Speaker 1 00:00:18 You are listening to right on radio on K F a I 90.3, FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Dave fig tonight, Annie Harvey chats with KA Weaver and Emily Bergland about their work uncommon charm in this 1920s, Gothic comedy, bright young socialite, Julia and shy Jewish magician, Simon decide they are not beholden to their family's unhappy history together. They confront such horrors as murdered ghosts, alive children, magic philosophy, a Milu that slides far too easily into Sur realist metaphor and worst of all serious adult conversation. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:00:55 And I'm Liz olds. Then in the last part of the hour, I speak with Pete David Eversol about his novel 99 miles from LA jonesin to quit his teaching gig. Frank jumps at the chance to implement his new girlfriend skiing, to steal the skin to cash treasure from her marijuana business tycoon husband hiding out in Palm Springs, 99 miles from LA Frank and his other accomplished Ramon team up in more ways than one, all of this and more so stay tuned to write on radio.
Speaker 3 00:01:32 You are listening to K F a I 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. This is Annie Harvey with right on radio and I am so excited to be joined by the co-authors of uncommon charm. New novel out now, cat Weaver and Emily ley. Hi, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 00:01:51 Hello, Annie. Hi,
Speaker 3 00:01:53 It's so good to have you here. Um, for those who aren't familiar, uh, Emily and KA are local authors. They've lived in the twin cities for a while, and this is your first novel, right?
Speaker 4 00:02:02 Um, novel actually. And well, it's, it's a very, very small novel <laugh> like think novel and then think like
Speaker 3 00:02:11 Half
Speaker 4 00:02:12 That size
Speaker 3 00:02:13 <laugh> she can travel with you. She can go wherever you wanna bring her. Exactly. She's a slender. She's a slender.
Speaker 4 00:02:18 Suck it into your pocket.
Speaker 3 00:02:19 Yeah. So, uh, could you summarize this little book for those who haven't read it
Speaker 4 00:02:24 Yet? Well, first of all, it's a historical fantasy set in 1925 and it comes from neon hemlock, which is a queer science fiction and fantasy press. It's about these two young faults, Simon and Julia, um, and Julia's mother the most powerful magician in all of England. Simon's recently come to the house. Um, he's sort of uneasy with, uh, these powers that he's experiencing unusual events, sort of occasionally breaking the laws of physics. Uh, it's told from Julius's point of view though.
Speaker 5 00:03:00 So Julia is, um, a 16 year old, almost socialite who has just been expelled from school. So yes, as Emily said, the Noella is told from her point of view first person, um, she is a very loud narrator for a very quiet book <laugh> um, but it is, uh, the story of Julia and Simon as they don't solve. What's not a mystery <laugh>,
Speaker 3 00:03:30 It's
Speaker 4 00:03:31 Hopefully perfectly apparent what's happening, but it's a great deal more about, um,
Speaker 5 00:03:37 So it's, it's not necessarily about, uh, learning, like discovering family secrets so much as it is, like the circumstances around how you, uh, how you explain to someone what they already know mm-hmm <affirmative>
Speaker 3 00:03:58 Yeah, it very much felt like a, like a character book and like a personhood book rather than like a plot twists kind of book, you know,
Speaker 4 00:04:06 It is very much, and I think we tend to that style of writing and that style of reading both when it comes to fantasy where it is, unfortunately, a little rarer mm-hmm <affirmative> and, um, to just general literature.
Speaker 5 00:04:18 Yeah. Like I've, I've, some folks have described it as more like slice of life, but then also the sort of style of fiction that we are like semi doing a past shove is very much focused on the domestic side of just like exploring people's lives and circumstances. It's just, there is also magic involved here. <laugh>
Speaker 4 00:04:42 Yeah. The way we've explained it is it's a little bit, uh, like Nancy Mitford, if there was more surrealism.
Speaker 3 00:04:49 So what was it like to write this book as a team? Well,
Speaker 4 00:04:52 We've been writing together in one way or another since we were small, very small,
Speaker 5 00:04:57 Like, like we're talking, pre-teens almost mm-hmm
Speaker 4 00:05:02 <affirmative>, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, we're in our thirties now.
Speaker 5 00:05:04 <laugh> just since we're so like we've been writing together for more than half our lives. Yes. Um, but also, um, more recently, um, we have like a tabletop gaming group where we play Ts and dragons. So that has also influenced our, uh, I guess, collaborative storytelling style. I, I think we've been doing collaborative storytelling since, since we were small. It is like, it is a primary form of creativity. Yeah. I might say, and like interacting with stories is, is doing it with other people, rather than just being like an author alone who like maybe asks for feedback and stuff, but who like is ultimately on their own responsible for the story versus working with somebody else where we can like bat things between each
Speaker 4 00:05:53 Other and you get a lot more of like the tension and the snap between characters and hopefully character is what really makes this work.
Speaker 5 00:06:00 Yeah. So, I mean, the, the actual, like nitty gritty process of it is Emily and I, um, would do like improv dialogue as we were making dinner.
Speaker 3 00:06:13 Oh, cool. And write
Speaker 5 00:06:14 That down and then refine it further Uhhuh
Speaker 4 00:06:18 <affirmative> Kat's a very skilled line editor and that's what she does. She's an editor for strange horizons, the science fiction, periodical mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and so we just, uh, we'd hammer out the dialogue frames and pros around it. Um, generally I'm the one coming up with, I think the, the narrative choices.
