Interview: Claire LaZebnik of Epic Fail and Families and Other Non-Returnable Gifts

Posted on September 27, 2011 at 3:59 pm

Claire LaZebnik is the witty and wise author of two new books, both highly recommended. Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts (for adults) is the story of Keats, the “normal” child in an unconventional family with poetically-named siblings Hopkins (a brilliant doctor) and Milton (a reclusive computer geek) and divorcing parents who disapprove of her long-time boyfriend. Epic Fail, for YA (young adult) readers, has the daughter of the new principal of a tony prep school meet the son of Hollywood stars in a Pride and Prejudice-style romantic comedy. LaZebnik is as much fun to interview as she is to read and it was a treat to get her to answer my questions.

You are a big Jane Austen fan — which book is your favorite? How has she influenced or inspired you?

My favorite Austen novel used to be Pride and Prejudice, because it’s the most unabashedly romantic of them all. Darcy and Elizabeth spar so beautifully while they’re falling in love–the romantic tension is phenomenal. I’ll never get tired of rereading it. But at some point after college, I started to prefer Emma. Emma is such a wonderfully flawed heroine. She’s conceited and overly-confident and a snob, but she’s also smart and beautiful and lovable. And Mr. Knightley is . . . <happy, dreamy sigh because words can’t capture how I feel about him> . . . There’s just something about the way he’s guiding her and loving her and forgiving her all at the same time that I find even more romantic than the Elizabeth/Darcy sparring thing. But I had to grow into that.

Austen’s inspiring because she was limited to writing about the world she knew, which was a very restricted world of parlors and teas, but she still managed to capture an entire universe of human behavior.

Also, Austen wrote in her sister’s house, in the midst of chaos. I do most of my writing downstairs, surrounded by the family and pets, in the midst of chaos. If she didn’t complain, I’m not going to. (Okay, that’s a lie. I always complain.)

When you began Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts, the story of upheavals in the life of an unconventional family, did it start with an image or a character or an incident?

With a contrast actually: I wanted to contrast a middle-aged mother who’s dating a bunch of different men with her young daughter who’s in a longterm relationship. I like that they both play against people’s expectations.

Why do we all feel like outsiders in our own families at times?

When you’re a kid, you buy into your family’s mythology. You believe that the way your family does things is the right and proper way to do them–maybe even the ONLY way to do them. Then you leave home, go to college, fall in love, get to know other people’s families, go into therapy . . . and you suddenly have a different perspective on your childhood. You walk into your old home and realize that there was nothing universal about your upbringing, that it was specific to your family and that certain aspects of it probably could have been better. And once you realize that, it can be strange and alienating. You can go home again but you’ll never look at it quite the same way.

How do you have a first-person narrator tell a story so that the reader understands some things before she does?

A friend once told me that even though her boyfriend was difficult and jealous, she loved him and intended to marry him. I could tell she was actually trying to gather the courage to break up with him. Sometimes we telegraph our intentions before we even acknowledge them to ourselves. And that’s what happens with my narrators sometimes–they manage to communicate to the reader their underlying emotions without stopping to examine them.

You have some vivid and sympathetic portrayals of characters with social interaction issues, not often seen in novels. What does this add to the story?

I just think it’s realistic: I know lots of people who have mild agoraphobia or autism or depression, and there are times when these things can really interfere with forward momentum. So I find that interesting to include in a novel, especially since how their family members deal with it–whether they’re supportive or enabling or dismissive–reveals a lot about those characters too. And I think readers really root for someone who’s struggling to overcome any kind of inner paralysis.

Do you have a particular audience in mind when you write?

My editor, mostly! I’ve had the same editor for my last four adult novels. She’s wonderful–smart and receptive and kind–and I feel like if I can please her, I’m on the right track. She’s also kind of the target audience for the book–she’s young, and well-read.

Why does Keats, the “normal daughter,” remind you of Marilyn in the old Munsters TV show?

Cousin Marilyn was the odd man out in the Munsters, because everyone else was a monster and she was blond and pretty and human. Keats, who’s competent and lucid and socially outgoing, feels like she’s the weird one when she spends time with her brilliant, quirky, incompetent relatives. Normalcy is relative: out in the world, Keats is normal, but at home she’s the oddball.

How did you pick the three poets that inspired the names of the main character and her siblings?

