A Trip to Philly to celebrate stories in a vending machine and do my first reading

UPDATE: Many of you asked how to purchase these stories. They are now available here for $3 (shipping included.)

I spent last evening in Philadelphia, dreaming words on the train, sitting on the benches in Rittenhouse Square, looking up, in the wet dark, at the twinkling Christmas lights. Then, I walked down a blue lit path on 22nd street and went to the Science Leadership Academy. It's a school I've heard about and wondered about. I've seen the TED Talks and articles and the PBS stories about the work this school is doing and how it is inspiring others to relook at their own models of education and follow suit. 

I was there for the launch party of the 4th Floor Chapbook series, an awesome publishing venture from the Head and the Hand Press in collaboration with SLA's students and staff. See that vending machine in the photo? It's selling chapbooks. Snackable stories. My story, The Song Inside, sits alongside some amazing work and it was so cool to be a part of it. 

I wore flowered tights and, you guys, I did my first reading in front of a live audience over the age of six -- feeling very grateful for my friend Tracy, who used to make me read my work aloud in her living room, but only after giving me liquid courage in the form of wine. Don't worry, I was completely sober for this experience, unless you count the delicious potato chips I had beforehand. 

I was able to talk with Nic Esposito, who founded the Head and the Hand Press and told me stories of his son and his urban farm, which he wrote about in his collection of essays, Kensington Homestead. Linda Gallant, who might be the nicest person ever and it's clear, took great care with our stories. The author Jennifer Hubbard, who read from her fantastic story In Memory of Lester, and advised me where to get middle-eastern food. And Robert Marx, a senior at SLA, who is waiting for his college acceptances, no doubt to do great things wherever he ends up. He blew me away with his story, Fade to Black, which I read on the train ride home. 

It meant a lot to me, to share my work in such a unique venue. My story sits next to great talent. To pop in a few dollars and watch books fall through the machine was a great thrill. If you can't make it to the school itself, I hope to be able to point you toward the place to purchase these stories in a few weeks. 

Thank you to Beth Kephart, who told me about this series. If you haven't noticed, she pretty much points me toward everything awesome.

Now, I must return to my regular scheduled programming in our Brooklyn apartment. Little O has found the recycling bin, its contents are in a pile at my feet as I write, and I think he just tried to bite into a metal can.

Thoughts on Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent by Beth Kephart

I always wait impatiently for my friend Beth Kephart's books. I'm lucky they appear on the shelves often. I'm never disappointed when I crack open their spines.  I read her latest, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, quickly and quietly because I don't like fits and chokes and starts when I read a Kephart book. I prefer to chug it in its entirety. Then sit happy and full.

That is what I love, love, love about this book.  The fullness and richness of this writhing adventure. Each sentence swells with the endurance of characters that are, in many ways, running on empty, past empty, but with their hearts bursting full at their worn seams.

Fourteen year old William Quinn is a finder and fixer despite a life of tremendous loss (his father in jail, his brother, Francis, murdered, his mother slowly disappearing from a broken heart.) His best friend, Career, still stomps across the dust with a ripped sack jacket and a 'too-big-for-him' vest while he doggedly pursues even bigger dreams.  His mother, struggling every day to cope, still manages to rise from bed and stitch that sleeve. And I haven't even got into blowzy Pearl and her boisterous kindness or the amazing, persistent, stubborn Molly whose yellow bow, against all odds, still clings to her hair. Even the empty promise of the magical sarsaparilla (it's just root beer) doesn't stop them (or me) from believing, hoping, knowing, that their strength is resolute.

I'm not smart enough to really know the time period (1871) or the place (Bush Hill, Philadelphia) but I'm lucky Beth fills the pages with the sound and spirit of the time so I can come to understand it (a most gorgeous review that goes into that here.) And, in collaboration with her husband, artist William Sulit, the beautiful illustrations reveal the scratch and charcoal and steam of those words.  

This winter, in freezing cold, I did visit the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where parts of the novel take place. As a symbol of atonement and redemption, the former prison (known as Cherry Hill) seems to stand at the center of the book, and the characters make their amazing rescues and deliverances around its imposing walls.

I'd pull every sentence from the book if I could, such is the care Beth puts into each one. But I'll just excerpt one of my favorite moments:

William leans against the streetlamp, corner of Broad and Pennsylvania, the light an apron of yellow around his old, broke boots. Two brown moths lap at his head, fuzzy creatures with gigantic wings that make him think of the night he and Francis and Ma sat within the spectacle of the Phasmatrope. She'd caught her breath as soon as the first projected waltz had begun, and by the time the tumblers started galvanizing and leaping across the screen, Ma was pulled to the edge of her seat, her sons on either side each holding one hand. Ma's fingers were white from the laundry bleach. Her nails were short and square. It was her gold ring that shone like a star that night, an infinity band. William remembers remembering Pa and what Pa'd been through and what he'd done and lost, and how the bearing of him had changed, but never his outright love for Ma.  