Speaker 5 00:06:39 Yeah. So a lot of the shape of the story is due to Emily, but then what I've done is I am the one who is mostly in charge of like editing and cohesion. Mm-hmm <affirmative> to make it all sound like it is from the same first person narrator.
Speaker 3 00:06:56 Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4 00:06:57 Mm-hmm <affirmative> as, uh, Kat said to me before, if it was Simon telling the story, it would be a completely different book, which is what you hope for, of course, when it comes to a first person narrator, but yeah. Also it would be longer
Speaker 3 00:07:11 <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>, we'll get to the narrator, cuz I think you made a really interesting choice with who you chose. Um, but I also just wanna touch on, you mentioned working out the dialogue verbally together mm-hmm <affirmative> like while cooking. Cool. So digging a little more into the book and its world. The book was set in 1925, for those who haven't read it yet. Um, could you two, tell me how you researched and kind of did the world building for the story.
Speaker 5 00:07:40 So, so the thing is, um, first of all, our research was being obsessed with 19th century and interwar Britain for more than 15 years Uhhuh
Speaker 3 00:07:51 <affirmative> yeah. Long term research,
Speaker 4 00:07:53 Very, very, very long term. So,
Speaker 5 00:07:55 So a lot of it is just simply ambient research. Although we do have, uh, some specific touchpoints that we have, like books that we can name.
Speaker 4 00:08:06 Yeah. We're cribbing a lot from Nancy Mitford of course mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> and um, I actually encountered the Mitford through another fantasy author, Joe Walton, who wrote an alternate history mm-hmm <affirmative> um, of the second world war. Um, we aren't taking many of the biographical details just because, oh my God, there's so distinctive and so weird. I don't think that we could do them justice. They are a novel in their own <laugh> um, but also just a feminine middle brow fiction of the interwar era in general. So rose, McCauley, Doty Smith, Dorothy Sayers, um, even
Speaker 5 00:08:42 I would say, um, em Forrester nice. Who's a early 20th century. Um, gay author.
Speaker 3 00:08:48 Yeah. It feels very immersive and built out. Like it doesn't feel like you read a textbook or a couple books of history. Like it feels like you have observed a lot of customs of the era and are able to synthesize them into your own thing.
Speaker 4 00:09:03 It is my very great pride that the Brits who have read it have only had, well one or two changes to issue <laugh>
Speaker 5 00:09:11 Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, we, we are writing in a pastiche of, um, specifically upper class British like very posh voice mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so of, I mean of, we are of course American, but we <laugh>, we, we have had, you know, readers who are like native to London who have been like, well actually like, you know, you should like, this would be phrased this way or like you should change this to this mm-hmm <affirmative> but overall I think it is just, um, having read a lot of the fiction of the era mm-hmm <affirmative> for such a long time.
Speaker 4 00:09:52 Another thing that we've pulled from is traditions of, uh, Western esoterism and magic. Um, it's not something that I think as many people have noticed just because I think lots of people aren't familiar with the history of magic where thinking of it as a thing where you like wave a wand and say a word and something happens mm-hmm <affirmative> whereas in this book and in general mm-hmm <affirmative> um, magical thought is used as a way of framing yourself
Speaker 3 00:10:24 In the book. There was a point where Simon who is also Jewish makes a comment about magic and faith feeling related to him. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and I found that to be an interesting kind of different way instead of like magic being kind of an artifice or a slide of hand, being more of a, um, kind of a force, a universe force.
Speaker 5 00:10:52 It's also, it's also very personal because we have another character Julia's mother, lady Laia who conceives magic. It's not, not religious. Yeah. But like her interpretation of magic has more to do with like her own experience of like mental illness. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so it's every person who calls themself a magician has a different, extremely personal way that they approach it.
Speaker 3 00:11:21 Cool.
Speaker 4 00:11:22 And I actually, um, had something of an unusual experience, myself writing
Speaker 3 00:11:27 This
Speaker 4 00:11:27 Book, um, which is that I decided to convert. Mm. Um, because I had been living in Simon's head and I was trying to really genuinely think through what he was feeling and what he was doing. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, there were other more difficult circumstances at the time. Um, but this was a big drive for me. Mm-hmm <affirmative>
Speaker 3 00:11:53 So Julia, the narrator is an exceptional person, but she doesn't have the specific magic powers that, uh, Simon and Mel do what went into your choice to tell this story from the quote unquote non magic person's eyes.
Speaker 5 00:12:07 So originally mm-hmm <affirmative> um, so the seeds of the story started long, long, long ago mm-hmm <affirmative> um, but the seeds of this particular story started maybe like five or so years before we actually started writing it. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and the idea of it was, it was like, just part of the joke. So you have this idea like of this big, powerful magic that warps reality, it like wars, world changes the world there's ghosts, and then you have a narrator, uh, who looks at all of that and says, oh, that just happens. Sometimes <laugh>,
Speaker 3 00:12:41 That's just what my mom's like
Speaker 5 00:12:43 <laugh> yeah. You know, whatever.
Speaker 4 00:12:45 It's not a big deal.
