Holly Kennedy, The Sideways Life of Denny Voss and red wine

I had the privilege of reading this book months before it was released and it has felt like I've been keeping an amazing secret, but now that it's out and I really want tot talk about it with someone! Anyone! MOM! read this book!!!  This book has a HUGE heart, an unbelievable protagonist and absolutely show-stealing secondary characters.  Holly and I talk about how Denny just arrived in her head one day and has been with her for years.  We also have a really frank and interesting conversation about the challenges and worries of writing a mystery in the POV of a character like Denny.  If you read and loved The Curious Incident With The Dog In The Nighttime - you will love this book. 

In this poignant and funny novel, a man who is defined by his limitations sets out to fight a murder charge—and discovers unexpected truths about himself, his family, and the world at large.

On the surface, Denny Voss’s life in rural Minnesota is a quiet one. At thirty years old, he lives at home with his elderly mother and his beloved blind and deaf Saint Bernard, George. He cleans up roadkill to help pay the bills. Though his prospects are limited by a developmental delay—the result of an accident at birth—Denny has always felt that he has “a good life.”

So how did he wind up being charged with the murder of a mayoral candidate—after crashing a sled full of guns into a tree?

As Denny awaits trial, his court-appointed therapist walks him through the events of the past year. Denny’s had other scuffles with the law, the first for kidnapping a neighbor’s cantankerous goose. And then there was the time he accidentally assisted in a bank robbery. It seems like whenever Denny tries to do the right thing, chaos ensues.

Untangling the events around the murder reveals even more painful truths about his family’s past. He’s always been surrounded by people who love him, but now it’s up to Denny to set his life on a new course.

Find Holly here: https://www.hollykennedy.com/

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Transcript

Molly Fader (00:33):

book, the author picks a drink, and we discuss both. I'm your host Molly Fader, and today I am really excited to talk to Holly Kennedy, the author of The Sideways Life of Denny Voss. And I was thinking about how lucky I am that I just get to read all the time and some books come into your life and they're just exactly right at the exactly right time. And I sometimes forget that reading isn't always just an intellectual process. It's supposed to be an emotional process. And I cried and I laughed. I mean, this is a beautiful, beautiful book for fans of the Curious Incident of the dog in the night. And I would actually say if you're a fan of Eleanor Olyphant is completely fine. You are going to find so much to love in this book and I'm really excited to have Holly here to talk about it. First, I'm going to read the back cover Copy Mom again. Not that I just do this podcast for my mom, but when I find a book, when you find a book that other book lovers are going to love,
(01:35)
It's like handing a gift. Everybody's going to love this mom. You're really going to love this Aunt Cherie You're really going to love this. Okay, here we go. The sideways Life. This is like the whole podcast is like a process for me to recommend books to my mom and my aunt. I needed to make it more complicated. The sideways life of Denny Voss, a novel in this poignant and funny novel, A man who is defined by his limitation sets out to fight a murder charge and discovers unexpected truths about himself, his family, and the world at large. On the surface, Denny Voss life in rural Minnesota is a quiet one. At 30 years old, he lives at home with his elderly mother and his beloved blind and deaf St. Bernard George. He cleans up roadkill to help pay the bills. Though his prospects are limited by a developmental delay the result of an accident at birth, Denny has always felt that he has a good life.
(02:24)
So how did he wind up being charged with the murder of a mayoral candidate? After crashing a sled full of guns into a tree, as Denny Awaits trial, his court appointed therapist walks him through the events of the past year. Denny's had other scuffles with the law. The first for kidnapping, A neighbours cantankerous Goose. Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. What did I hit? The neighbours Cantankerous Goose. And then there was the tiny accidentally assisted in a bank robbery. It seems like wherever Denny tries to do the right thing, chaos ensues. Untangling the events around the murder reveals even more painful truths about his family's past. He's always been surrounded by people who love him, but now it's up to Denny to set his life on a new course. Holly, welcome to Day Drinking with Authors. Holly Kennedy (03:08):

Thanks for having me, Molly. Molly Fader (03:11):

First of all, what are we drinking today? Holly Kennedy (03:13):

I am drinking coffee. Very toxic myself. It's whatcha doing what you got? Molly Fader (03:21):

I'm drinking coffee as well. We had a brief conversation before we started recording about how much we enjoy our morning coffee. We're each kind of limited due to heart situations. The way that I think about my morning coffee the night before when I go to bed is it's like a romance. Holly Kennedy (03:43):

