Speaker 1 00:00:14 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Weber. And tonight on right on radio, I'll be joined by Keith Loveland to talk about his debut novel. The end of the empire. It's rich exploration of the changing values that have shaped our countries since the second world war, particularly what people love, whom they love and how far they will go to protect that.
Speaker 2 00:00:40 And I'm Annie Harvey in the last part of the show, I'll speak with New York times best-selling writer of comics and novels. Merico Tamaki about her work cold. It's a haunting WIA novel about a shocking crime told by a boy who died and the girl who wants to know why all this and more. So stay tuned to write on radio.
Speaker 1 00:01:10 Hello, Keith, are you there?
Speaker 3 00:01:12 Yes, absolutely. Hi Josh. Hi, Keith,
Speaker 1 00:01:15 Do you have your reading selected?
Speaker 3 00:01:17 I do. I have it right here? Do you, would you like me to begin,
Speaker 1 00:01:20 Please? Go ahead.
Speaker 3 00:01:22 This is from just about the middle of the book. Andrew continued working for the state department in Washington, DC, unlike everyone else in the Alpine management family, he had no interest in owning a home, but lived in an apartment which allowed him to lock the door when he left and not worry about upkeep or maintenance or what the neighbors were thinking about his absences. He did not drive a car either. He didn't need one. Andrew spent much of his time traveling most often to Europe and the Soviet union, where he used his fast Sal language skills to fit in and spot trends that he reported on. When he returned. He loved it all though. He visited home infrequently. He called as often as he could usually reaching Susie who is happy to fill him in on everyone in the family, Susie trusted her younger son.
Speaker 3 00:02:30 She told him anything much more than she ever shared with her husband or Cameron Jr. So he learned about Bobby's continued ill health and the workshops Lina and Lars had begun so successfully and their books as well. Susie told him how his father and brother were strategically leveraging and expanding the business though. They both worked too hard in her opinion. At least they worked too hard to spend very much time at home. He was noticing the calcifying of the country. Mid 20th century had seen wonderfully daring experiments like the Tennessee valley authority and the national endowment for the arts. But after the protests of the 1960s and 1970s, a fear of change that emerged even worse. The inner cities that it burned in the 1960s remained destroyed with no money going into any kind of restoration and the people living in there in those neighborhoods, living without homes or opportunities, unless they jumped into the growing drug trade. That surrounded him
Speaker 1 00:03:57 Very good. So change is constant. And when it becomes more unpredictable, it requires finding more adaptive strategies to adjust to our new reality and Keith Loveland. He's experienced many paradigm shifts within his own life. The 1973 oil crisis, the.com crash the global financial crisis of 2008 and et cetera level, and has always been fascinated with how societies respond to change Loveland's debut novel. The end of the empire is an 80 year long saga that tells the story of two families over three generations that pear parallels the trajectory of the United States. Keith Loveland. Welcome to write on radio.
Speaker 3 00:04:37 Oh, thanks very much, Josh. I'm just delighted to be here with you.
Speaker 1 00:04:41 We're delighted to have you on the show. Keith, when did you first start writing the end of the empire?
Speaker 3 00:04:47 Uh, in the 1960s, I began making notes for this story. I continued to take notes and put all those notes into a banker's box. And then several years ago, decided during the pandemic was the right time to bring it to fruition.
Speaker 1 00:05:07 It's true that you've filled notebooks with character studies, events, philosophies, and interior monologues as an undergraduate eventually became this book. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:05:18 Yes, absolutely. That's absolutely true. My little spiral bound notebooks, where I would keep all of my thoughts very much like a diary and those characters now show up in the end of the empire.
Speaker 1 00:05:33 How did the characters or events change an now, from when you started till when you got this published?
Speaker 3 00:05:40 Well, the beginning Josh, uh, way back the setting was a think tank in the future. So in the 19 middle 1960s, I was setting the, uh, novel as this really optimistic think tank. And the characters were really mostly scientists and their families in this think tank and the death that took place in that. Uh, oh, let's just say formulation was actually a murder and very mysterious. Whereas the death in this novel is not mysterious at all.
Speaker 1 00:06:20 Why is this book called the end of the empire?
Speaker 3 00:06:24 Well, one meaning of it would be that the family business, the empire of the Alpine, uh, buildings, all of those things that the main characters had built over three generations, uh, came to an end at the end of the book. The third generation of the family had really lost to the business. So that's one meaning of it. Some of my readers have said, well, uh, it looks more like the United States of America and they've lost their empire in the 21st century. So after the 20th century was the American century, some readers imagine that in the 21st century, it will no longer be an American century.
