Amy Wallen's new book is an LA Times Bestseller
I first met Amy Wallen online. Oh wait, that's the only place I've met her, other than reading her book,
Moonpies and Moviestars. You know, reading any book is like stepping right into the skull of a writer. In this case, one obviously from the South, and one who has hit the streets of Hollywood with a notepad and eye for detail.
Let's face it, if you're in Bakersfield and you're a fan of the Paperback Writer blog, then you might know someone very much like, oh, let's say, a Texan, or an Oklahoman. And, you might have observed them having a starstruck opinion of Hollywood--a mere 100 miles south of Bakersfield. You know those people. They tend to have never even been to Hollywood. C'mon admit it. And yes, there are many exceptions to this rule.
Amy Wallen, with wings made of leaves
For those of you who don't know. Hollywood is south of the agricultural and oilfield landscape of Bakersfield, an area once filled to the brim with Joads-like immigrants of the Dust Bowl. Bakersfield has since grown a teeny bit more metropolitan, though I have to say, raised monster trucks are still a daily sighting in the land of Buck Owens.
Why am I bringing all this up?
Because if you're familiar with the South and with Hollywood, then you are more apt to get the comic humor and real-life dialogue from
Moonpies and Moviestars. You'll just get it. Wallen's story in turn will appear less the stereotype and more, "Hey, those characters are people from my family." Or, "Those characters I swear live right up the street from me." Or maybe even, "That is me."
I don't understand this photo, but Amy sent it to me and weird photos are cool
It's not a long stretch from the good old Okie mentality that still permeates Bakersfield. The South has forever swathed its paintbrush onto Central Valley California culture. You can't escape it. You just live with it. Or you are it.
Amy Wallen's road-trip story is pure comedy, pure fun and a psychological Winnebago voyage through characters as strange as any dysfunctionally functional Southern nuclear family.
I'm not lying.
With that said, here's a fun Noveltown interview with Amy Wallen:
Interview:Noveltown: Ms. Wallen, you have quite the tale you have spun. It’s kind of Southern, it’s sort of Hollywood. It’s a tour de force mystery comedy literary hijinks of what happens to a runaway. Yes, did I say funny? Funny seems to be lost in many people’s vocabularies these days. Yes, a funny book that hides serious issues regarding runaway children. Now, if you’d be so bold, please, allow the real Amy Wallen to comment regarding the idea of serious issues hidden in the comedy of your novel.
Amy: I love humor to tell serious stuff because it’s a great way to trick the reader into feeling the bad feelings. You get them to laugh hard, and then you drop a real sad doozy and they start to bawl because they didn’t have their guard up. But if you are writing a serious novel, then they are waiting for the doozies and they have steel mail over their hearts. It’s about getting people to be open to their emotions.
Noveltown: Moonpies… and Moviestars… Porkchops… and Applesauce… I’m seeing a connection here. In fact, I’m guessing your subconscious behaviors are rooted in a certain episode of The Brady Bunch, quite possibly indicating a hidden love for the 1971 version of Peter Brady. Now, I’d like to cut through the crap. Do you still madly love Peter Brady, and tell us how you named your novel and the process in doing so.
Amy: I had the hots for his older brother, Greg. But I wanted to be Marsha Brady, so maybe I have some weird incestuous thing going on inside of me. My original title was
DEAD ARMADILLOS AND MOONPIES. I loved that title, but I guess the word “dead” sells to a different crowd than the publisher wanted my book to sell to. My agents came up with
MOONPIES AND MOVIE STARS and I think it’s pretty damn good (can I say damn here?) with the alliteration and poking fun at a couple of themes running throughout the story.
Noveltown: Of course you can say, damn. Your book is on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list and you’re going to be on a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this April. Please talk to us about your festival appearance in real terms. While you consider your answer, let me tell you I have talked considerably with my compadres here at Noveltown. We thought it would be a good idea to attend your discussion on humor dressed as Moonpies eating Moonpies. Sort of a… shall we say, cannibalistic sugary show and tell, from the audience perspective of course. Quite honestly, such a display would be meant to protest your work of prose art. And possibly to build from there, a step further, yes, as an ongoing exhibit at the Getty Museum. Your book would be suspended above an entire Moonpie carnage fracas like a swinging block of moony cheese.
Amy: Oh I’d love it!!! Please come!! There’s something quite ironic about MoonPies eating MoonPies since so many people tend to shun them. Or at least in California where they would prefer they were made with wheat germ or avocados. And if you can get some sort of carnage image that represents my book sounds quite intriguing. Don’t you love the word “carnage”? I suppose I’ll never get to use that in a title either.