Speaker 5 00:12:46 It's it's it's a minor inconvenience <laugh> yeah. It's just how life is
Speaker 4 00:12:52 It? Uh, does this neat trick, I think of making the magic, uh, more explicable where you don't have to be in the magician's head thinking all these very deep philosophical thoughts,
Speaker 5 00:13:09 Uhhuh, which, which would be kind of boring probably <laugh>
Speaker 4 00:13:12 I
Speaker 5 00:13:12 Would. Um, so, but also having, you know, them talking about magic philosophy from an outside observer's perspective, it also does kind of preserve the mystery of it. Yes. And so it's Julia is making the choice not to be a magician. Yeah. Like she has heard all of her mother's lectures. Like she knows that, you know, magic being magic, being a magician is not something that is an innate inborn trait. It is something that you could choose to do. And she just, uh, looks at all of that and is like, oh, uh, no, thank you.
Speaker 3 00:13:51 Yeah. She'd rather do sports
Speaker 5 00:13:53 That's right. Yes,
Speaker 4 00:13:54 Exactly. And I think that that's important in its own way. You see the trope of, um, inheritable magic all the time and it it's sort of its own rejoinder to this idea of, I suppose, um, like AISM, um, of,
Speaker 5 00:14:13 I feel like having innate, like giftedness and innate special skill
Speaker 4 00:14:18 Mm-hmm <affirmative>
Speaker 5 00:14:19 Are really just like, you can be predisposed to think a certain way, but it's more about the choices that you make
Speaker 4 00:14:28 A really quiet interrogation of these ideas of heritability. Um, just because Vladimir Simon's father, he sees his magic is having derived from birthright. So he looks at Simon and he's like, oh, of course you get this from me. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, but Simon never grew up with him in his life. Mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, so why is he manifesting this? Because he experiences the world in a really profound and unusual way. Yeah. Is the
Speaker 3 00:14:56 Answer? Yeah. Something I loved in this novel is how real all the family dynamics felt. There was the, the tension, the moments of humor, the cousin dynamics. And there were also the class dynamics that I found really interesting in the family and in the broader society. So how much in the society scope of the book did feeling true to life, play into your discussion of these societal elements? Or did it just kind of happen that way
Speaker 5 00:15:23 In the book Simon, um, being a working class Jewish boy from London's east end is suddenly thrust into this world of like really over the top Liber, teen aristocrats mm-hmm <affirmative> um, so thinking about the aristocracy, it's like, so a lot of today's traditional thought about, uh, families and gender and et cetera. Uh, it does derive like really specifically from the 19th century and specifically Victorian morality. So that, that is still present today. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the way people thought back then. It, it still continues now mm-hmm <affirmative> so people in the 1920s, they were like really grappling with the end of an era after world war. I, there was a lot of reflection about that. And, uh, we are still sort of feeling the echoes of these various reactionary movements.
Speaker 4 00:16:32 A lot of it too was, uh, personal. We were obsessed his chains with the Romans. I feel like everybody, well, no, not everybody, almost certainly everybody. Um, people who are obsessed with history and historical fiction have this little phase, they go through where they just become enchanted with the Russian empire mm-hmm <affirmative>. But you look at the reality of it beyond these stories of, oh, the poor Roman of girls and the tragic murder mm-hmm <affirmative> and these people were horrible. Mm-hmm
Speaker 5 00:17:08 <affirmative> so, so that's something that was at the top of our minds, but what feels relevant or what could feel relevant today about the family dynamics is simply that, uh, we, we live in a society. We are still dealing with the same things. Um, none of these broader tensions mm-hmm <affirmative> were like, we didn't consciously think about them. Mm-hmm <affirmative> but like, of course, it's going to show up in the writing as we try to make characters whose interactions feel
Speaker 4 00:17:42 Real. And I also wanted to focus some on like the irregularity of experience, even within certain categories, like Simon's mother Ruda and Simon himself, they experience being queer in very different ways. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and how they relate to being queer and being Jewish is very different. Ruda was kicked out of her home. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, she was pregnant as a teen. She's a very, very outspoken atheist, a Jewish atheist, but an atheist mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, whereas Simon relates very strongly to his faith. Um, and I really didn't want to delve too much into what you see as like the typical faith and queerness story, which is like, oh, God hates me because it's not that yeah. What a lot of people are experiencing and what Simon is experiencing is this fear that he's going to lose a community that is very important to him. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so he is not concerned, um, as to like his status and the eyes of the divine. He's worried about losing his way of life.
Speaker 3 00:18:51 Mm mm-hmm <affirmative>
Speaker 4 00:18:53 If he's out
Speaker 3 00:18:56 To delve deeper into the conversation about queerness and compulsory heterosexuality in the book, I thought that was done in very interesting ways. Um, the characters, as you mentioned, um, and several more are out as queer, but there's also this strong societal expectation of matchmaking and straight marriage. Um, at one point Julia narrates, I would have to marry someone or other eventually referring to like, you know, getting latched to a man despite her own interests or desires. Um, so tell me about the role you perceive queerness and sexuality playing in this society in these characters' lives.
