 Are we live? Oh, all right Hey, dog. Yeah, nice to see you here. Hey, never follow fool's fury. It's a tough guy. I learned it's a tough gig So thank you to Ben and the company. This is really really fun for me And and the work that I've done with them has not only been really fun But it's something that really kept me going when the novel wasn't going quite so well We worked on monster in the dark together and that It made writing fun again It was a blast to work with the actors and that's a whole lot different from sitting in your room alone watching words not come up on the screen and So yeah, I think I think monster really helped the book get finished So we talk about your novel not going so well. Oh, we can start there. We sure Hey, thanks to the library and to Litquake and everyone who came out on this rainy night It's a wonderful event and dug to have you out here as a dream when they proposed you coming to town I was like, I got to be that person to make it happen. I just remember You know the times when you were working on this book and we were both in the Stegner workshop together and So many memories what one was When you'd hurt your back and you couldn't sit in the chair when we do workshops and you had to lay on the floor It was like there was a ghost in the room Tobias Wolfe would lead the workshop and he'd be like, what do you all think of the opening of Melinda story? We hear the strange voice Think it should be third person. It was dug under the table So, I mean we've we've shared it all since the beginning And it's it's great to kind of have read this book as a novel in progress many years ago To have read it with glee when I was going to be published and to read it with The curious all the readers in mind as well One thing I was curious about was just coma the why coma question and I drive down the 280 and you see the fields of glowing Headstones and the big jets coming up out of SFO and I'm driving down to Stanford to teach and there's that one flag That's always at half-mast and I'm like, do they lower it raise it and lower it Or do they just leave it there? Perpetual morning flag You know what what made you think that that this was a place you'd want to reside as an artist for a novel I The the germ of the novel came came to me actually while I was in grad school in Iowa and I while I was in Iowa I read in a newspaper that a kid had been tied up tied to a tree and left for dead in a cemetery overnight on a night when it went well below freezing and the senselessness and and banality of The sort of actions that would create that that would put him there really really struck me And I knew that was something I wanted to work with in fiction And I tried to write it as a short story Which considering that the first draft of the novel came in at about 900 pages Was probably a doomed venture and I didn't get very far with it and I moved back out here and finally dug that story out of a desk drawer and Right about the same time the Chronicle ran a feature piece on Colma. I think it was Halloween They were doing a you know spooky feature, right and and I had never I had lived in the Bay Area Bay Area for a long time And had never known anything about Colma. I knew it was that place with gravestones along 280 But that's about it. I knew it was that Bart stop that sometimes is there and sometimes isn't and And the more and so I read this piece and I said oh wow this this is where that cemetery story should get told and in and I knew immediately that was a much better choice because This was home the Bay Area it made a lot more sense for me to be writing about a place I knew then about Iowa City where I was just passing through and And at the same time I also found out that I had a friend who was a cop in Broadmoor Daily City and And so all of those different elements just kind of came together and I figured well Let me see where this goes Feels like you haunted that place like you drank at every bar and walked through every cemetery How did you research? I mean did you go kind of exist there? a little I'm I'm there are some writers who will go and like take up residence in a place and get to know Everybody and research intensely, and I'm really far too shy for that And there's no doubt I would have gotten better material But I'm not the kind of person that that does that easily, but I did go hung out at Malloy's and had some beers and research and Talking to people generally go better when there's a little bit of beer involved for me and Yeah, I walked around through the cemeteries I got to do a ride-along with the colma cops one night. Please please Let's share a little. Oh, yeah, it was a big ride-along. It's pivotal in the book when that's true He comes into being nothing in the ride-along section of the book actually happened on my ride-along They did not take me out and try to scare me with the big stuffed panther But but there is a thing much like that that they do scare the rookies with really yeah But yeah, we did we did some Traffic stops and you pull over somebody and they're on probation subject to search and you they search the car And then there's a crack pipe in the back seat or You know there's it's the same stuff that that cops in other towns all down the peninsula in the city They're all dealing with the same stuff. We're writing down cop talk Stuff like that. I was trying to be subtle about it. I was trying to just remember it Did you have a bull professed on I did not they just made me sign something that said if I got whacked it It was my own fault. I Did I did a ride-along in Phoenix one time researching a short story when I had a character was a cop as well and I think the cops saw me. They're like big white guy with a buzzed head. He's one of us Because I rode with two white guys with buzzed hair and they were like I was in the back seat And they'd be like guys tail light