Yesterday, the episode of the radio program STORYLINES, with host CHRISTINE COWLEY, on which I appeared, aired on HUNTER’S BAY RADIO. If you happened to miss that airing, Christine was generous enough to provide me with the tapes…and she has allowed me to use them however I wish to use them. Today, I share them here. In the episode, Christine interviews me briefly, and then the two of us perform my 10-minute play THE SPEECH…with the assistance of narrator Tobin Elliott.
So, here are the tapes. You can listen to them now!
In the interview, there is talk of my books, and other writings…particularly BURN BABY BURN BABY. You can check out my books on my AMAZON page…and order them from bookstores everywhere. Click on the image below to visit my page over on Amazon. You can read each book’s synopsis by clicking on the books on the Amazon page:
Click This Picture to Visit My Books on Amazon!
Much thanks to Christine, for providing me with this wonderful opportunity! Though I didn’t really know what I was doing, I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. I usually write my lines knowing they will come from the mouths of others. It was terrifying and exhilarating to have the tables turned. I’m no actor! It gives one a deeper appreciation of just how difficult it is to deliver lines…couldn’t imagine doing it on the stage!
Another day, another visit with authors from the Purgatorium anthology coming soon from ID PRESS! Today, I have an interview with Yvonne Hess. One more to go. Amanda Tompkins has some writerly deadlines to meet, so she will be participating shortly. Writers ALWAYS have deadlines of one kind or another. It keeps us honest!
I also took the liberty of answering this Proustian Questionnaire myself…so you’ll find my responses here, immediately following Yvonne.
I love love love Yvonne’s response to the first question. It’s quintessential. Enjoy her interview and look forward to discovering her horror fiction in Purgatorium. It’s coming!
Purgatorio Dialogues – VIII – Yvonne Hess
Yvonne Hess (Photo courtesy of the author)
1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
The moments when I become aware that I am experiencing true happiness in that moment.
2. What is your most preferred genre as a writer?
Literary/historical
3. What is your greatest fear?
Heights or being the centre of attention in a room full of people I don’t know.
4. What is your most preferred genre as a reader?
Impossible to choose! But if I have to pick one I’d say historical.
5. Which horror writer do you most admire and why?
I actually don’t read horror.
6. What was your idea of horror prior to setting off on this adventure into Purgatorium?
To me, horror could be anything from slasher/blood and gore to psychological thriller.
7. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
I’m not sure any of these can be overrated.
8. What is your idea of horror now that you’ve been to Purgatorium?
(Not answered)
9. What else have you written?
Several full-length manuscripts.
10. When and where were you most afraid?
I can’t talk about that.
11. Which talent would you most like to have?
Singer/musician.
12. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
The daughter of a multimillionaire!
13. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
I can’t talk about that either.
14. What are your three deserted island books?
Impossible to pick just 3!! But if I have to…Shogun, Outlander, anything by Jane Austen.
15. Who are your favorite writers?
Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Diana Gabaldon, Edward Rutherford, James Mitchener…the list goes on and on.
I could not make all the other contributors answer this questionnaire without also putting myself through the ringer. So, as we await Amanda’s response…I give you my own:
Purgatorio Dialogues – IX – Kevin Craig
Kevin Craig
1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Laughing with my grandchildren, or being purposefully lost and wandering in a foreign city.
2. What is your most preferred genre as a writer?
Although not quite a genre, I would have to say coming-of-age. I love the young adult market, but I love that a good coming-of-age story can explore themes not quite young enough for the YA audience, and yet still have the youth aspect to it.
3. What is your greatest fear?
The theft of childhood
4. What is your most preferred genre as a reader?
I don’t have one. Story is king, genre are the clothes donned by the story.
5. Which horror writer do you most admire and why?
Stephen King. Because he is one of the best character writers in the world. He knows the importance of all aspects of storytelling, not just shock.
6. What was your idea of horror prior to setting off on this adventure into Purgatorium?
Scary. Must. Terrify. Reader.
7. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
FORGIVENESS. It is not imperative to offer forgiveness. Some are not worthy of it. Most often, when you are giving it, it is to free yourself from the wrong done to you anyway. I only consider forgiving when the one I am forgiving is worthy. Sometimes, they are not.
8. What is your idea of horror now that you’ve been to Purgatorium?
It’s the genre where you take the reader by the hand and lead them down the garden path they simultaneously do not want to be lead down and can’t help but go freely and eagerly. They have to trust you and be leery of your motivations at the same time.
9. What else have you written?
Plays, poetry, novels, articles, and memoir. And manifestos…many manifestos.
10. When and where were you most afraid?
November, 1977…the day my childhood was stolen.
11. Which talent would you most like to have?
Singing.
12. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
I always picture myself as an aging Russian peasant farmer woman. I think getting there would be hard and tiring, but to just wake up one day as an 87 year-old babushka wearing peasant woman picking potatoes on her farm would be the loveliest of things. As it seems very unlikely this would happen, I’ll go with DOG.
13. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Not forgiving yourself for something that you could not possibly be blamed for…and having the kind of unhealthy mind that would allow this self-blaming to thrive and hold you hostage.
14. What are your three deserted island books?
I included this question because I hate it. The nature of the reader is that they love all the books. Their three go to books would change by the day, by the hour, by the minute. It makes for a conflict in the brain when they are asked this question.
Right this second, my answer is FRANNY & ZOOEY by JD Salinger, THE WONDER BOYS by Michael Chabon, and, THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS by Anne Rice.
But right this second, my answer is quite different!
15. Who are your favorite writers?
JD Salinger, Michael Chabon, Dr. Seuss, Charles Dickens, Jennifer Niven, Hannah Moskowitz, Sylvia Plath, John Green, Anne Rice, Mark Twain, Naguib Mahfouz, and on and on and on…
16. Who is your hero of fiction?
Zachary Martin Glass (Zooey)…because he is a king of sarcasm and a lover of life.
17. What sound grates on you more than any other?
The sound of a baby crying.
18. How would you like to die?
Any way other than the ways I have imagined in my darkest days.
19. What sound brings you deep joy?
A child laughing with utter abandon. And cicadas.
20. What is your motto?
I have several. This too shall pass comes to mind. As does Never quit and See beauty where others refuse to see it and LOVE.
A writer is sometimes lost and sometimes found. And quite often it’s a monumental moment that causes the shift between those two delicately interconnected worlds to occur. This weekend, I had one of those moments. I am found.
The Dock at Dale & Sue Long’s Haliburton cottage on Lake Kashagawigamog this past Saturday morning, prior to our Hunter’s Bay Radio stop along the way to the annual Muskoka Novel Marathon Wrap-Up Party!
I swear, sometimes it seems a writer’s life is made up of a series of gifts, miracles, and happenstances. Or so it very much seems to me. Every time I bring myself close to the edge of oblivion–to that place of writer/notwriter that I believe most writers go to–something or someone in my life brings me back to the heart.
Writers! From left to right, Tobin Elliott, Christine Cowley, myself, and, Dale Long. Tobin and Dale were interviewed together for an episode of the show appearing later in October. And Tobin helped out with the narration of my play THE SPEECH, which I performed with Christine.
This past weekend, I began one of my many cycles of intense writerly related periods. They seem to come and go. Nothing happens for weeks or months at a time to even remotely suggest that you may in fact be living the life of a writer, and then suddenly you find yourself in a chaotic hotbed of WRITERLY stuff.
What started as a thrilling adventure at the local radio station in Huntsville, Ontario, this weekend, culminated in discovering that I had won a much coveted writing prize. Again.
I was invited by writer friend Christine Cowley to be interviewed on her radio program STORYLINES on Huntsville’s Hunter’s Bay Radio. But not only was I interviewed, which was a thrill in and of itself, but I also performed one of my Trafalgar 24 plays for the radio program…along with Christine herself playing the role of the lead in the short play, and my other writer friend Tobin Elliott stepping in as narrator. It was such a fun time! The episode of Storylines airs in early October and I can’t wait to see how the performance went. It will be interesting to see if it translates well as a radio play.