Speaker 1 00:07:10 And see, I have the second interpretation. I was thinking about this until the very end of the book. And however, I'm not going to give it away, but you do end it on a, um, shall we say mildly optimistic, I think approach towards the future. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3 00:07:26 I think so. Yes. I, I hope that that's how people see it, uh, and optimism for the future.
Speaker 1 00:07:32 Sure. And audacity to hope. I think that's a phrase actually in the book. I remember reading,
Speaker 3 00:07:36 In fact it is a phrase in the book and a one always thinks about the audacity of being hopeful, uh, you know, in every generation there's conflict, turmoil, fear. If you would let it get inside of you. Uh, now this a decade is no different than any other. I think there's always been turmoil and there's always been true, Dale. Uh, but yeah, optimistic. I would say, I think the book does end on a very nice, a nice note. I like the ending of the book.
Speaker 1 00:08:11 Did you have plans to have this book be published sooner than, than you did? I mean, this has just been germinating for decades and what made you want to do this now? Was it just because you had time on hand as a result of the pandemic? What was it?
Speaker 3 00:08:24 Yeah, that's so interesting. Uh, one, I think one answer Josh is that perhaps I wasn't old enough, uh, when I was a teenager to really carry it through, uh, maybe all that I had within me in those teen years was the sketches, the short writings, the thoughts about it. Um, so that's one possibility. And then the other possibility is that now as an adult, a mature individual and having time, maybe that's the real Genesis to have the time to pull all of those threads together and do the work it takes, uh, to put the novel in a completed format.
Speaker 1 00:09:10 So when you started working on the novel, what was the most difficult part of the writing process for you?
Speaker 3 00:09:17 Well, I suppose the most difficult part was to remember the arc of the story and not go down into any of the rabbit holes. So being a avid historian, being a person who loves to read about historical events, one of the things I had to caution myself not to do was to go pages and pages and pages of infinite historical detail. That would be fascinating to me, but probably not fascinating to a reader. So that was probably the, the most challenging part. Can you give
Speaker 1 00:09:56 An example where you had to stop yourself going down a rabbit hole?
Speaker 3 00:10:00 Oh, absolutely. So draft lottery December 1st, 1969. There's a chapter in the book that describes some young man, uh, living in a house over by the university and draft lottery night, December 1st, 1969, uh, was something that I lived through and my brothers and I, my roommates and I, and it really bent the arc of our lives. So some folks went off to Vietnam. There are characters in the book that took that path and some folks did not, uh, go to serve and were able to continue, you know, working through their university and getting their degrees and doing those kinds of things. Uh, I could have written 200 pages just on that event, that draft and the way that characters had their lives changed. But of course, I had to condense that into a, a one chapter type of an affair
Speaker 1 00:11:03 In the end of empire, we follow the Bergen and McAlpin McAlpine families over three generations. Did you base many of these people from family, from people in your own life or family members?
Speaker 3 00:11:17 Yes, very loosely. Josh. So for example, the senior patriarchs who start the novel right after world war two are Cameron McAlpine and Harold Bergen. They had just come back from world war two. Uh, both of them were disabled American veterans and they had been paratroopers in the hundred and first airborne, my dad was a hundred and first airborne paratrooper. And so there's some of my dad in, uh, both Cameron McAlpine and Harold. Um, and then as far as the other characters, well, you know, it's always kind of hard to say whether they're like me or whether I would like to be like them. I suppose that's one of the things writers always think about.
Speaker 1 00:12:10 Um, I, one character that stood out to me, I wanted to ask about was Cameron junior very early in the book. He gets in trouble for refusing to say under God when he is, it's mandatory to do so when he's an elementary school. And then he gets, um, reprimanded by his elementary school teachers, he has to go home and, um, I believe has to get a signature from his parents, sign out. They told them about this. And then later on he gets, uh, he gets called up by a fellow boy scout. Did you have a similar experience at all?
Speaker 3 00:12:39 Yeah, absolutely. In fact, that was the experience that I had.
Speaker 1 00:12:44 It seemed to, it seemed to a specific, I think it'd be like, this is not just made up. I think some per this person writing this, I think directly had this kind of exposure. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:12:55 Yeah. I also had the same experience in a vacation Bible school. I was kicked out of vacation Bible school. That's early in the book as well. So there are some things in the book that do come from my very own nap past.
Speaker 1 00:13:12 Um, I, wasn't going to ask you, but now I'm, now I'm curious in the moment here did this. What is your thoughts about separation of church and state and the establishment clause? Do you have any strong opinions around that because of your early experiences?
