How to set up an interview with Alice Hoffman...like Bridget Jones

The Rules of Magic (the prequel to Practical Magic) is out October 15th! My interview with Alice Hoffman will be out in September.

How cool is it when a famous author calls you from her house in Cambridge on a Monday?! My interview with Alice Hoffman lasted 30 exquisite minutes and with her permission, I have enough material for several pieces for several different publications. 

One of my favorite characters is Bridget Jones because she's beautifully ridiculous; she's witty, self-deprecating, painfully romantic, always wanting to prove her intelligence, has two answers or more for a single question, and she starts off in publishing, reading and promoting pieces of literature with honest regard and hopeful enthusiasm that one day she will be known for her talents as well.

Sometimes I fancy myself to be a little bit like her, and it's not with intention, but rather through default, inordinary events happening in my life; an experience can either take a flying leap off a cliff and careen into the vast and treacherous unknown or it can soar into the sky, higher than imagined. I have experienced both events many times, but this one is like the bird soaring thingy. 

The following is regarding how this interview came to be. I would like to point out that I was writing the email to Hoffman's publicist, sitting outside the Captiva Library and facing the old cemetery while using my hot-spot. The service was shoddy at best and for some reason my email that was written on a Monday didn't get sent until Wednesday while I was having lunch with my friend Tajh, discussing the fabulous email I sent Simon and Schuster, YET I still hadn't heard back. I wanted to show Tajh the email, so I went to my sent box, and behold, it wasn't there. It was in my drafts, having never been sent! I am grateful to Tajh for this moment of realization. (Thank you, Tajh, for helping me see that hot-spots aren't always hot, specifically near cemeteries, and I needed to "resend" the email right away.)

So, what is it like to answer a call from this incredibly famous author that was set up between you and Hoffman's publicist just days ago? One word: Thrilling. 

First, yes, I set up this interview as some tiny little person in the world of literature, thinking that I have nerve to write Simon and Schuster and ask if Alice Hoffman would speak to me, tiny-little-person, me. Did I drop the small magazine for which I was writing and a name of the director of the conference that she is attending in the fall as the key-note speaker? Yes, I did; however, I believe that most of my prowess has to do with the darn fine email I wrote. 

Anne....

Simon & Schuster

Dear Anne ...:

I'm reaching out from Fort Myers Magazine, and on behalf of Tom DeMarchi, head of the Sanibel Writers Conference with FGCU, who also gave me your contact, to interview Alice Hoffman prior to her appearance as the key note speaker. Personally, and especially this summer, I have become familiar with her work, and as an English teacher and lover of well-crafted novels, her work is inspiring on many levels, especially from her historical fiction to magical realism.  In fact, some of us on the island have formed a little Alice Hoffman book club, consuming as many of her novels as we can each week. I am finishing up The Museum of Extraordinary Things and have The Dovekeepers on my Audible. Of course we are all looking forward to the prequel of Practical Magic! The Owen’s family is most fascinating and I am secretly glad I also have gray eyes [yes, I wrote this-- ugh, dork]. 

Anyway, I understand she has limited time to interview as it is summer, and I have a deadline by August 15^th for the September/October issue, which we would like to have out before the conference in order to gain more interest for the event. My best availability is anytime during the next few weeks and I can conduct the interview by phone. My questions may be geared around particular themes in her novels, magical realism, and Jewish mysticism; her ability to delve into characters so well, her overall writer’s craft and what she might talk about at the conference, as well as discussing The Rules of Magic [I asked much more and she revealed information never talked about in other interviews!].  

Again, my best times are anytime for the next few weeks, especially the next two weeks while my son is at sailing camp on Captiva Island and I’m spending my time writing at the library here across from the oldest cemetery called Chapel by the Sea, where shells wrapped in leather laces dangle from gumbo limbo trees like wind chimes for the dead. She would like to see this place, I’m certain [and she does want to go after I spoke with Hoffman directly about this place].

I would need to have the interview completed before August 7^th since my deadline is the 15th. 

I would be happy to send questions prior to the interview and we can limit the time to 20 minutes [we talked for 31 minutes holy cow!].

Thank you so much,

Paula Michele Bolado

Enclosure: I have attached a copy of my interview with Sue Monk Kidd to show my 

experience. 

---

And Alice Hoffman called me the following week. 

Heading out West

An article on our trip will be published September/October with TOTI Media Group

There's a difference between those who want to travel out to the Wild West to see the great Black Mesa of New Mexico, the Georgia O'Keefe blue skies, and seek the vortex while performing yoga in Sedona. Or there's me, the one who wants to experience the metaphysical cowboy, Mexican, and Native American dynamics in Cormac McCarthy's Crossing Border Trilogy. I know these desires only come from a crazy woman, so I'll just make sure I do those first three things mentioned just a minute of words ago.

