All Write in Sin City
Let's talk about writers and writing, right here in Sin City. Before we were the Motor City, one of the nicknames we were known by was "Sin City." Maybe that's why we've got so many great stories to tell. Our Windsor-Detroit region is full of inspiring poetry, first rate fiction, outstanding non-fiction, amazing writers, and exciting publishers. At All Write in Sin City, we aim to bring them to you. Check out our shows here, or take a listen wherever you listen to podcasts.
All Write in Sin City
Waltzing Home with G.A. Grisenthwaite
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G. A. Grisenthwaite is Nłeʔkepmx, member of the Lytton First Nation. His stories and poems have appeared in The Anitgonish Review, Our Stories Literary Journal, and Prism International. His work has earned a number of prizes, including the 2014 John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award. He lives in Kingsville, ON. His first novel is Home Waltz, published by Palimpsest Press in 2020.
Resources: https://palimpsestpress.ca/our-authors/g-a-grisenthwaite/
Welcome to All Right in Sin City, a podcast about writers and writing in the Windsor, Detroit region. Your podcasters today are Irene Moore Davis, author, educator, and local historian, Sarah Jarvis, former bookseller, publishing rep, and literary festival chair, and me, Kim Conklin, Windsor-based writer and filmmaker.
SPEAKER_03:This recording takes place online with Safe Physical Distancing. Our featured guest today is G.A. Gordon Grizzenthwaite. G.A. Grizzenthwaite is a member of the Lytton First Nation. His stories and poems have appeared in the Antigonish Review, Our Stories Literary Journal, and Prism International. His work has earned a number of prizes, including the 2014th John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award. He lives in Kingsville, Ontario. His first novel is Home Walls, published by Palimstys Press in 2020. Welcome, Gordon. Hi, thanks. Do you prefer Gord or Gordon? Gord. Gord, okay, great. So when did you know that you wanted to write?
SPEAKER_01:Good question. I think in a way I always knew. For instance, in grade two, we were asked to spell our middle names. My middle name is Arthur, and I spelt it A-U-T-H-O-R. But I didn't know I was a writer until well 2012. 2012. Until then I played around a bit.
SPEAKER_03:So what about that drew you to fiction over other genres?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I thought I would be a journalist until I started reading newspapers and magazines more closely. And the writing is mostly crap. So and I just didn't like the idea of well, journalistic truth isn't necessarily truth. It all depends on what the advertisers want. So and I didn't know I was a fiction writer until my first year of college in 82, when one of my English instructors, my English 100 instructor, told me I should take creative writing. And I thought she was nuts. And I thought she was joking. So I did anyway. And that worked out for you, and then I just quit writing entirely for a long, long time.
SPEAKER_02:So your acknowledgment cite various writing supports that you've been able to access, including a university creative writing program, writers' retreats, national novel writing month, and even a writing conference like Word on the Lake with Outlander writer Diana Gabaldon. Which of these processes did you find to be the most fruitful, or did they all meet different needs?
SPEAKER_01:Hanging out with writers is very cool. I really enjoy it. And Diana Gabaldon is an incredible person. Um she is so nice and so generous. I mean, one woman came up with a suitcase full of books to be signed, and she sat there and patiently signed every single one of them. Mostly, I think nano rhymeel was was most helpful. It's it's very intense. Um my like the first draft of Homo's is a product of the 2008 Nano Rhymeel. Um, and it spent a lot of years on the shelf. And then I pulled it down and finished it. And um my second novel is also a nanorimo novel. I'd hoped to have it finished by the end of the year, but um I only got half of it written. It became a much longer story. I did make my 50,000 words, but it's probably going to take a year to finish.
SPEAKER_05:So, do you continue any of these processes on a regular basis? How do you like to work?
SPEAKER_01:When I'm in a project, I write every weekday and some weekends. I write for three hours, and that's about as much as I can handle emotionally. Um, it's it's very, very draining. So I write as much as I can without without burning out. And if I'm not having a bad pain day, I will edit or work on other stuff in the afternoon. Gord, what's a home waltz? Uh it's the last slow song of the night at a dance. I don't think it's very relevant now because I don't think there are many live band dances anymore. I miss them incredibly. And so my understanding is I've never actually had one. No. I know, I know. Maybe in my next life. So if you don't have a home waltz by the end of the night, you're going like if you don't have a partner for the home waltz, you're probably going home alone.