Speaker 3 00:13:25 Well, perhaps Josh, I have more strong opinions because I'm a lawyer and I went to law school and studied the constitution and really spent a lot of time thinking about what preceded the constitution, the Federalist papers, which we studied a lot in both college and law school. And so I do believe that this country was formed as a secular country and the constitution hoped to in the bill of rights really make it very clear that the government shouldn't interfere with religious things, shouldn't interfere with churches and mosques and synagogues and the way that people pray and practice to their God. And similarly, our churches should stay within their own sphere working on spiritual and religious matters. So yeah, I would say that I'm, uh, I'm in favor of the separation of church and state just like it's expressed in the, in the ballot rights.
Speaker 1 00:14:31 One thing I liked about in this book is that the characters, um, you do, you do a fine job of showing complexity, I think, and just people in many ways we are walking contradictions. Uh, can you tell us a little about this character of Lars Bergen? He loves poetry. I'd like that about him. He especially likes Walt Whitman, but he's also a very staunch conservative. And by the end of the book, he's a, he's a, um, a very, uh, right-wing extremist.
Speaker 3 00:15:01 Yeah. Let's talk about Lars for a little bit. So of the second generation. So again, Cameron and Susie and Harold and Sonny are the original, you know, world war II, uh, people, and then they have children and Harold Bergen and Sonny Bergen have their oldest and that's wire Spurg. And, uh, he was born in 1947. So he's clearly a baby boomer and incredibly intelligent. In fact, all of the children are above average in intelligence and large you're quite right. Josh, uh, was a lover of not only poetry, but literature and, uh, served in Vietnam with distinction and then came back and wrote a book about his experiences, which turned out to be extremely popular. And as his life continued to go forward through the seventies and eighties and nineties, and then into the 21st century, uh, Larson's character gets darker and darker and you're quite right. He goes to the dark side and then he stays there. And, uh, he has, I w you know, what I would say is that he has no faith in the people of America, all 330 million of us. And that's exhibited in a number of different places in the book. Uh, but that's, um, you're quite right. I would say he was originally conservative and then just kept bending further and further into the extremes of, uh, oh, the far, far, far, far, far, right?
Speaker 1 00:16:42 Yeah. You made it very clear. I know there's a, I want to probably paraphrase it. I, but I know there's a section in the book you say that he, he had an essay, I think talked about his loss of faith in the inner dependability of people and focus slowly on just pleasure, I think. And just self satisfaction.
Speaker 3 00:16:59 Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. Josh. That was during a extended vacation that he took to the Nordic countries. And he really was, uh, a believer in, I am rant and selfishness, self Ben tress would be his dominant theme in the way that people should organize their lives is really to just take care of number one, just take care of themselves, but that's a good descriptor for Lars. He's a, uh, it's all about him, kind of a guy
Speaker 1 00:17:31 And this book, there's a, there's also this character, Andrew, who he ends up towards, I think maybe the middle part of the book. He teaches a course related to the book, the end of history by Francis Fukuyama and with the invasion of Ukraine now by Russia, I was curious you Keith, I was, what do you think Andrew would think of what's happening right now in relation to this work?
Speaker 3 00:17:56 Yes, thank you for noticing that. So one of the things that happened in the last century was an awful lot of optimism that more and more countries would find liberal democracies, which is to say, letting people make choices and having self-government through a democratic Republic would basically be the highest and finest form of government. And that is in fact, the main thesis of the book that, uh, Fukiyama wrote, Andrew was asked about it at a dinner party. And I think his answer is quite telling, and it's the fact that it's more likely that authoritarians and authoritarians and authoritarianism, uh, will continue to come back because the battles that we fight to preserve, not only the Republic, but democracy in general are wars that are never won, are wars that are continually fought generation after generation, after generation. And now here, and this book was finished before Russia invaded Ukraine, but Andrew would say, um, that was not unusual. And it would certainly not be unexpected after the Euromaidan crisis and the invasion of Crimea in 2014. So the war in the Ukraine really, uh, is an eight year old war with the most recent invasion. Uh, just being a really heightening of that particular word. I think that's what Andrew would say because he's quite a student of history.
Speaker 1 00:19:42 I think I can agree with that. I, um, as I've gotten older now, I'm seeing kind of a, a cyclical pattern here in history of authoritarian, regimes, declining and falling, and then coming back and researching. And of course, this is, um, in parallel, I think with liberal democracies, I want to take a, uh, this is my own age. I want to ask you about Linda. She's a character that, uh, I saw myself, I guess I say, I like this piece here in the book. You talk about how she wanted to be in on the action, a skinny girl with red hair and sprinkling of freckles. She was wholly likable, except those boys who presented for natural authority and independence. I saw myself in this character. I want to talk about her for a second. Where does she come from that?