looks out. Don't you think? You know, and it was just like a whole night of violating people's civil rights Shockings and I wondered if I had had hair and looked a little differently if I would have got that I I didn't see any I'm actually trained as a lawyer and I would think I would be like ready to hop on any So we're gonna get to that. Okay What I mean is the mayor of Colma here anyone on the Colma City Council We can speak freely any Feedback, I mean did they give you the key to the city have the cops read this book? I mean, I think I think a couple of them have I got a nice letter from the chief of police And I believe from one of the sergeants and from the city manager So yeah, some of them have read it and I'm really glad that it I Can you never know what to expect especially since the cops in the book are incredibly foul-mouthed they they do make mistakes they you know, they're they're not always behaving impeccably and But it's nice to know or at least my sense is that people, you know, we're able to recognize it as fiction Because really what what I saw was I mean, it's boring to say this But what I saw was complete professionalism And maybe if I'd been bigger and more buzz-cut I would have seen a little more. I was chewing tobacco and smoking a cigar. Yeah It was interesting to hear that you'd begun the book in Iowa because one thing I hear time and time again from From the crew of riders that we know is that people tend to not write about the place that they're in but that the place that they Were in last, you know, that somehow it lives larger in their minds and that when we leave a place I think there's a filter and all the mundanity falls away You just remember the interesting things and there's a kind of nostalgia develops and you start to I don't know psychically be there and So it sounds like a really interesting feat to have written a novel about a place that you're living in Except I did have that experience when I moved to Texas I mean I wrote the almost the the first two full drafts of the book while in San Francisco and I moved to Austin in 2005 and And the entire third draft was while I was in Austin and I very much had that experience of using the book to connect back to San Francisco and and it I think it made things easier definitely Not just because I think that filter was working. I mean, I think that definitely happened and also I Didn't really have the luxury of losing myself in research I couldn't you know take a day to go down to Colman scope out locations I Was living in Texas. I had a deadline. I had to just make it up and move on and that was probably something I needed to be able to do so It was freeing I suppose as well to be away from it One thing that you know, it's a historical novel in the contemporary novel at the same time, which is quite a rare bird I thought and You know, I read maybe in this amazing brochure Like this before I also read the discussion questions. I didn't know the answers to any of them. I was like What is the route? Um But I think I read that 10,000 people came to like the Emperor's funeral, you know, and I kind of wondered You know, is the San Francisco of past a more fascinating place? Well, they're more interesting characters than or now Did you come up with a conclusion? Yeah, I got it. I'll figure it out 10,000 people go to anyone's funeral Anyone's the mayor's anyone's little on a whole yeah I mean for Norton the The procession was several miles long. I think as they were going up to Lone Mountain Laurel Hill, I guess is is where he was and Yeah, I do think it was more interesting then I mean I'm sure just all of history feels that way because it's in black and white if it's in, you know Photographs at all my wife and I were just up in North Beach yesterday. They had a bunch of shots on the wall just of Guys in the 30s and 40s, you know those those eras where everybody wore hats and So I have this theory that everything stopped being interesting when people stopped wearing hats That somehow hats are are at the core Anyway, it's a work in progress this story But No, there is something about about the past in general and in particular San Francisco's past It's just so colorful And it would be fun to be a part of it wouldn't it be great. Yeah 1880s. It's a wild time You got things like You know the young the younger Spreckles boy Soon to become the the sugar trillionaire when his father left him the company goes down to the offices of the Chronicle because Michael D. Young the Chronicle editor has written an article suggesting that Spreckles is sugar companies engaging in fraud. Well, mr. Spreckles 27 years old Walks into the Chronicle offices pulls out his gun and puts about five bullets in Michael D. Young Right and he's subdued by other Chronicle staffers. I mean, it's just like this incredibly cinematic moment that The newspaper articles of the time captured. Yeah, that was San Francisco in the 1880s now We have comments on SF gates It's not as dramatic No, I remember there was one day we were you and I were walking down Hates Street and You were you were well in your book. You were probably at least three years into it and Three of eight. Yeah We're you were at least three years into it and you we're walking on Hates when you look at Adam Adam I've got it. I've got it The ghosts are gonna talk I remember thinking oh Doug the painkillers you've got to get off the painkillers is what I was thinking But it turned out to like add a dimension to the book that was so amazing It really seems to start off as Mike's book and I can tell you that was where the seed was and you began it that way When did you include multiple perspectives? When you decide to open it up to everything? It was after a couple of years of working on it. I think and I just I Don't know that I really approached it you know very intellectually or I Think I just had the sense that there were more stories that I wanted to tell I wanted to be able to go with Toronto and see what he was going through in his relationship I wanted to be able to spend some time with Fiona apart from Mercer Especially because who she was with Mercer. I mean, they're both a little broken when they're together for a lot of the book So I did I did want to see what she would do on her own And I and I thought well, and then there's Jude Jude's got his own narrative. He's a 16 year old kid trying to figure out who he is And I thought well, I'm going to trust that the novel is big enough to hold all of these Because yeah, my intent had been to write a really like simple streamlined Mercer Centric book it just it didn't work out that way and then dead people started coming in and it all just It went nuts At 900 pages dog. Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking I I got into not well the fun of working with the dead is I got to work with history do the research Invent emotional lives for these people And I also got to invent the rules of this world, you know, why are they walking around there? When do they leave? Why do they leave? And then on top I think I got so caught up in that then I started creating more and more of that world I I created their economic system. I created like a gang rivalry for pruno distribution, right? I mean a massive socialist uprising of dead root miners. I mean it All which I think I still think is kind of cool, but it God bless anyone who'd read that book. I mean it DVD notes. That's what they'll be Well, it would be nice, but it's that kind of obsession That it takes to make a novel eight years eight years of non-stop And psychological immersion in the lives of others until they become real people and I just know myself as a writer You know, it's a strange relationship. It's part like having a child. It's part like Melting yourself with another in an intimate relationship and then of course it ends in the same way that parenthood and marriage don't You kind of move on to other things. I don't think there's a relationship quite like it But I will say that when I was writing my book and this was before I had kids I had never really kind of been obsessed with death before until I got deep into my novel and then I started to think daily about death and You know, I called a friend and I was like buddy if I get hit by a bus Here's the here is the Password to my gmail account where I save a copy of my novel every day and you must finish you must swear to me in writing that you'll finish it And Neil was like buddy. Are you pain killers? Are you on painkillers and he he agreed and I I never thought about dying until I wrote a novel and I could feel the contemplation of death constantly in this book and I I thought about it a lot too and in fact, I was just paralyzed with fear that I'd get hit by a bus and And they would you know, this book was sold long before it was written and I was afraid that you know, oh my god The editor of the publisher they're gonna want to go into my computer and see what I've actually produced And they'll realize I was a complete fraud and that will be my legacy. I'm dead and a fraud So it was kind of a relief to get it done because now if I die, well, hey, there's The book If only you'd had a friend to warn you not to sell a book before you write it. Yes, if only When we were Stegner fellows together Adam On his first book tour had met a writer named Tony early who's someone whose short stories that I've love very much and Adam was telling me That Tony early had gone through this He'd sold a novel that wasn't written and he went through seven years of just agony stained glass Oh, really? Yeah, he did stained glass for five years. He said Because of the terror of having sold a book without written it right and Adam said Doug Advice never sell a book that isn't written. I said, oh, that's that's Swell advice Adam and then then my agent said, okay, we've got a buyer for the book and I was like right on I'd never say I told you And I was aware of it. I was like, I'm gonna work on this. I'm gonna work through it I'm gonna show Adam that it can be done and and I remember I think you told me it was seven years for early Yes, and then when you're seven of this novel rolled around. I was like, oh my god. It's worse for me. I Did worse So anyway, don't ever sell a book that isn't written, please I just I don't take directions. Well, I Got another question for you Doug. One of the interesting things about the book is these police forms Memoranda one of the assignments I have for my students is to you know, write through official discourse, you know, and It's a kind of writing in which you're not supposed to let anything personal into it Whether it's an office memo or a police report And yet of course it always does it's an exercise and withholding and our mutual friend Dana Roscoe It's kind of done a couple famous examples of this To a wonderful effect, but think about you as a lawyer a being a deeply creative deeply feeling artist in The realm of law school and completing law school And I kind of wonder if that tension between Wanting to create but having to write in a certain way Hasn't come out of the book in some way. He's speak to what it was like to be a writer in law school Actually, I wasn't a writer in law school. I got to law school and shut down completely creatively It was really I mean in part because it's a lot of work, but also I just I didn't have that side of my brain Working and It was and in fact, I don't think I've ever been able to harmonize those two Those two sides I actually did practice law for a year and I left it to take the Stegner Fellowship and I think the first two months of the fellowship I couldn't write anything because I was still in this very sort of linear analytical world And I couldn't do the associative kind of