Oh, I get it. I get it. And actually I learned something interesting about coffee about a year ago. I used to drink nothing but espresso thinking that I was getting lots of caffeine and that would just zip me right up as though I need any more of that because my mind's bouncing everywhere at all times of the day and night. But do you realise that the lighter the coffee, the more caffeine it has? Speaker 1 (04:05):

Yes. Holly Kennedy (04:07):

Espresso actually doesn't have a lot of caffeine in it, so I've moved to dark roast down the middle and actually for three years I didn't have coffee because I was diagnosed with a heart condition I didn't know I had. And they finally allowed me to go back to having one a day. And I thought, oh, what a month ago? What the heck? I'm going to try two a day and see what happens. Didn't go well. Did not go well. So I have my coffee, it's a dark roast. If people say, would you like a cup of coffee? And you're at a Shell gas station and there's a pot on a thing, I just know it has to be one and it has to be good. So I'm a Starbucks girl. I like Starbucks. Molly Fader (04:43):

Yeah, Starbucks has completely flattened us in terms of I have a teenage daughter and it's like cultural amongst that crowd. Luckily where I live in Toronto, there are a lot of incredible indie local coffee places. But I'm with you. I want my one cup in my chair doing my wordle and then yeah, I'm with you. I also make it last forever. I'm now drinking cold coffee. Are you really? I'm not supposed to. And I drag it out Holly Kennedy (05:16):

For about four hours. Molly Fader (05:18):

I'm not supposed to have more than one cup either. Really? Yeah. Heart palpitations. That's Holly Kennedy (05:23):

A good, I Molly Fader (05:23):

Just make a giant mug. My one cup keeps getting bigger. Holly Kennedy (05:31):

That's Molly Fader (05:31):

Great. Good for you. Alright, enough about our love Lives with Coffee. Let's talk about this beautiful book. How long has the character Denny Voss been in your life? You kind of reference it in your author's note, but it feels like he's been in your brain for a long time. Holly Kennedy (05:50):

Yeah, he has. And in the author's note, in some ways I wish that we could have published the author's note in the front of the book before readers, because I often tell people who grab arcs or if they get a book early for a reviewer, I'll say, you might want to read the author's note at the back. It'll give you some kind of an idea of how the book came about and who I am. And I'm a woman writing from a man's point of view and he's mentally challenged and he's arrested for murder and let's bite off more than you can chew Holly. So it was interesting. But he came to me, I was at a writer's conference in 2010 and I forget, I think it was Karen Joy Fowler was the teacher, and she gave us some kind of a timed thing to do and to go off and write a certain number of pages and come back.
(06:37)
And it was such a great environment, was in Hawaii, so it would be, and you're very inspired. And I wandered away and Denny just came flying onto the page through me. It just felt like I was a conduit for him and I was laughing so hard. And I really guess I do have a big sense of humour. It's always trying to come out in my work and I'm trying to tamp it down and not make things so funny. But Denny was just funny and he had really an undefinable charm for me and he really wouldn't leave me alone. And I was with a friend at the time who was also taking the class and she has her PhD in disability studies and she wrote a book called Lottery and I had already been published, three books published. She didn't have an agent, she didn't have anything and she really wanted to get published.
(07:19)
And she wrote this book Lottery about a cognitively challenged man who wins the lottery. And I helped her write her query and she got her agent and they took it out and it was sold internationally and she did really well with it. So she has a background in terms of the authenticity of understanding how people who are in that spectrum or on that spectrum would maybe react to things. Not that you can pinhole any of us, of course. But she read those first 30 pages and she was so excited and she said, you have to write this book, you have to write this book. And to be honest, I almost choked her a few times over the years because she would push me so hard saying, you need to write this book. And I would look at her and say, yeah,
(07:57)
But I knew inside I didn't have the ability to write the book. And that really worried me. And I didn't back then in 2010, I really didn't. Slight segue here. Denny Voss, this book was the very first thing I'd ever written in first person ever. Oh wow. Never even written an essay in first person. So all my other books are in third and this one's in first. So that made me nervous thinking, how am I narrowing, how much am I narrowing down my capacity to tell the story and to accomplish certain things that I need to accomplish? So each chapter that I went into, I would make a list saying through Denny's voice only his voice and what he sees around him and dialogue and I guess setting to a certain degree, I need to accomplish these six things and there will be humour and it has to feel organic.
(08:44)
And I think in our lives, there are many times where I've laughed. I'm sure you have too. Molly laughed till I've cried and then sat up and thought that was a really emotional thing we just went through and we were all laughing about it. But it's aval for us to really, life is hard and it comes at you every different direction. And I mean there's wonderful things too, but it'll come at you when you least expect it and try to take you down. And I think we need to have a sense of humour about so much of it. We really do. And I think having a sense of humour is tied closely to having grace, having grace for each other because we stumble, we fall, we spill our coffee, we have bad hair days, all those sorts of things. So Denny Yes, was around a long time and she has her PhD sliding back to that in disability studies.
(09:31)
I have nothing. I just have this guy in my head who will not leave me alone. And I literally dreamed about him and then I slid away and I wrote two other novels in third. And my agent didn't prefer either one of them and said, no, I think we need to work on these. And I was so hurt and she was absolutely right. And my agent I've been with for 23 years, she's wonderful. She's very hard on me though, and she has very high expectations. So I had to pull away from writing for a while. Everyone says, oh, if you're a writer, you write every day no matter what's going on in your life. And I would argue, no, you don't. We had some private things going on in our family and there wasn't an announce of creativity in my brain to write a sentence.
(10:10)
So I pulled away from writing and put my family first for quite a while and until things settled and they're settled now, and I decided I would step back in. And during that time I read, and I'm a voracious reader, although I read slowly and every time I open a book, I think I get very excited and I think to myself, what am I going to learn from this author? What can she or he teach about how they, and so I read super slow, I write in the margins, I fold the pages, I put post-it notes in the book, and by the time you're done, the book's twice the size and it's popped open and with them, that's a book that I love. And I think, God, she's so good at this or he's very good at character development and you don't plagiarise, of course. I don't think there's anything in Daddy Boss that could be plagiarised. It's so weird and quirky and different, but you do learn what works and you look at the nuances that drive you to a point in the book as a reader where you burst out crying. Speaker 1 (11:03):

