 But we're going to have quiet on the set now. Ready? And we're live on YouTube. And we're live in this new room. All right. Welcome friends. I see the room filling up. Welcome. Thank you for joining us tonight. We definitely appreciate you being here. I put some links into the chat box. These links will have links to all of the libraries, reading resources. Links to tonight's event. And links to our presenters websites and socials. And. All right. Welcome friends. Thank you all for being here tonight. We'll get started in just a moment. If you want to let us know what. Native land you're joining us from today, you could do that as well. There's a very cool map that. Shows you. Hello. Hello everybody. All right, let's jump in with library news. So tonight you're here for our summer stride author series, which has been every Tuesday night in summer and it ends. It's August 31st. So every single Tuesday night, you can count on an author. Talk at SFPL's virtual library. We have lots of other happenings for summer stride too. And summer stride is not just for kids. It's for all ages. And you do your 20 hours reading. You get your iconic San Francisco public library tote bag. And we want to thank our friends of the San Francisco public library for all they do for our summer stride and all of our. Programming and events and helping us bring amazing authors like tonight. We want to welcome you to the unseated land of the Aloni tribal people. And acknowledge the many Romitosh Aloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stores and lands on which we live. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these. These people's and we encourage you to learn more about first person culture and land rights. That link that I put in the chat box has a great reading list that has not just books, but also websites and other resources and our YouTube programming that we've had on first person culture. We have partnered with Chronicle books. The Chronicle. Total SF of their night and Peter Hart lob. And they will be doing the quarterly book club with us. Our second one August 24th, the end of the Golden Gate featuring Daniel Handler and Gary Kamaya. San Francisco public library has a by monthly read where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book. And this has been going on for years, years and years. And it's called on the same page. So July and August, we're celebrating the works of Jacqueline Woodson and her book, Read at the Bone. Jacqueline Woodson will be in the virtual library August 12th. And she'll be talking mainly about her youth and child children's books and young adult books. But definitely come check out the book. And join the book club as well. Book club. If you haven't come to our virtual book clubs, they're fun. We're going to breeze through some of the stuff we have coming up Sunday, August 8th, surrealist women. Tuesday night, author talk with Debbie Lascar. And the Chronicle again, Mick LaSalle. I want to say he has not had a book out in 10 years. So come check it out. August 18th, dream state. And if you don't know Shanta, you should. She is like a force of nature. She's amazing. She's one of the food justice warrior. She's a co-owner of other avenues out in the avenues, the food co-op. And she's going to talk about her food journey. And we partnered with SF neon and the tenor one museum for three part series. And this is our final one on August 25th, talking about neon and cinema. All right, tonight we are here to talk about Jamie quacks book. And I was telling Chaney and Oscar that I pulled this off of what we have the advanced reader card at our library. It was the last book that I got to pull from the cart before we went into shelter in place and I, it really found a special place in my mind. So I want to welcome both Oscar and Chaney here tonight. Chaney has written for publications such as the New York Times, The New York Times, the New York Times tusks, The New York Times, The New York Times, the New York Times, the New York Times, the New York Times, Condi Nash traveler, the New York Times, the New York Times, the New York Times, the New York Times, Condi Nash traveler. Food and wine. Travel and leisure and a number of National, geographic anthologies. His fiction has appeared in SZA va. Catamaran literary review, Gertrude and, other literary journals, earning a special mention from the push cart prize. conference and was a friends of the San Francisco brand and handler resident. He teaches nonfiction writing at Stanford Continuing Studies program. And tonight, Cheney will be in conversation with our own, I'm calling San Francisco's own Oscar Villalom, the managing editor of San Francisco's literary journal, Ziziba, and it's the technology issue. It's very good. I encourage you all to subscribe. His writing has been published in several publications including Freeman's, Zocalo, The Believer, and Lit Hub. And he's joining us from San Francisco. And there will be time for Q&A. Please use the Q&A function. And we're gonna have a nice amount of time for that. So get those questions ready. Oscar and Cheney, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I thought before we begin, we'd have, Cheney, if you'd be good enough to read a little bit from your book, The Passenger. And then after that, then I think we'll start the conversation. Great. Thank you, Oscar. Thank you to the San Francisco Public Library and everyone who's here tonight. I have a long list of things and I'll save that until the end. I'm gonna read really short passages, just snippets, and then we'll get started. Before Panic United us, boredom did. We had been sailing up and down the coast of Norway for more than a week, alternating between classic fjords and the open sea. Each day, the ship dropped anchor at a new port and unleashed all 915 passengers