Speaker 5 00:19:32 So Emily already mentioned some of that, um, from Simon's perspective. So most of the aristocratic characters on the other hand, so thinking of Julia Julia's mother, um, even Julia's gay cousin mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, they are, or at least, uh, they were in Julia's mother's case, unable to imagine anything different mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, so for them, marriage is still just as much of a job for them. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, as it is love. And, you know, even more than it being a job, it's a means of ensuring that their way of life continues and that to be money stays with the right people mm-hmm <affirmative> or, you know, even in the family. So based on our research and our readings, uh, queer people, you know, of varying levels of obviousness they're tolerated, if they adhere to these class expectations, mm-hmm <affirmative> so part of what Julia's starting to learn in this story is she doesn't have to do anything mm-hmm <affirmative> if she doesn't want to, uh, she has more choices than her mother did.
Speaker 4 00:20:42 Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. And, and it's also, I think, focusing some on how queerness was perceived then versus now we think of it as this very like Tora, Downton Abbey thing, where it's just like, oh, I shall be cast out mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, whereas the way that society thinks about, uh, queerness is completely different. Now there's a big divide between like doing and being something. Yeah. And it was starting to change over at that time.
Speaker 5 00:21:14 So you have characters, you know, on characters in this book thinking like they don't think of queerness necessarily how we do mm-hmm <affirmative> they would think, okay, well, what is the best way I can make a life out of this? What is the way I can have what I want, but still do what is expected of me? Mm-hmm <affirmative>
Speaker 3 00:21:40 Gotcha. That's so interesting. Um, continuing a little more conversation about Julia. Um, I loved her as a narrator because she's insightful and great at describing others. She's got this good rye humor that kind of played into the pastiche kind of aspect that you were mentioning earlier, which was very fun. Um, but we find her keeping issues and stressors at arm's length with this humor. Um, and at one point she even mentions that she doesn't like to think about things that she can't make into a joke. Um, and I think one of the strongest ways I saw in that, and I don't wanna spoil, um, this whole unraveling before people can read the book, but this ties neatly into how long it takes her to reveal why she got expelled from school. And to kind of tell other personal details about herself, how did this trait of Julia's this like kind of Ry shield play into your structuring of the story and pacing of how you reveal information?
Speaker 5 00:22:39 So, so we have in the story, there's the whole quote unquote main mystery, which, you know, it isn't really intended to be a surprise. It's, mm-hmm, <affirmative> what I think of as sort of a fairly typical and fairly like extremely well foreshadowed, uh, like Gothic, whole mess that happened 25 years ago. Yeah. So it's not personally close to Julia, so she and Simon can have that curiosity about it and they can go digging for things. But being at spelled from school is what's a little bit closer to Julia's heart and the same with Simon, like the, you know, the magic that he's been experiencing that caused him to have to, um, be taken on by Julia's mother as her apprentice. Like he's, he's sort of really shy about wanting to elucidate what the circumstances surrounding that were mm-hmm <affirmative>. So they put all their energy into exploring this cold case mystery mm-hmm <affirmative> versus actually thinking about what's most important in their lives currently
Speaker 4 00:23:53 Uhhuh <affirmative> it's also riffing a little bit again on the feminine middle brow literature, where, you know, we tend to think of this stuff as being very chicklet mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and just because it is about, so that like the domestic sphere mm-hmm <affirmative>, it is about women's lives mm-hmm <affirmative> um, but you read a lot of it, uh, and it is profoundly about domestic disappointments mm-hmm <affirmative> and Swed ambitions mm-hmm <affirmative> and that kind of thing. For example, the Radlett girls in pursuit of love by Nancy Mitford, uh, Linda throws herself into love affairs because she has nothing else to do mm-hmm <affirmative>, which is just profoundly sad. Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:24:42 To me <laugh> yeah. So, so Julia's at this sort of loose end mm-hmm <affirmative>, haven't been expelled from school and she's, you know, trying to figure out what is right in front of her face. Like what is she going to do with her life? Yeah. Um, but also the point at which Simon and Julia do end up being able to share these, these not really secrets that they've been keeping from each other, but the point at which they're able to be like, okay, so yeah, so this is what happened. That's like really when they cement their friendship with each other, but it's also, the story is also about them learning to do that sort of on their own time. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so the pacing of information from this main Gothic mystery is, you know, echoed there. So a lot of it is about boundaries and choices.
Speaker 5 00:25:33 Mm-hmm <affirmative> so speaking of, you know, different points of view, it would be a different story from Simon's point of view, but it'd also be a different story from Julia's mother's point of view. Okay. So from her point of view, you might, uh, get a more explicit question of, so when's the right time to tell my teenage daughter what happened 25 years ago? Mm-hmm <affirmative> is she mature enough to hear this? Does she even wanna hear it? How will she take it? Mm-hmm <affirmative> so a lot of this story is about these characters, probing each other's boundaries and wondering when to push each other's boundaries. Yeah. Or when to let their own down
Speaker 4 00:26:16 At, at what point she's thinking, am I going to lock my daughter in the car and tell her the saddest story she's ever heard in her entire life? <laugh>, which I think is an experience many daughters with mothers have had
Speaker 3 00:26:32 <laugh> I, did you ever consider resolving it in a different way? Like I felt like it was nice to me. It felt like it resolved pleasantly, but not too overly Rosaly,
Speaker 5 00:26:44 You know, I, I think it was always, yeah. Going to have not an open ending mm-hmm <affirmative>, but it, there is, there's only so much you can do mm-hmm <affirmative> when you are 16 years old. Yeah. And when it, you know, this, this main Gothic mystery of what happened 25 years ago is related to you, but like it's not your responsibility.