And Holly Kennedy (11:03):

For me, with all of my previous novels, which are I'm very proud of, but I am really proud of Denny Bos because I see the growth myself in my writing. I really do. And I sit back and I look at it and I think, yeah, Holly, my motto, if you will, is I want to make readers laugh. And then on the next page, I want them to sob. Molly Fader (11:22):

Yeah. Holly Kennedy (11:22):

So I want to art certain charities. Yeah, thank you. Molly Fader (11:27):

It's interesting. I get emails a lot from aspiring authors about advice and the advice that you just gave or the life you just lived. In order to be able to write Denny, I would argue that any writer, a story idea or a character is going to come to you that you are not going to feel up to the task doing it right. You immediately have a standard in your head and you know that you don't have the skill yet
(12:03)
To lift the book to the standard in your head. And what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? Well, you did the only thing you can do, which is take a seat, take a step back, and just keep reading and read with a lot of self-awareness and read with a lot of intention and read that until the path starts to open up. So you're reading, you've taken a step back. How do you start to take this story that's kind been in your head or this guy that's been in your head, and how do you start the process? Holly Kennedy (12:40):

For me, it was a very personal process actually. Everyone in our house, it was Covid and everyone was working from home. And I was sitting at our tiny kitchen table and we have dogs and animals and doors slamming and it's always very loud. And I sat at that kitchen table and I was literally crying one night. I was really feeling bad for myself, which I mean, we all go through those days and I thought, this is crazy. I need to step back in. I love writing. I am at my very best and my happiest when I'm writing. So I started writing at the kitchen table and I would literally look at my laptop and put my hands like this, and I would tell my family, if you see me like this, do not talk to me. Don't breathe on me. Don't just leave me alone.
(13:22)
And I wrote most of the first draught at the kitchen table with phones ringing and all the noise and a lot of crying on my part. And then I decided to go away to the choir writers conference and have some peace and quiet. And it was covid and it was 2021 coming off, and I booked my flights. I was meeting some friends there, and then they said, we're not running it. And they went, oh God, dear God. But I was locked into my cheap flights and I would lose them if I didn't go, and I could have done this in my backyard. But I flew to Kauai and I met a friend, and we've known each other for years. She's the one who wrote lottery. And we shared a room and had two beds. And she said, well, I'm going to work on this project and that project. And I said, no, we're each working on one project and we will support each other, but I'm not bouncing all over. God. Promote that with me and I'm gone. I segue off so easily. So I worked on Denny boss and I remember, I mean, God, the hours we put in 20 hour days, 18 hour days in pyjamas, and we're in Hawaii, not out on the beach, we're in a hotel room and there's jackhammers next door.
(14:26)
Honestly, God, you might as well have stayed home. It was awful. But I remember sitting there one night at 1:32 AM and I had written, you've read the book, I wrote court scenes sitting in Hawaii in a chair, and I thought, oh, I need to take, Denny is a bit overwhelming, and I wanted to pull away from him and introduce another element that would allow us to see what was unfolding. So I decided to courtroom scenes, and I've never done that before. And I thought, oh, it's got to be pretty easy. I started doing it and I thought, well, who would be in the courtroom? Well, Denny definitely and his lawyer and Lydia on the stand is an essential for me. And Angus provides the humour on the stand, but also in each of those issues, I had to determine what am I trying to accomplish with this character of that character? I've never written a mystery, and this is a cross genre book, and it has a mystery element. It has a coming of age element, it has a familial drama, and they're all threaded in together. So each chapter, I'm trying to tag off on those elements to make sure the reading experie is a good one for the Molly Fader (15:27):