thinking that I needed to do it. It had atrophied a little So it's it's not really easy for me to move between those worlds But it was a lot of fun to get into it in those police reports And my friend the cop was really he was really into writing And he really prided himself on being able to write a damn good incident report Yeah, and and you know and the whole point was like simple declarative sentences, you know, and It's an interesting way of seeing the world. It's an interesting way of trying to render action in a book And it was a tricky question sometimes like there I had to decide Okay, do I want to do this scene in a police report or do I want to do it in more traditional narration? You certainly get a more vivid experience with the traditional narration But there was something about working in that form that felt right, but there's definitely a cost So and I don't know that I would make every decision the same way if I were Spending another eight years on the book. There's much that I would change about my novel as well But you know character management is such a difficult thing, you know, I don't want to get too kind of technical but you know what I would Write a scene in my novel and there were six or seven characters on stage You had to keep the reader aware that they were all there and someone would have to pipe up And oh, it's my turn to say something or you forgot about me or give everyone like ridiculous juggling actions to do And I'm like, oh, I would like do anything to get a couple off stage. Hey, we're gonna go on a beer run I'm like, I got rid of three And of course obligatory scenes a big wedding scene is always Hard to do because they're cliched or things that readers have seen before and you had this giant showdown at the end of this book But telling it through the police reports Saved you 50 pages at least it did and actually I had in fact tried it in the traditional That that was part of the 900 in in the first iteration of the book Yeah, so overwhelming it's really hard Any sort of choreographing physical movement and action it can really bog a book down if you're not really on it Not doing it really really crisply and clearly So in a way doing it in the police report But you know, I have the little critical voice that says I punked out a little by doing it that way instead of really committing to the full narration But I also think you know It's a form that I was using and it made sense for the form, you know This this form of the incident report to occupy some significant place When the events of the book were coming together. I Think you were wise. I mean you did write it all out and your little voice said no not that way At the end of my book, I was like I have one character too many and I went on this I exercised a character called big daddy What was I thinking? I made the three quarters of the book and I had to go through and embrace Every single trace of him. You just don't you know search or replace big daddy But I felt so relieved But I got rid of that character. I was a little lighter Do you make any big changes at the end any big terror moves? Not not at the very end the big decisions at the very end were I Mean actually it was all about what's gonna happen to Jude I felt like there were several different options with him and I've actually since found an entry in one of my notebooks that Had an idea for what I think is a better ending and My eureka moment in discovering it was only about two years too late But that's okay. You know I like what's there The there was a big decision about 300 pages in I had been writing the book in past tense and That little voice started talking And I had I had been reading a book by Stuart Onan called the night country Which is has this real dark spooky kind of vibe to it And it was in present tense and I looked at it. I said, oh, that's the vibe that I want and And I the verb tense is a big part of establishing this feel I was like, okay, do I go back and again, it's not just search and replace the verbs You know got to reconstruct the whole thing so, you know Do I go back and do 300 pages of rewriting and I said I I guess I have to I wasn't happy about it I knew that like I was committing the next six months of my life to redoing stuff that I had just done But it felt right One thing I think you were blessed with is having a real old school editor in Sean McDonald at Riverhead. He's not old But he has a belief system of how a book should Be fostered through fostering a young artist and he's stuck by your side a year after year even after changing houses Which is unheard of it's really really rare my editor Had been with double-day double days who originally bought the book and he went over to Riverhead And he took the book with him and we know many many people who've written Fantastic books that you know the editor for their own personal reasons has made this career move and the book is orphaned at the old publishing house and You know sure some editor gets assigned to pick it up and work with it, but they've got no investment in it They don't love it in the way that the other editor did and so the book gets lost when it comes out You know, there's no juice behind it I'm extremely lucky that that Sean stuck with me and and he you know He really gave me the space He would every now and then you know apply a little pressure for some progress here or here But I think I needed I needed that room Because I don't think the characters really started making sense to me until year five or six which probably sounds insane But but yeah, there were still important discoveries to be made then and honestly if I'd not taken all eight years I don't think the book would have been any good at all. I think when you're making real people out of whole cloth That's what it takes and it's easy to kind of inherit or borrow or steal or pastiche Characters