Speaker 3 00:20:24 Um, yeah, that's very interesting. Well, you know, it's kinda interesting because, uh, she is an amalgamation of several persons that I knew as I was growing up in, uh, in my teen and in 20 years, I like her so much, Josh. I like her spark. I like the fact that she's out there doing sports, uh, when there were some other folks who didn't really go for having tomboys around, I like the fact that she's highly intelligent and she's not at all shy about showing her intelligence. And you'd have to say that even back in those days, Josh choose a feminist. Uh, she thought that there should be equality in sports and in business and in life. And so, yeah, she's a wonderful character.
Speaker 1 00:21:19 One of the later chapters in the book is called seeding the future. What changes have you predicted that proved to be accurate in your own lifetime
Speaker 3 00:21:30 Changes? In my own lifetime?
Speaker 1 00:21:31 I mean, I guess in a very broad sense, looking at him, looking at the pattern of history that you saw maybe before someone else, I was curious if you had any, any premonitions that normally saw or no unbelief that you saw before anyone else?
Speaker 3 00:21:46 Yeah, well, I, I think I'm like some of these characters in the sense that I don't believe that things go in one direction forever. So I do believe in the movement back and forth, the arc swings back and forth. We become more interested in individual Liberty. And then at times as a society, we become much more interested in security and that, uh, whole, let's just say those polar opposites are things we should expect to be vacillating as people move forward in time. One thing I will say that I did expect is that I did expect that people would be retreating into themselves and also fearful of change. And perhaps it's because of that enormous bulge of 75 million baby boomers, because they went through a lot of the same experiences together. Uh, and they are now, you know, 70, or maybe a little bit older. And, uh, and they're getting more fearful. They're calcifying, as I read in that shirt, uh, uh, section they're concerned, they're fearful. They don't have the optimism of youth. Uh, and so those are things that I would put that I did predict. And of course it would be normal to have predicted them, no big, no big, ah, no big, uh, intelligent brainstorm there. I think
Speaker 1 00:23:23 My, uh, my cohort here and he made a very good observations for our show here about how, um, my generation seems to have a real distrust of authority. It probably was built in very early of going through the Bush administration and just, I maybe just in partisan politics in general, just, you know, a lot of attacks and all the sides were there. It really sowed a lot to scent in us of any of leadership, I think in maybe not just our country, but in businesses. I was wondering if that's an observation you've seen as well.
Speaker 3 00:23:51 Yes, absolutely. And in fact, let me just highlight two things that are very troubling to me. And one of them is the relative percentage of voting age persons who actually go in and exercise that franchise. And so other than the most recent presidential election where we had, you know, 81 million votes for president Biden and 76 million votes for former president Trump, uh, that was a real high mark in terms of percentage. And in my voting lifetime, generally speaking, the participation in politics has been declining. You know, there's a really interesting book from the last century called bowling alone. And what it does is compares the civic engagement of the 20th century where civic engagement post-World war II was very high, high bowling league, high PTA library club, every other thing. And then the 21st century, not so much you're out there just bowling alone, if you're out there at all. Then the second thing that I would say is, I think you're quite right, Josh, every generation has the opportunity to distrust their elders. That was certainly endemic in the 1960s with the war in Southeast Asia and being a person who is in that 1960s period, a lot of distressed in believing what you could believe coming from the government about how well the war in Vietnam was going.
Speaker 1 00:25:33 Keith, would you believe that we're actually almost at a time, one last question for you? What is next? Do you have another book in you that you're planned or write?
Speaker 3 00:25:41 Yes, absolutely. In fact, I have begun my next novel and the next novel goes into the future at too far into the future, but into the future. And hopefully this one will be mysterious and, uh, there are murders in this one.
Speaker 1 00:25:58 It could, this is my time with Keith Loveland talked about his debut novel, the end of the empire. Keith, thanks so much for being here with us.
Speaker 3 00:26:07 Oh, thanks very much, Josh. I really enjoyed it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:26:32 Hi, Marico. Hi. Hopefully this is working. This is working, correct? Yes. You sound great. It's great to have you here. Um, for those just us, this is Merico Tamaki author of so many things. Marvel comics, great white comics, but most recently of the WIA novel, cold Marico, it is such a joy to have you here. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 4 00:26:56 Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 00:26:58 So for those who haven't had the chance to check out cold yet, could you please give like kind of a brief summary of what it's about, get people interested,
Speaker 4 00:27:06 Summary it's two stories. Basically a one is a story of a girl named Georgia who finds out at the beginning of the book that a boy named Todd has been found murdered in a park near where she goes to school. Uh, and as the story, regresses, Georgia finds out that she has more and more connections to Todd that they had sort of similar experiences in high school of being kind of bullied and being kind of like the odd person out. Uh, and then sort of that sort of falls like at a little bit of a personal investigation into the sort of his murder. Uh, and then the second storyteller is Todd, who is a ghost and the book, and he follows the two detectives as they try to figure out, um, how he died.