Reader. You need a list of six things. That's so clever. Holly Kennedy (15:31):

But I remember at two in the morning, I don't know what scene it was, I wrote a scene with Denny and I think it was the ending towards the end, and I started crying and I was sitting there just sobbing, and I remember looking around and I'm in my pyjamas in a hotel room in a quiet, I don't even know what the weather's like outside. My friend is asleep in her bed, and I'm thinking to myself, will anybody ever get to feel the magic I'm feeling right now? And will they get it? Will they understand what I'm trying to do with Denny's story? And I fell in love with his story. I really did. But backing up a wee bit, when you said, how did you get into it? I decided at one point in time you read other authors, and I greatly admire so many out there and think, oh my God, she's brilliant.
(16:11)
Or this individual is just a storyteller beyond words. And then I think to myself, well, I'm not so bad. I mean, I'm not them, but I have my own talents I can bring to the table, so I'm just going to slap it down, do a first draught and work from there. And I was so excited about the book, and I finished a second draught and I thought to myself, I'm going to hand this to my agent, and I don't think she's going to like it. It's really different. It's first person, and I'm being hard on myself. She turned down the last two books, and she represents me for my career, not project by project, but she also wants to represent books she likes. So I hadn't talked to her in probably six years, and I sent them part of the manuscript Molly Fader (16:51):

Off. Whoa, you took, I had nothing years off. And then, wow. Wow. Holly Kennedy (16:56):

Well, and she's a lovely person. We'd send Christmas cards, but we didn't really talk because I had nothing to give her
(17:02)
To settle. And she's a busy woman running a huge agency in New York, and we like each other very much. And she worried about what was happening in my personal life that I had stepped back and she understood. And she said, the beauty of this is, and she always says this, it's a career Holly. It's not a race, and I believe you have some burgeoning exciting stories that are bubbling in the background. So I sent her the first 50 pages of the book and I said, Hey, read this. Tell me what you think. If you're really excited about it, I'll send you the fall. If you don't, I'm not sure what we could do from here. In my mind, I was thinking, if she doesn't like it, I need to go get a new agent because I like this and I believe in this book, and I really believe that it should be out there.
(17:44)
And they believe it's different and unique, and every writer believes that about their work, of course. But I'm not a genre writer and I can't pump out one romance a year, not knocking romance in any way because I don't think I could even write that. But I'm not one who can just sit down and spit a book out of ear. I go over and over and over everything so much that it becomes OCD obsessive, and that's part of my personality. And anyway, sent her the 50 pages and headed off into the city, and I got to a store and my phone's blowing up and I answered it. It's my agent. And I mean, we haven't talked in a long time. And she just wrote in and she goes, that is the voice. That is the voice I saw when I signed you. And we published Tin Box in all those countries.
(18:30)
And I loved Denny boss. Oh my God. Just the other day I said to her, Liza, this is my first ever attempt at writing anything, your first person. And she goes, no. And I said, yes, go look at my other books. They're all third and there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm really enjoying first with Denny. So she got the book and said, your de ma is all over the place. And I said, I know, but you see it, right? You see the magic, you see what I'm doing? And she said, yeah, I do, and we have some work to do. And I went, for God's sakes, I was just so excited about Denny. I wanted to get him out there. And we worked on it for eight months, I think eight months back and forth and back and forth. And she said, what about this? Or I don't know about that character. And she worked on, she's wonderful. She's an editor as well. She was an executive editor for years. We got it to the point where she sent it out privately to a friend of hers who used to be an executive editor and now reviews books for the New York Times. And she didn't tell me, which is good, it's better. I don't know these things. Molly Fader (19:27):

