you close a book, do you really remember what the plot was? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. How you remember who, who the protagonist was, that's who you're thinking about. And so, so for me, uh, I mean, plot is important, but really it's all about character. Yeah. And for me, as I write my belief is if I surprise me with what's coming, the reader will be surprised and entertained with what's coming.
Speaker 4 00:34:32 Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's really a great way to look at it. The other thing that struck me a little bit was, um, the fact that John Junior dies of a heart defect. And I would have thought at least many mystery writers would've decided, okay, let's have his son be killed by somebody in an unsolved murder. And you chose not to go that way. Talk about that.
Speaker 5 00:34:58 Well, I, you know, I'm gonna go back to building a character again.
Speaker 4 00:35:02 <laugh>. Okay.
Speaker 5 00:35:03 When I build a character, uh, you know, there's a, there's a, actually a Minnesotan author named Jess Lowry, who I fought with. And Jess likes to say, when to know a character, you have to know what's in his or her refrigerator or his or her waste paper basket, or in his, or her wallet or bag. For me, I, I, I use that idea, but I go deeper. I, I want to know what someone's flaw is, what their secret is, and what embarrasses them, and what is the worst thing that's ever happened to them. And for Gus, what I imagine, what's the worst thing that could happen to me? And the, and the thought of one of my children, uh, dying before me mm-hmm. <affirmative> is, you know, what would blow up my world and let that would blow up my world. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so I needed Gus for the purposes of this book to start with completely off balance. And so, um, see a murderer as, as, as a is discussed in the book, there are people to go see about a murder. Yeah. Right. Somebody committed the act so you can find out who, why, what, where and when to a murder. But who do you see about, uh, a trick of fate? Who do you see when it's a hardened hidden heart defect? There are no, there's nobody to get answers to. Right. And so that's why I started there as opposed to having his son be murdered.
Speaker 4 00:36:48 Yeah. Yeah. And you give him Father Bill as sort of his best friend. Um, and as you mentioned, he has lost his faith, but he still retains this connection to faith through his friendship with Father Bill.
Speaker 5 00:37:02 Yeah. They're kindred spirits in a way. And, and one of the things I like to do in series novels, because this is going to be a series there, there are gonna be at least four books in the series Okay. Is I like having a moral center to the series that isn't a protagonist. Mm. And so, in my Mo Prager series, the Moral Center of the series was a man named Israel Roth. In this series, I, I hope Father Bill will be that moral center. Now it may not be the morals that everybody expects Right. But he will be the moral center of the series.
Speaker 4 00:37:44 Okay. And, um, speaking of Mo Prager, and you did the Gulliver Dowd series, and you're writing the, the Robert B. Parker, Jesse Stone series. Uh, talk a little bit about the process of creating a new series and creating new characters. I mean, does it sort of free you up to say, you know, I I can now make this character anything I want and I'm gonna go in a different direction, or I like certain elements of, of this other character, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring those along. Uh, I mean, do you start completely fresh? Do you, do you sort of work with some of the things you've done in the past?
Speaker 5 00:38:18 You know, I tried not to the now an objective observer looking at the, just the very superficial elements might look at Gus and Mo, for instance, and say they're very similar. Both, uh, guys about 35, 40 years old, both retired from the job, though in a different way. Um, both only uniform policemen, not detectives. Yes. In that way, they're superficially alike, but actually they're, they couldn't be less alike in who they are. Um, and I also like to match, although I always start with character, I have to make sure the character is of a place. And, uh, this, these books will be set on, uh, in Suffolk County, long Island, um, the Long Island, that is nothing like the Gold Coast. It's nothing like Easter West Egg. It's nothing like the Hamptons. It's, it's the Long Island where most Long Islanders live. Yeah. Uh, and so Gus had to be of that area. So although I'm building the character, I, when I'm building the character, I build the character where, with where he exists, his <inaudible>, his, his environment in mind.
Speaker 4 00:39:39 Yeah. That was one of the things that sort of surprised me. I'm not a native New Yorker. I've been to New York State, but I haven't, I don't think I've ever been to Long Island. And, uh, you mentioned at one point, I think there are 130 school districts on Long Island. I mean, it's, it's really a massive place, isn't it?
Speaker 5 00:39:56 Well, what's funny is it's not as big as you think. You'd think 130 school districts, it should be gigantic. Um, but the fact is that, as I discussed in the book, that those school districts are a way to really have our form of de facto segregation. Um, um, you know, rich communities have smaller school districts that more money gets spent on their students. Um, it keeps, uh, white people in white areas. It keeps African Americans in African areas, uh, African American areas, and it keeps Hispanics in Hispanic areas, and it's really, uh, manipulated to state that, to keep the status quo. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4 00:40:40 Well, let's listen if we can to another passage from the book.