SPEAKER_02:It's a Shagan song, but it's so the actual home waltz of your novel of that name incorporates a particular setting and time frame. The whole action of this book, in fact, takes place over just a few days, a weekend, but with so much action, drama, and reflection contained within. What made you choose that time structure for this novel?
SPEAKER_01:I really like oh, what's it called? 12 o'clock high? An old movie, 1952, with I think it's Carrie Grant. Say, I really like this movie. I just and um I like that the whole movie took place within 24 hours. And I think for a story like Homework, if it would dragged on too long, it would, I don't think it would have had quite the same impact as it does. A lot can happen in a day.
SPEAKER_06:Absolutely, a lot can happen in a day. And this one takes place in the 1970s. What was it about in that era that drew you?
SPEAKER_01:That was the beginning of I started to become a person and the music of that era. I don't want to say I like classic rock, but the music of that era still lives, and I don't hate classic rock, but it was an incredible time. There's lots of good and bad stuff going on. We had the FLQ, we had um the FLQ crisis, and then um the Nixon stuff was starting to explode, and OPEC was happening, uh, like the oil embargo. So it was it was a crazy time, and it just seemed to fit.
SPEAKER_03:The location of home walls tells a story of a community that is shared by indigenous and immigrant members. What is it about your protagonist, Squito's identity and perspective that was important to portray?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the thing about Squito is he doesn't belong to the Indian nation and he doesn't belong to the settler nation, and he can migrate between either and belong to neither. And so the physical setting helps underline the emotional setting, the emotional separation.
SPEAKER_02:Although Squito endures a tough family life and even bullying from his gang of friends, he finds hope and joy in music, including music of the era, and his own singing group. How does that shape your narrative, do you think?
SPEAKER_01:That evolved with each new draft until this like Squito appears in a whole bunch of my short stories as well. And he doesn't think he can sing, he doesn't think he can dance, he probably can't dance. And he just thinks he's well a total nothing burger. And having him able to kind of sing brings him, well, it surprises him and gives him a bit of joy. He doesn't think he's ever going to be like Fast Freddy or Skinny for that matter. And part of the not being like skinny ever helps kind of shape their relationship as the book evolves. Um, his his admiration or or adoration of of Skinny starts to um melt. And that's also a sign of growth, personal growth for Skeeto.
SPEAKER_02:So do you have a soundtrack to your writing process?
SPEAKER_01:Funny, you should ask. I absolutely do. Um, with Skeeto, the soundtrack is mostly Creed's Clearwater Revival, but the updated playlist is a little bit broader because of what happens or because of the music in in Homeworld's. So now the soundtrack includes um Beggar's Banquet, um, Exile on Main Street, Goats Head Soup, which just comes out uh about six months before, no, um July, four months before the story takes place. Uh so that era of stones, which is also my favorite era of stones, and bands like Uriah Heap, um, which plays more into the next novel, just that kind of stuff. And I'm also putting together a Spotify playlist of the songs pulled from the novel. And I might include some of the ones from well, there are some parallels between what what I listened to and and what Skeetle listened to in the story. I think I was influenced by what I was listening to.
SPEAKER_05:You even included an original song that is written by one of the characters. Do you have a secret songwriting talent of your own?
SPEAKER_00:Good God, no. Um no. Uh no.
SPEAKER_03:How did you write those lyrics then? You actually have lyrics in your book. How did you write those?
SPEAKER_01:I put myself in Scotty, Cody's skin and um wrote because it wasn't me, I was Cody, so I could pull it off.
SPEAKER_03:Then the book does cover some challenging subject matter, including a pivotal sex scene. How did you develop the process to write such scenes sensitively and vividly?
