Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible> tonight on, right on radio. Ian talks with Jeff Charlotte about his latest work, this brilliant darkness, a book of strangers early readers have called this book in cancer. Tori. This is brilliant darkness erases the boundaries between author, subject, and reader to ask how do people live with suffering? Joe Sharla is a New York times and national bestselling author of the family and C street and an executive producer of the 2019 Netflix five-part documentary series based on them, the family, and I'm losing the old and the second part of our show cash. We'll be talking with Christina DCA, Marie, born in Boston and raised in Minnesota. She is an author of Spotify and fantasy works and creator of the blog and YouTube Cannell, dragons Sotheby's and aliens, all of this and more so stay tuned for right on radio.
Speaker 1 00:01:12 This is from a section about the story of Charlie Africa, Kooning, who was killed by police on March 21, March one 2015. Open your eyes, darkness. A luxury afforded the man who owns two tents. One popped right inside the other, no street, light filtering and no headlights, rising long tan walls, just dark. You could be anywhere your father's house before Dawn in Cameroon, Paris or pretend it's Berlin. You know, it's America stretch. You want to run the Canyon, your long legs striding up the Ridge out of the haze until you reach the great Vista LA the city beneath you. You'll close your eyes and feel the sun on your skin. And in your mind, the movie will roll the film of all that is yet to come. You've always been gifted like this granted stories and the power to believe him, mercy. You think may I see you?
Speaker 1 00:02:08 Thank you. God. Open your eyes March one 2015 Sunday, you need to call her your sister mean get to half of who you are. Bon wee. You texted her last night. Every day you text her. I'll call you tomorrow. Mancha my heart. My dear darkness, silence earplugs. You don't hear the street. Begin to breathe. The 10 people in the blank and people in the single room, occupancy people coming out for prayer and breakfast at the missions to stay awake all night, dancing in place for 24 hours, tweaking people. The flat-out face down sidewalk people. The corner men are pissed. The foot of the two's story glass cross the jury to pitch your tents on this corner. Sunday, skid row, Los Angeles, America. This is where you are on a mattress and a tent on the sidewalk. You flick on your flashlight, taped to the tents.
Speaker 1 00:03:02 Walls are photographs of Africa. You've got from magazines and a picture of Beyonce. Isn't that a woman stretch. You're going nowhere today, but your body remains strong muscle at the shoulder, tapered at the waist, the 43 old man still that'll get withdrawn, tall, beautiful black Kings. As your friend, moon child, some days you actually feel like one. When the chemistry is right, crystal raising you up, spice shifting you sideways. When you feel like you can envision your way home across the ocean, right through the front door of your father's house. And Douala sip open the tents, smell the street, zoom into the right now, right here, crouching on your milk crate in front of the 10th and staring down at the sidewalk. You sweep and sweep until you break the broom. And then how can you keep it clean, tall, beautiful black King, not this morning.
Speaker 1 00:03:49 So you take up the play Macbeth. You've been studying, learning lines, reading them aloud. Come sealing night. The street throbbing gospel booming from ms. Mika's Cornerstore radios. Rolling by and wheelchairs. I'm a, I can't read this on the radio. Uh, so many ancient songs, public enemy NWA, and the music music from the listeners last good day. The dramatics, Marvin Gaye, voices that balloon into the evening, the police and the mission workers and the drive-bys snapping pictures from automobile windows. Think skid row gets worse at night, but they're wrong. It gets better. The cooler air tamps down the fumes ans rise. You read out loud, loud. Maybe it's a chemistry end of the month. Money dried up. Everybody's stashed. Wouldn't linger gone. No spice left to continue. Just the crystal rising in your Gorge. I have almost forgot the taste of fears he read at certain times, your friend, your friend Juju, but Judah was say willing himself sober.
Speaker 1 00:04:49 So we can tell your story crashed on the couch at the back of ms. Mika store sweating. Even in the after midnight show, he started around seven read straight through to nine 30. Not always out loud, but that Saturday night am I disturbing you, you asked Juju is 10 next to yours beneath the big tree. Judah says, no. He loves to listen. He says, he knows what you're reading says. He remembers it from high school years ago. The very play says, it's beautiful to play your voice. The way you read you sound like Africa is Juju. That's what they call you here. Africa. You've never told anyone your real name, that's the home for your father's house to which you are Turner. You read tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow rather Juju says, I love you.
Speaker 2 00:05:37 Wow, that was Jeff Charlottes. And you were listening to him reading from his newest book, this brilliant darkness, a book of strangers. Jeff's an associate professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth, and also the best selling author of the family, which has just been made into a documentary series C street and sweet heaven. When I die is workers and numerous awards, including the national magazine award and the outspoken award. That was extremely powerful that are reading Jeff, even though it was on the radio, you had to, you had to suppress a couple of words there.