Speaker 5 00:40:44 Sure. Oops, now I gotta find one. Okay.
Speaker 4 00:40:46 <laugh>.
Speaker 5 00:40:47 Here we go. This is, this is a little further down in the first chapter. Okay. Um, and Gus is, Gus, just to set it up a little. Guss is at the, still at the train station waiting for, uh, some gentleman to come in so he can drive them to the airport. So, um, okay. Aziza the mocha skin, Pakistani girl behind the counter, not a at me smile, the gap to smile. She no longer asked what I wanted. Small coffee, half and half too sweet and lows. She made it up for me, put it on the counter. She no longer gave me the change. When I paid, she dropped the change in the paper tip cup with the other careless pennies, quarters dimes, and Nicks I like because she expected nothing of me beyond our routine. We danced our nightly dance and then went back to being strangers. She didn't expect me to put the pain behind me or to bravely get on with my life, to lead the night manager. A fleshy man with sharp eyes and a suspicious face stared at me, as he always did. It was as if he could smell the taint on me. He didn't like me in the shop, thought I might sully the place with my taint. Or maybe that wasn't it at all.
Speaker 4 00:42:12 Very good. That is Reid Ferrell Coleman reading from his new novel where it Hurts. And one of the things I love about your writing is the language. You really take a great deal of care with that, I suppose, being a poet, in addition to being a, a writer of mysteries, uh, that's just sort of maybe second nature to you, but talk about the importance of language is to sort of distinguish your work from so much of what's out there.
Speaker 5 00:42:38 Um, well, I I, I'd like to say that I started as a poet and I was a poet for a while, but I don't really actively do it anymore.
Speaker 4 00:42:46 Okay.
Speaker 5 00:42:47 So, you know, I always feel like a fr opposer and fraud,
Speaker 5 00:42:53 But it is what I studied in college. So I guess that's, you know, we can, you can, let me get a pass on Uhhuh, that uhhuh, um, language. Even before I wrote, I was always good at expressing myself. Um, and language was always, I always loved playing with words, you know, w h o and there this apocryphal story about w h Aden, a woman came to him and said, you know, my son is, is, he could be a great writer. I'm sure of it. He has a great vocabulary. He studies very hard, and Aden allegedly said to her, but does he like playing with words? Um, and so I've always loved playing with words, and I've always had a good vocabulary. And somehow, you know, I don't, I I, I don't like thinking about it too much because it works. And always, when you ask people about how they do things, they're always afraid it'll go away.
Speaker 4 00:43:49 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's always a concern. Um, but, but I think you're right. I mean, if you, if you really sort of enjoy it, you're not as likely to do things like repeating the same word within a paragraph unless you mean to emphasize that word. And I see so many writers who, who will use sort of the same word, and I'm not talking about words like the or, and I'm talking about words like, like taint. You know, what you just talked about, which you just read. And that was a word I could tell specifically. You wanted to use that word twice to emphasize that aspect of, of, uh, gus's character that is being perceived or that might be perceived.
Speaker 5 00:44:30 And I, and I also think that there are certain words that have real power in them, just intrinsically. And I think the word taint by itself has a lot of power to it. It, it, I don't think we think about that much. I, I, you know, it's my job to think about that, but I, I think words like taint are powerful all by themselves. So, um, and to repeat it, it, it really does underline it to repeat it. Yeah. Yeah. And yes, I purposely repeated that word, and if you read my paragraphs, I try really hard not to repeat.
Speaker 4 00:45:06 Yeah. And that's why it stands out to me, because you do a great job of that. And then you see something like that and you say, aha, this is a word that I have to pay attention to. Um, and, and the other thing that I love about your, your books is that your characters are very three dimensional. Even your minor characters are relatively three dimensional. Um, you've got characters like Kristin, who is, I'm sure we'll have a bigger role in future books. And Annie, who has a not real large role necessarily in this book, I, I'm guessing we'll have another larger role maybe in, in future books. But, but they're all sort of fleshed out and, and three dimensional.
Speaker 5 00:45:44 Well, I, I, I'm, you know, known for saying there's no such thing as a minor character in my books. Um, and I always use this example when I teach character, um, you know, did going to work today, did you walk or drive by someone walking their dog? You know, yes. Most people do. You know, you don't, you hardly notice it, but I'm sure you did. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, well, they are a minor character in your life, right? Yeah. But think of their perspective. You're a minor character in their life.