Speaker 2 00:27:48 Yeah. So to delve into your process and your method a little bit, um, I right away snatched up this galley because I love your graphic novels, loved Laura Dean loved skin. Um, and the first thing I noticed when I opened this galley was like no pictures, um, traditional novel. Um, how did you choose to tell this story as a prose novel and kind of, how does your process for choosing pros or graphic work more broadly?
Speaker 4 00:28:18 Um, it's a very unscientific, uh, process, um, that is very hard to explain. It's a lot of a gut instinct. I think that there is my visualization of graphic novels is usually that they take place over a pretty, um, sort of easily scaled time period, like a summer or, you know, a trip or sort of a week. Um, so that's how I tend to visualize them, which is not to say that that's the only way that, that a graphic novel can be written. Um, and I think because I come to detective stories or murder mystery stories, especially through prose, uh, I saw it as a prose book right away. Um, and I really wanted to, I think that there's something about a detective or a murder mystery book that is about this kind of fumbling around in the dark and things being unseen that seemed like it would, it would work really well as a prose novel.
Speaker 2 00:29:12 Yeah, absolutely. And it, in some ways it's so different than a traditional murder mystery, but in some ways you have, like, you have your two cops with very different personalities, you have your small town where most people know most people like, um, it was very fun to see those things kind of converge and it definitely feels like it's of a lineage.
Speaker 4 00:29:32 Yeah. I mean, I'm a big fan of, you know, like I've watched broad church, all three seasons of rock church multiple times. So I'm definitely a fan of the tropes of that particular genre, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:29:44 To dig a little more into your characters in this story. Um, so your two narrators, Georgia, her voice, I loved, cause it has kind of a brash humor. She's not afraid to like take a little jab or a day get patterns she sees, but that hides a more sensitive inside. And then Todd kind of has like a mellower softer, outward demeanor. Um, but underneath he's compressing all this isolation, some distress, um, feelings of ostracization at school. Um, when you were writing this book, how did you kind of conceptualize these characters voices and how did you, um, separate out writing these two characters? Like, did you have any routines that helped you get into one character, the other, or did they just kind of flow?
Speaker 4 00:30:29 Um, well, because the chapters go back and forth, I often would write a bunch of Georgia chapters and then write a bunch of Tod chapters and sort of different sittings because it is hard to go back and forth between those two voices. Um, I tried to make it so that there was sort of like a story behind the way each character talked. Georgia is from a very, uh, she has a literary family. She has a mother who's a very famous children's book author. And so she's kind of used to kind of narrating through and kind of talking through things. I mean, she's not the most, uh, forthright person all the time, but I think that she's someone who has kind of latched on to making jokes and telling stories and stuff like that, kind of, um, very rich world that way as being a way to survive, she's become kind of the meta commentator, uh, which, you know, I think it's not the most popular person in the room when you're in high school, but it's a good job later.
Speaker 4 00:31:25 Um, and Todd, I think first of all, because Todd was a ghost, I really wanted there to be a kind of like ickiness to him. The, the fact that he's not really, he's looking at these things that happened in his life that are emotional, but because he's dead, it's not really, you know, it's not really his problem anymore. And so there's lots of things that don't really resonate for him or sort of, um, impact him. Uh, but it also kind of gave me chances to when something does impact Todd, when he does feel something it's a huge moment. And it's something that you can kind of save up and do once or twice in the story to really give the reader a sense of like, here are the things that are like the sort of core wounds for this character.
Speaker 2 00:32:06 Yeah, absolutely. And Georgia to dig in a little more to her, which I loved being a, uh, being a storybook character who resents being a storybook character. She's a character in your book, resenting being a character in someone else's book and then kind of in a way mythologizing and narrativizing her own story and personality. Um, so anyway, you mentioned Georgia kind of resents her mom's profitable career that kind of builds an idealized version of her and her brother where they're like best friends go around pal around and do things. And while, uh, George's mom is baseline affirming and kind to her kids, Georgia still feels used by them. Um, you as an author, Mariko Tamaki, if you could tell George's mom something about building balanced characters, what would you say?