That’s such a good question! I didn’t even realize how much I was hoping someone would ask that until you did. Yeats is my all time favorite poet, so I would have liked to have named my protagonist Yeats but that’s just TOO weird. No one even knows how to pronounce it. But Yeats makes me think of Keats . . . and that seemed much closer to a real name. So she became Keats. Hopkins wrote my favorite line of poetry, one that’s stuck with me for decades–“There lives the dearest freshness deep down things“–so I’m fond of him. Plus, Hopkins sounded like a cool name to me. And Milton is a real name, and also one of the greatest poets of all time, so he seemed like an obvious choice.

What has surprised you most about readers’ reactions to your books?

Their concern about characters I haven’t thought that much about. I don’t want to ruin anything, but one character does get his heart broken in this novel, and several people emailed me to say, “I’m very worried about him–please promise me he’ll be okay.” Someone even asked if he could get his own sequel. In all honesty, I hadn’t given him another thought once he was out of the picture . . . but it’s kind of gratifying to know that readers feel that invested.

Your books are very funny — what makes you laugh?

Many things make me laugh, but my kids most of all. Like, a few months ago we were all trying to figure out what movie we should go to and my husband and I wanted to see “127 Hours,” so we were describing it to the kids, and my 11-year-old son said, “I don’t think I should see that movie and I don’t think I should have to be the one to point that out.” Every time I think of that, I start laughing again. He was so right. And it was such a great way to put it.

What was the first piece of writing you got paid for? What did you do with the money?

Wow. I’m not positive, but I think it was probably an essay I wrote for GQ magazine. My sister was a magazine writer at the time and they asked her to do an “All About Adam” essay (I don’t know if they still have that feature–women writing about men) and she was too busy but she told them they should give me a shot at it. So I did and they bought it and that was the beginning of my magazine career. I think it was like a dollar a word, so a few hundred dollars, maybe? I’m sad to say that I’ve never been one of those people who earmark earnings for something special. I always stick checks in the bank and they just become part of my savings, although sometimes I will think, “Well, that last check paid for this” when I buy something indulgent.

What’s the best thing about writing for a YA audience?

The fan mail. I get the most mind-blowingly wonderful emails from teenage girls. They care deeply about the characters and really want to connect with me to discuss them. And a lot of them are interested in a writing career, so I love having the chance to encourage that. I answer every email I get. If someone’s taken the time to write me, I’m going to let her know how much I appreciate it.

Your characters often use humor to connect with or deflect each other — how do you create the humor personality of each character?

My romantic leads tend to “find” each other through their similar senses of humor. I often have the main characters tease each other in a way that other people in the book just can’t keep up with. I’m not interested in snarky or nasty humor–there has to be a positive and playful energy to it. And they have to know when it’s time to be serious. Not everything should be a joke.

What is it about the Elizabeth/Darcy conflict that makes it so enduring and relatable?

I don’t know if I’d say it’s relatable so much as it’s a truly satisfying fantasy: I mean, the most sought-after bachelor in your social circle falls in love with you AGAINST HIS WILL. He knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help himself. It’s the most romantic thing in the world! And the reason he falls in love with her is that she’s so funny and smart. Honestly, there are so many clunky romances these days where you never actually see the attraction, where the authors assume that having characters be rude to each other is the same as Elizabeth and Darcy sparring. E and D are never RUDE. They’re smart and witty and have good conversations, even before they fall in love.

How is high school like Austen’s insular communities?

There’s a clear hierarchy to both, one that might not be obvious to outsiders, but is very clear to anyone inside the community. And those social divisions are almost impossible to cross or change–it’s very rare for someone in one group to fall in love with someone in another, and if it happens, it sends ripples throughout the entire community. Plus everyone knows everyone else’s business–it’s virtually impossible to keep a secret!

Sea Fever: The Lovely Poem from ‘Dolphin Tale’

Posted on September 25, 2011 at 3:05 pm

“Dolphin Tale” features one of my favorite poems, “Sea Fever” by John Masefield. Here it is:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

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Interview: David Code on How Parental Stress is Toxic for Kids

Posted on September 20, 2011 at 8:00 am

Many thanks to author David Code for answering my questions about his new book, Kids Pick Up On Everything: How Parental Stress Is Toxic To Kids.

As featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CBS and Fox News, David Code is an Episcopal minister and award-winning author who draws on the latest research in neuroscience and his own study of families in more than twenty countries across five continents.

