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Northwest Passages: Chelsea Cain
Chelsea Cain ruined my run last weekend. Or perhaps I should blame Gretchen Lowell. Cain is the author of a series of bestselling thrillers. Gretchen Lowell is the beautiful, psychopath star. Cain's books are set in Portland, and in the second one, Sweetheart, bodies are dumped in Forest Park, left for bugs and pugs to feast on.
Too bad for me I stayed up late Friday night to finish Sweetheart, then got up early for a run in Forest Park. The weather was cold and wet. The trail was muddy. Nobody much was around. And I was busy imagining skulls and limbs behind every tree.
I know Gretchen Lowell is made up, despite the doubts of some readers. But I still wish I'd brought a friend. It's a good thing I think Cain's horror stories are funny too.
Her newest book, The Night Season, keeps Lowell in prison. Instead, there's a psychotic child-stealer killing people with rare octopi. (Or octopuses? There's a brief grammar debate in the book. Or octopodes? Here is an entertaining explanation of all three, thanks to Merriam-Webster.) The story was inspired by Cain learning about the 1948 Vanport flood, which wiped out the city then just north of Portland, leaving thousands of people homeless and destroying a core African American community.
We'll talk with Cain about her books and her life, beginning with her early years on a commune in Iowa. At the tender age of 22, Cain wrote a memoir tracing the core of her soul back to that farm. She calls it "the place where everything seemed possible." To write about it, she grilled both her parents, who
remember their time at the farm as differently as two people could. My father remembers people and events. He can tell you who was there when and whose friend they were. He can tell you what stories were going on in the news in relation to everyday life, whether they dug the new outhouse before or after Kent State, and who had or had not yet been convicted for Watergate the day he rode out of the lane on Rue after that blizzard of 1972.
My mother's memories are sensual. She remembers what was blooming in the garden, walking down the dusty gravel road to pick blackberries in the summertime, how big the moon looked at night from the porch.
We'll also peek into Cain's writing process with help from one member of her writing group, Lidia Yuknavitch. Cain says she likes Lidia's writing so much she considered stealing drafts from one workshop session. Yuknavitch has plenty to say herself.
Tell us your questions for Chelsea Cain, or Lidia Yuknavitch, about writing, murder, female body image, the best place to leave corpses in Portland, or whatever else is on your mind.
Tagged as: books · chelsea cain · crime · northwest passages · reading
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Thank you, Dave. I wrote to the general TOL Staff email address (thinkoutloud@opb.org) over the weekend to let you guys know about the proliferation of ad hominem attacks. I usually enjoy coming to the blog and reading, and contributing to a lively, thoughtful exchange of ideas, but the spate of personal attacks made me begin to think about leaving and not coming back. I would not have liked to do that.
I, for one, try to make thoughtful comments that add to the discussion, even if they are occassionally slightly tangentially off-topic. Sometimes my comments are a bit tongue-in-cheek (like the "Voldemort" comment in the International Students thread), but I try to keep them respectful and well-thought out. When I am responding to another poster's comment directly, I usually quote and give credit for the comment I am responding to. I hope that TOL has a long and thought-provoking life on OPB.
Courteously,
Penelope McKibben
(AKA Penny_From_Eugene)
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Just started your latest book and love it. We moved from the valley to Baker City 8 years ago and if you ever want to change the venue for a book I am writing to invite you to stay with us and get a feel for the OTHER side of the state. Keep on writing and I shall keep on reading. Thank you very much for allowing your books on Kindle. ivamarie
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I *never* read thrillers, except I *devour* Chelsea Cain's. For one thing, she nails the Portland I know in a way that few authors do. For another, she's witty.
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I LOVE reading books set in familiar places... it feels like I am more a part of the story and I am more confident that I am visualizing the book as the author intened... otherwise, I'm always wondering!
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Thank you for having Chelsea Cain on this show, after several loud bursts of laughter in the first 20 minutes, I'd decided I had to check out some of her books. I work at REI and after the delightful quip about people "putting on their REI jackets, skip out into the woods and getting attacked by sneaker waves" I laughed so hard that I spit coffee out my nose! (Thank god I wasn't at the computer). Now I must buy Chelsea's books!
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Speaking of books writen in places you know- I've been friends with Chelsea for years (I ended up on her and her now husband's first date not knowing it was a date ubtil we got there). The funniest thing about reading her books for me, is she writes very much in her own voice and reading the Heatsick series is really strange- reading thease horrible acts take place with every character talking just like Chelsea. It is a bit unsettling.