Speaker 4 00:33:01 I mean, I think that there is, I mean, first of all, I would tell Georgia, your mom writes children's books, you know, there's like, there's a simplification of, you know, of storytelling that has to happen. And maybe you shouldn't take all these things quite so personally. Um, I think that, I mean, I have, I love children's book authors. I have a lot of very close friends who are children's book authors that of whom are in this book. Um, but I think that it's sort of a, I mean, it really points to a larger thing, which is, you know, the story of you is told many times by many people before you figure out how to tell the story of you. It's like you go to high school and everyone's like, oh, you're the quiet one. You're the goth girl, you're the nerd. And that is, can be so overpowering. And it's very hard to sort of push through that and become a person who is telling your own story. I mean, that's the path of the writer, it's the path of the artist, you know, all of those things. So, uh, I think that George's mom is doing a great job. I wouldn't recommend, there's like a scene where she basically like has like a lesbian movie night for her daughter. I don't think that's such a great idea, but other than that, I think she's doing okay.
Speaker 2 00:34:08 Um, so this book, you mentioned broad church a minute ago, so just to kind of swing back into the little crime story narrative. So this book is clearly in dialogue with, um, existing crime media, as well as kind of the true crime media era that we're in the boom of true crime podcasts, Netflix, documentaries, et cetera, um, and Georgia herself references watching procedurals, um, the teens kind of like wander through the scene of the crime since it's in the area. Um, I was just wondering what you wanted to do similarly or differently than kind of the mainstream true crime and crime story scene. Like whether you're picking inspiration or things not to be like,
Speaker 4 00:34:48 I mean, I, um, I tried to make it so that it's a very personal story as opposed to like one of the reasons for having Todd be a character in the book is because I didn't just want the sort of, you know, queer victim of violence to be just the victim. I wanted him to have like, you know, magically have his own take on his death and to have his own story in the book. Um, I think that there is kind of, um, you know, there's, like I said, and you know, it's the same as children's pluck. This has got a simplification of stories and happens in a lot of true crime. Like, you know, he was the bad man. She was the innocent victim. Um, I tend to, like, I think the one thing that, you know, some of my favorite podcasts and true crime series that have done have done well, uh, like one of favorites is like in the dark is to really kind of pull out all of these slides and all of these stories that are affected by, by these crimes and by the systems that sort of like, you know, turn people into people, uh, accused of crimes and turn people into criminals.
Speaker 4 00:35:52 Um, so I tried to look at, I tried to look at that and make it so that it was kind of an ongoing mess of a bunch of stories as opposed to a straight line to the conclusion of, um, of who did it. Like I think that that was the thing that I pushed against the most. And actually it meant that like halfway through writing the book, I changed my mind as to who did it. Cause I was like, oh yeah, there's like a sort of easy answer. And then there's a kind of muddier answer to this. And I mean, I'm always been a writer who enjoys muddy or answers. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:36:24 I liked that a lot. I liked that it kind of allowed itself to both be a very plot driven book, but also be very character based. You're constantly learning more layers to characters. It's not like a simple game of clue.
Speaker 4 00:36:38 Yeah. I mean, I also do love clue as a movie. Um, but I think that that's the thing is to me the entertainment of, of like, because a murder itself is a horrible thing, the thing that's interesting is all the sort of, you know, power dynamics and stuff like that that are at play in a community era, in a group of people. And that is the thing that is the real story to me. Um, and then of course you actually have to have like, really, if you think about it in terms of a murder mystery, it's like all of this muddiness, like as part of a murder mystery is these kind of, you know, like false conclusions where you think it's going to be somebody and then it's not the person you think it's someone else and it's not. And really this sort of, that is the most that's most of the story in a murder mystery and the actual sequence of events that led to the crime is just like a kind of code at the end of the book.
Speaker 2 00:37:28 Yeah, absolutely many characters in the book, including a teacher who ends up being wrongly accused, um, experienced alienation and fear and marginalization, um, based on a shared trait, their sexuality, um, how did this kind of similar people living under similar, having similar experiences, but still being so socially isolated, how did that paradox play into your conceptualization of the book and the characters?
Speaker 4 00:38:01 Well, I think what I did part of the thing about cold is that there's a lot of queer characters in the book. One of the detectives is queer. Uh, the two main characters are queer and this teacher is queer. And I think what I wanted to do was really just show a sort of diversity experiences. So there's the sort of perception of who the queer people are going to be and the sort of qualities that those queer people will have. But most of those characters sort of both embrace it, actively push back against those things. Yeah. Um, and I think that that's, that's the truth of queerness, right? There's like there's elements of queerness that are, you know, it's like, who am I to deny that part of the reason my high school life was not super fun had to do with my queerness. Not that I was out in high school, but that was a factor in why I hated high school, but it's complicated because it's also the best parts of me are queer. And so I wanted to do, I think that, for example, like I think that queerness turns Todd part of Todd's sort of turn inward is because of a lot of fears that have to do with his queerness, but Georgia also refuses those things and is, you know, kind of unrepentantly who she is because she's also, you know, she faces some of the S some similar stigmas, but her response is different. So I wanted to sort of be able to really show just the spectrum of those things.