onto snowpacked streets and into shops brimming with handed sweaters. We rode in sleighs pulled by steaming reindeer, squinted our eyes at 7,000-year-old rock carvings, and bathed in sunlight filtered through the stained glass of a titanium cathedral. And we witnessed the northern lights. The reason many of us came on the cruise. Once accustomed to the dopamine hit that a new locale brings each day, your brain begins to take the novelty for granted. You develop a sudden aversion to the mundane. I did anyway. Yesterday, the captain blamed high winds and rough waves for the cancellation of a scheduled port call at Buda, just above the Arctic Circle. Today was yet another stormy day without docking, which meant we were left to amuse ourselves on this floating 465-cabin complex. We were bored to death. Desperate for stimulation, I turned up for the morning quiz hour at the Explorer's Lounge, the ship's glass ensconced living room at the bow of Deck 11. I sank into the chaise with a slice of success cake, which, Google told me, is an Norwegian specialty of almond meringue and egg cream. Teaming up with a group of snow-haired passengers who are three, maybe four decades older, I try to answer questions about minor Henry VIII wives and milestoneed World War battles. Since Viking Ocean Cruises advertises heavily on PBS, it attracts a certain demographic, the type of people who actually want to geek out on baroque palaces and the Marshall plan in their free time. Without Google, I was an empty vessel. Needless to say, I got my ass handed to me so much for that success cake. Earlier in that morning, the dark sea and bruised colored clouds had sandwiched a sliver of blue sky. By the time the quiz finished, the blue ribbon had disappeared and near-horizontal rain glashed at us. The ship pitched violently, rising and bouncing as we penetrated deeper into the storm. Still, from all the way up here on Deck 11, hundreds of feet above the sea, even the largest wave seemed like ripples in a bathtub. Wait till my grandkids see this, said one of my quiz teammates, thrusting her phone at me to film her against the window. Am I having fun all alone on a cruise, the playground of couples and families? In fact, would it shock you to hear that I've willingly gone on not one but two cruises in a row? This month, back to back, sorry. Three weeks ago, I boarded a luxury Italian cruiser from Bali. And if that sentence makes you want to punch me in the face, I'm right there with you. I had a butler with the most erect posture unpacked my cheap clothes into hard mahogany drawers before wiping down my battered carry-on. I took Balinese cooking classes, got needed by no sewers like a lump of dough, and drank bottles of wine that cost more than my weekly grocery budget. I donned a bow tie and satiated across the deck under the stars. The ship glided across the South China Sea, which I later described in the magazine article as, forgive me, silky. Then I disembarked and flew from Manila over to Bergen, Norway to do it all over again in the opposite hemisphere. I know, I know. Being a travel writer sounds glamorous on paper. And yes, I have come across plenty of folks who could afford to think of themselves as glamorous long before they ever sold a single piece of writing. A tribe that knows how to swill with Klikko before noon and not feel even a tiny bit buzzed or guilty. I, on the other hand, snuck into this trade by reviewing hostels and writing penny-pinching advice while attending graduate school in Berlin on a German government scholarship. I've approached every cruise I've taken like Margaret Mead visiting Papua New Guinea, the most foreign of environments that grows somehow more alien each time I inhabit it. That may be why I kept getting similar assignments from editors without trying akin to sending a puzzled pacifist to interview Jean-Claude Dandem while he punches Steven Seagal to pulp. That Bali cruise, the editor-in-chief of a top travel glossy, had emailed me out of the blue. The Norway cruise, I've been summoned by the head of a cab by it so you need to be in the know monthly found only in the libraries of country clubs. Or maybe it was all just a joke worn out of a, not out of intention, but from the very unfairness that drives the world of freelance writers, I happened to be available. I knew better than to decline the assignments tossed into my lap. No, wait, this is disingenuous. Work wasn't the only reason that set me on month-long trips. If I wanted to make money and lots more of it, I could have stayed in San Francisco where I live and worked for one of the social media services that everyone hates but uses hourly. Something else was keeping me away from the one-bedroom apartment I shared with my partner of 16 years. And I guess I should stop there. Thank you, Cheney. Thank you. As folks could tell from your reading, the passenger, it's about many things. But to me, I think it is primarily about, I think, the transformations that happen to us when we pass through a crucible. I think in these such moments of great fear and stress, scales fall from our eyes for a moment. And we can see clearly who we are and how we are happy or unhappy or what it is we need or can live without. And in that recognition, a reckoning may happen. We may be transformed even if the extent of it isn't immediately fully understood. Nonetheless, something has happened and things will not continue the way they once did. In the passenger, this reckoning of a life, yours, Cheney, but not just yours, happens off the coast of Norway. You gave us a sense in the reading of the calm before the literal storm. But could you tell us what happened to you and the more than 1,300 people aboard the cruise ship Viking Sky on March 23, 2019? Yeah, I think that's a very generous and yeah, summary of what I tried to