I wonder if this is the only serious photo Wallen has ever taken?
The
LA Times Festival of Books takes place Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29.
I’m more than honored to be on the Fiction and Humor panel. I’ve attended as an audience member several times and it’s just so high energy, inspiring and stimulating to readers and writers alike. I’d be giddy as I frolicked around the UCLA campus to each panel. My panel is on Saturday morning at 10:30 am in Young Hall CS 24. Fellow participants are Allison Burnett, Merrill Markoe and Pamela Ribon. The moderator is Barbara De-Marco-Barrett. I hope I can contain my giddy frolicking.
Noveltown: We don’t mean any harm in our Moonpie protest and come to think of it, we don’t really have time to bother with sewing Moonpies onto our sweat jumpsuits. But I do have a question. What made you choose Moonpies rather than some other kind of preservative injected pastry or breakfast cereal for an obsession by one of your characters? I mean, consider your options:
Ho-Hos and Hollywood, which really goes along with some rather naughty Hollywood behavior and risqué madam and star guestlists. Or
Snowballs and Sin City. I won’t play with the humor there. So, talk to me, in a real way of course about your characters obsessions…
Amy: My grandmother owned a honky tonk on Highway 90 in South Texas. On the bar were two rounders, one with pork rinds and barbecue potato chips and the other had honey buns and MoonPies. I had honey buns for breakfast, and have to admit they were my fave, but MoonPies had a much better name. And there’s that old song,
MoonPies and RC Cola.
You asked me about my characters’ obsessions. Hmmm. Well, one of them would probably have preferred to have been a book titled
Snowballs and Sin City. She’s obsessed with men and having a good time. Another one is obsessed with cleanliness. Or she was during a couple of drafts, but I got tired of keeping her motor home clean when I couldn’t even keep my own house clean. And then there’s the narcissist of the bunch and she’s obsessed with herself. The little girl is obsessed with her Mrs Beasley doll (Remember
Family Affair with Mr French and Jody and Buffy? Didn’t Buffy OD?). The little boy in my book is obsessed with digging the hearts out of roadkill. The roadkill has to be very fresh because he’s hoping to find a heart that’s still beating so he can hold it. Has it gotten weird enough yet? That’s probably the weirdest thing, and lots of folks wanted me to take that out, because they thought the little boy would grow up to be a serial killer. But I figured, he was being an angry little boy and if he did grow up to be a serial killer, well that would be another book to write, wouldn’t it?
Noveltown: Family Affair. Some of us at Noveltown to have to watch that because our sisters liked it. Barf. Oh the roadkill theme is
magnifique! Perhaps a sequel where the obsessed kid grows up to be a weird writer guy... Speaking of weird writer guys, who is James?
Amy: I have no idea who James is. I was walking into Trader Joes grocery store one day and he kept pestering me to give him some change or to buy him some food, so I finally told him if he would push my cart, carry my groceries to my car and do an interview that sold a few million copies of my book, I’d give him a box of cereal, but only the kind with antioxidants because he has a horrible rash that runs up one side of his face.
Honestly, James Spring is one of the funniest writers you’ll ever meet. The sarcastic and insulting remarks just spill out of his mouth and pen (maybe those are just directed at me?). What I can’t figure out is how there can be so many brilliant editors out there, and they aren’t picking up his book and getting it out to the masses.
www.crossingthegap.com The only answer is that they want to lose money. [
Secret: I’m really sabotaging his whole book effort so that he won’t be more successful and quit helping me with all our great endeavors. But don’t tell. Shhh.]
Noveltown: What is James?
Amy: Def. 1 Noun. A type of beany that women in the 16th century wore to signify their chastity belt was chaffing. A kind of call for help.
Def. 2 Verb. Being an adroit writer while writing derogatory remarks on a friend’s myspace site.
www.myspace.com/jamesrspring (he needs more friends and please feel free to post rude comments).
I took this photo last night. That's my kid. We were all at Zingo's after his punk band,
Dirty Spanglish performed at Studio 99. Those of you who know this truck stop cafe on Buck Owens Boulevard will understand when I say Moonpies and Moviestars is like taking your family to Zingos...
Noveltown: San Dee-ahh-go. Oh that delightful should-have-been-a-prose character, Anchorman. Such delights. Tell me, what does San Dee-ahh-go and First Friday mean to you? Only the real deal please about literary San Dee-ahh-go…
Amy: This is a hot question in San Diego now.