Speaker 1 00:06:16 I did. I did this. I, you know, I never write in the second person. That's, you know, when you dress you and, uh, I would especially wary of doing so with this story about an unarmed black man whose real name was Charlie <inaudible>, who was killed. It was held down by a police officers on arms, held down into the sidewalk and shot six times killed by a contact shot right through the heart. But as I spent time talking to his family, talking to his friends, for some reason that addressed seemed appropriate and they thought it was appropriate to just at a moment to ask us to, to really try and feel Charlie's humanity and its beauty as well. I think,
Speaker 2 00:07:02 Well, I love the second person. I find it very effective in, in, especially here, but how odd that, um, you and I would get talking this, this book very much is about using Facebook and Facebook connections and you and I talk a lot on Facebook and found out about your book on there, that your publicist didn't send me this one. She sent me them before, but I found out about it in Facebook and we got talking and here you are on right on radio tonight, right after we've had a situation here where the city nearly burned down. And it's quite ironic working on that particular issue in your book about a killing that happened in, you know, five years ago, I suppose that must be sucking up all the air for this book at the moment, that issue.
Speaker 1 00:07:46 I mean, uh, you know, I published this book in February. I worked on this book for many years. It's a Charlie story is the heart of it. But it's a story of many people, including my own, worked on it for many years, published it in February. And, uh, I was one of the lucky ones. I got a little bit of a book tour before the pandemic shut things down and I have mostly, I've done. I'm so grateful to you and to those who invite me on. But, uh, I think there's a, we're at a moment right now where conversation is so broad that most writers, I know, feel a little uncomfortable saying, Hey, look, get my new book. Uh, at this moment there's so much urgent news that we also must absorb, but I think we have to, you know, at least I can speak for myself. I benefit from doing both from reading the longer form work, the work that's been building for a long time and following the news urgently and trying to understand the world
Speaker 2 00:08:45 Well, we've had the same feelings from several losses in the last few, few weeks, especially, um, you know, feeling very perturbed about where they sit with all this. Um, but let's just start, let's just focus on the book. And, uh, it's a, it's a brilliant book. So 116 pictures in it, which you've mostly, I think all of them are from your iPhone. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 00:09:08 They are. The book began, uh, years ago. Uh, I was, I read a lot of magazine stories and I was, uh, I, I live in, uh, Vermont, very small town area. So sometimes you like to work late at night at the time I had insomnia couldn't work. So the only place to go wait at night around, well, there was a Dunkin donuts and I'm sitting in the Dunkin donuts and I noticed the, the night Baker is wearing this t-shirt with his very Baroque goal on it, which, you know, if you've ever been to a Dunkin donuts, you can imagine a big skull is not the logo. And I get to talking to him, it's his last night of work. He's quitting a job. He hates the job. He hates the night shift and we just get to talking and he's, you know, those kind of, kind of candid conversations you sometimes have way to night and here's a little tear tattooed beneath his eye.
Speaker 1 00:09:59 And I asked him what it's for. And it's for his son who died as an infant. And, uh, I asked, I asked if I could take his picture with my phone, just the same camera we have in our pocket. And he said, yes. And I wrote a little store and I posted it on Instagram and I hashtagged it night shift. And then I hit the hashtag who else is awake at night? What thousands and thousands of people. And that's where the book really began. And I started taking the photographs became, I've always been very engaged with photography, but I, I didn't think of myself as a photographer, but I like many journalists always take pictures as notes and suddenly those notes became the story itself. And so I moved back and forth between image and text, sometimes telling the story with a sentence sometimes with a picture.
Speaker 2 00:10:47 And sometimes there's a picture and then, you know, quite a long, short story length or article length piece as well, which is it's broken up. Um, it's almost like a micellar journey, which I don't think we use that word very much anymore, but you know what I mean by that, right?
Speaker 1 00:11:03 Yeah. Yeah. I do love that. I hadn't, I hadn't thought of that. It is, it's a book of fragments, so it's, uh, I ended up, uh, it sort of documents two years of my life, essentially. The began my early forties, my father with whom I was my clothes. I'd had a heart attack and Vermont, he lived in upstate New York. I would drive back and forth across the mountains. And I wasn't some knack I had about a thing. I was having a hard time processing all the stories I'd collected as a writer over the years. And so it started taking, just talking to people and asking if I could take their picture and writing these, these short kind of prose poems a little bit that were made up of their language. They started assembling and taking on own form. Some of them took serial form. So, uh, the, uh, I say Charlie Coon Ang is the heart of the, and there's another sort of very long passage about a woman named Mary Mazer, an older woman, a pretty severe mental health issues who lived in a what's called a transient or welfare motel.