do in the book, and I hope that does come through. On a very literal level, it's a story that starts off on a cruise ship that loses all four of its engines in the middle of a really bad storm that the Washington Post describes as, I think, a freak storm over 80 miles per hour winds and 60 feet swells. And it's not a good place to be when you don't have a working engine and you're a large cruise ship carrying over, like you said, 1,300 people. Complicating the matter was that we were so close to coastline that we came very close to capsizing against the rocky shore. So that's the basic literal beginning point of the book. But like you said, the passenger wasn't going to be a book until we all went through something similar, I think, figurative, equivalent, life equivalent, which is what we all went through last year during the pandemic. And in some ways, we may be headed to again. I had been trying to write about this experience. And it was kind of a funny, salty article, but never more than that. And during the pandemic, I really, I was able to recast the experience through a completely different lens, because I realized, oh, this lockdown, this feels kind of familiar. Oh, remember that time when I was in this cruise ship without any kind of power over my own destiny, hunkering down in this closed space, not knowing what was going to happen to me. And like you said, it does make you wonder about the life choices that you've made leading up to that point. And also, I guess in some ways, the collective nature of what we might call destiny, even though I don't necessarily believe in that. So yeah, it's what started off as a kind of a suspenseful, but also funny story about a cruise ship became, I hope, a book about an experience that we all shared. Now, again, it's about many things, but your descriptions of this, it turns out to be a 27 hour or deal are very funny, but also harrowing. It also gives you an opportunity to sort of give a sense of all the folks who make up the roster of passengers and employees on the ship. And I don't know if you could talk a little bit about that. Who are your fellow passengers? What sort of folks are they? Sure. Spoiler alert, the main character doesn't die. I'm here. Nobody dies, which is probably why I could write a story that I hoped would balance the funny with the suspenseful. But people are badly injured. Some are injured for sure during the ordeal because we were pitching pretty violently, but also because the sea was so rough that they couldn't deploy any of the lifeboats, which meant that everybody had to or they tried to evacuate everybody with by winching them off on helicopters. And there are some injuries happening there to less than half the people got airlifted in the end. But like the roster of people, characters, if you will, some that I just described, very well educated and well to do cruise passengers. But I also wanted to shed a light on other characters who don't necessarily take the center stage in many cruise stories that I've seen. I actually have gotten some flak from cruise fans since the publication in some ways because I shed light on the inequality that takes place on a ship. And it's a literal, it's a small world on a ship. You have this microcosm of the world starting with well to do passengers on the literal top level top deck down to the bottom of the ship where there are staff members who never actually get to be seen or get to see much because they're greasing and laundering and whatnot. And the incident actually brought some of those people to light as well. And I was fascinated by that experience. And I wrote about that. But of course, I can't claim to know what it's really like to have gone through that. I was in that strange between upstairs and downstairs position because I was embedded and I was treated very much like a passenger. I was a passenger. And I can't really claim that those 27 hours are really bad for me because even during those hours, there are staff members feeding us and cleaning up after us. It does make you also wonder what it would take to upturn that kind of world order or hierarchy, if you will, because cruise ships didn't create that inequality, certainly, but it holds up a mirror and you can be very uncomfortable. So when some cruise fans have problems with the fact that I highlight that, I take that criticism because I think it is a choice to talk about inequality on a cruise ship as much as it is a choice not to talk about it and to ignore that. I think it takes a lot of willful unwillingness to see if you were to go on a cruise and not be able to notice the kind of literal disparities that's happening, not just between the passengers and the staff members, but also among the crew members as well. Yeah, I think to be clear, I think people are aware usually of the service staff on these sort of cruise ships. A lot of them mostly are from other places in the United States. A lot of them are brown, but what you're talking about is essentially the crew, the labor hoard, otherwise invisible until this near catastrophe. And there's a scene in your book in which you finagle the way to go back to your room and you want to actually retrieve your copy of Moby Dick, speaking of disasters at stake. And you're going down the hallway and you see this, you see these, I believe they're all men? Yeah, they're all men in that hallway at least. And it's interesting because even the service staff that are visible, they're designed to be visible, they're trained to talk in a certain way, smile in a certain way. One of the most gratifying experiences of publishing this book actually was getting an email from a crew member who teaches other crew members how to behave, how to speak around passengers. And she wrote me and said that I got that kind of uncomfortable hierarchy within the crew