Speaker 4 00:27:15 Um, and a lot of that comes from, I think are desired not to tell a fantasy story that is, uh, motivated by extremely dire stakes. Like I have to take this object to this location or else the evil sourcer will annihilate us all, which
Speaker 5 00:27:35 To be fair, I enjoy, yes.
Speaker 4 00:27:38 I have read many a book among this line and enjoyed it greatly, but it's not what I want to write. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, I'm interested in personal stakes. Mm-hmm <affirmative> ones that are hard to resolve mm-hmm <affirmative> extremely difficult because not wanting to speak too much about what happens. There is a dilemma that, uh, Simon and Julia Julia, more so, um, they're left with mm-hmm <affirmative>, which is to tell their cousins about the history of their family and the horrible things that have happened. Do they want to share that or do they want their cousins to go on just living without it in their lives?
Speaker 5 00:28:24 And it's, it's a question that's not answered
Speaker 3 00:28:28 Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:28:28 In the confines of the Noella. And I think that just felt more real and more human and more like something that an actual person yeah. Might decide more so than like telling an overarching story with a point and a plot and a moral, I mean, there is a moral here it's just the moral is that there is no like, best answer.
Speaker 3 00:29:02 Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:29:03 You don't know what you're doing and I don't either. Yeah. Yeah. So we just have to go on living that's
Speaker 5 00:29:08 Right. And
Speaker 3 00:29:08 There's a certain part of coming of age that is knowing that everything won't be resolved now mm-hmm <affirmative> and that, and that you have to continue working on relationships with people and you have to continue learning more about your family dynamics and how to live within them and how to communicate well with others. And I think it's very realistic not to have that all solved when these characters aren't even 18 yet. <laugh>
Speaker 6 00:29:45 Hello? Hello?
Speaker 2 00:29:46 Yeah. David, are you there?
Speaker 6 00:29:48 Yep. I'm here. Can you hear
Speaker 2 00:29:49 Me? Yes. I can hear you just fine. Thanks for joining us on right on radio this evening. Uh, this is P David Eversol author of 99 miles from LA, a hard boiled crime story with a bisexual love triangle peppered with double crosses. So, um, why don't we start with your reading?
Speaker 6 00:30:11 Oh, sure. Um, you know, the title comes from a, from a Johnny Mathis song. And so, uh, uh, as I, as I read along here, you'll notice that, uh, that it gets referenced. So chapter one, he sings along when he drives his voice. One of awards when he was young and it's far from unpleasant now, but he learned long ago that no one was gonna pay him to be a professional musician in life. Still. He loves to sing. He holds the notes on the vowels because that's the way to sound good. He can't hold a consonant in the car. He always tries to imagine an audience because it makes a difference. You sing better. The oncoming traffic becomes the blinding Footlights in his mind's eye, the rain and the windshield stands in for that faint murmur of the crowd. The wet tires are cocktails being served, even though you can't see the people, you look straight ahead and you sing outward at all of them.
Speaker 6 00:31:05 And each one of them simultaneously, he had those dreams. Yes, but he's had a lot of dreams that did not come true. This current one, though, this one's gonna work because it isn't a dream. It's a plan. And this is the very last part of it. Now, everything else worked, all three of them have to do is come together, keep their heads and not fight. He's pretty sure she's gonna be mad because she was hit so hard, but it had to be done to make it look real Ramon though. Ramon will be glad to see him. He's damn sure of that. If he's there, he said, he'd be there 99 miles from LA. He hums the words. He doesn't know. She could also get mad because he was already planning to see Ramon without her being there. Anyway, she doesn't know about him in Ramon, so she can't be mad.
Speaker 6 00:31:54 Even if she is who cares. He spent his whole life trying to please people know more. He was supposed to drive to the desert tonight. Ramon will be out there too, but none of her Palm Springs house, they can't risk that anyone of them has been followed, but who would follow them for a hundred miles without picking one of them up. If the cops were onto them, they'd have stopped the car by now. And if her husband somehow figured it all out, he'd be dead before he hit the 1 11 99 miles from LA. You know why the movie stars all went to Palm Springs back in the day, according to local lore, they were salaried. And under contract of the studios who wouldn't let them go further than a hundred miles beyond the studio zone when they're engaged in a film so that they could be called back to set. He read all of this history right after she told him Palm Springs would be their getaway town.
Speaker 2 00:32:51 That was David Ebersol, P David Ebersol's reading from 99 miles from LA. Um, why don't you introduce us to our three protagonists?
Speaker 6 00:33:03 Well, Frank is our main character and, uh, he is a kind of disgruntled music professor at UCLA. He had dreams of being a singer and now he's at his ropes end kind of uh, realizing that his life is gonna go nowhere and he's come to a place where, as he says, you know, he's pretty much ready to Rob a bank. And he comes across sell, who is, uh, unhappily, married woman always has been the smartest woman in the room. <laugh> and, uh, uh, she happens to be at the UCLA campus where, where Frank works because her dog is at death's door. Uh, and she just couldn't pull the trigger. And so she decided to take the dog to the, uh, you know, to the sculpture garden to have one sort of more moment in nature, but she's been looking for people to help her get her, get out of the situation that she's in. She has a favorite bartender named Ramon, who is where she goes to, uh, to drink usually after she's taken her dog to the vet. And she's kind of tagged Ramon as one of her cohorts. And now when she comes upon Frank, she seems to have found the third that can help her pull off this crime. Her husband is a marijuana dealer, which is an all cash business, and he's been burying money in the backyard and she has masterminded a plan to run away with the fortune. And that's our setup.
