Book Beginning: Mary Chomenko Hinckley: Material Evolution

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Throughout history, artists have helped us see the world in new and exciting ways. They have revealed the beauty and the grandeur as well as the complexities and the not-so-beautiful of the world.

-- from the Foreword by Brian Ferriso, in Mary Chomenko Hinckley: Material Evolution. Mary is an American artist who works in bronze, resin, glass, and photography. Her new book is a monograph of her stunning work.

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING





TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

Mary creates images strictly from her own personal experiences and concerns, past and present, and the imaginative equivalents they suggest to her. The narrative, if there is one, stems from the secret world of the artist.

-- from "Images, Words, and Letters: Seeking Meaning in the Art of Mary Chomenko Hinckley," an essay by Paul J. Karlstrom. There was only a picture on page 56, so this was as close as I could get. Paul is an art historian, author, and the former West Coast regional director of the Smithsonian’s Archive of American Art.

Author Interview: Andy Brown

Andy Brown was serving in the Air Force as a law enforcement specialist when, in 1994, he responded to an active-shooter incident in progress at the base hospital where he was stationed. Four days later a B-52 bomber crashed during an air-show practice flight. Both tragedies had been predicted and warned about.

Brown's book, Warnings Unheeded, is part of his ongoing effort to share the lessons learned from the Fairchild Air Force Base tragedies and his experience with the effects of trauma.

Andy recently talked with Rose City Reader about his book and his experience at Fairchild:

Please tell us a little about the two events at Fairchild Air Force Base in June 1994 that are the subject of your book.

Warnings Unheeded tells the story of two separate tragedies that occurred during one week at Fairchild Air Force Base. A former airman who had been discharged from the military for mental health problems returned to the base hospital and sought revenge with a rifle. The gunman shot two doctors who he blamed for ending his career and then moved through the hospital campus indiscriminately firing upon the patrons and staff. The airman had shown signs of severe mental illness throughout his two-year career. His bizarre behavior scared his co-workers. He had threatened to harm his roommates and expressed a desire to kill his former schoolmates. A variety of doctors had diagnosed him with paranoia, schizophrenia and anti-social personality disorder. Some believed he may have been hearing voices. Doctors had repeatedly recommended his discharge from the military and placement into civilian mental health care. Their recommendations had been repeatedly ignored.

Four days after the shooting, a rogue pilot crashed a B-52 bomber during an air-show practice flight, killing the four crew members onboard. The B-52 was the size of a commercial airliner, but the pilot flew the huge plane like it was a single-engine jet fighter. His aggressive aerobatics were reckless. Multiple aviators feared for their lives and refused to fly with dangerous pilot. They predicted disaster and had attempted to get leadership to ground the reckless pilot, but their pleas had been ignored.

You had a personal role in the events at Fairchild. Did your experience compel you to write your book? 

Yes, it did. I was a Security Policeman at Fairchild and responded to the hospital where I confronted and shot the gunman. I ended his killing spree, but not before he had shot several people. Over the years, I experienced a lot of guilt over the number of people who had been seriously injured and killed. I wanted to know why the tragedy occurred. I also needed to know if I could have done anything differently, if I could have saved more lives. The more I learned the more I realized that others could benefit from the information. If we can learn from these tragedies we could prevent similar incidents from occurring.

How did you research the details of the events found in your book? Did you have primary sources? People to interview? Other materials? 

I started by obtaining the reports of investigation and witness statements from the Air Force. Later, I was fortunate to connect with some of the journalists who covered the stories. They provided me with copies of the gunman’s medical records, journal entries and other various documents. Newspaper articles and news footage were also helpful, but I verified all of the information that went into the book by re-interviewing the source whenever possible. Whenever a person’s name was mentioned in the research material, I tracked them down via the internet and interviewed them. After the interview, I always asked the witness if they knew of anyone else I should talk to, and that usually led to another interview. It became quite a rabbit hole, and I eventually had to force myself to stop researching in order to focus on writing. I didn’t start seriously researching and writing until 2009. It took seven years of writing and re-writing before I felt the manuscript was worthy of publishing.

Who is your intended audience and what do you hope your readers will gain from your book? 

The book is popular with true-crime fans, veterans, people with an interest in psychology, history, law enforcement, military, or aviation.

The writing is clear and concise. Any use of jargon is clearly explained. I wanted the book to be accessible to anyone, because I believe that anyone could benefit from these stories. When you see all of the warnings signs and missed opportunities, you will be better prepared to recognize a similar tragedy in the making.

What did you learn from writing your book – either about the subject of the book or the writing process – that most surprised you?

Regarding the incidents; I was surprised by the number of red flags and missed opportunities to prevent the tragedies. It was amazing how many people had predicted violence or disaster and tried to do something about it. It was also amazing how often their concerns were dismissed.

What surprised me most about writing, is that someone had not already written a book about these incidents. It is an incredible story.

Do you have any events coming up to promote your book?

I don’t have any events planned. However, I have recently expanded the distribution of Warnings Unheeded. It is now available in print, audio and ebook from every distributor and on every platform that I am aware of.