world, right? And that meant the world to me. But the scene that you describe has me going down the hallway where I wasn't supposed to. And I realized that they're all these men that I'd never seen before who are not uniformed. They're in this greasy T-shirts and they came up from the bottom of the ship to be evacuated, but still out of sight from the passengers. I'm still making, yeah. And they're more or less huddled together and utter exhaustion? Yeah, I don't know what was happening to me, honest, because I think being an introvert, all I wanted to do being in the hallway was really to be away from people. I was sneaking out because to get, you know, to get a copy of my book, but also really I wanted to be away from people. And he was just shocking to see crew members willing to be just huddled together. And I wondered, is it because they spent months, if not longer, being around other people, do they find comfort in that? Well, I also bring it up because, of course, when one thinks about the context of the pandemic, one also, you know, thinks of all these other communities, adverse communities that suddenly we become aware of during this pandemic, we become aware of how precarious our situation is. That's right, they're crammed into closed quarters. I mean, speaking of, you know, pandemic, cruises have always been kind of vectors of viruses, right? All sorts of different viruses. But, you know, I think COVID-19 makes you wonder about, well, is this a really good idea? And also, if you think about it, the sheer absurdity of building ginormous ships with casinos and duty-free shops and multiple restaurants and floating them in the middle of the sea, and makes you wonder, like, what are we up to? I'm wondering, as a, you know, as someone who's been around freelancers his entire life and who's worked in newspapers, et cetera, and reporter, and those reporters and editors, I was fascinated by your reaction towards the availability of social media. At one point, the ship is drifting so closely to shore, you now have cell phone reception, correct? And you go, I guess you go to Twitter or you go to whichever social media app it was, to see what people are seeing about this, this unfurling disaster. I found that part of the book so engaging. Could you tell us a little bit about what you were seeing online? Yeah. You know, there's a lot of, the social media peanut gallery was in full swing talking about what was happening and we were getting a lot of passengers, the passengers and crew members were getting actually really good up-to-date information about what was happening. What's really scary about social media is that there's also, there was a lot of misinformation just floating around where people might speculate what might be happening aboard the ship and then next thing you know, that just spreads like wildfire. There are all these people who become experts all of a sudden on, you know, maritime navigation and criticizing the, you know, captain for sailing on a day like this and whatnot and I just found that all very interesting and I still don't know if social media is responsible for the kind of inflamed narcissism that we're experiencing today as well as the spread of misinformation or if it's just simply the byproduct of humans having been gossiping for the last millennia, you know. I really don't know but the fact that it was happening in real time was crazy. To be in the middle of it, to be the subject of this inadvertence reality TV show was pretty darn, I don't want to say like repulsive but I certainly never signed up for it and there's a bit of not exactly shot in Florida but I think Kuli, Kuli in watching this real-time disaster, right, certainly different when you're on that she was thinking or potentially sinking ship. But you should, this is what I found so interesting as I could see how someone who was a freelance writer would think, aha, this is my chance. That's to say, you know, I could start reporting live right now and, you know, go quote unquote viral. But you choose not to but in fact, because you're thinking that the story I want to tell is going to be longer and nuanced. Well, I hope that's right. And also, I mean, you know, we go a few years back, right, Oscar? I think I was born maybe 50 years too late and going viral has never been one of my aspirations even though I think people my age or younger probably do aspire to do that or many people do anyway. It was interesting because there was also another photographer, a freelancer on board, a photographer, and around my age as well. And both of us chose the same path and I describe us as kind of dinosaurs in this ice age of print media where we're seeing our opportunities evaporate yet were reluctantly on social media yet unable to evolve into birds and kind of watching our imminent extinction. I just I just couldn't reconcile with the idea of possibly the ship possibly going down in my last words that I left leave behind in this world being tweets about what was happening. I just and getting likes for that. That's just seems like the most inhumane way to go. I would prefer to go anonymously. But, you know, I did write a book about this and I own that too. And there were times when I was looking around and I took extensive notes in part because that's how I cope with the world. I'm always kind of taking notes. I mean, you know, even now I'm scribbling because this is how I can cope with the world. And but also there are times during those 27 hours when I thought, Oh, maybe I just maybe I could, you know, sell this story, you know, this could be good, you know, maybe up. And, you know, I did try to pitch it afterwards to as kind of this funny comic stories. And I'm so glad that it didn't happen because, you know, the pandemic made me grow up so more and also made this story grow a