What inspired you to research and write this book?

Since I grew up with few resources, I always assumed what many others assume: Families with more money and education must be more secure, more relaxed and just plain happier. But when I was ordained as an Episcopal minister in 2003 and served two wealthy parishes near New York City, I was surprised at what I found.

The wealthy families I counseled almost seemed to suffer more. For example, a successful graphic designer had a daughter with ADHD who had been rejected by several private schools she had applied to. An entrepreneur practiced attachment-parenting with her son for years, including “babywearing” the child on her shoulder or back, and sleeping with him. But her son constantly threw tantrums, and his parents later divorced. Several successful company presidents had children who barely finished high school. Even the relatively normal families I visited often had children with allergies, asthma, learning disabilities, ADHD, or mood disorders, and many were on medication.

This made no sense to me. These kids had well-educated, well-intentioned, self-sacrificing parents who were doing what the experts told them to do: shower your kids with love and attention, help them find and pursue their inner passions, never raise your voice, protect your child at school and defend them on the playground, etc. Yet, their children weren’t turning out as expected. Why would kids with loving, dedicated, successful parents and all their advantages end up as troubled as children?

One clue was that in many of the homes I visited, the stress was palpable and many couples had drifted apart emotionally. As I listened to parents’ kitchen-table confessions, I felt a kind of frenetic, jangly tension that was so thick in the room that one could almost see it. I assumed, like most people would, that these households were tense because their child’s problem had left everyone on edge.

Then, I read something that made me look at these families differently.

A psychiatrist named Murray Bowen had conducted an experiment in the 1950’s at the National Institute of Mental Health, observing how schizophrenic youth interacted with their families. For 18 months or more, several patients lived with their entire families in a ward where Bowen and his staff could observe and record their behaviors 24/7.

How brilliant, I thought: he observed our species the way Jane Goodall observed our chimp cousins in Tanzania!

As Bowen observed and compared the behavior of these families, a certain pattern emerged. He described “a striking emotional distance between the parents in all the families. We have called this the ’emotional divorce’…. When either parent becomes more invested in the patient than in the other parent, the psychotic process becomes intensified.” In other words, the parents didn’t drift apart because they were too busy caring for a schizophrenic child. Rather, the drifting apart of their marriage came first, and it had somehow affected their child’s mental health.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Dr. Bowen’s quirky little experiment, but his concept of the “emotional divorce” forever changed my pastoral counseling to families. For the first time, I noticed my own assumptions and began to question them.

Like most people, I had assumed that a child’s health or behavioral problem makes a family tense, which of course it does. But now I asked myself, “What if that couple was tense even before the problem, and their tension somehow contributed to the child’s symptoms? If the old saying is true that kids pick up on everything, what if there’s some kind of mind-body connection between a parent’s anxious mind and a child’s sensitive body?”

I began to ask doctors, nurses, teachers and therapists about this mind-body connection between parent and child, and they poured out stories of how overwhelmed they feel by today’s seeming epidemic of stressed-out parents and troubled children. As I continued to read more medical studies and interview more experts, my conviction that there is a mind-body connection between a parent’s mind and a child’s body became stronger. It almost seemed as though children become barometers for their parents’ state of mind. Could it be that children are “canaries in the coal mine,” indicating when a family’s levels of stress have become toxic?

The answer is yes. Here is what every parent needs to know:

1) Kids pick up on everything, especially our stress and anxiety;
2) This happens both in the womb and throughout childhood;
3) The mind-body connection is a primal link between every parent and child;
4) This mind-body connection contributes to problems in every family—it’s just a question of degree: from colic and food allergies to asthma and autism;
5) This pattern is already epidemic in America, and it’s getting worse;
6) This is not the mother’s or father’s fault. Today’s parents are more stressed-out because our social support networks are dwindling, and we don’t realize that, as our isolation increases, it drives up our stress levels.

I feel a tremendous sense of urgency in getting my message out to parents, because every day lost is another child born with disorders that could have been reduced or even prevented. Asthma now affects 1 child in 10, as does ADHD. The national prevalence of autism almost doubled from 2002 to 2006, and now it is 1 out of 110 children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But among military families, the rate is a startling 1 out of every 88 children, and in Silicon Valley the rate is roughly 1 in 77.
I want parents to see the urgent medical imperative to reduce their stress now.