Speaker 1 00:12:05 And, uh, and her telling her story over many pictures in many stories. Um, and then thinking about how do all these fit together, how does this become an effect it's sort of a memoir told through other people's lives is how I, I began to think of it and that gave it its organizing principle. As I wrote the last sentence of the book or what I thought was the last sentence, uh, when I was 44 and I pushed literally, I mean, this was, I don't mean this in a sort of conflation symmetry. I wrote, I said, that's it, that's the last sentence I pushed myself back from the table. It was two years after my father's heart attack. And I felt a pressure in my chest and it was my heart attack and you know what it wants a heart attack. But, uh, you know, I had to say, even by the time I was in the hospital, I didn't know if I was going to make it through the night, but I was joking with a friend. I'm like, well, if I make it, this book's going to have incredible symmetry,
Speaker 2 00:13:02 Quite amazing thing. I was going to ask you how you came up with the unity, you know, whatever it is that holds all this together and on a kind of psychological level, it's the heart attacks or heart attack of that. And then the heart attack of you and two years later. And, um, I I'm, I'm always aware of that because that's laid out very early in the book. And, uh, and you, you know, I'm getting the sense of a, of a kind of search or kind of lost in the night. I kept thinking, I kept sort of hearing it, uh, kind of Charles Bukovsky a kind of Anthem, almost music created from the, these collages. And it, it really caught my attention very early on. And I loved that about it and took me back to Richard Braughtigan and, um, was that fly fishing and America and some of those Wisconsin death trip. And then some of those books about dead bodies, you know, and they put the narrative of the dead person into it.
Speaker 1 00:14:01 That's amazing. You said Wisconsin death trip, the author of that great book, Michael Vesey was the, my teacher as an undergraduate and has been my close friend ever since. Um, and uh, very much understood this book as, as, as a death trip with constant desperate for Michael last year, we published originally 1972, a book of photographs that he found in an archive and excerpts from newspapers and from the late 19th century photographs, uh, that they're terrifying photographs. Many of them, people, their children, if your baby died, what did you do? You called him the portrait photographer. You had a photograph taken. And I learned so much from, from Michael and this book very much was sort of my attempt after years of writing, a lot of, and a lot of journalism of what, what was the purpose of that kind of storytelling that I was, uh, originally doing?
Speaker 1 00:14:59 You mentioned Makowsky too, you know, I'd never been a fan. I'd never read <inaudible> the second time. The first time I finished this book, I had a heart attack. The second time I finished this book was, um, by my father's death bed. He survived, his heart attack, lived on for several years, uh, died a year and a half ago, uh, of cancer. And I finished the book by his death bed and then, uh, was going through his things that has had his home. And he was not, um, he was not a Charles McCalsky kind of person, if anyone else would be Koski mean not right. That, and there was a heavily annotated, big collected, uh, volume of Koski poems. And it was such a startling kind of moment to sort of, and as you say, I started reading them because he had read them. And then after thinking for years, I don't like that guy. Um, I had to recognize that there was a certain kind of affinity between what I was trying to do and telling these late nights stories of these people who were as lost as I was, and by telling their stories, trying to find my way somewhere.
Speaker 2 00:16:08 Well, I think your dad in, in liking Bukovsky and, uh, you like probably a lot of us who live most of the time, at least, uh, after we've matured a bit, live a cleaner sort of life than Charles McCalsky did. And I made a lot of very smart people and very conventional people love him because it gives one an entrance into that dark world that you're talking about. And I think your book does the same thing. It's this brilliant darkness. And it's very well titled in that sense. And you do take us down into the streets and you take us to Africa and you take us to, uh, Dublin, you take us to, uh, to Russia and you have a gun pointed at you several times and not even right in front of knives and all these kinds of things. It's very brave of you, what you've done. And of course you're a journalist and you're willing to do that, but it does take us to places where great writing should. And then you also add a picture to it, which is, this is a certain kind of genre think that, you know, going back to, um, Wisconsin, death, death trip, and those kinds of day book collections, um, it's its own genre really isn't it?
Speaker 1 00:17:26 It is, you know, and, and, uh, I way, I mean, this is the genre of the sort of a book of words and pictures, but then there was, of course, another kind of a story that we tell with words and pictures, and this is actually, uh, another place for where this began for me. I started, I, I told a lot of these stories originally on Instagram, and I always have to, whenever I talk about, I felt like I don't want to be a, for Instagram, it's a big, bad corporation, uh, et cetera, et cetera. But what it provided me was this way to sequentially tell stories with words and pictures. And as a writer over the years when I was a kid, I loved comic books, just, you know, superhero comic books. I, I, I still, I like graphic novels and graphic writing and so on.
Speaker 1 00:18:12 It's not as much a part of my life, but when I'm stuck as a writer, I go to comic bookstore and I just buy a bunch of comic books as almost doesn't matter what they are. I'm interested in the emotion between words and pictures, the way, um, that, uh, the reader sets into motion, um, the images together. So there's the white space that you see between panels and the comic book, comfortable guard is called this the gutter, right. You know, in, in panel one, uh, wonder woman is swinging her magic lasso, right? And panel two, she's got the bad guy, all tied up. Your imagination provides some movement in between. So when I get stuck as a writer, I look at that and to help myself sort of restart. And I, and I was stuck as a writer early on in this book and I bought some comics and I was reading them.