The no writer needs to know those things before. Holly Kennedy (19:31):

And then she sent it back to, but her comments back to me, and this woman was so lovely. I read the email, I didn't know what I was really reading, and at the end of it, I was crying. She said, this book is exceptional. It's what the world needs right now. It moved me. It reads like nonfiction in the best possible way. And I thought, oh my goodness. Okay, so we're getting close, and here's a treat for you, Molly. All the way through this book was called Penguin Hill. Molly Fader (19:58):

Oh, Holly Kennedy (19:58):

Funny. I called it Penguin Hill. I love the title Penguin Hill Lies. I love the title Penguin Hill. Every writer I know would say, Holly, I love that title. And I go, me too. So I said to Liza, I don't care. Well, I do care who buys it, but whoever buys it, I don't care what they want to do. I can touch and do this and that and tidy up. I just don't want them to change the title. And she goes, oh, I agree. Everybody loves the title. So my publisher fell in love with a book, bought it, and they said the only thing. And they looked at the story and they said, here's the good news. There's really nothing we want to do. Because if you pull on any, and you read the book, pull on any of the threads, and it all falls apart. So if you pull on the guns, the guns were upsetting. Some people, you pull those guns out, the book means nothing. What Denny started with, that's the whole story, starts around the guns. And I said, well, the guns are not a political issue. They are a human issue. And I tried to soften them. They were in their own chapters, and then I blended them into other chapters to make them important to the structure of the story, but less in your face. Molly Fader (21:00):

Right. That's fair. Holly Kennedy (21:02):

And I think now that it reads better, and it reads as though us from a humanity perspective, any human being, I would argue so do, if someone said you have an issue with guns, I would say simply, I have an issue with death that someone running into a school and shooting 16 little kids. That's insane. I think any human being would have an issue with that. Molly Fader (21:24):

Yes, agreed. A hundred percent Holly Kennedy (21:26):

Does. And he at least tries to do something about it. You got to give him credit for that. Molly Fader (21:31):

One of the things that I really liked about the point of view of Denny, and I want to talk about what a difficult thread it was or difficult needle, it was to thread, because you do have the heavy topics. He is arrested with all these guns and bullets, school shootings in general kind of play a periphery role in the book and a major role in the book. You also have sexual assault. You have sexual grooming. You have, Denny is violently assaulted a couple of times. So you have these big heavy things, but they're told in such a way, Denny is not preoccupied by this. Denny is preoccupied by the gun violence. That plays a big part of it, but not in a way that it takes over his thoughts all day. He's thinking about George, his dog, and he's thinking about his mom and he's thinking about, so on the other side of that, the other part of the difficult needle, this is to thread is the things that he is preoccupied about.
(22:44)
What is he having for dinner? What is he having for breakfast? What's Angus doing? His dog, George, there's a way that that could be monotonous and never is. And there's a way that these heavy topics could take over the prose and they never do. And it's because Denny is just living his life. So can you talk a little bit about, you said his voice was so clear, but was that sort of careful characterization and careful plotting, was that a virtue of editing? Was that a virtue of writing? Was that just a virtue of having taken so many years off and having them in your head? How did that all work? Holly Kennedy (23:24):

What you mean? I do see what you mean. I wouldn't say it didn't come in editing. Anything that came in editing with Denny was a very soft touchups. Denny was pretty solid all the way through. It was the other characters I had to play with in editing. I'll put it this way, I miss Denny deeply. I've really struggled with letting him go. And when was editing, I would step out, do an edit for Liza, send it to her, step out and go do something else and be involved in other things. And then I'd get it back three weeks later and we would talk about it. And I'd have to go back into the book. And I've never had this happen before where I would circle it, little physically circle the room, trying to figure out how to get back into Denny's head, because I've pulled out and it felt like something physical pulling out of his head. And I would sit down and try to get back into the way Denny thinks. And really, someone gave me a review the other day and she said something so lovely. And I thought, oh my God, you're absolutely right. She said, the book is, I forget her wording on it, but she said, essentially, Denny approaches everything with kindness
(24:27)
In every single scene, no matter what he's going through. He approaches it with kindness. When I started out, I don't know that it was a mindful thing in as much as me saying, this is the person that I'm trying to put forth. And I didn't want him to be a Disney character. I really didn't. But I did want him to have a purity and an innocence and a presence focused on the now, the here and now. So Denny has a life here and now, and there are gun shootings and there are situations that are cropping up. You've read the book, so I won't throw anything. Yeah, we don't want to. No spoilers.
(24:59)
When he learns a couple things that are upsetting, he doesn't go to Nanogel, he goes to Angus, and Angus is his anchor point. Angus talks him off the ledge. And when I've had a few people start the book, the 20 pages in, and they go, oh, I know who Angus is. I know what role he plays. I know why you put him in the book, dah, dah, dah. I just smile and think. It's not a genre thing where I just throw this little propped up character. And as the book moves along, people who have done that have come back and said, I love Angus. I love Angus so much. But you see little layers of him. He has this crusty exterior and all those T-shirts, right? Molly Fader (25:42):