heart. But, you know, I was gonna say, you know, one thing too that's interesting, I, in my experience, often for if you're reporting live from some sort of unfurling catastrophe, sometimes that live posting is almost like a form of psychological armor. You know, you know, you're not really, I mean, you're there, but you're not there. You know, you choose to sit with what's happened. Yeah. I, you know, I don't think I'm superior to people who use social media, not at all. I'm just really slow. You know, I'm slower than they are. And I just need time to compose my thoughts. And I had an inkling that what I was going through might mean more than what was happening on the literal sense that I might be able to make more of the experience than just the experience itself. And I wanted to hold on to that. And I was right. This is, this is a story that helped me heal in many other ways, not from this experience per se, but many other personal things that I describe in the book. And, you know, having been someone who's very personal private, and someone who's never dreamed of writing a memoir, it's really uncomfortable to put this out there to the world. And nonfiction, I think, can cause casualty in your personal life. And, and it's just what it is, because I realize that you know, sharing this story is also an act of generosity. It's not about narcissism because I don't think I come across looking really good, to be honest. But if there's someone that the book reaches someday somehow, and it doesn't have to be this year or next year, but somewhere, then yeah, I'll be, I'll be ecstatic. So, and if this helps someone heal, like it helped me heal, then yeah, right on. You, you also write early on, I think one point you write that not knowing can be the pathway to happiness. Gosh, you know, there's a Korean proverb that says that goes not knowing is medicine. And it's one pathway. I don't think it's the pathway, but there are times when I would have preferred not to know from social media what exactly was happening to the ship. Like when we were headed perpendicular to the shoreline, I would have preferred not to know that. But, you know, what are you going to do? But then much later, when you're describing the appeal of cruise ships, you write, when you create a space that everyone can tolerate, you end up draining all life from it. And it seems to me, these two, those two insights are not unrelated. That pathway of not knowing, of being out of touch with your feelings, say, leads to the sort of tolerable, not comfortable existence, I guess you could call happiness. Yeah, I mean, this is why I was kind of nervous, but really looking forward to this talk, Oscar, because you notice things. I never made a connection, but you are absolutely right. And I'll have to sit with that for a little longer. But I definitely see the appeal of cruises. I totally do. Because aside from the physical creature comfort, you're right. You don't have to know. You don't have to think. And yeah, I think there's a reason why there's that willful turning away from disparities and inequalities, in part because people are trying to escape by being there. And what are they trying to escape? And I myself was trying to escape, too, by being there, being on two cruises back to back. You got to wonder, someone who doesn't, who claims not to like them to be gone for a month, you know, you got to wonder what was really happening in his life. See, you're right. I totally understand that and respect that. And during the last year, there are times when I just could not bear to look at my New York Times app. I just turned it away. I mean, I just deleted it. And I thought, I don't need to know the counts anymore. I just want to watch my Netflix because there's that comfort, like you said, in not knowing. Is that a good state of being in a permanent, you know, on a permanent basis? I don't know. I think there are people who go through their lives trying to stay in that kind of ignorant bliss. Who am I to judge that? You know, they seem happier than I am. Right. And this is again, I think it was too late. It's the way I looked at the book is that, you know, we then you get into this crucible. And it's sort of you have a moment, perhaps of conviction. You see things for what they are and you can choose to do something with that or not. And having that choice, my God, my goodness, you know, that's that's a huge privilege and often conferred to us unfairly. And I think it was conferred to me by my parents in many ways. So yeah. But you also, you know, again, the book is about many things. One of them certainly is that the sea is pitiless. Indeed, life is pitiless. You write of many other shipwrecks and the loss of so many other lives because of them. Of the sinking. I think it's of the Ukeshima Maru off the coast of Japan is just at the end of World War Two. You write those on board were not the people whom history books honor just bit players on the chaotic stage that had seen too many anonymous casualties already. Your book to me seems like an attempt to at least address that, no? Yeah, I mean, you can't honor them all individually. But at least I want to acknowledge that and also accept the fact that I could have been one of them, you know, the line between a near disaster and a disaster is really tenuous and really, really fine. And yeah, I mean, I'm part of that collective as well. And I don't know, there's something kind of pointing on about that. Yeah, you said earlier that if I remember correctly, you don't believe in destiny. I don't. And I mean, this book, I think fairly argues that fairly well, the reason you wouldn't. I mean, you know, really, the book really gets us, the book does why I love what other books do, which is to get you to question about how we arrive or we have arrived. That indeed, how