 Aloha, my name is Elaine Gallant and I am your host of Books, Books, Books, a live streaming series to think tech Hawaii on a walkthrough. This is a show where you might talk about reading books, writing books, and anything in between. Today's guest is Paul Devlin Wood. He's a long-favored Maui son, a writer and author, journalist, and instructor of imaginative advanced, imaginative writing at the University of Hawaii Maui College. He's an advanced teaching artist with the Hawaii State Foundation on culture and arts. He's also a novelist, co-novelist, and writing coach. His work has garnered many awards, including the Elliott Cades Award for Literature by the Hawaii Literary Arts Council. Please, let's welcome Paul Devlin Wood. How are you, Paul? Hey. Oh, there I am. Great. I'm so happy. I just didn't recognize myself from that glorious introduction. Being a writer is, hmm, well, I won't deny. That's wonderful. Well, I have to tell you, we've never met in person and only recently just corresponded due to this show. But I've been a secret fan of yours for over 25 years. What do you think of that? I hope I have more secret fans out there. I hope they become less secret. No, that's really nice. You send your words out there and have very little understanding of what happens to them afterwards. I'm not a particularly good marketer. I think I'm a good writer, but good. Yeah, well, you are a good writer, and I first noticed your writing in the Maui News. But I have to ask you, since it was brought up in our pre-show correspondence and it became the title of a show, you're a writer in Hawaii. Yeah. Are you nuts? Yeah. Well, I don't mean anything disrespectful about Hawaii. I'm a writer in Hawaii because I live here, but also because it's a fascinating place to write about. And to do that, I had to give up being anywhere in the proximity of Manhattan or wherever other people are doing things. And not to put myself in any kind of special position, but there aren't that many people writing in the state that I know of. I mean, there are people and friends and people whose work I respect, but there's a whole lot to say that hasn't been said. And we're shrouded in the influence of the visitor industry, which has its own way of writing about where we are. And it struck me early on in my youth that there's something going on here that the visitor industry doesn't expand to include. So I found my way of being a writer in Hawaii and it's been really diverse and kind of risky. Yes, because you're writing is diverse. I want to talk about that. I see you as a satirist or even a humorist, but you've written some very serious or co-authored and coached, some very serious books as well. So that's quite a range for a writer. So how do you describe your writing as yourself as a writer? Are you a satirist? Oh, well, I like to make people laugh. I think that's, it's a tricky thing to even endeavor to do, but there's not enough of it going on in the world. I mean, not laugh maliciously at young people who are not like us, but to laugh itself and the day-to-day. Somebody once called me, it was really out of the blue. I was at a restaurant and somebody introduced me and someone I never saw again said, oh, yes, you're the Paul Wood, you're the chronicler of the minutiae. Well, that's cool. But in other words, I find delight in looking at very, very close up at small things. Yes. I find you writing that way too. I really do. I think you have a, you have a, you know, what they have those gels on cameras that change the color of things. When you look at life, you have one of those gel sleeves over and it just puts a funny new twist on it. But before we get into the fun stuff, let's talk about the book that really bore me that you co-authored and that is Laura Gancho. If we can see the cover of that novel, you co-authored this with Ed Padilla. Now, this is a really serious novel and you coached one, another one by Gail Treadwell titled, Holy Hell, a Memoir of Faith, Devotion and Poor Madness. You want to talk about either of those two because I could, I cannot get Laura Gancho out of my head. I really can't. Sure. I've read it like twice. Yeah. And if I go on too long, just signal me. I will stop you. Laura Gancho is a prison escape story and it's a, it's a true story, a true account. And I want to say something about that in a minute. But I met Ed Padilla at a friend's house. He, he had, he and two of his friends had been arrested in Peru in the 70s and were not sentenced at all, just thrown into the world's worst prison, Laura Gancho, on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. And, and they had been smuggling cocaine and had been, he had been doing it repeatedly. He had an interesting background, kid from Southern California, who is half Mexican, who couldn't get hired for that reason at Disneyland. He grew up in the Long Beach area. And what I'm getting at is he became a founding member of a group called the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which was a hippie group that was excelled at smuggling marijuana and, and especially LSD. They got into promoting LSD and it became quite an international agency. But all, a lot, most of those people