that readers have seen out there in the world, but if you're gonna create someone They should be like real friends, and I think a real good friend You're still getting to know after a couple years and they can still surprise you and they'll say that one thing about their past You didn't know and there it is and And there's even some left on the table that you're probably still coming to a Saw on this Scene I saw in this and I'm not gonna ask you what the root is But there's your playlist. Oh, yeah This is about you know music you listen to music when you write. Yes, I often do I mean sometimes it's it's the last thing that I should be doing sometimes. I need absolute silence, but Yeah, I put this playlist together for a website It's largeheartedboy.com and they ask writers to write about music and musicians to write about books and Some people do it as a you know a soundtrack for their books kind of scene by scene what the ambient music would be like For me it was okay here are the songs that I do this crazy OCD thing sometimes where I put a one song on infinite repeat. Yeah, I have it up really really loud and I generally do this when the words aren't coming and I'm a little angry with myself and it's a way of like forcing words onto the screen and just and Trying to write with fury when writing with calm isn't working like that So so this this playlist it contains it's all songs that were part of the infinite repeat roster I guess over the eight years of the book and some of them are very sort of mellow and haunting but some are kind of punky and attitude filled and Yeah, there were a lot of nights were like I'm at the coffee shop at four in the morning My wife is home asleep. I've got four classes to teach the next day. Nothing's coming out. I Just was so sleep deprived. I drove the car into the house And you know a little a little bit of punked-up music was was just the thing How did you make it out of this book? I don't know. I'm not gonna write another one. Are you? Don't do it. It's crazy Well, I would like to think I know a little more about if not how to do it I'm some thinking that you have to relearn with every book how that book wants to be written But I think I at least have gotten to know myself a little better such that I can avoid I can get myself out of the pits more easily as opposed to just falling into them for weeks or months at a time Yeah, no that's off, huh? I do I've never listened to music before when I write but as you know, I'm writing this book set in North Korea and I will listen to music sometimes if it's another language it doesn't distract me if it's Portuguese or Spanish and On the DPRK central website. They have all this propaganda music Glorifying Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, of course, you know you could download the MP3s for free and I do have these like huge playlist of big brassy propaganda music In honor of Kim Jong-il Sometimes I'll sit in the library for like 10 hours listening to that and you don't want to talk to me afterwards really And does I mean does it do you do you find that it has influenced the prose that comes out that you sort of get that? I don't know if I can identify the the scene Scenes that I listen to that music or not, but it's gonna turn into now that I have three kids I've turned into a person who can't write in my house and I write in the public libraries and UCSF is close to me. I use that one Sometimes the park branch is my branch Coal Valley Sometimes the mechanics institutes and I see a library downtown But there's often lots of noise and stuff. So I'll listen to things going on and I Guess I you I do get into a strange North Korean trance when I put on that music and you know, it's weird you look on your iTunes And it's like that one song has been played 247 times You're like my god I've just been through like a grade school year of North Korea really in terms of indoctrination I'm gonna go crazy. It's kind of crazy what I mean you're four and a half. Yeah four and a half is nothing Yeah, I scoff at your four and a half Now you you know when I Know you're working on short stories right now. There's such different animals. It's so difficult to go from one to the other and You know, I don't remember the famous writer who said, you know, never write short stories because you waste all your good beginnings and endings, you know What's it like to make the transition back to the short form? It's I think it was a little trickier than I had thought it was gonna be I think I had this sense that That it would be That I'd be so relieved to be finished with the novel and finished with that form that I would just fall right into it and I had like notebooks full of story ideas and I I had a I've had a hard time actually getting Back into that into that mode what helped a lot is that I went and re-edited some older stories that are going to be in the collection. I wanted to make sure that You know that they stood up that they didn't feel dated and that they didn't feel too juvenile You know that it was still my language my voice the writer that I am now You know try to harmonize that with the story being from a certain time So that helped, you know that that's those are that's training wheels kind of work Getting into the stories and working with them again And yeah, it's just going one by one It's I Think now I'm at the point where it is easier to think of it as You know, it's a shorter it's a much shorter commitment it's It's a finite little project one year So yeah, I'm having fun with it. I actually started the second novel over the summer and I'm looking forward to getting back to it. It's it's a little on the back burner right now, but I Think it'll be fun to work in that expansive realm again, you know where you can have characters like Glenn You know making jokes about lifting from your knees and like you can't do that