My thirteen year-old son and I are about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Oh, these words always sounds so cliche. The opening of The Hobbit doesn't work, so how about, “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” This sounds about right: Aiden screaming out of the window and me at the wheel pointing to the cacti ridiculing us with their inappropriate poses.

The fun we will have, the adventures unknown, the fights, the tears, the bad tacos and the good ones, and the friends we will get to see again after many years, all await us out west. No wolves or pretty horses to tame, at least I don't suspect, and all the fear and loathing of Las Vegas will be set aside for this mostly proper trip with planes, trains, and automobiles, minus the trains.

Road Home

Road Home

By Paula M. Bolado

You are dead. Stick shift still in hand

and the old gravel road of Big Cove begins.

Tiny chunks of mica and quartz crackle under the tires.

Birds bounce under the rhododendron.

The car rolls to a stop beside a house, gray and green,

where an old post covered in lichen says LINQUEST.

He died thirty years ago and the old sale sign

across from his broken, red mailbox has rusted

and the realtors don’t work there now

because they too have died.

Away from the Linquest place, there’s a sharp incline.

Your little car needs low gear or it will slip back into the trees

and wrap around the poplars below—

Below, where it is dusty enough that if were you to go back,

The path would be gone;

the dust never cleared.

Half way up Big Cove, it should still be light out.

The light effervesces through the leaves of the giant poplars

and speckles the grave stones of the children who died long ago.

Long ago, when the baby pines fought for sunlight

over and over again under the poplars and always lost.

The light will guide you beyond an abandoned shack, a silo, and

another grave. Up a steeper, narrower path etched into the mountain,

where you remember the days of youth, where Danny and Tom

threw sticks at squirrels and shot BB guns in these woods.

Tom had just kissed Julie, and Julie was a secret friend on Saturdays;

the days when you shared stories Tom never would tell,

because Tom went to church, and your parents were never sober enough to go.

Watch for coyotes and black bears or an occasional stray dog or two.

The light is fading. You must watch for potholes

and deep pockets covered in leaves beside the road;

the road is not always kind it seems;

they are a hindrance on voyages like these—

these upward climbs from the purgatory below.

You want to say, “I can go no further; here I turn away.”

But your mouth is stopped with blood.

My house, golden in color, with marble floors

and cascading fountain sculptures is always

visible in the fleeting light.

I will wait for you, but will you wait for me?

Turn right, then sharply left, and follow the road.

Turn quickly or slide along the soft sand and rocks,

like when you were riding dirt bikes with Julie,

and she slipped along the dirt, screaming  in pain.

The blood splotched her clothing and you were scared,

scared like the children in the house that burned down in the fire;

their small bodies charred black like toast.

It was the fire Mr. Lindquist started before he shot himself in the mouth.

He was a lonely man for many years, like you.

But you would never do such a thing. No.

Such madness of men is treated at the bottom of the mountain.

If you’ve made it up this path, past Linquest’s place,

the grave stones, and the potholes, you have made it far enough.

Park and walk up another steep path.

Through black soil, buckthorn, blackberry briars, and multiflora rose,

and your legs will hurt just as they hurt

when you rode off for help because Julie had broken her leg,

and no one was around, and you became lost riding through

rambles of rhododendron, pushing your bike over deep creek beds

while thinking a shortcut was better. Remember?

She waited in the woods for hours, but you were lost.

Her father found her finally.  

Julie married Tom and they had four kids.

You never finished school and ran a red light one night

when it was raining, and now you are here.

You just got lost. I just got lost you have thought over and over again.

This is your second chance to find me.

I will be waiting for you in a golden house with the fountain,

Where I won’t abandon you nor do you harm.

You’ll find me; just keep heading up the mountain.

I will save a table for you with the finest of linens.

We will wear our funerary gowns, you and I.

Will you stay for dinner?

_________________

The Truth of a Junonia (excerpt from a memoir)

The Truth of a Junonia (excerpt from a memoir) by Paula Michele Bolado

As soon as the waves pulled back, thousands of rainbow-colored coquina shells glittered orange and gold along the shore before quickly burrowing back into the sand. While watching my son dig at the sand and shells, I remembered at his age what it felt like to scoop the tiny coquinas which wriggled down into my palms. Holding coquinas in his own hands, Aiden laughed at the feeling. His slim, four-year old body was covered from head to toe in white sand and broken shells. Highlighting his smiling face were the colors of the beach—a perfect creation as if the sea itself had formed him from water and sand.

