Category: Interviews

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Los Angeles lost another great writer to New York when Patty Yumi Cottrell moved back to the east coast last year. But the author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, this month’s giveaway, got a lot of writing done while she was in the City of Angeles — so you can expect to read her hilarious-sad work in the months to come.

I got to chat with Patty about doing things differently and writing for a whiskey company and getting conflated with her novel’s protagonist. Enjoy the interview —

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Siel: If you were to go through the entire first book process again, from acceptance to publication, is there anything you might do differently?

Patty: I would meditate more often and look at social media less frequently. I would try to be more flexible and less demanding. Expect anything to happen and nothing at all. It’s all the same anyway.

Because, like your character Helen Moran, you’re a Korean adoptee and your parents live in Milwaukee, many readers have conflated — or have been tempted to conflate — your own life with that of your protagonist, Helen Moran. I too have noticed a tendency for readers do the same with my novel-in-stories although I’ve never said my fiction is autobiographical — and I feel like this is a challenge that many writers have to address about their work. Do you have any tips for dealing with it? 

The way people read my book doesn’t bother me too much. In many ways, the book doesn’t belong to me, it’s up to the reader to supply the meaning. So if a reader wants to understand the book by conflating me with my narrator, I can’t control that.

But I dislike it when journalists categorize it as an autobiographical novel, as if that’s a fact, especially during interviews. One thing I’m learning how to do is to be evasive. Don’t answer questions you don’t want to answer. In person, if this happens, I try to start talking about something else, even if it seems rude. If someone asks me an invasive question, I’ll start talking about Fiona Apple or the NBA or a book I’ve read recently or how my digestion is going.

You said in an interview that New York was, for you, “a terrible place to write a novel” and that Los Angeles gives you “more freedom” as a writer. Then you left L.A. and moved back to NYC. What is up with that? Also, how’s the writing going these days?

Yeah, I’m back in New York City. It was time for a change. My girlfriend lives here, and there are teaching opportunities, so that was that.

Right now I’m mustering up the motivation to write another novel. I like to get lost in long projects that take up a lot of mental space. My writing has felt heavier lately, not as thin and spare. This summer, I was asked to write a short story for a whiskey company (Bulleit). It’s about an Asian man with a girlfriend and he’s miserable. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing I had ever written, but now, after several months, I can see that it’s good. Everything is always changing!

What were you working on, writing-wise, while you were in L.A.? Or was your time taken up with Sorry to Disrupt the Peace stuff?

I wrote my novel, some short stories, a poem, and an essay. So that took up a little time. When I wasn’t doing that, I traveled a little, took walks, met with friends, etc. I was teaching, too.

How do you decide what to read, and what books are you looking forward to reading in 2018?

People recommend things to me. I like to read interviews of writers I admire, and read the books that they like. I can tell if I’ll be into a book by reading the first chapter, but this doesn’t always work. The last one I wanted to set down after reading the first chapter was Outline by Rachel Cusk. I was mistaken, and it turned out to be brilliant.

There are so many novels I’m looking forward to, but the best story collection to appear in 2018 is Rita Bullwinkel’s, Belly Up. I feel certain about this. Her book is so funny, weird, and intelligent. She’s incredible.

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Enter to win a copy of Patty Yumi Cottrell’s  Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered. Good luck!

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Coming-of-age stories set in Los Angeles: It’s a subgenre of sorts that’s growing in size, that holds within it wildly different books. I love these L.A. stories so much I wrote one myself — and read with a thrill Chiara Barzini’s volatile and beautiful novel Things That Happened Before the Earthquake too. (full review here)

Chiara was born in Italy but spent some formative years in L.A. and other places in the U.S. before moving back to Italy. This novel’s actually Chiara’s second book; the first was a collection of short stories titled Sister Stop Breathing. But in addition to writing fiction, Chiara’s also a screenwriter and journalist, with work in publications ranging from Vice to Vogue.

In this interview, Chiara talks about her choice to fictionalize memoir, L.A.’s transformation and stasis through the years, and daughters with artistic fathers.
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Siel: On the LA Review of Books podcast, you mentioned that you first started writing your Things That Happened Before the Earthquake as a memoir. How did you realize it needed to be a novel?