Speaker 1 00:19:01 I had recently signed on the Instagram for the same reason. Most people do friends and family, but I was looking at those squares and the space for the writing underneath. And I said, Oh, look, I can't draw. But it's like, I couldn't make a comic book of my own. I could tell a story with words and pictures. And that was, that was really essential. You know, all these books that you mentioned, Wisconsin death trip, the idea of a, miscellany the idea of a fragmented narrative. I think people come to that when they have a feeling that for them, at least the traditional ways of telling a story are no longer working. And that's certainly where I was. I was tired of writing magazine stories. I was tired of working the formula. Uh, I need to break the story down and find my own way into it
Speaker 2 00:19:47 Certainly works. And it's, I found it very satisfying. I mean, I'd love to read a well formed novel or, you know, a really good piece of a memoir, you know, that's, that's literary based and the rest of it. But I also loved, you know, just the, the freedom of jumping through these very short pieces and being able to attach a know a real face to, you know, a young man who later on overdoses or a cost sack that, uh, you know, you know, with his weapons all around him, who's who doesn't like gay people, you know, or somebody who doesn't like a Jew and you have to tell them you're a Jew. And I loved being in those short little explosive moments with you, knowing that you actually did it.
Speaker 1 00:20:36 Yeah. And it also, it was important to me too, because it gives these people a way to occupy some space in the story. I know, I, I hate that phrase. You sometimes hear, you know, Oh, I give a voice for the voiceless, no such thing. You're just someone with a book contract, right? These people have voices and tell them stories. And I tell my story about them, but by including the photograph, and these are photographs I've asked to take with their permission, they are portraits sort of in the style of a photographer that I really love Milton Ragovin. And I don't want to compare myself to him as one of the great 20th century photographers, but who really said, you know, where the portrait wouldn't really be so much, candida would just sort of say, how would you like me to photograph you? Um, so that Casa, the Casa who pointed a gun at me and forced me to write down is horrible, homophobic violence.
Speaker 1 00:21:27 Nonetheless, he sort of stood there and said, you know, get me in my uniform with my weapon, my knife and my gun. It allows, it allows the sort of the subject and when the subject is not the caustic, but someone like the other person you mentioned there, Jared Jared Miller, young man, I met him skid row while learning about tri Kooning's rife and ended up making a series of portraits of him and his story and about, uh, the son that he would, he hoped to overcome his addiction so that it could return to. And the strangest thing I posted these on Instagram and all the women in his life ex-girlfriend ex wife, uh mother-in-law and ultimately his mother found each other in the comments of this Instagram post. And they were all arguing about who had the best plan for rescuing Jared. And I ended up becoming acquainted with his mother and she sort of shared with me this story and the ups and downs and the story doesn't end well, Sarah died, not everyone makes it through this book, but it seemed very important to me that that Jared gets to look at the camera, gets to compose himself as he would like to be seen.
Speaker 1 00:22:41 And while I write the sentences and yes, I framed the photograph, nonetheless, he has his own self, and I loved that conversation back and forth. This, uh, you know, the book is, um, there's a phrase from, uh, another writer, a friend of mine named Leslie Jamison, a recent book of hers called the recovering and I, and she's writing about 12 step groups, alcoholics anonymous. Uh, she, uh, is an alcoholic and, uh, you know, posed a great deal to those communities. And she has a great phrase. She says the saving outcome of community of that phrase, a saving alchemy alchemy. It's a magic, it's a transformation of base materials into gold and of community. And this is what everybody in this book, even the scary characters all ended up becoming part of this community. Uh, and to a certain extent, we try and save ourselves and save each other by telling stories together.
Speaker 2 00:23:43 Well, it's a, you're a very great human, uh, for doing this, uh, massively appreciate, um, getting this book in the mail and getting, having time to look through it. Then I just want to say a last couple of words about your acknowledgements at the back of the book. Seldom do these ever get read, but I always read them. And, um, you obviously are very aware of acknowledgments having written several books, significant books before, and this is a wonderful acknowledgments section. It's almost like an epilogue. And I suppose, I suppose you didn't really intend it as an epilogue, I'm sure, but you cover everybody and, you know, it's, it's got a rhythm to it and a sadness to it and it, it pulls together how the work was accomplished. And, uh, I really liked that. Am I wrong in thinking that you, you were being a little different with this app? Epilogue?
Speaker 1 00:24:42 Yeah, no, you're not at all. And it really had to become an epilogue because the, sort of the opening, the opening, I don't know, section of the book, um, is about that heart attack. My father had, you know, and in that section I wrote my father survived. And so did I, but then of course, as I was finishing, he died and, and he had been my most crucial reader, all my writing life, as different as we were. And so I had to, I had to respect the moment that I was documenting in that introduction, which he was still alive, but then I couldn't leave the story in complete like that. And so the, the, the acknowledgements, and of course the really important one is for my father. I liked that you call it an epilogue and thank you. I'm glad that you, you see it as it hadn't occurred to me to call it that. But yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 00:25:37 It caught my attention. Cause this is, this is the day June 16th, which of course is Bloom's day. But this is also the day my dad died and reading about, um, your dad and how you feel about him. Just, uh, connected me back to, uh, men and their fathers and how we need them. And often we don't have them and you've done a fantastic, um, um, book that you sort of internally dedicate to him. And the thank you for that. And maybe all be good fathers going forward. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. Again, this is Ian Graham. Lee's talking with Jeff Charlotte about this brilliant darkness, a book of strangers. Thanks for being on the show. And we look forward to talking to you again, Jeff,
Speaker 1 00:26:27 Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 00:26:30 And now this alright, Christina, are you there? All right here. Alright. If you want to go ahead with your first reading, we can get this started course. This is from
Speaker 3 00:26:44 The first story in the diary of the green snake series, ties and offerings. Although B wasn't getting any money, the Reynolds had gotten her a sleeping roll and fed her every night. All she had to do was make sure Laura made it to San Francisco. In one piece, this arrangement made life easier for Allen who got to spend two evenings reading, stick legal texts in their wagons B found them studying by a dim lamp. His lanky form folded over their supplies and the way that extremely uncomfortable and pointy. But when he said it was time for dinner, he closed his book and blue climbed out. Where's Tom. She shrugged. She looks after Laura, not Thomas. Find them please. She started hunting her feet, sending spikes of pain up her legs with every step from the floor. She asked a few other people, most shrugged campfire that had a small cluster of girls.