I feel like I know so many guys like Angus, right? Yeah, they're good. They're good guys. They're good guys. But you just get to the, you got to find your way in Holly Kennedy (25:57):

Denny, I think his family and his environment, Angus George definitely brings him some warmth and some sense of purpose. I think George is perfect for him, frankly. I sat down and started writing his Denny, and I literally, as I said in the author's note, would just let him go. And I'd think, what am I writing? What kind of garbage is this? And then I'd see a nugget that was working and I'd go, oh, and I'd sweep it all away and look at what Denny was doing. And he operates differently than the average person out there, and he's so present in his day, in his life. And yes, there's stuff going on, but as the book goes through the Deman, you get to that last paragraph, which I wrote in Kauai, sitting in a chair at two in the morning, and I threw down that long sentence.
(26:44)
Denny has those long sentences, and I won't read it out loud, but start the one that says, so yeah, I guess that's just how life works. Some days it's like a fast move in CV show. Some days it's not. And as you go through that sentence and you really analyse that sentence, it's speaks to the guns. It speaks to everything that might happen to you in your life. Some things are going to change and some things are going to stay the same. And there is both comfort in that and a fear, but not a resignation on his part. I think a recognition on his part that nothing is ever going to just stop moving and freeze in place. And I think Denny handles changed really well. I could picture him on the side of a road cleaning up roadkill, and a car goes by and spins into the ditch and gets stuck, and someone jumps out and they're half naked.
(27:31)
And Denny would be just like, huh, well, I'll deal with that later. I got to fix this first. He's very, and people would find it funny, but he's very compartmentalised in his emotional thoughts sort of thing. I adore spending time with him. And every scene I had him in where I would take him to a bachelor party or take him anywhere, and even the scenes where the police beat him up and stuff. I had a podcast, my first podcast the other day, and the one woman said, I found it so upsetting the way they treated him. I really don't think that was right. And maybe it was over the top. And I said, but it's true, true to form. We see it all the time. We see it all the time, and we see it all the time with people who are not cognitively challenged.
(28:12)
So she said, well, why would they not handle him with better care? And I said, well, here's the reality on their part, they have protocols to follow. They have to step into a situation and quickly assess it. Denny, to be blunt, if he were down syndrome, he would have a physical tell and you could look at him and say, oh, I'm dealing with someone who is neurodiverse and needs handling in a special way. Denny doesn't present that way. He does not have any physical presentation of his problem. So you need to pick that up when you're dealing with him. And sometimes when Denny does the things he does, starts singing. Molly Fader (28:47):

Yeah, starts singing. Holly Kennedy (28:48):

You've Molly Fader (28:48):

Got a friend in Holly Kennedy (28:49):

Me. Yeah. Is it wrong for a cop after he's moaning and groaning and huffing and doing everything he does and then moves into a song for them, their immediate go-to is he's on drugs, he's a problem. And he's big, right? He's a big guy. So even though he doesn't get aggressive, they're trying to sort things out the best way they can. And I don't agree with what they did, but I explained to her that scene, the first one where he goes to the border
(29:14)
By Canada, I had, sorry, I can't even speak this morning. And my editor came back and said, can we take that scene and cut it down like four or five pages? We want the book more propulsive. And I said, well, I'm trying to do the balance of the book needs to be propulsive and have readers wonder what the heck is happening next. But I also need to set a standard. And in this opening scene where he gets arrested at the border, I want to show them how people deal with Denny. I want to show all the nuances. When he says, the cop says to him, I'm going to check your backpack. And Denny says, that's okay. And he goes, I'm not asking your permission. He goes, that's okay, Denny, just whatever you need to do, I'm good with. Right? He's just very affable and sweet and kind. And then they throw 'em on the ground and they're tasing him or they're beating him or whatever. And I'm sure in that moment, Denny's kind of scared, but his personality is very interesting, isn't it? Molly Fader (30:07):