we are at the mercy of chance and luck as surely as ships are at the mercy of unforeseen inclement weather. And that incredibly too, that I mean, it's that sort of vulnerability is unremarkable because it's ubiquitous. But it's nonetheless amazing that we can shape any lives at all. Right. I mean, just by existing, we beat out some crazy odds, right? We used to be just genetic strands and how are we like functioning humans thinking? It's incredible. And I think we like to assign certain like retroactive narratives and, you know, call it destiny or what have you. But I really think that it's just everything is a series of random occurrences that go down one path. But we could have, you know, like the permutation of all the opportunities where things sort of gone radically different. It's just really overwhelming to think about, you know. Yeah, I don't know. It's both overwhelming and really awe inspiring, to be honest. You write out during these 27 hours that the one thing you hate is you feel useless. You feel as if though you there's really not much for you to do except just sit there and try not to get hit by flying object. I mean, yeah, such a capitalist immigrant child thing, right? It's like, I got to be productive somehow. But but nonetheless, I mean, you later after this is after you all you go through this, you go back and you talk to a few of the people who help rescue folks off off the ship. And one of them is I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly, Erlen Birkaland. Perfect. Yeah. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about about Erlen. Yeah, he's a rescue diver. He used to be a rescuer in his 20s, and then chose a career in nursing hospice nursing. And then in his late 40s, early 50s, he decided that he wanted to rescue people again. Crazy. So he was part of the rescue service responding to Mayday. And he was on a helicopter, basically, repelling down from the helicopter and getting on the ship and sending people up, right, one by one, risking his life. And when I talk to him about, so part of the book, those of you who haven't read it, I interview rescue workers and and try to write from their perspectives, although, right, I mean, I also acknowledge the limitation of me as someone who wasn't actually, well, who's not them. Anyway, so I interviewed him and he was very self-effacing in many ways. He kept saying, oh, you know, it's nothing. I was just doing my job, you know, but then you hear the story about how he like the ship, how badly the ship was pitching and he could have just basically slammed into it. There were times when he was, you know, practicing before the incident. And, you know, if you have to jump into the ocean, you could actually get the rope wrapped around your neck. He was risking his life to do all this. And hundreds of people did that in order for us to stay safe. And yet, it could have gone the other way, too, you know. And in fact, it sort of goes pretty badly for another group. There's a cargo freighter called the Haglin Captain. That's right. And they received the Viking skies distress call. Can you tell us what happened? Yeah, a quarter of other apparently, if you hear Mayday, you respond. So this freighter nearby responded, but then their engines failed as well, bad storm. And there are nine crew members on the ship and they had to abandon ship and jump into the freezing water in order to be rescued. Luckily, all alive. I talked to the spokesperson at the freight company. And they assured me that they're healthy and employed, but would not release their names. So just like those casualties that history books would never honor, they will remain nameless. But these Good Samaritans had a much more harrowing knife than I did, for sure. While you're researching the book, did it become that much more clear to you just how much danger you all were in? Yes, yes and no, yes in that, for those reasons that you mentioned, and there's just there are hundreds of articles actually out there. So it seemed to me that even though, I mean, we were safe because a lot of people work hard, but at the same time, it could have, you know, occurrence going one way or a bolder being in another place, we, you know, it could have turned out very differently beyond anyone's control. And there's some comfort in that as well, morbidly, if that makes any sense, it makes you think, gosh darn it, like you can do all the right things and, you know, still may not survive. So just live in the moment, Yolo. Well, again, it's that sort of, I mean, again, what I admire so much about the book is that it forces, well, I don't say forces, but it allows the reader to shake off the cobwebs and to sort of understand just how incredible this thing we call life is. How much of it really is out of your control? Yeah, absolutely. I hope it's one of the things that people take away. But it's beyond my control, and that's a good thing. You know, when you put out a book, it has its own life and what people make of it is really not within my control. And it's none of my business to be honest, but I have been struggling with it to be honest. I think the post publication, post part of Israel and part of me wants to nurture it, you know, show up for events like this and wish it well and say, go out into the world and do your thing. And another part of me thinks, gosh, like it's so alien. I gave birth to this yet. I just, you know, it's going to have such an alien life and I can't even bear to look at it. And yeah. Before we get to Q and I want to ask you one more question, because one of the passengers who was particularly interesting is, I think a pronounce her name, Sarri. Yeah, Carrie. Yeah, Carrie. The answer. Yes. Yes. Could you tell us a little about her? Because yeah, well, first, let's let's tell us a little about her. Yeah, Carrie was