Speaker 3 00:27:39 Pretty much all the girls around her age. And I hesitated there only about half a dozen of them ranging in age from 12 to 19, but they seem to know everything about everyone and half of them flirted with Thomas on a regular basis. So maybe they know the undisputed leader of the group was Margaret at 17. She was a couple years older than B and everything. B wasn't blonde, beautiful, elegant, popular, and mean she saw B approach and sneered. What do you want? Slave started a rumor that he was a purchased slave since no one would willingly look after a well, let's just say she used several nasty words to describe Laura that be had no interest in repeating the law I had caught on. And now several other caravan members thought she was a pale colored servant with no business with them, no matter what Alan did to disprove it, of course they were half, right?
Speaker 3 00:28:32 She did have a colored background, thanks to her grandmother, even if it wasn't black. And she had no interest in sharing that fact. And have you seen Thomas asked as politely as she could, Margaret pretended that, think about it, that you made a drink and I might tell you B said nothing to reply. Just walked past them, ignoring their laughter. She eventually found him on the outskirts of the caravan with his usual crowd is Margaret rule. The young woman of the caravan and Thomas will be young men. And because the majority of the caravan were men, his kingdom was three times. Besides Margaret. When Dee found him, he was wrestling. One of the young, other young men in the grass surrounded by a ring of automakers, sutured the mom, she waited for the fight to finish Thomas one before Claire in her throat. One of the older boys, a dark haired freckled by named Abraham smiled at her.
Speaker 3 00:29:21 Tommy got company. Thomas rolled onto his feet. The youngest of the Reynold siblings at 16, he looked very little like his brother where Alan was tall and lanky. Thomas had a shorter thicker frame, thanks to spending his free time planned sports. Allen kept his Lake Chestnut walks long and tied back. Whereas Thomas sheered, his darker hair. And while Alan could sit still for hours with the book, Thomas could never stay so far a minute. Dinner's ready. B said, Thomas looks at his friends, men shrug, and I'll be there. Eventually. A few of you said you wanted to play winter. Several of the boys cheered and started arguing over who exactly got the next fight, anger swelled in B's chest. She did not just walk across camp on bleeding feet to get them sold to them. Brushed aside. Luckily it had rained for most of the day.
Speaker 3 00:30:08 So there was a lot of fresh, wet mud. She could easily scoop a handful on her without the back of Thomas's head or fingers twitched, but she didn't do it. Not only could Thomas effortlessly hurt her. Allen was her boss. If he found out that she was throwing mud at his little brother, he might leave her at the first Fort. Then how would she ever get to California? Instead she mourned. If you're not at the campfire in two minutes, or we'll feed your shirt to the horses here up to the campfire in five minutes after she bends close enough, the meal itself with delicious, but we couldn't find it in her to enjoy it. She's at her empty bowl. Aside made noises about relieving herself and walked away from the caravan, doing her best, not to limp. When led to the campfires failed to reach her.
Speaker 3 00:30:51 She stopped sat in the grass and pulled off her shoes and socks. One of the larger blisters on her heel at burst and was now losing be closed her eyes and ground. God forgive me, but I'm about this. And she concentrated on her injuries and she did her hands began to grow with the green light. If someone had asked how B how exactly she did this, she wouldn't have been able to tell them it was almost instinctive. When she concentrated hard enough, she could feel flowing currents of energy within her. Not I'm like veins of blood and like looking at herself in the mirror, her eyes were always immediately drawn to the floss. The currents that were nodded or clogged with injury and sickness with glowing fingers, she smoothed the current edit, taken almost a year's worth of secret practice, but now she could do it without thinking after a minute, the light faded, she would wiggle her toes, no pain.
Speaker 3 00:31:48 Those scarred her feet had been fully healed, be pulled on her socks and shoes again, and spent a good five minutes praying for forgiveness and shaken and fear. Not necessarily in fear of God though, that was a heavy concern on her mind too. The last time she'd used magic, it had resulted in more scars on her body and her uncle's death. Every time she did something mystical on purpose or otherwise something bad thing to happen to counterbalance, usually trouble came because someone saw her work, her magic. And when they did, they never failed to point out how unnatural as long it was. But this time she'd gotten far enough away from the wagons that no one had seen. So she stood, brushed herself off and returned to the camp.