Chiara: I felt like I had more freedom when I didn’t feel blackmailed by the hard facts of life. I could break things apart and rebuild them again elsewhere on the page. It was very liberating.

The girls in your novel are artistic, independent, and often lonely. They could be described as latchkey kids, with the freedom and daring to take incredible risks while their parents aren’t watching–yet the girls are also caged or trapped in many ways, often expected to serve their parents’ ambitions and desires instead of exploring their own. Is this just a basic feature of female adolescence, do you think, or a tension more specific to children of artist parents?

I definitely think that the children of artists, on this regard I saw a great documentary about Julian Schnabel by an Italian director named Pappi Corsicato, are often bound to carry the weight of their parent’s creative field. This weight can go in different directions. It is electrifying and sublime to be close to the art of parents, but it can also be confusing in terms of your own independent creative identity. Daughters are often required to take on the weight of their father’s ambitions. Hard not to muddle them with their own, especially when you are young. Eugenia tries to break free from this pattern.

You’re a filmmaker and journalist as well as a novelist. Do you find that you use the same creative energies in all these roles–with the passion for them coming from the same place–or does each one fulfill a completely different need?

I am lucky to work in these three realms because they very much inform each other. Journalism gives me the thrill of discovering stories and doing research, which is to this day one of my favorite parts about the writing process in every field. Screenwriting holds the promise of visual satisfaction. Fiction is your secret lover.

I love the nostalgic “Valley Girl” personal essay you wrote for Vogue, where you write your heart still aches for Southern California — especially the “wildness and violent winds” of Topanga and Malibu. I’m not sure how often you visited L.A. these days, but I know you did come through recently on book tour. In your view, has L.A. mostly changed or mostly stayed the same?

Los Angeles has changed immensely since the 90’s, socially, culturally, and politically, but its nature, as we’ve seen, has not. It is still a land of terrifying fires and mud slides and quakes. Glued in front of the television watching the flames in the last weeks, I was reminded of how relentless the nature of the city can be, wild and completely unpredictable.

What are you working on now?

I am working on a very fun film project in Italy and starting research for the next book.

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Enter to win a copy of Chiara Barzini’s  Things That Happened Before the Earthquake by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered. Good luck!

Photo by Jeannette Montgomery Barron

Every month, I interview an author I admire on his literary firsts.

If you’re plugged into the L.A. literary community, you know about Roar Shack, the eclectic monthly reading series in Echo Park with its impromptu live write competitions. And if you’ve been to Roar Shack, you know its host David Rocklin, the energetic writer who’s been putting the monthly series together for five years now.

I first met David when I first read at Roar Shack in 2013 — after which, out of curiosity, I picked up David’s first novel The Luminist (Hawthorne, 2011), a historical novel inspired by the life of photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron. Reading it, I got to enjoy a lyrical novel with feminist underpinnings and also learned a lot about the advent of photography —

Julia Margaret Cameron has in fact inspired David’s second novel too. The Night Language, officially out from the local Los Angeles indie press Rare Bird Books Nov. 14, 2017, stars a fictionalized version of Prince Alamayou of Abyssinia (Ethiopia today), who in real life was photographed by Julia (full review of The Night Language here).

In this interview, David gives advice to second-time authors, reveals the benefits of working with a local press, and describes the addictive high of a literary reading series.
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Siel: This is your second novel with an indie press — but your first with a local indie press! Did it make a difference in the publication process, working with a press based in Los Angeles?

David: It’s made a huge and wonderful difference that coincides with the difference in my position as a writer this 2nd time around.

The first time, I was fortunate enough to be acquired by a wonderful lit press that wasn’t located here in my hometown. They were good to work with and did their best, but I wasn’t ever quite a fit with them to begin with (they tended toward edgy material, and my first novel, The Luminist, was period lit fiction set at the beginning of photography), and I didn’t have roots in their venue. On top of that, I didn’t come from an MFA program and didn’t know anyone in that lit community, or any other one.