We stayed in Haliburton over the weekend, taking up residence in the cottage and bunky of writer friend Dale Long and his wife Sue. It was a thoroughly enjoyable stay, filled with great laughs, amazing food and good friends. Dale is something of a BBQ aficionado and what he can do with a grill, a cedar plank and a side of salmon is almost religious. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with the Longs, the Elliotts, and the beauty of Haliburton.
After our stint as radio celebrities in the recording studios of Hunter’s Bay Radio Station, Dale, Tobin and I went to Kelsey’s in Huntsville with our significant others (Sue, Karen, and Michael) for a quick lunch prior to heading to the Muskoka Novel Marathon Wrap-Up Party. We were all excited to see who would take home the peer nominated awards and the Best Novel Awards this year. After the long summer that follows the July marathon, it’s always a special treat to head back to Huntsville and reunite with the other marathon writers…so the excitement we had felt at the radio station was only growing as the wrap up party approached.
The photo above-left shows the table full of awards handed out every year at the novel marathon wrap up party, from peer nominated awards to the judged Best Novel awards. On the right, Kate and Nancy from the YMCA revealed the total raised at this year’s Muskoka Novel Marathon—A whopping $36,000.00. Just see what 40 writers can do when they put their hearts to something. ALL FUNDS raised go directly to the literacy programs of YMCA Simcoe/Muskoka Counties.
The Winners Take a Selfie! I was extremely thrilled to have been awarded the BEST ADULT NOVEL AWARD for the 2016 Muskoka Novel Marathon for my novel I WILL TELL THE NIGHT. And just as thrilled for the lovely Lori Manson, who took home the coveted BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL AWARDfor her novel NED AND NORA STONE.
I did not think I would ever win the Best Novel Award again. I counted my 4 previous wins among my greatest feats in my writing life. With the amount of struggling I have done in recent years, I can’t even begin to describe how much I needed this. It is the vote of confidence I needed to continue writing. It’s pure unadulterated validation.
I would like to thank Dale Long for two things. The first…over 24hrs into the marathon, I still did not have my novel started. I couldn’t connect. Dale told me to tell my story—just shake it up and make it fiction. Or something along those lines. So I said, “What have I got to lose…might as well do something!” He stirred my creativity and got me started. The second thing he did? I wrote my two title considerations down on a piece of paper, looked about the room until I saw Dale (who happened to win this year’s SPIRIT AWARD–for the 2nd year running) sitting and typing…then I approached him and asked him which he preferred. So, it is because of his choice that my novel is called I WILL TELL THE NIGHT. THANKS, DALE!
Here it is! My name on the Best Novel Award trophy again! VALIDATION!
A list of my Best Novel Award wins:
2007 – Best Adult Novel for SEBASTIAN’S POET
2008 – Best Adult Novel for THE REASONS
2010 – Best Young Adult Novel for HALF DEAD & FULLY BROKEN
2011 – Best Young Adult Novel for THAT’S ME IN THE CORNER
2016 – Best Adult Novel Award for I WILL TELL THE NIGHT
What an incredible weekend. Filled with affirmations, friends, laughter, food, love, light and life. I want to thank Tobin’s wife, Karen, for starting the snowball-rolling-down-a-hill conversation that culminated in the arrival of my new nickname, which I will expect to be addressed by from this day forth. I am LORD AWA (awa aka AWARD WINNING AUTHOR).
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a manuscript to pound into shape! I am now tasked with the great burden and joy of completing and polishing my novel, I WILL TELL THE NIGHT, in preparation of submission. (-:
Stay tuned to this spot! My spate of WRITERLY related chaos is still ongoing this time around. Tonight and tomorrow night I have some exciting writerly events happening that I’m sure I will want to write about. Stay tuned!
KEVIN CRAIG 