in a short story Glenn can't occupy a page in a short story But but in a novel you have that kind of freedom And that's a really fun way to write when you can just you know find everything that might be there and throw it in And see what sticks so you're writing short stories and a novel at the same time Yeah, yeah, but I mean the novels It's it's ongoing But a little less active than it might be But that's that was one of the things that working on the play helped me with I realized I'm much better when I'm sort of moving from project to project and actually forcing myself to to To try to be that nimble Instead of just getting lost in the big monolithic commitment I know you've been blessed to have some great great mentors, you know Stanford and I went at Stanford again. Are you you have students under your wing now? Do you have some students you're passing things on to I do I? Got to work with some fantastic students at through Stanford continuing studies One of whom is in the audience now as a Stegner fellow himself I would like to say that I recognized his talent earlier than anybody It might be a lie, but I'm gonna say it anyway His stuff was really good And I've got some students from CCA the master's program who are still writing You know really trying trying to make it and the undergrads that I'm working with now At St. St. Edward's University. It's a little university. I You know and I assumed that I had gotten spoiled at Stanford that I wouldn't see you know really quality student work and They've really blown me away There are some kids there who are really really into it, and they've got the chops They are far ahead of where I was as an undergrad. It's almost a bit frightening But I try to hold back the fear and and and dispense wisdom I know them. I know my Stanford students are so sophisticated. They're so aware. They've read they're cultured You know and with them I always found that subtlety You know was the paragon of writing and anytime you were obvious that was the greatest sin And they always write these beautiful well-crafted stories. We didn't know what happened But you know I taught at Louisiana for a couple years and You know my students there You know My god, they would write stories, you know, I'd ask the student like hey, how come he didn't come to class? He's like well, you know my dad had his parole hearing, but our bass boat blew up on the way and You know my crossbow went off and I got to deal with that, you know, and so it's something about You know students in Texas, Louisiana other places well Doug I just want to say You know, I hope we haven't scared people by talking about eight years and things like this to make a book For people who are writers out there and working on their own But it seems to me there are writers who don't write from themselves who research who like I'm gonna write about you know Submarines and Antarctica and they go research stuff and they do it and then there were writers who write from deep personal experience From the chronic aches and yearnings that they have across a lifetime Who are trying to make people and have fully realized? Relationships with them and that takes a kind of time though The people can't often understand and you're one of those writers who are kind of deeply deeply curious about the human experience and are trying to portray it in a wholly new and original way and That's why your books so fabulous Can we take some questions from the audience? Who where's someone's got the mic is it on it is Thank you for writing that book I thought you took on so much, but you pulled it off Thank you, and I'm here with my book club members and we we always do one city one book So this was a great pick. All right. Thank you I just had a comment and then I got to ask about rain up at first the comment You brought it up about you know the end of the book toward the end of the book and resolving the Dead conflict and the officer That was a huge relief for me I didn't find that to be a shortcut Because when I saw you got the reader in such a frenzy things are going wild at this point But then like oh my god. He's alive. Thank God. That was the first reaction. I had if he wrote the report He lived so thank you. I didn't have to suffer, you know It was hard and frenzy so I like that it was easier on me Raina I was that was the only thing I felt like you know, you should write me into the book So I can slap her personally because I really Found I was one thing I thought well, maybe he's gonna do another book and it's gonna be all about her So what I'm she's an interesting character if you could tell us a little bit more about creating her Yeah, she was So Raina is the the girl that that Jude is head over heels in love with in that 16 year old way and You know and she's young too. She she's still you know She recognizes the power that she has over him and that's you know I think a pretty big realization and she's someone who I Mean it was I didn't want anybody to be purely evil or Sociopathic in the book But she does make some decisions that are pretty disturbing and pretty cold But what I was trying to do with her was actually I wanted to to make it possible for for someone to have some empathy for her or at least to understand why she was doing what she did and You know a lot of you know where she ends up and you know I don't want to give it away, but They've all read the book don't not all oh really be not all But just in case That you know, I think it's something that she she can't deal with she doesn't have the wherewithal to deal with what she really needs to deal with in order to be a sort of Moral adult I Liked writing her. I mean I I don't know I certainly wouldn't take her out to dinner And I certainly wouldn't you know trust her to look after my cats But I you know I did want to get into her story and and sort of show what that push and pull