Since then, and as a result of touring for that novel, I’ve developed relationships with authors all across the country, and especially here at home. So now comes The Night Language and everything is here in L.A. The community of writers that I belong to has been just astonishing in their support and enthusiasm (present company included!). The publisher feels like a friend around the corner. We know the same people and places, and they’ve embraced the novel and what it stands for. There’s a platform beneath me, which is a wonderfully supportive feeling as this odd publishing journey begins for the second time.

We hear a lot of advice aimed at first time authors, but not as much for those on the second go around. What words of encouragement or advice would you offer to those seeking to write and publish a second book? I’m really just asking for me —

Like you need it, successful Cake Time author extraordinaire!

I guess I would say this: if you’re fortunate enough, like me (and holy shit, am I lucky) to be traditionally published twice, you obviously intend to make this your work (and supporting your ability to do that work, and do it the way you want/need to, is a whole other topic that I’m more than happy to expound on), so do yourself the favor of treating it like the profession it is.

Be aware of what your contracts (publishing and agent, if you have one – and if you don’t have one, think seriously about getting one) provide for. Become a collaborative partner with your publisher on everything from cover design to reading locations to promotion (as in, how much and via what mediums). Understand that your art is paramount, but sales do matter because your publisher, or perhaps your next publisher, will look to the numbers you moved in deciding whether your next book is a worthwhile risk to undertake.

Network with your lit community, with bookstores and libraries, as you would in any other field of endeavor – making those contacts means that they’ll remember you when it comes time to support you with word of mouth.

Protect your writing time. There are lots of distractions in life, but if you think about that other job you hold, you’d never let yourself clean your office or work space rather than help a customer. Don’t do it with your writing, or else you’re guilty of the very thing we all hate when we hear it from friends or family who don’t get it: you’re treating your writing as a hobby that can always be interrupted for something else.

Both your novels were inspired by photography. Has visual art always been an inspiration for your writing?

Everything I write seems to begin with a visual prompt – an image of a moment – but not alone. It needs something hard to strike against and spark up, and that hard thing is always a stray fact that, when coupled with the image, starts my wheels turning.

With The Luminist, it was one of Julia Margaret Cameron’s images coupled with the fact that she’d lost a child at birth. From that came the story of a woman obsessively determined never to lose someone to the frailties of memory again; photography would forever hold them still.

With The Night Language, it was another of Ms. Cameron’s images, one of the actual prince Alamayou as a boy, coupled with the fact that he died so young in life (I won’t tell you how it turns out in the novel). The spark that struck was this: I wanted to write a life for Alamayou that he never actually got to live in reality. That became a love story, because of course.

Your monthly reading series Roar Shack is a beloved part of the Los Angeles literary scene. What inspired you to start this series — and what keeps you motivated to keep doing it now, years later?

It grew out of the book tour I did for The Luminist. All along the way I was exposed to one community of writers after another, and when it was over, I really found myself pining for that sense of belonging that I’d experienced reading alongside other remarkable and accomplished artists. I’d been exposed to so many amazing series and venues, and one in particular, up in San Francisco, really made an impression and inspired me to try to create a series here in LA.

In the best “hey kids, let’s put on a show” tradition, I honestly was too clueless to comprehend how hard it would be to create a reading series out of nothing and build a following, but I reached out to LA-based writers anyway. What I found was what I continue to experience each and every time I interact with our lit community. Inclusiveness, support, enthusiasm, and love for each other and for each other’s work. It’s inspiring to me, and now I can proudly say I count some of the most amazing writers as friends. That’s an incredible feeling for me, as is the awe that comes over me when someone I’m not familiar with, or someone thoroughly unknown, comes out of nowhere and kills it at Roar Shack. It’s an addictive high, to see a writer reach for something they might never have thought themselves capable of, and the audience respond. That keeps me going. It’s a joy.

What are you working on now?

I’m at work on my new novel, The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger. It’s a love story across time, and it’s also about the accidental discovery of the electroencephalograph. I’ll pause while you take that in.

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Enter to win a copy of David Rocklin’s  The Night Language by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered — but you can get a second entry into the drawing by leaving a comment on the giveaway post with the name of your favorite language. Good luck!