one of the four vocalists lead vocalists on the ship. I didn't know because I didn't go to any of the shows and I was very, very embarrassed because she was a minder who was assigned to this little cluster of passengers were there to look after us. It was incredibly well organized, well rehearsed. Well, practice, I don't know what to call it, it wasn't a rescue, evacuation maybe. So there was one person assigned to say two dozen passengers and then that person for us was Carrie. And I got to know her through her stories, you know, inadvertently. And, and I just kept thinking like, I mean, I also learned that she briefly considered going to medical school over being an actress singer. And I think she regretting her life choices being here. And, and I, you know, the kind of life that she would have I did follow up with her by the way and that's why I gave her a Welsh name because she is Welsh, but I also didn't want to use her real name because I the only people whose names I changed are the crew members because I wanted to make sure their employment wasn't affected. And also my ex, but yeah, so Carrie, she didn't talk to me on, you know, like while I was writing the book, I only informed her after and said, I want to send you a copy. And here you are, you're, you have a different Welsh name, but And am I right? Am I right remembering she no longer works on cruise ships? You know, that's as at the time of me writing it, there was absolutely no trace of her. There was nothing listed for hers on her agent's website. Her social media went dark after the incident. In fact, she was the only person from the crew members and I looked for all sorts of crew members. She was the only person who didn't delete the post about the incident. She just let it sit there and whereas the other crew members I think were gently or not so gently reminded that they shouldn't be writing about that incident for the sake of their employment. Since then though, however, I learned since the publication, I learned that she has chosen to go back. So life does go on and yeah. Life does go on, but reading I wonder if she too, like you in some way wasn't changed. Right. I mean, I can't imagine. Well, some people probably became more of who they used to be, some passengers. But I really think that we are all impacted by it one way or another. I hope so. Yeah. I think that's correct. I think the way you write about some of the passengers, they pretty much seemed like they weren't there when it happened, even though they were there from some of their reactions. They seemed, you know, I think there's one particular who seems to be things that, but she's not dealing with that. Sounds like this wasn't this fantastic. Right. And you know, honestly, I can't speak for anyone other than myself. Right. And I find it so awesome that every one of us will have a different story to tell about it. You know, that's how it makes life so fascinating that you share this experience yet you could walk away with a different story. That's right. Okay. Well, let's open it up into Q&A. Hi. There is a really wonderful comment in the Q&A. It says, hi, Chaney. We were on this voyage. We were with the same group in the atrium with you. We were under supervision of Carrie, the cabaret singer. Thanks for capturing the experience and transformational nature of the experience. We stayed on the sky until moldy. We went back to Norway in August 2019. We had to visit the coastline of the near disaster to try to come to grips with the experience. We've purchased four copies of your book to remember and to share with our friends and family to use a baseball metaphor. You hit the experience out of the park. Thank you, Janet and David from Concord. Oh, my goodness. Thank you. This means the world to me. Thank you. So I don't have anything intelligent to say about it other than thank you, Janet and David, did you say? I may have seen you, may not have gotten to know your names, but isn't that incredible that out of the seven plus billion people we got to intersect at all? Okay. So now how about some questions? Let's go. I love the humor in passages you read, but you mentioned how the cruise ship experience was oddly similar to early COVID lockdown. Do you feel like the cruise ship disaster helped prepare you for quarantine in some way? Yeah, absolutely. I was unfairly better prepared than many people. That kind of uncertainty and the loneliness of being around many other people. It's a very special kind of loneliness, you know, living in a city and yet being confined without any control. It's a very specific feeling, but I had gone through that. So I was able to cope with it better, I think. And plus this time I had Netflix, so you know. All right. How about a fun one? Have you embraced your inner Martha Stewart? So this refers to a section in the book. Oh my goodness. So I'm visiting my parents since Seattle. They're watching the other room and I hope they never get to that point. It's kind of embarrassing, but my friends make fun of me that I have this big Martha Stewart energy and that makes people sort of want to settle down with me, if you will. I have not fully embraced it. I really hope to have a proper room springer. But COVID seems to have a very different thing on a plant for us, so we'll see. It sure does, Cheney. The book felt to have such a natural flow of weaving the factual with the very personal and sometimes painful. What was writing like this and weaving this together for you? Cathartic. I laughed a lot and I cried a lot. Oh my god, I sound like a really bad movie reviewer. I laughed. I cried. Healing, you know, and hopefully reading it feels that way for some people too. And it's hard. It's hard, but I felt like without putting myself on the page, it just felt disingenuous, you know? If I was going to write about life