in the Brotherhood came to Maui around 1970. It was less surveillance there and they were sort of kicking back and they served. And so Ed was on Maui. But that, and then it was during that interval in the 70s that he started smuggling cocaine, which was, he realized afterwards was a terrible thing to do. Yeah, ended up in that, in the world's worst prison and ended up escaping. So a little bit on Holy Hell, because that's another one. You did not co-author that one, but you helped Gail. Treadwell, I think Treadwell, did we say? Yes, Treadwell. Yeah, Gail Treadwell, yeah. You coached her on this book because it was a very difficult subject for her to, I mean, she was literally enslaved. Well, that, yeah, in a way, psychologically, let's put it that way. She became a devotee of an internationally famous Hindu saint, the hugging saint, Amma, who a lot of people will recognize that name. And when Amma was just starting, Gail, who is an Australian woman, was in India and became enthralled with her presence and her, you know, whatever she stood for and became her personal assistant. And the relationship became abusive after a while. And so she knew things about Amma and her private life that were a burden for her. And Amma became quite vindictive. It was just a, that's why it was called Holy Hell. It became a Holy Hell for her. And she ended up fleeing. She was under such severe surveillance that she had to hide in the back seat of a car at night and be driven away. And yeah, she came to Maui as a refuge. And because I have a reputation, people find me, you know, who can help me write, write as a, in this case, as a form of self-curing, really. And, and she didn't know how to do it. And I just sat down with her. I talked to her last week, after we talked about doing this show. And she's in good shape. She's moving, because the economy has shifted, she's moving to New Zealand. But she feels like the whole project, she was, she just told the story of her season over many years with Amma. And she did not tell it in a vindictive way. She told it honestly. And she still feels very loving toward Amma. But she felt that she had to get out of there and had to purge this. Yeah, she had to save herself. And, you know, when I read it, I thought, oh my goodness, how often does this go on in the, in all kinds of organizations, right? I mean, but this one, it was, it was a moving story. And I really wish her well. So, what did you... Five criminal charges against her in India, by the way. Gail does or Amma? Gail does, yes. All sorts of obscure Hindu laws have been levied against her. Yes. Well, you know, it's terrible that these same things happen in life. But we're so fortunate that people can write about them as, especially in the way that they have been written, because we can, we can follow it. We can understand it. We can appreciate their, the survivorship that they experienced. And both of these novels are about surviving, about survival. So, how many books have you written yourself? I mean, I, I mean, I know, but why don't you tell us about them? Well, I have two books in print that are available through, I mean, I self-published them through Amazon. And these are collections of columns I've done. I've done a lot of short pieces. And Upstart, Scallywag, Giveaway for Free, kind of tabloid fold newspapers. I started doing that in the early 90s, when if somebody I knew was a stained glass artist, started a tabloid fold newspaper called The Holly Acula Times. It was paid for by advertising, was passed out and sent out in the mail to people for, and suddenly I had a, I started to help him get it organized. And then he gave me page two to do anything I want with it. So I called the column Four Wheels, Five Corners, which is a direct reference to where I was living at that time around Makawau, Haiku, Upcountry Maui. And there's an intersection called Five Corners and it's a truck kind of neighborhood, as most of Maui is actually. Which you have another fan in that very area. And her name is Susan, let's see, hold on, let's see, Susan Armstrong. And she says, do you have a favorite essay from your Four Wheels, Five Corners column? And would you like to read a little bit? I did, I brought something. Thank you. And I'll take a bit out of it. The whole business of writing a column for one's community taught me really how to be a writer. I was always a writer since I was a kid. But it wasn't until I got to that point where I knew who my audience was. When I went to pump gas in Makawau, the woman behind the window was collecting my money. I just thought, that's my reader there. And it made me realize that I was communicating with people. And then I was able to write about whatever was up. And this piece I just brought, I haven't put this in book form. But it has to do with, I wrote it on the solstice. It's called Blind Man Swinging. And I just talked about the solstice. And I literally recorded what happened to me that day. And now on that day, I left my house in a hurry and saw a blind man. I didn't think he was a blind man. He was just a man with a cane and a dog who was getting attacked by other dogs. And he was swinging his cane around to defend himself. And