He asked me to dig a hole with him. I sat beside him, just us, on our vacation—without any other family. Here on Sanibel Island, as the sun started to set, all we needed were the sand, the water, the shells, and each other: mother and child.

Shells covered the beachscape in patchy blankets of tans and creams. We dug our toes in the soft, damp silt of the beach and watched the sandpipers dance along the shore. As we scooped away at our hole, Aiden noticed an olive shell beside my toes. This type of tulip snail is olive-shaped, glossy, with a brownish-grey exterior and an undulating perfect whorl shaping a pink pointed tip, and lastly speckled with spots of black. I had never seen such an olive shell before.

“How are shells made?” My son asked.

“Well,” I started, thinking carefully how to say this: “They are formed from the animal inside, giving it protection in the Gulf, where currents and predators could harm its life. As the animal grows, so does the shell it carries. In order to house its increasing size, the animal adds more layers to the shell as time goes on.” My son nodded while he turned the shell around in his hand, the sun glinting off the enamel. All my years as a shell fair kid on Sanibel paid off in this moment. The shell in my son’s hand had been through some challenges; we observed the scratches along its back and the small hole that penetrated its hard exterior. Such a hole, as small as it was, could make the entire shell vulnerable to predators. “I’m sure the animal here tried to fix its house.”

Aiden picked it up. The spots on this olive shell reminded me of the junonia from the same tulip snail species but more rare. My mother and I spent years combing the beach for the junonia. This palm-sized, thick-shelled gastropod, ringed with large, giraffe brown spots normally lives off-shore, but on rare occasions, it washes to the beach as an empty vessel. The residents of Sanibel Island prized it for its rarity, its beauty, and the adventure in finding one. My mother never wanted to buy the shell, even though it could be bought; rather, the junonia was something to discover.

The rare junonia shell is usually found after a powerful storm. Out of the quarter of a million different types of shells washed up along Sanibel’s coast, the junonia is the most valuable and finding one is a gift. Such a gift from the sea always comes at the end of an evolutionary cycle of the shell’s life; from the animal to a speck of sand, to a chamber of beauty, to the death of the creature, to spinning around in a storm’s raging waters, until finally the junonia is exposed as a gemstone along the shoreline and ends up in the hands of a woman looking for a sign. My mother found that shell on her own one day and she believed it was a redemptive sign, as she was a single mother before she met my step-father.

The name of the junonia shell refers to the Roman Goddess Juno, protector of the well-being of women. As an immortal being, Juno is depicted as a woman of majestic size and beauty. She appears in Shakespeare’s last play The Tempest, as queen of the god’s, and her name is used in the movie, Juno, which is about a girl going through pregnancy alone. I thought about those things, about Juno, the junonia shell, my mother who had passed away years before, and looked to Aiden, who was still digging into the sand with the olive shell tucked into his pocket. My marriage was ending at the time and I was going to be a single mother; the stigma hovered over me like an ominous gulf storm. But it was something I had needed to do, as I had a hole in my own shell created by an emotionally abusive husband that I needed to repair. There were dark days ahead for us, but at the moment, I was present with my son, contemplating the beauty and strength that shells withstand as they tumble out of the ocean and into our palms as keepsakes.

After the divorce and graduate school, I kept that olive shell and others like it nearby, especially the ones with holes, because they represent how even the strong are vulnerable and the need to repair our own holes to live life beautifully.   

A Shell's Secret

In the deepest corner of a shell, no true black paint can devise its darkness. For the artist, Payne’s gray is near to the depth, where a bluish-gray fold bends and twists in the void of light. This home is where the animal forms her shell armor, excreting sand granules slowly and methodically from a tighter place, a pocket, a crevice, a junction of life where protection began. Using just a pinpoint of blue and Payne’s gray proves that the ocean left its one darkest, drop inside. The hard shell reveals a surface of undulating curves coming out of the penumbra, whipping upward, and wrapping back around to its tip. The body of this univalve is a cone of purity, no holes, though it has been empty for some time, leaving a hollow home abandoned by a creature long ago. The only entity that resides in that deep crevice, where the painter reaches for the right shade, is that singular spot of gray-blue, blackness the ocean secretly left behind.

My Stomach Bug (OH gosh is it a bug...a real bug?)

Belly Pains: Is it in my head, our heads, ok then, whose head?

