When I started out in publishing, it was in the twin low-brow worlds of original paperbacks and \u201cgenre fiction” something that the literati looked down on and derided. \u00a0I liked to get the drop on them by saying \u201cI write books with no socially redeeming value whatsoever\u2014the kind of books you can find at better bus depots everywhere.\u201d That was back in the old days, however, when bus stations still sold books.<\/p>\n
Thirty plus years later and with nearly sixty books in print, it stands to reason that I like some of them more than others. \u00a0So far, my all time favorite would be Beaumont #21, Second Watch. \u00a0Writing that story allowed me to honor some real people in my life\u2014one of Bisbee\u2019s hometown heroes, Doug Davis, who died in Vietnam on August 2, 1966, and Bonnie Abney, the girl who loved him then and loves him still. \u00a0By paying tribute to them, I had the honor of meeting Michael Reagan of the Fallen Heroes Project, a man who has devoted his life to doing a labor of love\u2014creating pencil portraits of fallen heroes for Gold Star families. \u00a0Another result of that book was meeting Stephanie Caisse whose moving book, A Corpsman\u2019s Legacy, is a tribute to the father she never knew. \u00a0I\u2019ve also heard from countless Vietnam Vets who found their own lives and losses reflected in Bonnie\u2019s and Doug\u2019s real life story woven into Beau\u2019s fictional one.<\/p>\n
I was sitting in my family room with a computer on my lap, a blank screen in front of me, and a need to write the next book when I realized that Beau and Doug were only a year apart in age. \u00a0That\u2019s when the thought occurred to me that perhaps they might have met and interacted in Vietnam. \u00a0Looking back I chalk that up as a moment of divine inspiration. \u00a0I shed real tears in the course of writing Second Watch, and that alone probably explains why it\u2019s my favorite.<\/p>\n
Second place on my list of favorites would be Hour of the Hunter, the first book in the Walker Family series. \u00a0I seldom reread my books once they\u2019ve been written and edited and edited and edited again, but HOTH\u2014as we call it around here\u2014is the exception to that rule. It\u2019s a remarkable piece of storytelling, and if I pick it up to go looking for a single detail, I\u2019ll inevitably end up reading the whole thing. HOTH was my tenth published book and my first hardback. \u00a0Rather than writing in first person, the story is told through multiple points of view with a flexible time line that moves back and forth over a period of seventy years. \u00a0And woven into the background of that book, and the subsequent Walker Family books as well, are the stories and legends of the Tohono O\u2019odham people that I learned during my years as a school librarian on the reservation.<\/p>\n
So those are my two favorites. \u00a0I also have a least favorite, and that would be Day of the Dead, Walker Family # 3. \u00a0For one thing, it\u2019s a very dark book with some very bad people for bad guys\u2014people who have been kidnapping, brutalizing, and murdering young women. I don\u2019t believe I liked that story even when I was writing it, and yet I felt compelled to tell it. \u00a0And then, some time after the book came out, a young woman from Canada wrote to me asking if I knew her. \u00a0I told her I did not. \u00a0She wrote back to say that when she read Day of the Dead, she thought I was writing about what had happened to her and several other young women somewhere in Canada. \u00a0I\u2019ve now seen that story featured on 48 Hours, I believe, but at the time I wrote the book, I hadn\u2019t seen it, but here\u2019s what\u2019s important. She told me that when she read the book, she was glad the bad guys got caught\u2014that reading the book helped her recover from what happened to her. \u00a0So although I didn\u2019t much like the book then and still don\u2019t, my writing it clearly helped her.<\/p>\n
And a book that helped me recover from tragedy was one called Damage Control. \u00a0In that one, Joanna loses one of her deputies in an officer-involved shooting. \u00a0The fallen officer memorials featured in that book were drawn from my experience when my younger brother, Jim, a Bisbee area firefighter, died at age fifty of an undiagnosed heart ailment. \u00a0The whole town turned out to honor him. \u00a0His funeral service was held in the high school auditorium. \u00a0The facility holds 800 people, and it was full to the brim. \u00a0When the first cars in the funeral cortege arrived at Evergreen Cemetery, there were still cars leaving the high school parking lot more than a mile away. \u00a0As for the old couple in that book who have their \u201cforenoon coffee\u201d picnic and then go sailing off a cliff in a truly \u201cThelma and Louise\u201d exit? That was the exit my parents wanted and one that my father\u2019s stroke denied them. \u00a0So writing that book was, for me, a writer\u2019s way of honoring my lost loved ones and a writer\u2019s way of grieving for them. \u00a0If you look at the dedication in that book, you\u2019ll see it says: \u00a0For Jim. \u00a0Enough said.<\/p>\n
So if the author can have favorites and non favorites, it\u2019s hardly surprising that my readers have books they like better than others. Hey, we\u2019re all entitled to our opinions, right?<\/p>\n
One of my recent works that has gotten a lot of reader pushback is a novella called Random Acts. \u00a0In it, Joanna Brady\u2019s mother and stepfather, Eleanor and George, fall victim to a freeway shooter. \u00a0People wrote to me complaining about that story. \u00a0\u201cWhy did George and Eleanor have to die?\u201d they asked me, and I didn\u2019t have a good answer for them other than to say, \u201cIt was the story I needed to write at the time.\u201d \u00a0After spending years being the one who delivered next of kin notifications, Joanna is suddenly put in the terrible position of being on the receiving end of one of those. And in the following books, Downfall and the upcoming Field of Bones, Joanna is still dealing with the unexpected loss of her loved ones and trying to come to grips with her new role as the \u201cgrown up in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n
But then, this week, I heard from someone who, I believe, is the reason for Random Acts\u2019s bit of divine inspiration. \u00a0A woman wrote to tell me that months before she read Random Acts, her parents\u2014\u201cher best friends\u201d\u2014both perished in a motel fire while on vacation. She told me that, while she was still dealing with the shock of losing them, she read Random Acts and discovered the she wasn\u2019t alone\u2014that she had a friend named Joanna Brady who was walking through the same kind of experience.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m out on the road, doing events, I always talk about my book of poetry, After the Fire,\u2014another favorite, by the way. \u00a0ATF, my autobiography in poetry and prose, tells the story of my marriage to a man I loved but who died of chronic alcoholism at age 42, a year and a half after I divorced him. \u00a0It\u2019s a story of love and loss and eventual survival. During the signings after events, almost always at least one person will appear at the signing table to tell me, with tears in his or her eyes, that my story was his or her story as well. Even though other people in the room might have heard the story before, there was that one person who needed to hear it that time out.<\/p>\n
And so, Vicki, even though I didn\u2019t know you at the time I was writing Random Acts, that novella was clearly meant for you. \u00a0You were the one person on the planet who needed that story. \u00a0I\u2019m so sorry for your terrible loss, but I\u2019m glad Joanna\u2019s suffering a similar loss spoke to you and helped you find a way to go on.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the amazing thing about being a writer. \u00a0At the time I\u2019m telling the story, I have no idea how what I\u2019m writing will resonate with or affect one of my readers, but I\u2019m glad it happens. \u00a0And when people tell me about those things? \u00a0It\u2019s what Bill likes to refer to as my \u201cpsychological income.\u201d<\/p>\n
The truth is, that psychological income is part of what makes my life as a storyteller incredibly rewarding.<\/p>\n
Thank you, for that Vicki.<\/p>\n
As for writing books with \u201cno redeeming value?\u201d \u00a0Maybe it ain\u2019t necessarily so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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