Speaker 2 00:39:21 Yeah, absolutely. And I really appreciated, um, I promise to people listening that this is the only spoiler I'm going to give, but I appreciated that the kind of the queer adult in the room, um, was kind of falsely seen as like, uh, a negative or dangerous influence on boys and then totally ended up being just fine. And it was kind of cultural bias where people were like, yeah,
Speaker 4 00:39:48 Well, and I did seem like it did seem like, um, when I was sort of working on various drafts, it seemed like, uh, unrealistic to not include some false perceptions, like the sort of easy answers of like, who do you look at when you're looking for the person who perpetrated a crime in these, in various situations, right? Like the kind of easy answer that makes this person sort of a suspect. Um, and then the very complicated, long blown out story that, that shows you all the things he was, which was like really nothing to do with this boy's murder.
Speaker 2 00:40:24 Totally, totally. And the way kind of everyone had those, um, kind of traditional or stereotypical traits, but also they're very complex traits like Todd, both being embarrassed to love the color pink to some degree, but also, um, there being so, so much more to him.
Speaker 4 00:40:43 Yeah. He loved the color pink and he was a knitter and, you know, he was like all these things. And I think that that's, that's the thing that I wanted to sort of give space
Speaker 2 00:40:52 For sure. Yeah. It was also fun to see him discovering himself in ghost space, just on a completely different aside. I think you had some, there was some fun to be had with him figuring out life in a ghost body and like observing situations without anyone else knowing you was there.
Speaker 4 00:41:09 Yeah. I kind of wanted them to be, there were very stressed where he was a little more judgmental because I thought, yeah, if you like, let loose this person who's been bullied for his appearance, his whole life, and now he's a ghost and he can kind of just go anywhere and like his, his true thoughts about all these people around him, but it was getting a little, so I dial it back a little bit.
Speaker 2 00:41:28 Yeah. I feel like Georgia was kind of like throw the hits at people a little more in terms of judgemental and Todd was a little more scaled back. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:41:40 Georgia is like the future writer in my mind, George was the person who's like spending her teen years sort of assessing and then will eventually become the thing that she hates. Her mother Would be like children's books who needs them. And then she's like my first children's book. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:42:02 Totally. So speaking of, uh, you know, books coming forth, um, I see that you're working on an imprint with, uh, Abrams that focuses specifically on queer representation, um, which is super exciting. And I was wondering if you could kind of talk broadly about the direction that you're trying to create and want to see in teen lit.
Speaker 4 00:42:26 Yeah. Um, well, so Shirley books is a imprint. That is our still mandate is LGBTQ books by LGBTQ creators. It's really creator focused, um, which really lets us be very broad in terms of the kinds of books that we're publishing. Um, like our, uh, first two books, uh, are lifetime passes by Terry blasts and Claudia Garay, uh, and, uh, flung out of space, uh, which is a Patricia Highsmith, uh, inspired story by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templar. So, you know, this various sort of film, the bar's book with this book that said in a theme park, uh, are the sort of like starting books. Um, and really, it's just been a really amazing journey to see the different kinds of stories that queer creators are interested in today and not sort of, uh, you know, not attempt to sort of push it into a direction, but really go the direction that the creators are going. Um, and I think, you know, there's been just such a, an amazing explosion of queer creators. And I think that the popularity, especially of white comics has kind of helped that be like a kind of commercial thing. Um, so yes, we're not necessarily doing, we are doing some comics that are, I think why a, but it's sort of really a mix of things. Cool.
Speaker 2 00:43:54 Yeah. And it's going to be a comics in print or an, or an everything in print.
Speaker 4 00:44:00 Yeah. So it's just graphic, it's just graphic novels, it's graphic novels, which is like everything. Yes. Um, yes. And we have been myself and Charlotte Greenbaum is the editor I work with at, uh, Abrams have been working really hard and, uh, I think it's been like, bye. So first of all, my girlfriend came up with this idea, so I can't take full credit for it. My girlfriend, Heather gold came up with the idea of me doing imprint. Um, but it's been a real joy to see just giving people resources and giving people as opposed to saying like, this is the sort of thing we're looking for, um, has been really rewarding. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:44:37 Yeah. So have you done, have you been in communications with kind of agents who focus on this sort of thing, or what has your been your author recruitment kind of been like recruitment?