I hate self-diagnosis stuff on the internet because one always end up the in weird, hypochondria-tic world of the web, worrying about stomach ulcers the size of hands, parasites with teeth, two-headed babies, and tree man visiting (I always end up in You Tube watching tree man's struggle to drink out of a cup). I'm just one more click away from discovering I've been abducted, and some Prometheus alien is harboring inside me. 

So, I've been struggling with a stomach ache for about a week. I've since had an ultrasound on my gallbladder to check for stones, have been given some medicine for pain, and have talked to a psychotherapist for the obvious reasons that maybe it's in my head. Nothing has helped and no answers have come, so I've decided I'm nuts and only people on the internet can help because that always makes things better and the internet never lies.

I wonder when "stuff" starts to really be in our heads? This could be a moment that happens suddenly or sharply, such as when we think there is one more step to the staircase, but the foot lunges awkwardly to the ground because there is, in fact, no more steps to take. Or, could the saying, "it's in your head," really take a lot longer, a gradual process of becoming ill upstairs (not down). For example, what we are afraid of most, like getting cancer, tumors, and other maladies, could really manifest in some sort of alternative reality, where we are sick and dying and there is no cure; theoretically this reality only exists in our heads. I'm not undermining anyone who has these terrible illnesses, but what if we all are sick because we THINK we are sick, even though we are completely fine according to everyone else? 

This is my case; I have created a world of  gastrointestinal illness, and subsequently have been treating myself as though I do indeed have gallstones,  a parasite (good Lord), or a ruptured ulcer that is getting infected as we speak and is a precursor to stomach cancer, which is the most painful of all cancers according to some guy's post on Live Heath Chat room 201. What can I do to prevent getting more ill? It's a handicap at this point, too, and I will probably need a tag for my car.

It's pretty hard to go around sick in the head, exhausting in fact, because no one understands that not only am I sick mentally, but in this alternative reality I have created (World 2), I am physically incapable of getting out of bed (even though I just went grocery shopping in World 1) ---it's that bad. Does anyone feel sorry for me yet?

There is nothing worse than feeling bad and finding a discussion group online where everyone is commiserating about their trial and tribulations. Some folks even list all the surgeries they've had, where underneath their esquire, there's usually a quote from Gandhi or Maya Angelou (or someone else who has truly has suffered).

Here's what I've seen:

"I have a terrible stomach pain for three months. I've had four CT scans, three ultrasounds, and still no one can find anything wrong with me."

John Burge

Appendectomy '04

L4/L5 Laminectomy '07

Revision L4/L5 Laminectomy 07 (never left the hospital because I liked the jello)

Lumpectomy (yes, I'm a dude) '09

Vasectomy '10 (just on a whim)

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”  [how ironic]

― Maya Angelou

We have emerged as a new society, especially on the internet, where attaching our maladies to our names becomes a label of importance, significance, and dubious gallantry. Man, it's not cool to have so many surgeries. Do you think some it is in your head? Hmm. Maybe I should go back to the doctor for my belly ache, and even though he thinks I'm fine, my head and the internet tells me differently.

Losing Miranda

published in The Nomad

Losing Miranda by Paula M. Bolado

O, wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't! -The Tempest, Shakespeare

It is Tuesday.

The evening steadily took the light,

dragging its hours to her bed.

Her mind sluggish, and her face—

She once was beautiful but now left with sunken eyes,

deep like a hollow lost ship

where the dripping of leaking water

fills over the heads of the few souls

who have been sacrificed by wild waters.

Those who sought the soft rays—

rays breaching the cold pitch of her eyes—

only became lost again.

In fetus pose, she nurses the bellowing moan

deep inside her womb,

while her boy is sleeping in the next room making

child-like grunts and noises children do,

where he has to sleep with his lamp shining

against the horrors of his youth.

To her it is luminescent, shining, and painful

along her own bedside where she sleeps,

always on the right side.

Tenderly, she reaches to the frozen side of the bed

where nothing lies but cotton folds like razor blades.

The night gathers an orchestra of crickets and frogs

all shouting obscenities at her.

She lies back into the chronic ache and black pool of memory,

letting the malicious water slam against her vessel.

The Black Raven beats against the hull before he swoops down upon her chest

picking, scratching, tearing—

the remains of the day.

Away went the prayers to her Father,

the noise drones, and she slowly drifts,

steadily toward a shape in the dark,

molded by gray matter,

making sense as she draws near

seeing something, feeling something

like a touch, or a stroke, felt between two lovers entangled

under a woven congregation of lustrous stars, vows, and a baby’s cry.

Awakened by the sound, the electricity is out!

Her son is alone in his room.

Miranda wonders where the angels went.

Sinking into the night, being brave in her vessel,

Wednesday approaches.