SPEAKER_01:That's a work in progress. The first scene part of the book I showed anybody was the sex scene because it to me it was one of the most important scenes in the book, and I had to do it in such a way that you get a sense. Well, it is kind of graphic, but I and I eventually I changed it so many times. Fred Stenson said it needed more detail. Lynn Cody says, Why do you even have this in your book? Um, one of the instructors at Okanagan College just oozed joy over the sex scene. Um so I I wanted it to have a serious impact, and I wanted, well, definitely to show that this kid has absolutely no sense of how sex works. And the thing with with Ingrid's talk is kind of it just kind of evolved. You know, you can do this, but do not do this, and he does it anyway, but in the end, he doesn't do what other guys might have done in that situation. And he doesn't, well, yeah, if you're in the book, you kind of know. So it was important to have this scene get him thinking about why he wants sex so much. And he think he so he's he's growing, and he's actually thinking of of women as people, not objects. And this is this is where that change happens. It's not quite spontaneous, but it's almost spontaneous.
SPEAKER_02:Have you had time to think about your next project? What are you working on next?
SPEAKER_01:I wrote the next novel, well, half of the next novel during NanoRimo. Um, it's a follow-up to to Home Waltz. It's not necessarily a sequel, but in my mind, like there's a collection of short stories that's almost done. I've been working on it since 2003. And so it's it's like one long story in three parts. And originally I'd planned to kill Skeeto about three quarters of the way through through Home Waltz. My my wife said, if you do that, I will kill you. I like breathing. So, and she was right.
SPEAKER_02:So I take it we'll hear more about Skeeto in the sequel or the next book. Will we also hear about Anti Max and Bernie?
SPEAKER_01:No, this novel will does feature more of Skeeto's grandmother and father, and his father's girlfriend, and Skeeto has a girlfriend in the next one, which is called I Love You and Other Lies.
SPEAKER_05:I love the title. We'd love to have you read some of your work for us. Would you like to set up your selection?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. What I'm going to do is read the first couple of pages of the novel. I haven't done this before. I'm just tired of reading the stuff that I always read. Although I do like this stuff. I just anyway. So this is Ungodly Hours. There are three three parts of the of the novel are titled Ungodly Hours. Kind of beginning, middle, and end. And that's that's a structure that evolved during editing. Um, I didn't see it initially, but when I had to make a substantial change at the end of the book, it it just came together like this. Ungodly hours. So my dead cousin Erica walks into my dream again, pulls the covers off me, doing it to a girl, Bernie, I think. My spyak shrivels, goosebumps rise on my arms and legs. Erica's arms flap and wave like wind-ripped clothes on the clothesline. She yells, but her words only spit a little cold wind. Bernie crumbles to dust in Erica's growing shadow. Erica only visits my hot dreams. So she visits me way, way, way more than she ever did in life. Her visits leave me sad. Erica, always a little chubby, liked her chips and Pepsi for breakfast and then got the diabetes. Till the day she died, she'd gone with a shema called Johnny Smith, a walking venereal ward of a kid who came to town with his parents from somewhere out east. The Smiths, as white as Aunt Polly Spence, claimed their great maker commanded them to come here and open the Groovy Grub, one of those weird hippy-dippy food stores. They came to save us with their so-called health food and save us with their trans mental Rama Lama ding-dong stuff. Almost no one bought anything from the Smiths. Would you buy raw peanuts and herbs and powders that smelled like ground-up gym socks? They kept the store open about a year. They had a going out of business sale and couldn't even give away their rotten food. Even Crazy Tom, a guy who drinks gasoline for beer money, wouldn't eat it. Erica and her mom, my Aunt Lois, took in all the Smith's great maker stuff to cure Erica's diabetes, but she got sicker and sicker. Then a big town doctor told her he'd have to chop off one of her legs. Besides, Erica and her mom, only some hippies who ran away from the Vietnam War to squat in the bushes outside town, bought the Smith stuff. Them hippies live in one of them comes. Where they say, everyone does drugs and has sex orgies all day and all night. But skinny Jim Jim Cody and I never seen one. And not one single naked girl. Bimbo says he sees them every time he goes over. He says you just need to know where to look, but he won't tell us his secret place and won't go over there with us. I'll stop there.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you so much, Gorett. That was great.
SPEAKER_01:That's good to hear them. This was fun. Let's do it again.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. Looking forward to your next novel.
SPEAKER_01:Ah, me too.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks for joining us. Look for more episodes of All Right in Sin City wherever you listen to podcasts. Or check out our website, allright in SinCity.com. For information and announcements of new podcasts, sign up to our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.