Speaker 4 00:32:28 Excellent. Just fitting in. That was Christina DCA, Marie reading from her first in the series of the diary of the green snake. She is a author of, and finished works and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Drake and zombies and aliens. Christina DZA Marie, thanks for being on right on radio with us.
Speaker 3 00:32:48 Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:32:50 So my first question, the DCA in your name, it's an acronym for dragons, zombies, and aliens. I was kind of curious if you had a preference for one of the subjects over the other, would you, or what'd you say your interests are roughly the same?
Speaker 3 00:33:05 It depends on the medium. I can't really read whore. It doesn't hit me the same way it does others. I can't read Stephen King. I'm sorry. I just can't do it. Um, but I love horror movies. The first rated R movie I was ever allowed to see was a resident evil as landing movies. But when I, when I am reading a book, my go to genre is a scifi or fantasy, usually fantasy, especially in writing it simply because like, it's, it's more freeing. You don't eat with science fiction. You have to at least adhere to the rules of science. But with fantasy, if you're doing magic, you can to make up the world because I throw physics out the window if you want. It's great. Um, so if we're going literature, so I will be fantasy Saifai horror. And if we're going to movies, it'd probably be core scifi fantasy.
Speaker 4 00:34:00 I think the first heart radar movie my parents exposed me to was the Terminator. So that's funny that you had the resume. I was a,
Speaker 3 00:34:08 You've never seen the first Terminator movie I've seen the second one, um, and dark and dark fate, which was amazing. I was, I was so shocked and amazed at how good that was, but yeah, I've never seen the first Terminator movie
Speaker 4 00:34:21 Shocking. Wow. I feel it. I was five years old. I think when I watch it, I'm actually doing a demonstration on a preschool talking about the Terminator and the experience of Kyries and how, what happened to try it. We can talk a whole episode about that, but, um, we gotta move on. I was surprised from my reading about your background that you had, uh, you went to Hamlin and you got a degree in history and social science, but I mean, as from what I can read from your experience, you're focused on being a writer. I was ready to talk about that. Or did you have a different idea of a career path before you decide to settle in, on wanting to be a fiction writer?
Speaker 3 00:34:54 Yeah. Well, I mean, I've always known that I wanted to be an author, um, since I knew what a career was, but, uh, luckily for me, um, you know, my mother is a, uh, international bestselling author herself. She writes paranormal romance under the day, Mary Janice Davidson. And my father is a part time writer. He, uh, enjoys writing fantasy. So I was exposed to two different ways of doing it. And they told me, you know, here are all the risks. Here's the reality of it. You know, I, I don't want to say they were trying to warn me or scare me away from it, but they definitely wanted me to know what I was getting into, but I was not deterred when I first stepped foot in Hamlin. I thought I'm going to get a degree in creative writing and maybe something like digital media, because I also really enjoy art as well.
Speaker 3 00:35:46 Cause he was a creative writing major, the sheer number of classes you have to take. If you don't get in to those classes within your first year, you're going to be there for at least five or six years. It's just, that is a laundry list. And I was just not having it at the same time. When my first year I met a professor who rekindled my love of history. I hated it in high school. It wasn't the worst, but in college it was incredible. I loved learning it. Uh, and later I found out that social justice is another degree that you can get. So that was my double. Every social justice major has to have a concentration. And my concentration was creative writing my goal, uh, starting then and continue to stay is to find a way to spread and encourage and ignite social justice with creative writing. And I, I definitely prefer having a more boots on the ground approach. I like to have, you know, I guess you could call it a quote, unquote real job might have to have a day job. Uh, so I don't starve, but of course the end goal is to eventually be able to write full time.
Speaker 4 00:36:57 Of course, speaking of your writing career, 600 serpent as a publisher you've worked with and have published many works through, it's a, it's a force in the industry, I think, especially in this Metro area for pushing for more progressive speculative fiction. I wonder if you could talk about that and how you, uh, try to make your work more progressive within speculative fiction?
Speaker 3 00:37:17 Yeah. So for me specifically, you know, there, there are really two ways to do it. The first is, uh, adding diverse characters. You know, I'm a white, straight cisgender woman. So this means I gotta research them. Um, I need to know, because know, a lot of times authors will try to put in minority characters, but they don't, they don't do it right. They fall into stereotypes. They end up doing more harm than good. So you really do have to, you know, research, what are some of the stereotypes to avoid? You know, if you're going to have some, some black characters in your historical fiction novel, don't try not to make them all slaves, like, come on, we have enough of this, you know, your research, different backgrounds, different peoples different civilizations. You have to get them right in your picture, but you also do it to, to better yourself.