with Jude was And as for her actions at the end of the book a Little reprehensible. Yes But I also understood them You know I understood why she would behave that way. Sorry. There's kind of a long rambly answer Did the club figure out the root The root that's what that's what we had some discussions about turning the book into a TV series and all the Hollywood people were like Okay, the root. How does the root work? It's it's really really just like blunt and and direct and I'm like, well, it's kind of the you know And Hollywood metaphor. Yeah, Hollywood has no use for that. They're like give me an answer and The root was a contrivance I needed a way to account for the fact that not everyone who was ever buried in coma was there because that would get kind of crowded and And I thought well, you know what? I'm gonna have my dead people make the choice every day to remain You know alive and walking around they've got to have a reason to keep doing this and some of them many of them We'll get to the point where it's just not worth it anymore. And the root is a sort of final exit Device for them. I don't know what plant it is the root of I Sure didn't want to get into that my wife is a botanist. I would never be able to fool her with it So I said, well, it's just the root capital R root. Let's go So Doug you you said earlier that you don't take directions very well and both you and Adam were in workshop together Can you talk a little bit about what it's like to I mean not all novelists Come up with their novels in a workshop situation and what it's like a little bit too to workshop along project to take directions or not and Especially I mean if you're taking directions from Tobias Wolfe, you know, where do you say no? And I think that's one of the hardest things about about writing is trying to figure out where that that Balances between, you know being porous and open to voices from the outside who can help you and also knowing Where it's yours and where you are not gonna bend. I do think it's probably It's probably best not to workshop a first draft of a novel, you know before it's completed I think it probably makes sense just get to the end have it be your own thing let it come out that way Because I think too many voices too early on might push you in some wrong directions And It's hard. I don't think there's any real answer I think you you have to kind of look deeply and just figure out what's most important to you And it might be that some of those things are not things that are working yet And in doing that you're saying okay. I'm committing to this, but I might have to do it really differently But I'm gonna make it work And that it's scary I have no great answer Do you I remember I workshopped a chapter with John Leroux Who's a professor of fiction writing at Stanford and author of like 18 books now? I think and I Turned into chapter and we were about to discuss it on our day I was a little nervous and he's a little bit. He's got a dark streak in him And he certainly knows when he has power over you. He's a wonderful wonderful teacher But he said we were about to start he said he put his hands on the table Of course, everyone understands how absolutely dangerous it is to workshop a chapter of a novel in progress It's really fool's work I would never do it myself. I'd never advise anyone to ever do it But Adams put this before us and he knows what he's got himself into Let us begin Shit And then it was wonderful. It's wonderful. I remember You know reading Adam's stories in workshop and You know, I I love Adams work and I have from the very first one I saw in workshop and But I remember writing you comments I remember hating the ending of the eighth C One which is one of the stories in Adam's collection and I think I wrote something sort of very vociferously to that end and I just took it out again. I just taught it to my class. Oh, thank you And I encountered that ending again and I was like, oh my god, I was so wrong I was an idiot. This ending is perfect. Thank you I finally get now eight years later what Adam was doing way back then. I see those angry comments Sometimes I unwrap them But you know, sometimes when you when when you you love when you love what a person's doing It's like you you really get invested in in wanting to help shape it But thank you for not listening to me. Oh, you're welcome On the on the topic of endings, I'm back here. Oh, okay. I haven't read your book yet doggie, but I look forward to For to jumping in I you mentioned and maybe this is a silly question But you mentioned that you discovered in your notebook as an alternative ending and I'm thinking of the various movies that we see that Do have a second ending and I'm wondering if you've considered Writing a second ending for your readers. I've considered it ever so briefly and Then I get the voice that comes in and starts reminding me that book took eight years And you might think you're gonna write a new ending really quickly That'll be like three more years and you have other things to do and you have a family to feed And so yeah, I mean you just sort of have to make your peace with the projects over. I'm a writer I got to write other things So I think it's gonna have to remain a theoretical exercise Yes, sir. Oh It was um, yeah She was really really drunk and squeezed into pants that she should not have been wearing Which is let it out. That's um That was actually a chapter that was kind of weird to work with because it if anywhere in the book It comes close to like judging people or having fun at people's expense That's that's the one and and there's a degree to which I'm not quite comfortable with it But that was also a story that my cop friend told me he had in fact been working security up at Seton Hospital and There was the girl trapped in the jeans and there was the projectile button and I was like, I'm gonna