Yeah. Holly Kennedy (30:08):

So when I wrote the scenes, I thought, there's a couple I wrote that I had to pull back to make him a little softer in, because I don't think Denny gets angry very much. There's one scene where a Tesla gets, and I don't think he doesn't swear very much either. He sweared in the Tesla scene when he got hit in the ditch there, which one I'm talking about. Molly Fader (30:29):

Yeah. Holly Kennedy (30:29):

But he's not a swearing kind of guy. And I thought, is he? Molly Fader (30:32):

And he's not aggressive, and he's not. He's just Holly Kennedy (30:35):

Through his life and he's changing for filters, and he's raking the yard and he's cutting potatoes and yeah, he's doing his thing. But I adored him and I found him easy to spend time with, and I was having so much fun adding the characters, and I had made a list of all the characters, and I wanted them to have full rich lies, things they wanted to do, things they wanted to accomplish. Like Elaine, the stalker. I find her Molly Fader (30:58):

Hilarious. Holly Kennedy (30:59):

She really Molly Fader (31:00):

Is. She's great. And the lawyer's great, and I felt like through his, even Lydia, I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for Lydia, but it's an interesting process, right? Because she's reacting to Denny, but Denny, it's being filtered through Denny's perspective. So again, he's just living his life, but Lydia at some point is living, is trying to get him to talk, trying to get him to into bury some or hash out some things between them. But then finally she's like, well, you just be quiet. And you realise in the things that Denny isn't telling us is that he's been chatter boxing away. He's been just kind of monologuing about breakfast and whatever's going to come next. And I felt like Angus has that reaction to him a couple of times. His therapist definitely does. His therapist gets so frustrated, and he's a kind and good guy. But Denny not being able to clearly, and with forthrightness answer these questions, it creates this other layer to this character that is very heartbreaking to me, very real and very heartbreaking, how he's living his life and how lucky he's been to be surrounded by people who taken as he is. And that's a really interesting way to try to develop secondary characters. So you're developing the character of the therapist through de signs and through his reaction, it's a bit of a mirror. That's the dialogue. Holly Kennedy (32:42):

Usually it's through dialogue or setting. It's really hard to do that. They say with the book, if it reads easy, it wrote hard. I get it. This was one of the biggest challenges I've ever had ever. And halfway through, I thought, what are you doing? Can you not just do anything simple, can't you, Holly? You're coming back after all these years. My last, I wrote three novels. They were published in multi countries, all that. And then I stepped away, and I think the last one was 2008, so that's a long time ago.
(33:13)
And just getting a book published and getting it in the pipes and editing it takes time. But Denny Voss was done by 2022 by the end of 2022. And then E Liza took it out and then pulled it back. Everyone was upset about the guns. They weren't sure how people would react to the guns. And I thought, oh, for heaven's sakes. So we're having a chat on the phone about it, and here's something you'll love to know. And Liza said to me, I don't know. I've got some of the nicest rejection letters. I want to frame them. They just love the book, but they're really nervous about the Republicans, how things are in the states and the guns. And I said, oh, I know how to fix it. And she goes, no, no, no, no, no, Holly, I want you to go away and think about it for a few weeks and think about how we could tame that down in the entrance to the book. And I said, well, it's not like he's standing there with a gun in someone's forehead. Think about Beartown. Have you read Beartown? Molly Fader (34:03):

Yeah, yeah. Holly Kennedy (34:04):

Opening paragraph. There's a gun on someone's forehead or American dirt, 7-year-old standing on a toilet, and there's a bullet going by his head. I love it. It grabs you, it pulls you in. It's good storytelling. But I thought, no, I'm not going to just have a kneejerk reaction and change all this. And yet I thought, I allowed myself to think, what would Denny do to fix the problem? And that people are saying, why is this dangerously cognitively challenged man, in their opinion, running a slave full of guns down a hill, eight guns and bullets? And I mean, you immediately think he's going to the school or going to go do something horrific. So what I did is on that call of lies, I said, no, exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to have him wrap them all in cellophane. And she goes, what?
(34:45)
And I said, yeah, Angus is going to the airport. He wraps his suitcase in a pod because he is naive and thinks it'll keep it safe. And Denny's watching him, and later on, he just gets this idea from Angus, and he takes all the guns and stands them up and wraps them in a pod of cellophane. And I said, so somebody's reading that tell me that if he's going to do a mass murder or mass killing somewhere, is he going to wrap all the guns and cellophane get there and slowly unwrap them? So it does have people say, what the heck is he doing? But they're doing that with Denny all the time. Molly Fader (35:15):