Speaker 3 00:38:10 A lot of times when I'm creating a new fantasy world, I'll think, you know, let's base this off of ancient Persia or like what let's, let's base this off of an Aztec society or, um, let's incorporate some Imperial Chinese because I know absolutely nothing about them. So it forces me to research these different cultures and that betters myself, if that makes sense. Um, and then also, you know, incorporating real world themes into your fiction as well. Things that people are currently facing today, not only does that make the work more progressive, but it also makes it tragically more relatable to a wide range of your audience.
Speaker 4 00:38:53 So this leads me right into our discussion from your, from your reading of dire, the green snake. When did you first come up with this story?
Speaker 3 00:39:01 Uh, it had to be a few years ago. I think I was still in college somewhere around my second or third years. So 2014, 2015, somewhere in there. And actually it was originally a long novella because I was trying to answer this call for submissions and I forget exactly what the, the prompt or the theme was. But, um, yeah, it was originally a develop out a, a girl, a name named B who has these strange, mysterious powers that no one else has. And she thinks that it's, it's a curse that it's a Mark of bad luck and she starts in New York, but she's getting these dreams, these visions that are telling her to come to California. Um, and so she joins this caravan to go there and this story was not meant to be a novella. It sucked, they rejected it as they should have.
Speaker 3 00:39:58 And it sat on the shelf a while. And then a few years later, I was already working with 600 per serpent on another short story series, twisted tales, where I take modern day fairytales, you know, snow, white Cinderella, uh, Hansel and Gretel, et cetera, et cetera. And I, um, I rewrite them with, uh, with a feminist lens. So you need to be used. My version is beauty, the beast Hunter, she hunts, she hunts beasts and creatures, um, Hans little Griddler or witch hunters and Gretel herself as a witch. Uh, I did a mystery around Cinderella. It was fun. And they were asking me if I wanted to do another short story. So I ended up revisiting green snake and I realized, no, this would actually work a lot better as a short story series. And that's just how it came to be.
Speaker 4 00:40:47 What I, what I thought was unique while I, I, I ended up becoming a patron and I started reading through all of the directories. No problem. Yeah. What's especially unique about, I kind of was when I was reading through it, it was how you, you integrate and take the old West and you blend it with these other genres within speculative fiction. I kind of thought about how in recently you see this with Westworld, that iteration HBO, um, I know a kind of recent horror film that Kent came out with was a melting pot of horror. And, uh, and the old West was bone Tomahawk. And I thought was interesting. I didn't, I don't think I've really been exposed to anything quite like what I was reading with your work, where it was a mixture of fantasy within the old West. Did you really love works to get a feel of how you want to do that and how you want to get this essence off of it?
Speaker 3 00:41:30 Uh, fantasy works. Yes. Westerns, no. Um, I never really got into the Western genre, um, because I never really saw myself in it. Um, if I don't see myself in a particular as a, in a character in, in any of these stories, if I don't see a woman with agency, um, I don't care for it. I don't care about it. I'm not gonna waste my time on it. Um, but of course, every person in America knows what a Western is. We know the tropes, we know the feel of it. And through me, I partially absorbed that my grandmother's horrible taste in movies and grandma, I'm sorry if you're listening to this, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 00:42:13 It's bad. But, um, for doing green snake, um, I just put my history major to use. I have found that the way history was the way people actually lived in that time is much more interesting than what Hollywood makes it out to be. So when I was figuring out the details of what a caravan is going to be like, the road marks the Ford, some of the towns and the places that these characters are going to have to pass through both through, in order to get there. That was a lot more interesting than, you know, whatever, you know, gritty seventies movie could, could, could produce for me.
Speaker 4 00:42:57 I actually am kinda thinking right now. You said that I don't know if you've heard of true grit, but that's a great, wonderful book from Charles Portis with Maddy Ross, who is a character in the movie, which is with the character, the agency and the old way. So I'm thinking like if you haven't seen that, I think that'd be a good example of what, where you can make it work. Um, another character,
Speaker 3 00:43:12 One of the few movies I saw that it was okay,
Speaker 4 00:43:16 The book is wonderful. I thought, um, another character, I, or the main character of the green stakes series B, she's a core Chinese. And, uh, within the, the story itself is we're by the people in the caravan that she is a slave or her background is from people who are slaves. Why was it important for you to place this emphasis on B's background?
Speaker 3 00:43:37 Because if I had just made be the regular white, that would have been cultural appropriation, um, BS powers as the whole story, all the monsters and demons and ghosts that she bases in sites, they're all based on Chinese mythology. You know, it's not like required and where, um, you know, naked it copy and paste it. But there, there are very strong elements of East Asian and specifically Chinese, those dropped in the old West. So it only made sense that if her powers are going to be from China, she is going to have ancestry from China. And excuse me, I don't know about you, but her just way too many white chosen ones already. I've been seeing the previous forward again for like this movie, the wall where like Matt Damon has to save China. And then there's like the last samurai where Tom cruise has to save Japan, or it's like, you know, so many white guys have to save, you know, these, these are like, you know, are, you know, front and center on these stories that are supposed to be about indigenous cultures.