I love this moment for the wide-eyed, knowing, perhaps misunderstood kindness that brought them to the Phasmatrope, William's memory of it, and the enduring love behind it, always at the center of Beth Kephart's beautiful books. If I must wait for the next one at least I always, always, wait happy and full.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

I love these pale winter petals, brushed by the light of burning lamps on the streets of Society Hill in Philadelphia (where I ran off to, briefly, just the other day.) 

Does anyone know these flowers?  How do they dry and stay through winter? 

Guest Post: Let Setting Emerge From Character

The lovely and talented Laurel Garver is taking over the blog today!   She's going to talk about one of my favorite topics, setting, and how she worked with it in her novel Never Gone.  

Setting is a key element of my novel, Never Gone, about a teen who is grieving the death of her British father, and must somehow build a life with her workaholic American mother. Danielle’s trip from the US to England becomes a catalyst for her to get to the bottom of family secrets. Setting also undergirds the story flow, as one of my reviewers on Amazon picked up: "From the sky-scrapers of New York, to the hills of England, Garver brings you on a lyrical journey that rolls with highs and lows, full of valleys of tenderness."

Thanks, Melissa, for the opportunity to talk about how I chose some of my settings and used a mix of research and imagination to bring them to the page.

The opening of Never Gone is set in New York City. Why not Philadelphia, since you live there?

My story decisions usually develop out of the characters, rather than the other way around. As I got to know my protagonist Dani’s parents, Graham and Grace, it became clear that no other place would work for them. Grace is a driven advertising executive who would never settle for working outside Madison Avenue. Making a living as a professional photographer—which is Graham’s career—requires proximity to the most potential purchasers of this kind of service, like ad agencies.
Honestly, though, New York City is only two hours away, and we have friends there who’ve been a great help answering my questions about family life in the city. I did five trips (combined with family fun) to chose Dani’s neighborhoods and gather sensory details.

How much are your New York locations real, and how much a fabrication?

Dani’s homes in Park Slope Brooklyn and the Upper West Side are based on real buildings. I was able to find real estate listings for her UWS high rise, including floor plans, which I adapted slightly.
Dani’s school Rexford Academy is a fabrication based roughly on a private school on 91st, though I place it in the West 70s. Her church is riff on All Angels in the Upper West Side, mixed with several Anglican/Episcopal churches I’ve visited in the US and Britain.

I think it’s important to make your fabrications realistic by drawing details from real places.

A majority Never Gone takes place in a rural English village, Ashmede. How did you choose the location? How real are your British settings?

I wanted the time that Dani spent in her late father’s hometown to challenge her strong identification with him. The setting had to be a big contrast from her very American, very urban home, so her dad is not only foreign, but rural.

I’d originally planned to set the story in the Cotswolds in the southwest near Wales, where I lived for a semester in college. But while I was researching and drafting, friends invited us to visit them in Durham, which is up north. When I discovered that folks from northern Britain face deep prejudice in the south, it made Graham’s back story even more compelling. He’d have a hard time breaking into photography in London because of his accent, and would more easily find work in the US. Americans don’t understand or really even hear regional differences among British dialects.

So that visit turned into a major research trip. I invented Ashmede (a popular name for streets, but no village bears it) from places I visited then, and a North Yorkshire village I stayed in during spring break as a student. Durham Cathedral, a real location I fell in love with on my research trip, is the backdrop for several chapters. I also set a chapter at Kings Cross Station, where all the northbound trains leave London. It worked nicely on a couple of levels, including Dani’s love of Harry Potter.

What advice would you give other writers about setting?

Remember that where you come from shapes who you are. Start with your character and do your best to follow logically where such a person would come from and where he or she would naturally chose to go from there.

Second, there is no substitute for real, on-the-ground research. Even if you choose to invent a town like I did, you need authentic details from that geographic area. What is the weather like? What unique topographical features (mountains, forests, deserts, etc.) affect daily life? What is local cuisine and how does it taste? How does the area typically smell and sound? Is the culture informal and inviting or uptight and suspicious? What do the locals do for fun? What slang expressions are typical? You can’t get any of that information from Google street view.
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Laurel Garver is the author of the Never Gone, a young adult novel about a grieving teen who believes her dead father has returned as a ghost to help her reconcile with her estranged mother.

Add it on Goodreads. It is available at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, CreateSpace.