Yeah. But it does, I mean, listen, it's so heightened and it's so politicised in a way that it shouldn't be. It is a human issue. It's not a political issue, but the wrapping it in cellophane makes it not an immediate threat, for sure. Holly Kennedy (35:31):

That's right. Yeah, it softens it. So then you think, okay, maybe I'm okay to keep reading this story. And they were talking about doing focus groups, and when they changed the title from Penguin Hill, everybody said they love the name title Penguin Hill, and I still do, but they said, that's a literary title, and it doesn't make anyone open the book. So it's a beautiful title, Holly. And yes, if you now know the book, it reflects beautifully on the book. But they did a focus group. They're lovely. And they said, we did a focus group with young readers from the age of 18, I think, to 26. And this is the feedback we got back. If you can get people to open this book and read 10 or 15 pages, you're done. They're gone. They're hooked because he's so unique. And the story's so different.
(36:12)
And I mean, you're in scene in the opening sentence. I don't do a soft slide into the story, and I don't think I have the luxury of doing that with this story. I really needed to grab readers fast. And they know from the flap copy and the promotion that he's mentally challenged. So putting it in scene where he says, eight days after I got myself arrested, diction is very fascinating. Doing life and doing flirting and all this stuff. But the first chapter, probably the first 25 pages never changed from 2010. Not one word. They, they're always the same. And I told the last podcaster I was talking to, she said, any little Easter eggs, I said, there are my favourite number's eight. It's supposed to be my lucky number, and I love the number eight, and I am wildly OCD, and I hate uneven numbers.
(37:04)
So if I get in the car and my husband has the temperature at 23, I'm looking at that temperature and I start to feel like ants are crawling on my skin and I can't sit still, and I get so upset and I need to put it at 22. So throughout the book with Denny, you'll find a lot of eights on the opening page. He says, eight days after I was arrested, there's eight guns. There's a lot of eights in the book. And when you get to Teskey, who I detest and rightfully so, you'll look, and I tried my best to ensure that any numbers used in scenes with teskey are uneven and they're not eight. So I have these little things that I do when I'm writing that are just stupid. They're holly things and just they matter to me. Molly Fader (37:47):

Well, they matter to you. So how do you follow up a book like Denny? Are you working on something else right now? Is it more Denny? Do we get more? Holly Kennedy (37:58):

I really wish I could do that. I've struggled with that too. But talking to my agent and editor, it's a standalone book, mean, now that you've read it, how do I take and follow that up? You could, however people say, oh, I see it as a movie. It's so film driven. I see it as a series. I'd say either or would be great, and maybe you could add extra scenes and things going on. But as a book, fully arc, the way this one is, I don't think there's any follow up to do. And I thought of doing a book on Lydia or a book on pull one of the characters out and do a book that way. But everyone said, don't do that. So I'm working on something new. Yes, it is first person, and it will be a cross genre book. So it also has a mystery element coming of age, family drama. But this one I think is going to have a romance too. Oh, fine. So all those layers I think provide for me, and I don't know about readers out there provide an interesting story. I get really bored with genre books that really what's going to happen. I want more of a, you think about books like Crawdads, where the Crawdads sing.
(39:06)
It is a coming of age tale. It is a murder mystery. It is a family drama, and it provides a good story. To me, it's all about the storytelling story first. So our lives are not A to Z. There's a lot of, we take a lot of side trips, if you will, Speaker 1 (39:25):

A Holly Kennedy (39:25):

Lot of things that happen to us husband ups and leaves and says, I'm gay and I'm not happy. Or your son says, I'm going to Europe and I'm living there for the next six years in an antrum, and I won't be talking to you. Molly Fader (39:39):

Well, you took us on a beautiful sideways trip with Denny and I, for one, love the title. I fully approve of the change, and I can't wait to see where this book goes. Thank you, Holly, so much for stopping by and telling us about the creation of this incredible book. Holly Kennedy (39:59):

Thanks for having me, Molly. It's been great. Molly Fader (40:01):

Yeah, everybody out there, please pick up the sideways life of Denny Voss and then email us so we can finally talk about it with people. Thank you. Everybody out there, grab a book, have a drink. Stay safe. Thanks everybody. Holly Kennedy (40:15):

Thank you. Molly Fader (40:17):

Day drinking Speaker 1 (40:18): 

With.