Speaker 2 00:34:43 And, uh, Frank also knew Ramon before he met Shelly or was it kind of a
Speaker 6 00:34:48 No, no, it was it's, you know, it's all pretty much been in Shelley's in Shelley's mind. Okay. They go to the, to the bar after Frank helps her put her dog down that day. And that's the first time that he re meets Ramone, but the two men have immediate sparks between them, even though Ramon, I'm sorry. Even though Frank and Shelly have already kind of started up a bit of an affair with each other and the two men just find themselves uncontrollably attracted to each other. And of course, once, uh, you know, love gets in the way of reason, that's when everything starts to fall apart. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:35:28 Talk a little bit about, uh, you know, 99 mouse from is one song that, uh, comes up obviously in the, uh, book, but it seems like there's a lot of other musical references and I'm wondering, uh, what they might be and how they, uh, throughout the story kind of move the story along
Speaker 6 00:35:49 Well, you know, because Frank is a, a music professor and a lot of the story is told through his eyes. Music is a really important part of kind of his life. And so one of the things that he references and talks about is how often pop music will kind of come along, uh, while something's going on in your life and has such resonance. And I think we've all kind of had those, those moments. You're breaking up with someone and you hear a song or, you know, you're falling in love and you hear a song. And so he keeps kind of making reference to the music that he hears and how it is fitting in with this story that we're, that we're going through. So it, it comes up quite often throughout the throughout and Ramon and, uh, and Frank begin to kind of share almost a bit of a private language with their, uh, with their, uh, moments of, of kind of hearing music and especially Johnny Mathis.
Speaker 2 00:36:51 Now I got <affirmative> now I gotta ask you you're a screenwriter. Would you say you're primarily a screenwriter?
Speaker 6 00:36:58 Well, I've really been a documentary filmmaker. Mm-hmm <affirmative> for the last 11, 12 years. Um, and I have done a lot of screenwriting and filmmaking. I mean, I'm a, I'm a 58 year old man and I've been doing it since I was in college. I won best film at NYU when I was, I don't, you know, uh, a young pop 23 years old <laugh> oh, wow. And so, uh, it's really been my life, but I, but I was an English major first at UCLA before I transferred to NYU film school. So I made this kind of left turn at, at that moment and never really looked back, but my dream was always to be someone who had written a book, you know, a book on a bookshelf in a bookstore mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, was to be the highest, uh, you know, the, the highest achievement
Speaker 2 00:37:46 With your name on the spine. Right.
Speaker 6 00:37:49 <laugh> exactly, you know, you go along and it's like, you know, uh, E EA EB and they pull it out and you're like, ah, there's Eversol
Speaker 2 00:37:58 Interest. Well, what, it's
Speaker 6 00:38:00 A dream, you know, it's
Speaker 2 00:38:02 Oh, I relate to completely. I'm a, I'm a writer too. And I dream of the spine and my name on the spine <laugh>
Speaker 6 00:38:10 Of the book.
Speaker 2 00:38:11 Yep. Um, as someone who's been a documentary filmmaker and a screenwriter, uh, what prompted you? What inspired you to write a hard boiled? No crime novel?
Speaker 6 00:38:25 A lot of, I mean, a lot of what I have written in my own writing of screenwriting, uh, has been kind of in the noir world. And so it was a natural for me to be looking to do that when I started to, you know, move over to have this idea about writing a book. And, um, my favorite writer of that world is Jim Thompson. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I really like to follow the criminal much more than I like to follow say, you know, the, the, uh, the detective trying to figure the story out, I find the criminals much more interesting. So, uh, so as I was, uh, kind of dreaming up this story and looking for a way to, uh, kind of bring some reality to it, if three people are gonna come together to steal money and they're trying to change their lives, it has to be a lot of money.
Speaker 6 00:39:20 And these days, you know, where does that even happen? You're gonna knock over a liquor store and what are you gonna get? 10, $15,000 if you're lucky. So I, so I ended up, uh, landing upon the pot business, the marijuana business, because it's an all cash business. And there was a ripped from the headline story about a San Diego couple who were in the marijuana business and their employees followed them home and they abused the woman and they stole all of the money that had been buried in the backyard. And I was like, aha, <laugh> a cheery little rip from that time story helped me write my book. Um, so, uh, it was always a dream to take the time to write a book. And one of the things that I find difficult about writing for film is that you can't get inside. Anybody's head, you write what's on screen.
Speaker 6 00:40:13 Mm-hmm, <affirmative> you write dialogue, you write action and you create a blueprint to either if, even if it's yourself to go and film it. But with all of these collaborators, when you write a book, it's all you it's in your own head and this intimate relationship between you and the reader, the reader will read these, you know, little black marks on white pages that are, you know, typed words and they have to dream it all up. So, uh, so it was just a, it was a whole new exercise of using talents that I maybe have honed in different ways over the years, but finally got to put in to this form. I always wanted to do,
Speaker 2 00:40:55 Do you have a preference at this point or are you, uh, still learning what your preferences are?