Someone (I won’t name any names, but a semi-newly appointed UCSD writing program professor) called San Diego’s writing community a sweet-smelling rotting corpse. She took that from the city’s namesake St. Didacus and the history she read on Wikipedia. A non-Wikiality version is that St D’s corpse was never rotting—that’s the part that got him canonized— and while his body awaited burial he emitted this sweet smell.
I won’t say that San Diego is the place where miracles happen, but I will say that the writing community is as vibrant as the freeway center-divider oleander in mid-May, and when the night blooming jasmine is wafting through the evening air, you can get a little loopy. I suspect we have to be even more disciplined as writers because we have to tell ourselves that even though it’s 80 degrees, blue sky and the orange blossoms smell sweeter than old St. Didacus, we must endure the indoors and write. Isn’t there some kind of suffering involved in that?
Whatever the reason, suffering or bliss, San Diego has some truly witty, insightful, original and poetic writers, all of which can be witnessed the first Friday of the month at First Friday Open Mic Prose reading.
www.firstfridayprose.com I started the First Friday ongoing event almost 3 years ago now at the request of
San Diego Writers Ink (a writing organization extraordinaire—
www.sandiegowriters.org ). The monthly event has grown stronger and wittier every month to the point we are SRO now—50-60 folks reading and/or listening. Anyone who wants to share their writing finds their way there eventually. San Diego Writers Ink sponsors the event and provides wine and cheese. But it’s the writing of the attendees that brings the crowd. That, and my stupid poodle-in-the-microwave jokes in between pieces.
It is strictly prose, no poetry (I can tell when anyone tries to sneak it in and the rest of the evening that writer will be punished by my enduring sarcastic harassment.) I added the prose-only rule because so many opportunities exist for poets to read. Hell, a poet can stand on a street corner and read. But prose readers go to an open mic and they usually feel ostracized. It’s like folks are whispering behind your back, “What, no meter?, no rhythm? No intonation? No anger?” Plus, prose writers ramble on and on. That’s why I instituted the 3-minute rule, to shut them up. It works and so does the whole fete.
I’ve limited the readings to 3 minutes each. The regulars have nicknamed me the Time Nazi because you get my black satin, spiked-heel DSW Ferragamo Knock-off in the ass if you go over 3 minutes. It’s become a competitive sport in editing, and the writing and readings have become better and better because of it. We’re soon going to have to start urine testing to see who’s been snorting Strunk and White and shooting up Liquid Paper before the event. It’s full of laughs, fast-paced and exciting to see glimpses of the great writing coming out of San Diego.
We now record the evening and post the readings as mp3s on our
website for readers’ moms to listen in and any and all to download and peruse at their leisure. We also have a
myspace spot we’ve just started and are looking for friends and fellow writers.
All this to say, First Friday is just one of countless writerly goings-on in this city of spic-n-span. Neither our nifty smelling corpses or the sunshine and green lawns made possible only by the man-made sprinkler systems has made San Diego alive and real with a scene. We don’t need the smog and grit of LA or the fog of London or the sludge of the Hudson River to produce art. We’re like the Nike tennis shoe of writing communities—we just do it.
Noveltown: Or the dusty smog of California's Great Central Valley. Ahem...
It’s clear the Los Angeles Times is in love with you, that Moonpies, if alive with little sugary arms, legs and noses, would be in love with you too, and that we ourselves, might be in love with you… But only if you answer our final question in a most truthful and honest way. Discuss your future and your next delving into comedy.
Amy: Viking asked me to do a series based on the characters in MOONPIES. So, that’s what’s coming next. Same characters, same bat channel, same bat cave, but new batman. The main character will be the sister named Loralva that is a major character in MOONPIES. She drives a school bus in the 2nd book. It’s due out at the beginning of 2008. I also have a couple of more book ideas swimming around in my head. James says I can’t say that because it makes people throw up. But I’m itching to get many books down on paper and out there. All I can do is do my darnedest to be a really good writer and if it makes people throw up then they need to see a gastroenterologist.
Noveltown: Thanks for being a truthful, honest, and real author with a sense of humor… We do love you.
Amy: I don’t know about real. One of my main ingredients is “cocoa processed with alkali.” At least that’s what it says on the outside of my package. Baked at Chattanooga Bakery in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Total Fat: 7g which is barely even 11% of your daily value though. And I have a marshmallow filling, which puts the non-fluff ranking of truthful and honest at risk. I’m not a Trans Fat and admit that I prefer to stay saturated.
Labels: authors, Bakersfield book, blog, books, California literature, central valley, LA Times Festival of Books, UCLA books