and all its messiness and yet keep my hands clean and walk away from it looking good or not sharing much about my personal life, then, yeah, I don't know. I think there would have been a cop out. Has that been your initial approach to the story? Yeah, so when this had a kind of a strange path to publication, but long story short, my editor at Godin is the one who kept pushing me to write about my relationship and I fought him all the way through. And in fact, actually, right until the date of public, we had to send things off to the printer for proofs, but certain sections were still just placeholders because I just couldn't bear to write them. And then on one night, sitting down outside in my courtyard in San Francisco, I was able to just write it in one go and it just felt great. And I knew that I had been working on it in my head for months and months and I've been dreading writing it, but it came together. I think it comes together very well. I think it's very, it brings the reader into intimacy with you, let's say you in quotes, the author, but with the story. I think, you know, that idea that here you are in the situation. And again, it's an assessment of everything. And I really hope that, you know, I become sort of an empty vessel, like as a character. And of course, that's hard. It's just imagining my 15-year-old niece opening the book makes me want to just hurl. But I hope strangers can just kind of treat this person as a character and, you know, not necessarily make the connection to me. I would think so. I mean, again, just to go if we think of this as being analogous or metaphor, even for the pandemic, certainly a lot of relationships came under scrutiny during lockdown. For sure. For sure. You know, and I think that's something that I think a lot of readers can easily relate to, of that sort of that necessary reassessment. Yes, someone in chat does mention, so indeed he is your ex, right? A short story. Yeah, short answer is yes. And also, Erlen Berkland, the rescue diver, after having read halfway, or like halfway through the book, I sent him a copy after publication. He said, unsolicited relationship advice. Dump him. I like that guy. I like him a lot too, yeah. All right. I think we have time for a couple more. Oh, how about, has anyone optioned yet? Somebody wants to see this made into a film. If you'd like it, great. I don't know. And it's not, no, the answer is no. And it's got its own life. And if it does get optioned and get turned into a movie, I really hope that it becomes a very different story and it becomes, it's played by someone who looks nothing like me. That's all I hope for. Let's see. How about a further research? How much more research did you put in after the events in this? Because there was quite a bit of like, you know, yeah, Oracle ship stuff. I didn't keep track of the time. I was accused by a certain cranky Facebook commentator that I was out to make a quick buck, which is hilarious. Because if any of you know anything about book publishing, you don't make a quick buck. You get pelted by pennies over many years, you know. So if I actually think about like per hour wages, it gets very depressing. Luckily enough, I enjoyed a lot of it. I'm a very nosy person. I take after my dad. And so it was just so much fun going down the internet rabbit hole. Having said that, I couldn't have done this without the lockdown where I just had a lot of time. The magazine world was decimated. I was laid off and had a lot of time. How about our final SFPL questions for the both of you? What are you reading? What are you watching? What are you eating? Oh my goodness. Cheney, go ahead please. I'm finally reading Kathy Park, Kathy Hall Park's Minor Feelings. I'm so sorry. I'm two last names. That's hard. Fantastic collection of essays. And also I'm reading kind of a guilty pleasure book from the library, a thriller, a murder mystery. I'm not going to name it because I'm kind of embarrassed. I shouldn't be actually, why am I embarrassed? It's called Bath House. So there you go. It's literally steamy. And it's, yeah, it's a page turner. Okay, Oscar, what are you reading? Author of Bath House was in the, has been in the virtual library. We love him. Oh my God. Yeah. No shame. I know. It's just my parents are watching. Oh yeah. I turn into my like 15, I revert to my like 15 year old self thinking like I shouldn't be reading this. That's understandable. I'm reading submissions. That's pretty much it. Lots and lots of submissions. Wonderful. Well, I thank you to the San Francisco Public Library, not just for having me, but like you've been a lifeline to so many of us. And it's been just so great. And it's incredible how quickly you pivoted to provide all these amazing things. And you know, it's been incredible. And thank you to Oscar and Ziziba. It feels like a home coming to me. Ziziba was the first literary journal to publish me. And the San Francisco Public Library, thanks to the Brown Handler residency at the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. I've had this incredible, you know, relationships with the library. And this is and also thank you to everybody who joined because libraries like our last public sphere that were random encounters happen. I don't recognize any other names in the attendees, which is trust me, when you're a writer, the best thing to do like to see because oftentimes it's just your friends and family. So this is incredible to see all these names of people I don't know. And you know, library people who love the library, you know, you are my people. So thank you. My people too. Thank you library lovers. And Oscar and Cheney, we thank you for being here tonight, library community. We always thank you for being here. And you too, viewers, we thank you as well. And have a wonderful night, everybody. Thank you.