Speaker 6 00:41:02 Well, I, you know, um, documentary film is kind of my career. It's what I do and what people are willing to pay me for <laugh>. So, so it probably comes up again and I'm sure that I will go back to it, but at the moment, what I'm gonna do, I think is, uh, is, is take some time and invest into this new direction. So I'm gonna try to try to write a couple more novels. I think, I think that's sort of my idea.
Speaker 2 00:41:34 Talk them about your documentary. All,
Speaker 6 00:41:36 All writing is interesting. All writing is really fun and really interesting to do. Like, I don't really, I wouldn't say I have a preference except for that. I love to be in this world that I'm in right now and it's new to me. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so it's kind of exciting. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:41:51 Uh, talk some about your documentaries hit so hard. And, uh, my name is, uh, Lopez is coming out soon. Right?
Speaker 6 00:42:00 My name is Lopez is actually just out so great. It's about, um, it's about Trini Lopez, who was a trailblazing Latino rocker. He came up in the fifties and into the sixties. He had a huge hit with, I had a hammer and lemon tree mm-hmm <affirmative>. So a lot of people know him from that. Uh, but really, you know, he kind of changed the world for Latino musicians because before him, everybody was willing to change their name. And he said, no, I'm Mexican. I'm proud of it. This is my heritage. And he was turning down record deals because of it. Uh, so his friend, you know, uh, Richard Ballen, you know, uh, Richard Ball Suela changed his name, right. Uh, car changed her name. Everybody had to kind of fit in with what somebody's idea was of what could be a star in America. And he said, it could be different.
Speaker 6 00:43:00 Why can't I be who I truly am? So he made a huge difference in the recording industry. And we knew him because he lived in Palm Springs where we live. And he just, you know, uh, happened to be, uh, gigging and playing a lot with neighbor, friends of ours who offered to produce the documentary if we would make it. And so we were in the middle of making our documentary on pier. Cardan called house of Cardan at the time. And we said, well, you know what, let's get started. And hopefully, you know, we can kind of turn our attention to that next. And thank God we did because actually tri ended up, uh, you know, dying of COVID.
Speaker 2 00:43:43 I did not
Speaker 6 00:43:44 Know that we had all of his, all of his life recorded all of his, you know, all of his stories, kind of ready to go. We were supposed to show him a rough cut when he went in the hospital and died 10, 10 days later.
Speaker 2 00:43:56 Oh, dear. I did not know that.
Speaker 6 00:43:58 So we're so happy that we have this legacy and that we're able to, you know, to let people remember who he, who he really was. Um, but documentary has been a very interesting, um, direction as well. It started because Patty Shemel, who was the subject of our movie hit so hard, which is, uh, about the grunge scene. The Seattle gr scene, and Patty was a young girl, openly gay, uh, and a drummer. And she happened to gig around town with a guy named Kirk Cobin who took off <laugh> and became the most famous rock rockstar in the world. And, uh, Patty was the best drummer in town. And so everybody wanted her to be in their band and she just started to, you know, travel and get to know everybody. And she ended up the, the drummer for whole, for Courtney loves band. And she happened to have a video camera with her.
Speaker 6 00:45:00 Uh, and she filmed all of this incredible behind the scenes footage with her camera. And that was our first doc. She, she was a friend of ours. We knew she had a great story because we knew that she had ended up homeless on the streets of LA after having gone on that rocket ride of success. But we didn't know what had to happened. So by doing the documentary, she told her story for the first time. And it, uh, was really kind of a, a heartbreaking and heart wrenching story of survival. Uh, and that got us hooked on doing docs
Speaker 2 00:45:33 Now, where can we find these, oh, you and your husband?
Speaker 6 00:45:38 I say us because, yeah, it's me and my husband, Todd Hughes do do a lot of our, our films and work together.
Speaker 2 00:45:45 Um, well I had a question that I was saying, and I don't remember what it is, let you grew up in. So,
Speaker 6 00:45:49 Oh, you asked me where you could, where can you find
Speaker 2 00:45:52 Yes. Where can we find these documentaries?
Speaker 6 00:45:55 So, um, uh, hit so hard, the rights just recently reverted back to us. So we put it up on video and you can buy it on demand on Vimeo. My name is Lopez, which is just out, is on apple, apple, uh, TV and Amazon. And it's just come out on DVD as well. So it's kind of just released and available everywhere. Um, all of our movies, if you look up, uh, Eversol Hughes and documentaries, they all kind of pop up. House of card is on every platform and they're out there. Yep. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:46:34 Now you grew up in Southern California. How has that affected your creativity in your Sunday matter?