Speaker 3 00:44:49 So when I was creating this world and created the walls and the magic, I realized very early on, I don't want to do that. I need my main character to have the proper ancestry at the same time. I also needed her to pass as white for the sake of the caravan, because guess what? The caravans going West were really freaking racist. There was no way that they were going to let her go with them unless she could pass. That's horrible. Look at the history of Oregon. If you don't believe me, it's bad, but that's the way I, the way I needed my story to work, that I had to balance that with what I actually wanted the story to be. And as the story progresses, once she feels safe enough, when she, when she makes friends and she's able to trust them, she takes great pride in her heritage. And it was really fun to research. You know, what that actually looked like in that time and place.
Speaker 4 00:45:49 There's this other character you have in the stories as well. Laura, I know there's instances where the people around her referred to as simple, or at times more harsher stupid. I was curious, I'm always curious when this happens, when, and then just watching the actions as I play out in the story, how authors to pick these characters, who I I'm, I'm guessing they're implying there's a mental illness or disability at play there. And at points where they, I think sometimes the people around them, especially if it's in a different setting or era or trade with less empathy or less care from those characters surrounding them. And I was wondering your process was like putting Laura on the page. How did that come about?
Speaker 3 00:46:25 So originally when I, when I did the first novella version of this, Laura was on like a six year old child. Um, I wanted, you know, cause, cause I was still in college and I was still an idiot. And then right after graduating Hamlin, I, uh, the first job that I thought was with Dungarvin it's, uh, this organization where they help people with disabilities, um, hit their goals in life. And they cover a very wide range, you know, in home as well as non residential services, job coaching, other life help services. I ended up doing a wide variety of hats cause I was helping, um, people with a wide range of disabilities, physical and cognitive for two and a half years. And sometimes it was helping them find and keep their jobs. And sometimes it was just making sure that they were all right, uh, that they were able to get all the groceries.
Speaker 3 00:47:23 And so I ended up what I was rewriting the series and reworking it. I was reexamining the character dynamics be and the friends that she meets. And at one point it occurred to me like it, wouldn't a bunch of stories I've read even more. And it's like, why have I not written a character with a disability? I, it was a jolt to me and I realized that I need to write at least one character who has some sort of disability. Cause I don't want, you know, these people cannot be erased from the page representation matters. So I actually based, Laura's a specific disability based on a person that I worked with a lot in those two and a half years, uh, she was on my caseload like two or three times a week. And I was most comfortable with being able to write something that I was able to work with in my life, namely social anxiety and a cognitive learning disability, Laura cannot retain.
Speaker 3 00:48:23 It's very difficult for her to learn and remember information. There's a part in this, in this series later on where another character is teaching her, how to use a gun for the first time. And while it would take either of her brothers or be, you know, five, 10 minutes to get it down. It takes her the course of the entire story before she was able to memorize it. But she's also a really sweet character. She's an amazing person. She really helps, you know, keep her family together. She has goals, aspirations. She was married at one point and divorced her husband. She has a whole bag or she has a whole person and she's not just her disability.
Speaker 4 00:49:03 Sure. I just got a three minute warning. So really quickly here, I want to go over a couple of things with you. What are you currently working on right now? What are you looking at for the future?
Speaker 3 00:49:13 Uh, so I've several projects I've been working on and the one that's closest to the finish line is a side by story science fiction that I've named. So the Dell for the most part, because I'm terrible at titles and I'll have to think of a better one later, but uh, the short description is wolves with wings on an alien planet and it features another, um, if you'd just another girl, a human is the main character names Livia, and she is nonverbal autistic and has ADHD. And she figures out the quote, unquote demons, those wolves with wings that her people have thought of nothing more than animals, a plague that needs to be destroyed and eradicated that they're actually people and they just communicate differently. And she's the one who has to figure out how to stop these two very different types of people from killing each other.
Speaker 4 00:50:11 Very interesting. Where can people find your work? What's a website people can look to or where can they see your blog and your views?
Speaker 3 00:50:18 Of course. So my blog and YouTube channel, they're both named dragons, zombies and aliens. You can find
[email protected]. I'm also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Um, Instagram handle is at DVA underscore Marie, where I am currently giving away a signed copy of my illustrated novella homestead hunts. Uh, another Sidebuy post-apocalyptic story. That's basically about Canadian cannabis,
Speaker 4 00:50:46 Canadian cannibals cannibals. And my last question, what are you currently reading and or watching?
Speaker 3 00:50:54 Uh, so I just placed an order for the, excuse me for the blackout. I can't talk right now. I'm sorry. Um, just placed an order for the blackout, um, bestseller list where readers are encouraged to order a purchase at least two books by black authors to help with the black lives matter movement and the protest. And I got a little more than that. Um, lots of media core for, uh, Tevia Butler fledgling. Um, tell me a day Yama Helen OAM, uh, McKinney and Toshi only Bucci so that's, what's coming in the mail and that's what is, uh, what I'm going to be diving into.
Speaker 4 00:51:40 You just listened to an interview with Christina DZA Marie. She is a local author in the Minneapolis area. You can find her on her website. Thank you so much for being on right on radio with us. Thank you so much. And now this.