Speaker 4 00:46:19 Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:46:20 Um, so that the, that person walking that dog, even though he or she took up two seconds of your life, right. So they're minor, but they have whole, they have their whole lives. So I never treat anybody as a spear carrier when they, in my books, no one, no one comes on stage and says, har, I hear the cannons roar, <laugh>,
Speaker 4 00:46:43 And walk
Speaker 5 00:46:44 On stage. But if they did, I would think of them as having full internal lives and families. So it's, it's a matter more of how I think of them, and I think that translates to the page.
Speaker 4 00:46:58 Mm. Yeah. And a lot of your characters in this book have given up, haven't they?
Speaker 5 00:47:04 Uh, yeah. I think a lot of people have given up, generally <laugh>, so yes, a lot of people have given up and, and mo um, mo I, goodness mo I, I make that mistake sometimes. Yeah. Gus has pretty much given up mm-hmm. <affirmative> almost.
Speaker 4 00:47:21 Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:47:22 And it's, and it's, you know, I think even when you've given up, there's, there's given up and there's really given
Speaker 4 00:47:28 Up. Yeah. There, there's giving up and laying down to die, and then there's giving up and still going through the motions and, and sort of hoping that, that you won't have to stay given up forever, I suppose.
Speaker 5 00:47:38 And I think there, there, even Gus at his worst, there was always hope in him. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:47:44 Yeah. And I really liked Slava too, and I imagine he will be back in, uh, in future books as well.
Speaker 5 00:47:51 Well, the next book is already done. It's called What You Break, and Slava plays a very, Slava is playing very big role <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:48:03 Yeah. Yeah. He's great. I mean, you, you can sense that he's as deep and as conflicted and as pained as, uh, as Gus is. Um, and initially when we meet him, we don't see any of that. And as the book goes on, we see more and more of that.
Speaker 5 00:48:21 Uh, yeah. He's the perfect example of, uh, there's no such thing as a minor character, because I could have done that with almost any of the characters in the book. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, but for the, the plot choices I made, it might have been Felix, the desk man who was who, who fulfilled Slava's role, or a smudge or any of the other characters. Yeah. So that's the joy, like going back to an earlier question, one of the joys in creating the first book in a series is, um, you get to pick and choose who populates the world that you're gonna write about.
Speaker 4 00:49:00 Yeah. Right. And another thing that every mystery kind of has to do is, or every author of mysteries kind of has to do is, is keep certain information from readers. You do it very well. Some authors you can tell are sort of just, they have to do something that seems very contrived to, um, to keep the information away. Talk about how you go about structuring the story to keep information, crucial information from readers without making it seem contrived. That's a really tough thing to do, of course. In a short time. We only have a couple minutes. But that, but that's the question.
Speaker 5 00:49:36 Well, but I, I, I have a very simple answer to it. It's one of the real benefits of not outlining it is a real benefit for me not to outline, because I'm never really sure how I'm going to give the information out until I reach a point where, oh, it makes sense to give some information here. You know, when you outline, you have to sort of outline and let the, let yourself know, okay, I have to reveal this by this page. I have to reveal in this chapter. That's not an issue for me when I'm getting to the end of the book. I know, you know, I better have revealed X, Y, and Z or it's cheating the reader and I hate cheating the reader. Yeah,
Speaker 4 00:50:24 Right, right. Um, we're pretty much out of time, so I think we're just gonna leave it at that. It was, it was really, uh, amazingly well written. I, I really enjoy it and I'm looking forward to the next one. You're gonna have to have that one sent to us when, uh, when that one comes out. Cause I'd love to talk to you again about this. Uh, so we're, I
Speaker 5 00:50:43 Have it sent to
Speaker 4 00:50:44 You. Yeah. We're, we're out of time. This is Steve SRO speaking with re Ferrell Coleman about his new novel where It Hurts. Reid Ferrell Coleman, thanks for being on Right on Radio.
Speaker 5 00:50:55 Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 00:50:57 And now this,
Speaker 1 00:52:40 You are listening to Right On Radio, on Cafe I 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie Harvey. I'd like to thank our special guest tonight, Carla j Hogan. And I'd like to thank Josh for picking a fun archival episode from literally when I was in college, as well as all of our listeners. Without your support and donations, kfi, I would not be possible. You can find more news and info, but right on radio at kfi i.org/right on radio. You can also listen to our, uh, right on radio episodes on our podcast. Um, go wherever you find podcasts, your Spotify, iTunes, Google.