Speaker 6 00:46:40 Well, you know, I think even just this sort of interest that I have in, in Noar comes from having grown up under the Hollywood sign, I grew up up Beachwood. I don't know if you know, LA well or not, but literally the Hollywood sign is, is, uh, above you and the sort of, um, uh, dreams of success and desire to be able to participate in what might be the biggest American dream of all, which is, you know, becoming a star and being discovered is something that happens to so few people, even though you're growing up right underneath it, that it kind of dovetails with that idea of noir where when we believe that we cannot achieve through normal means, we think to ourselves, well, what if I crossed over to the dark side mm-hmm <affirmative> and what if I said, well, look working hard and, you know, being talented and, and putting my heart into things, isn't getting me ahead. So, you know, maybe I should knock over a bank <laugh> or, or, you know, do something on towards, so the, uh, the kind of the kind of dream that lays over everything in Hollywood, I think lends itself really nicely towards this idea of noir. And, uh, uh, you know, we, uh, the story takes place in LA to start with they, uh, steal their, they steal their fortune in LA, but they run away to Palm Springs to hide out.
Speaker 2 00:48:13 I was gonna ask you about Palm Springs, your, um, uh, part of the proceeds of your book, go to a no kill shelter in Palm Springs. You wanna talk a little bit about that and your love of animals? Y
Speaker 6 00:48:24 Yeah, yeah. You know, the, the story starts, I mean, that I was reading from chapter one, but the story, and that's, that's a bit of a jump ahead, but when we flash back to the very beginning of the story, uh, it begins over these two characters meeting with this, uh, main female character's dog having had cancer. And, uh, it metastasizes and the dog dies. That's a scene from, uh, from my real life between me and my husband. We actually went to the UCLA sculpture garden for this poetic gesture to, uh, before we had to put our first dog down female, uh, pit bull. And that has, that started our kind of lifelong desire to, to rescue lady pits. And so we're on our fourth one now. And both of them, the two girls that we have right now came from the Palm Springs animal shelter.
Speaker 6 00:49:24 It's a no kill facility. And when my publisher asked me if there was anybody that I would like to, uh, you know, uh, benefit from sales from the book, I just immediately said, Palm Springs, animal shelter, the girls kind of play a role in the book. They're the, uh, the dog that, that dies at the beginning is a, is sort of a mixed description of our first two dogs, MIS killer and Buty. And then, uh, oopsie Daisy plays a, a role at the end is being kind of a symbol of hope. And she literally sat at my feet the whole time I wrote the book. So, uh, it was like Lucy wanting to be in the show. She kept saying to me, you know, aren't you gonna put me in the book? I felt like she was saying to me <laugh> so I said, all right, I'll figure it out.
Speaker 2 00:50:12 Oh, that's sweet. That's sweet. Well, what are you currently working on about Thero?
Speaker 6 00:50:18 Well, you know, uh, between having a, a movie released and a, and a book out, and then we also, uh, released an album, uh, it's funny because, you know, my, my, uh, lead character is a frustrated pop singer. And then here I am at 58 and we just released a, a pop punk boy band record with friends. <laugh> <laugh> so, so I'm, so I'm healing all my own childhood wounds as I, as I'm going along, but we have that, and we have the soundtrack record for Trinity Lopez. We have so many things coming to fruition and being released right now that we're kind of a little bit on pause towards the next project, but, uh, I do have an idea for, I don't know if I would call it a sequel or just kind of a, a continuing of ideas for a next crime fiction, novel called 24 hours from Tulsa.
Speaker 6 00:51:11 Oh. Which is also a song title. It's a gene Pitney song. Um, and, uh, it's a, it's similar in that it has this sort of what sounds like a cheery, uh, story to it. <laugh> which is you think that he's singing about being just 24 hours away from the love that that he's driving towards, but really what happens is that he gets 24 hours away from Tulsa where his long lost love lives stops into a motel, has an affair and decides he's not gonna make it. So he's saying to his beloved, sorry, I almost made it. I'm 24 hours from Tulsa, but I fell in love with somebody else.
Speaker 2 00:51:52 That's the end of that?
Speaker 6 00:51:54 That fits into my, you know, lexicon, tragic love affairs. I think I could figure that one out as a, as a basis for, for the next book.
Speaker 2 00:52:04 Well, David, we have run out of time. I'm sorry, because I had more questions in my book, but, uh, is it Hughes Eversol or Evers saw Hughes that people should be looking for?
Speaker 6 00:52:13 Eversol Hughes? The ever the Eversol Hughes company is the name of our company. And, uh, Eversol hughes.com is where you would find all the stuff about all of our, all our projects.
Speaker 2 00:52:24 Okay. We've been talking and, you
Speaker 6 00:52:25 Know, you're in Minneapolis, correct? Yes, because we're gonna, I'm doing a reading in Minneapolis on, uh, June 12th, uh, at film north. Okay. Which is the, uh, one of the, one of the film societies there. And so we'll be in town then
Speaker 2 00:52:40 We'll get you on our calendar. We've been speaking with P Ebersol author of 99 miles from LA. What a wonderful interview. This has been David. Uh, thank you so much for joining us on, right on radio tonight and, uh, have a wonderful day as we let you.
Speaker 6 00:53:00 So Liz
Speaker 2 00:53:01 Appreciate you. Bet. You bet. And now this,
Speaker 3 00:53:17 You are listening to right on radio on K F a I that's 90.3 FM in streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie. I'd like to thank our special guests from tonight. Cat Weaver, Emily bergs, Leanne, and P David Eversol and all of our listeners without your support and donations KFI would not be possible. You can find more news and info about right on radio at K a i.org/right on radio. Um, you can listen to all of your favorite, right on radio episodes on Spotify, iTunes, Google podcast, apple podcast, and more.