(more…)

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Win a Copy of Seven Days in Utopia

Posted on August 25, 2011 at 8:00 am

I have five copies of Seven Days in Utopia: Golf’s Sacred Journey, the book behind the upcoming film starring Robert Duvall and Lucas Black in the story of a young pro golfer who learns meaningful lessons from an eccentric rancher in a place called Utopia. The book uses golf as a metaphor for life. Our choices bring us to the place where we address the ball and it will require patience, humility, forgiveness, and love to find meaning and mastery. Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Utopia in the subject line and tell me your favorite golf movie. Don’t forget your address! I will select three random winners a week from today.

Interview: Barbara Dee of Trauma Queen

Posted on August 22, 2011 at 8:00 am

Barbara Dee is the author of Trauma Queen, a terrific new book for ages 9-14. It is the smart and very funny story of a 7th grader named Marigold. While most parents are what we might call amateurs in the field of child embarrassment, Marigold’s mother Becca is a professional. She is a “performance artist,” whose job is to do outrageous and provocative things, including one presentation that attacks the mother of Marigold’s (soon to be former) best friend. Ms. Dee answered my questions about the book, how she knew she was funny, and why she likes writing for kids.

Why are all young teens so easily embarrassed by their parents?

Well, I’m no child psychologist, but as a mom of three teenagers I think it’s pretty normal for young teens to separate a little from their parents. Maybe a part of this process involves holding up your parents to incredibly complex rules of behavior—and rolling your eyes.

What was the most embarrassing thing your parents ever did to you?

I’m not haunted by any one excruciating incident. But I do remember cringing at some of their fashion choices—paisley scarves, wide lapels, big jewelry. In Trauma Queen Becca describes being mortified by Gram’s plaid pants, which may have been inspired by—and I’m just guessing here—my own parents’ wardrobe in the Seventies.

How do you think contemporary performance art will be seen 100 years from now?

I wonder! The boundaries between types of media keep changing, so maybe by then all art will be performance art. Or possibly in 100 years art will be accessible only electronically, so Becca’s type of performance art—spontaneous, low-tech, performed in front of a live audience—will seem antique. I hope not. I love going to the theater, because I love that feeling that once the curtain goes up, anything can happen.

Should Becca have refrained from putting on a performance that she knew would hurt her daughter’s friendship with Emma?

Oh, definitely! Becca made a big mistake by putting her self-expression ahead of her daughter’s feelings, and I think she figures that out. But I know how hard it can be sometimes to put your work second to your family’s needs. And of course no mom enjoys being judged by other moms, so I completely understand why Becca felt provoked. Still, she should have considered that her thirteen-year-old daughter had a separate—and valid—perspective.

When did you know you were funny?

My kids are all very funny, and we spend our dinners trying to crack each other up. So I knew I could make them laugh, but of course writing funny is a whole different thing. I wasn’t sure I could do it until I printed out the manuscript of my first book (Just Another Day in My Insanely Real Life), left the room–then listened by the door while they read it out loud and giggled. An amazing moment for me!

What made you decide to bring in two generations of mother-daughter conflict?

Trauma Queen is a kid-centric book, but I didn’t want to write nothing but Oh-my-crazy-mother. I wanted the mom to be as well-rounded a character as the daughter—far from perfect, yes, but also creative, smart, and big-hearted. So I decided to show a bit of Becca’s history, especially what sort of daughter she was herself. I think Gram helps Marigold begin to see her mom as a whole person, and also to understand that we’re all just family.

Will you write more about Marigold?

Hmm, maybe. When I finished writing this book, it was so hard to let go of the characters, so that’s certainly a possibility.

What do you like best about writing for a YA audience?

Actually, most of my readers are tweens, kids who’ve outgrown the Children’s Section of their library but aren’t ready for the edgier stuff in some YA fiction. (These readers are usually ages 9-14.) I love how strongly this audience connects with characters, so I try to write the sort of people they’ll want to hang out with. I’m not interested in creating superhumans coping with dark fantasy worlds; I’m going for the flawed, complex, funny types of characters which kids that age will find in real life.

I also love how a tween audience expects direct contact with authors. For a writer, there’s nothing more precious than reader feedback! Most of the time it’s email–but once in a while a reader sends an actual letter written in purple gel pen. Those are always the best!

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