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Octopus? Pacific North West? Chelsea should definitely check out the rare Tree Octopus include one in one of her books!
Here's a website about them... http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
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What a fun site.
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What a fun hoax.
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I CANNOT WAIT to read your books after hearing this lively banter! I am a big Philip Margolin fan and love getting entranced in dark, local novels.
I'm so glad that you found your way to the NW and your voice here!!
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Did I miss this the first time around or is this a new show?
Either way, what a fun woman and the books sound interesting and fun too.
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New, new, new!
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Thanks, Dave.
I wonder if after you guys do a series of repeats, you might somehow make it known that the new shows are starting back up.
Or maybe do like TV schedules do, put an R or N in parentheses to indicate which it is. (R) = repeat (N) = new.
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Tom, when they do a re-broadcast, they so note in the title of the show. There was one about a week ago that was a rebroadcast, and the title of the discussion page said, "Rebroadcast: The Benefits of Auctioneering." (This one was originally done in December.)
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Penny
I know they do and yesterday was the final in a series of 4 or 5 shows.
Somehow I just wrongly assumed that today was a continuation of those reruns.
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Tom, I'm not sure what you're referring to when you mention a recent series of 4 or 5 shows. All of our shows have been new (or "new, new, new!" as Dave says!) except for last week's program on Auctioneering. That being said we'll have another archive this Friday on Trust and Travel and one later next week too. So it is safe to assume we're new unless we tell you otherwise!
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SJR
Whaaa?
- Strategic Default
- Food Access
Were both reruns weren't they? Certainly I have heard and posted on them previously.
Hmm, maybe I dropped into my own personal "TOL Twilight Zone?
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Both were new!
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SJR
I realize now that the shows were new. I just got confused because the topics were essentially recycled. I am highly confident that TOL has done shows on default and local food before. So I mistook them for reruns.
Oops, my bad.
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Emily and Chelsea thanks for a fun show. On the topic of writing groups, Chelsea, besides the critiques does the group market or read to audiences together? ala www.mountainwriters.org
I understand that Chuck Palahniuk is one of the authors in your group. Do you hear echoes of your writing group in his book Haunted?
Lastly does your writing group have any associated web site or blog that other writers can glom onto to get a look behind your curtain? ala www.theguttery.com
Thanks again for an entertaining look at your writing.
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Chelsea, one of the things I enjoy is reading novels, especially mysteries set in cities I am going to visit. Thanks for your addition to the Portland Visitors Reading List. I will have to read your books during my stay-cations.
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I've been a fan of Chelsea Cain from the time of her column in the Oregonian, and it was great to hear her and Lidia talking about their writing process and their book group. I am a member of a book group that is very similar to hers (for good reason; several of those of us who began the group have a friend or two in her group).
I related greatly to the way Lidia and Chelsea described the idea of writing for the members of the group -- I think, 'Dave will like this alliteration,' I wonder if Rebecca will particularly appreciate my gardening reference, I know that Dana will nod her head when I depict the reality of marital "bliss." and we, too, know each other so well that it's almost frightening sometimes -- whether we're writing fiction or non-fiction, we put so much of ourselves on the page and only we know how deeply much is true.
One week, early in our group, I brought a story about my husband. He had been in Kuwait for a few months at that point, and I had a particularly vivid dream. I wrote the story of the dream, which involved him dying, but told it from the point of view of inside the dream.
Two of the other members of the group were very, very uncomfortable for most of my reading, shocked that I would be coming to the group so soon after my husband's death. that taught me to do a better job of introducing the pieces I wrote... and the enduring value of trusting your writer's group with their darkest secrets (as long as those secrets aren't about one's family members having died in the past 30 days).
another thing I find hardest about writer's groups with really great writers is wanting to know how the work comes out -- and having to wait the interminably long time until they finish the book. this must be doubly hard for Chelsea's group -- who wants to know the end of the thriller!
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Comments are now closed.
Folks,
(This is largely a repost of a comment I wrote for the Strategic Default thread. Sadly, it applies here as well.)
I've just deleted nearly thirty comments from this thread that were personal attacks. Some of the comments were from a few days ago; sorry it took so long.
As many people have noticed, the level of discussions in these threads has taken a real dive over the last few months. We don't want to alienate more people like Desolation, who wrote, "with the hostility and lack of intellect on display I find to be far too juvenile and poisonous to bother with this forum any longer."
We'll do our part to monitor the threads more carefully, and to enforce our commenting guidelines more assiduously. I hope that all of you will stick around to keep these threads what they've been for so long: models of frank, feisty, and respectful dialogue.
Dave