he scared the dogs away. And then I realized as they drove by, they had these heavy dark glasses on and he was blind. And then my whole day was about that. Later on, I met a guy at the hardware store who was also blind. So just a sample of the way I like to write. Here's just a bit. About mid-afternoon, gloom begins draining the sky. Dark cloud drizzle starts peltering. I find myself standing in the parking lot of the Pukalani hardware store talking with a guy named Bob. Suddenly a woman's voice blasts at us from behind. Excuse me. I don't want to interrupt. She interrupts. I turn. A beefy old Howley gal and a wrinkled Moomoo shuffles toward us in house slippers waving her arms. Her gray hair seems to have exploded on her head. Pinched rimmed glasses teeter as it glued onto the tip of her nose and her plastic necklace includes a medical alert pendant. We can't get home. She cries. My husband and me. We had a taxi. But the taxi driver just drove away and left us. Where do you live? Say Bob and I and Unison. I don't know. She shrieks. We just moved there. I don't remember the name of the street or where it is, but we have to get there before dark. My husband is blind. Where's your husband? I asked. He's still in the hardware store. We need help. So I went in and found this guy who was blind and wasn't wearing glasses and used to sing with Don Ho. And I thought after when I got home I thought well this is kind of an interesting story. We end up together kind of improvising a soft shoe shuffle and singing what's the song? There'll be pennies from heaven for you and me. Anyway and I just thought that's such a local event and tied to a you know celestial time and I don't know. And I got to publish that because no one was telling me it was silly to write about that sort of thing. Wonderful. We have things like that that happen in these islands. And it just depends on how you look at things, right? So thank you for that. Talk about your other book. I read False Confessions. That's one. When that came out I got this award. When that came out I was given the Elliot Cades award. It was a good moment for me. The first book I did with these columns is called Four Wheels Five Corners. I have written other things. I've written everything Elaine. I mean I'm a writer. That's how I feel about it. And I live in Hawaii. That means I'll write all kinds of things for anybody. And I'm really proud of writing press kits for very successful multi-million dollar fundraising campaigns too. And I teach. So I mean people get this glorified sense that writers are somehow on another sphere. I'm just a guy in the community trying to use what skills I have here. But I have written a novel because I just want to say I've written several novels but they're not in print. This COVID situation has really knocked out a lot of my purchase and my places to publish my work on any scale. Do you find your conductive with COVID having happened and being sheltered in place? Well I have. I wrote a novel. I've written two books that are available. I actually have three books available for any publisher who will find me. And I keep sending these things out and they think oh here's a white guy in Hawaii. Take with him. He's not. Anyway never mind. What about your ingenious life of Melbourne Smith? One man's revival of historic sailing vessels. Oh yeah that was a marvelous project. I did an article for Honohoa magazine on a fellow named Woodson Woods who lives in Kamuella on Big Island. And he had a soaring club, these magnificent sail planes. He and his buddies and they would go up, get towed up to the top of Mauna Kea and then soar from that point on. He took me up and we hit it off. He was a sailor and sort of an all around hero kind of fellow. And he had commissioned this man Melbourne Smith to design and build a replica of a War of 1812 vessel. And it's sailing on the east coast now. It's called the links. And Woody said I want to honor Melbourne Smith who is an ingenious antique boat replicator. And so Woody sent me to Florida for 10 days and I hung out with Melbourne and wrote this book and Woody published it and it's on the links. I wish it was more available. Woody has and Melbourne are both gone now. So it was just a magic moment. It's a beautiful book. If anybody wants that, especially as a gift for, I don't mean to be plugging anything. The good gift for anyone who loves boats and I have cartons of them. They just want to get in touch with me. They're not available on Amazon at this time. I think there's one on there that's priced at $1,000 or something. I'm thinking of so many writers that I know that have stacks of their books, you know, because you know for a while there we were doing all kinds of signings and things like that and we had to have them on hand and then COVID just shut it down. Now you have, I want to talk a little bit about your magazines, but you have some new books coming out that I think you should let us know about because they look very interesting. Yeah, I just finished the best thing I've ever written about just six months ago. A novel based on the life of Kalakaua and it is fun to talk about that, but it's called Asking of the World. And then I did, I