work this into the novel some way Because because how could I not? Um But yeah, there's a little a little comic relief there Thanks, I'm curious about a timeline you have a master's in writing and then your law degree The law degree came after you're a master's no the law degree came before I went straight from undergrad to law school Because that was what my parents wanted me to do and I was I had no idea that It was actually my task to figure out for myself what I wanted to do They made it very easy, you know, and it was this slippery slope of chronic achievement It was like take the LSAT Doug. Well, okay. I'm good at standardized tests I'll fill in some dots and I did well and I was like well you have to apply and See where you can get in, you know, and I was buying into it. It's like, oh, yeah feather in my cap But that's not it was not a successful strategy for me as a way to live so I was in law school I did finish But it was During my third year. I had not all my classmates had jobs I Hadn't even gotten a sniff of a job. I was incredibly depressed. I had hair out to here. I had poor grades I mean, I was a walking disaster. I would not have hired me And yet I was baffled about not having a job anyway I actually found out from a college friend that a mutual friend of ours from Stanford Who is actually sitting in the room right now? This is Ben of fool's fury That Ben was in Iowa doing the I would writer's workshop and and I had this moment Where I mean I've been broken down to little pieces at this point and I said why does Ben get to go have fun and and do creative and now I'm doing this and Then and it was just this little twist where I was like, oh, wait a minute. I Can do that too? I mean, it's amazing like this Paradigm shift that it should have been obvious years before So I just put off studying for exams. I dug out my old stories. I worked on them I put in an application and got lucky it worked out and Ben and I lived in a farmhouse for a year in Iowa And I got to think of myself as a writer, which was a great relief after law school Then I practiced I came back and practiced law for a year There were bills to pay student loans and I also kind of thought well Having done these three years. I at least have to try it. So I practiced for a year with varying degrees of success and Ignominius failure death penalty cases. No No, thank God. No, no, no, I couldn't I was not put into places where I could do any harm It was a document review and such and then I got the call They said we have a Stegner Fellowship for you and I said, okay, I'm out of here and It's actually a decision. I've never regret I've yet to I'm a man of many worries and This is not a decision that I've ever worried over It felt right then and his felt right for the last ten years Hey, we have time for one more question. Oh There's two hands. Okay. I'll go quickly hands be crisp answers Lindsay you'll choose well Hello, I Have a question about the way that you write. Do you write in a linear fashion from beginning to end or do you like? Have like inspire inspirations from dreams and you're like, oh, that's chapter there and I Generally do write linearly except when I get stuck and I feel like in order to continue I need to jump ahead and work on this scene that I know is needs to happen But I do better actually working Sequentially like that and the pieces may get mixed and matched later But yeah, I I work a little traditionally like that Can we squeeze in one under the wire? Okay, great. I thought the strongest part of the book was the juxtaposition of Mercer and Fiona and Them using one another as a sort of foil to figure out who it is that they wanted and trying to make each Each other, you know work in it talk a little bit about those characters The the Mercer Fiona relationship was really really difficult to work with it And in fact my my wife read an early draft of it and she put it down and she said you are not treating Fiona Well enough she is not you're not treating her with the dignity that the character needs to have She was a little too much of a sad sack a little too Reactive and and not strong enough and she pointed out it only works It only makes sense if she's got some strength such that we can believe in her and then we can believe in Mercer At least being torn about wanting to be with her, you know that that he might want to And also that's the only way that that the relationship is gonna Offer anything rich to the story So the third draft of the book one of the big focuses for me was was building up this I mean I had I changed the whole relationship in that in that third draft And I tried to give her a little more You know gravitas and and energy and You know, she could push back, you know, she wasn't just gonna be pushed I Don't know if this is answering the question. Is it okay? But yeah, it's a it's a tricky relationship They both kind of wanted but also kind of don't and and I I did want the relationship to live in that Uncomfortable world where it's not necessarily clear who you ought to be with or who you ought to avoid being with and You know and and where they end up is What can I say this I suppose y'all know I mean it's neither magic happy fairy tale ending it's it's not doom and misery It's what felt real to me Which is they make this decision and they're gonna do their best with that decision and keep moving forward Thank you. I guess we're wrapping up. Thanks for coming out tonight. Thanks for writing a great book. Thank you Thank you for hosting That's all the advice I ignored Thanks, I love you for coming out really appreciate it and thanks again to fool's fury Doug would Don't be happy to sign copies of your book So maybe you can say a word to him in person as he inscribes your copy. Yeah, I think we're doing it somewhere out back there Okay, thanks for everyone who came out on a rainy night. Yeah