Speaker 4 00:44:47 Um, we, I mean some, but some people have already approached Abrams because they know because Abrams, uh, publishes comics. So some people come from that. Um, one of our goals was to sort of reach outside of our immediate circles of the artists that we already knew. Um, so that was also a mandate. So just going to shows, and I'll just talking to artists about artists that they're inspired by, um, and just sort of trying to go out there and see what people are creating. Um, but really it's, I mean, the kind of queer comic fandom is such a, such an amazing community. And so it's been really fun to just talk to queer creators about who their favorite creators are, who people that they think should be, you know, publishing graphic novels are. Um, and also working with some pros authors that wouldn't necessarily think to work in comics or are looking for an opportunity to work in comics has also been a thing. Cool.
Speaker 2 00:45:43 Not to put you on the spot, but like, are there any authors, whether they're affiliated with this in print or not, or any recent books that you are really excited about and you want to be like, grab your library card, go get that
Speaker 4 00:45:54 This, oh my gosh. I'm excited about them all. Um, I guess, uh, trying to sync. Yeah. I'm excited about them all. Honestly, it feels like asking about like your favorite child. You're like, they're all my children and I love them all. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think, uh, I guess I think lifetime passes is a really amazing book and I'm really excited that it's our first book. Uh, it's just such a, it's such a fascinating book because the premise is a very hard candy shell. Like it's very, um, it's about this theme park that has a policy that if anybody dies at the same park that their whole party gets lifetime passes. And so this group of kids, uh, basically comes up with this plan to start bringing people from this retirement community where one of the kids, aunts work to this theme park, which is a, like I said, a super hard candy shell of a premise. Um, but Terry and Claudia just created within that, like such a sweet heartwarming we'll make you cry book. Um, that is so incredible. Inter-generational like really talking about like, you know, like sort of luring people in with this very wicked idea and then bringing you into a story that's about the sort of real life struggles of these characters. Cool. So yes, go pick it up. It's in bookstores now. Oh, cool.
Speaker 2 00:47:21 Are you yourself working on any graphic novels, novels, anything
Speaker 4 00:47:26 I am working on? Uh, I'm working on another graphic novel with my cousin Jillian Tamaki so we are working on something together. I know it's very exciting. Um, and actually it's been really great because we wrote this book together. It was a very sort of, uh, sort of long, like a collaborative process that it was part of the writing process as well, which was amazing. Cause Jillian is just an incredible writer and one of the funniest people I know, not the funniest, but one of the funniest people I know. Um, so that was really great. Um, and I've been working on like a lot of DC comics stuff has been sort of most of my time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:48:03 How does it feel the balance kind of that DC stuff with kind of, you know, I just, you know, reading that one summer and then reading a DC comic are very different experiences.
Speaker 4 00:48:14 I mean, I think of them all as muscles. I think that part of being a working writer is you have to do more than one thing. Like, I don't know a lot of working writers who are just like, I'm working on my novel and that's it, you know, like you teach, you write more commercial stuff. Yeah. You, right. You know, so I really like to be able to, I like having, I like being really busy, um, and part of working in graphic or working in trade comics, especially as you write 20 pages, you send it away and then it's gone and then you can work on something else until the 20 pages come back and you have to work on them again. So I kind of love, I mean, it's also, it's such a, there's like a long tradition of working that is in like little 20 page or, you know, short segments. Um, so I feel very like I'm, I'm part of the grand tradition of writers when I'm doing it. Oh, that's so
Speaker 2 00:49:06 Cool. Well, that's a, a very cool thing to think about, and that's also all the time we have. So thank you so much for being here. I really liked having.
Speaker 4 00:49:17 Yeah. Thank you so much. Go read books. Everybody go to your local bookstore, buy books.
Speaker 2 00:49:22 Thank you. Merico it's been really fun to have you, uh, for those who joined us part way through this was Merico Tamaki, uh, discussing her new way, a novel cold as well as her, uh, numerous other fantastic projects. Um, thank you so much for being here. Merico and we'll definitely look for your future work.
Speaker 4 00:49:41 Thank
Speaker 2 00:49:42 You. Thanks. Have a good night.
Speaker 1 00:50:14 You are listening to right on radio on cafe and 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Webber like to thank our special guest tonight, Keith Loveland Merico Tamaki and all of listeners with a, your support and donations cafe high would not be possible. You can find more news and info about radar radio at cafe.org/red on radio. Plus listen to recent episodes on our recent launch podcast, not recent so much anymore, but I've been around for awhile, but we have a podcast out there you can find on Spotify, iTunes, Google podcast, and anywhere podcasts can be found.