finished a project about vocabulary. I'm an English teacher, but I wrote a book. Is that a nonfiction on Kalakaua? It is what we call magic realism. It's not an accurate history. It is taking the context of the shift in Hawaii from the beginning of outside contact to what happened in Kalakaua's time. There's more to say about it, but. Okay, all right, so a body of words. Do you want to talk about it? A body of words is a collection that I started a long time ago of taking the words we use for the body, starting with the feet going all the way up to the top of the head and talking about how those words, it's an etymology, a fun etymology piece about the history of words. Can you give us a sample? Oh, sure. Talking about standing and all the words that have to do with standing, they're so essential to our self-concept. But the whole notion of being an animal that stands up while others are four-legged or flying away is the unique scary thing about human beings, and it's our pride, right? So do you understand that that is substantial? And a lot of terms about straightness and correctness come from the fact that we honor our upright stance. That stance came to my mind. Yeah, and so it's just a fun way to teach vocabulary, basically. That's what I'm envisioning. And I'm working on a novel now called Slocum that started as one of my columns. And it's about a Howley guy who lives in contemporary Kihei and gets transported in time back to pre-contact Hawaii in the same spot. And he gets a lesson. And I'm going to get him back to confront his previous reality. Anyway, it's just a fun... Is this a book that you had to do a lot of research on? I mean, Kalakaua would have been, but Slocum one, is this something that you would have had to do a lot of research on? I am doing research on it too. Yeah, right. I don't mean to be a scholar in the sense of academic in this regard, but I have paid attention for quite a long time, my life. And I think I have a pretty good sense of what that would be like without claiming to be someone... I especially don't want to claim to be Hawaiian or know what Hawaiians know about their own culture. And then you have Living with Volcanoes coming up. Is that correct? That's some short... I decided that since COVID is sort of the publisher... Publications have gone dark. I decided I should take my best pieces overall this time. And I isolated 48 or 50 or so, and they're all good. And they showed up in publications that maybe a few people read, and then they're gone. That's not fair. So I thought I'd put them together into a volume. Well, that's interesting because we have a question here in the chat room that says, I remember you well from your column in the Maui News. It's been a while. Would you consider a comeback? This might be the answer to this person's prayers, huh? A comeback. I would like to find a place to keep writing publicly for my community. That's where my heart is. I'd like to make more and be wider known. But sorry, I need to correct. I would never wrote for the Maui News. I've written press releases and seen them get printed with somebody else's name on them, printed verbatim. But my work has been... Say it again? Maybe it was in one of the magazines, like Hanahao or something. Well, I've written a lot in Hanahao. And they've given me some of the best assignments. And my best big pieces have been in there, or Spirit of Aloha when we had Aloha Airlines. All the Eklah Times I did a lot with. And other publications like that. The one that just folded was called On Maui, which was a spin-off from Maui Arts and Cultural Centers. Well, Paul, we're almost out of time. I won't know. Well, first off, I want to put your website up because there's a whole lot of information there. www.PaulWoodWriter.com. Please be sure to visit his website. Are you on any social pages, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media? I'm not doing that stuff. I'm not doing that stuff. Paul, can you tell me what's currently on your bedside table that you're reading? Yeah, let's see. I have a mama's last hug by this Belgian primatologist. What is his name? It slips me. I don't know. But it's a recent bestseller. And his whole premise is that animals have emotions and emotions are part of our intelligence and essential part of our intelligence. And I happen to really believe that and try to teach that too. I've read a couple of novels that are on that subject. In closing, I want to thank you for visiting with me, spending some time with us. I can't thank you enough. I want to thank our underwriters, our technicians, our Jay Fidel, our producer. What can I say? And I want to invite you all back in two weeks with my friend Irita Forsythe. I don't know who her guest is, but I promise you it'll be great fun. And Jay Fidel has a few more new shows coming up that you'll want to stay tuned to the site to find out what they are. I'm very excited for him. I'm very excited for Think Tech. If you can donate, please do. We operate that way. And that's the only way we can keep coming to you. And I want to thank the viewers too. Mahalo and Aloha. Paul, thanks again. Thank you, Elaine. It's been a lot of coffee with you. Okay, we'll do it.