What is the most valuable advice you’ve been given as an author?

The most valuable advice I received is to not be in a rush to publish. I learned from other’s mistakes that it is a lot easier to promote a book if you have taken the time to make sure it is the best writing you are capable of.

What else do you want readers to know?

Readers should know that I eventually overcame the guilt and other mental health issues I struggled with as a result of the shooting. My experience with the trauma is another story in the book that I hope others will be able to learn from.

Also, signed and inscribed copies of Warnings Unheeded can be obtained from a link on my website, or here. A 20% discount is available to followers of Rose City Reader by using the promo code: ROSE at checkout.

What’s next? What are you working on now?

Right now I am focused on spending time with my family, any free time I have is spent trying to get the word out about this book. I would eventually like to write another book if I find a subject that I feel as passionately about, as I do Warnings Unheeded.

THANKS, ANDY!

WARNINGS UNHEEDED IS AVAILABLE FROM MANY SOURCES ONLINE, OR ASK YOUR LOCAL BOOK SELLER TO ORDER IT. 

Teaser Tuesday: Live and Let Pie

She kept her dark brown eyes lasered on the skull. "I just can't believe that poor Hannah found a human skull."

-- Live and Let Pie by Ellie Alexander. This latest book in Alexander's Bakeshop Mysteries series find pastry chef and amateur sleuth Jules Capshaw dealing with a dead body from the 1960s and her recently dead landlord.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday: A Weekend in New York

What books came into your house last week? I got one from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program:



A Weekend in New York by Benjamin Markovits. I like the sound of this one. An extended family gathers in Long Island because one of them has qualified to play in the US Open tennis championship. Over the course of a long weekend, family drama ensues.

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Editor Interview: Carole Vanderhoof

Carole Vanderhoof is the editor of a new anthology from Plough Publishing House, The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers. Many people know Sayers as the author of the Golden Age mystery series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriett Vane. This book traces faith-based themes through Sayers's popular fiction and other writings.

Carole recently talked with Rose City Reader about Dorothy L. Sayers, her writing, and this new anthology:

Before we get to the book, can you introduce us briefly to Dorothy L. Sayers?

Dorothy Sayers was a British author, a Renaissance woman with a great deal of intellect, which she applied to different projects at different times of her life. Just out of college, she published two books of poetry. Then she worked as an advertising copywriter in London. She supplemented that income by writing murder mysteries until 1937 when she began writing stage and radio plays with Christian themes. As a result of her popularity, she was asked to lecture and write essays, magazine and newspaper articles. During the war she did a series of short radio broadcasts to the troops explaining the Apostle’s Creed. At the end of the war she began to translate Dante's Comedy from the medieval Italian into English verse. She didn't finish the third book, Paradise, but passed away when she was about two-thirds through it, in 1957.

Perhaps what made her so popular was that although she was a scholar, she was not pious, never prim. Her down-to-earth metaphors, her enthusiasm, I would call it gusto, and firm grip on the realities of life made her popular with real people, and those in the church who could see the value of a popular defense of basic Christian doctrine.

C.S. Lewis said, “There is in reality no cleavage between the detective stories and her other works. In them, as in it, she is first and foremost the craftsman, the professional. She always saw herself as one who had learned a trade, and respects it, and demands respect for it from others.”

The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers is an anthology. Please explain what that means and how the book is organized.

Many people know Sayers as a mystery writer. Some folks only know her for her play-cycle on the life of Christ, The Man Born to be King. There are others who only know her as a promoter of classical education. So what I have done is bring together examples of her writing under topical headings. No one else has ever tried to do that, and I must say, it wasn’t easy. But each chapter begins with a chunk of her fiction that applies to a topic, for instance, “Creativity,” then is followed by more of her thoughts on creativity from her poetry, plays, essays, lectures, and correspondence. You get to know the breadth of her thought on this topic, instead of just one instance.

What are some of the themes explored in the book and examples of Sayers’s works in which those themes are found?

I have twenty chapters in my book, mostly relating to gospel themes, since the book is part of the Plough series, The Gospel in Great Writers. Some of them are Sin and Grace, Forgiveness, Judgment, Belief, Pride, Despair and Hope, Sacrificial Love, Incarnation, Time and Eternity.

An example of a chapter that is relevant today is the one on Equality. I start the chapter with a passage from Gaudy Night, a mystery that takes place in a women’s college at Oxford. Dorothy herself graduated from a similar college, in the days when women were not given degrees. She only got her degree from Oxford in 1920, five years after completing her education. Anyway, that’s just to say that she knew inequality, and had to deal with it for many years. The conversation that I use to start the chapter is between a student and Harriet Vane, a graduate. The student would rather not be at college, she wants to be a cook. But her parents expect her to go to college because they were women’s rights activists themselves. So that’s the interesting dilemma that starts that chapter.

Then I quote from “Are Women Human?”, a lecture that Dorothy gave to a women’s society in 1938, where she begs to be treated as an individual, not a member of a class of people. Here’s a little quote:

I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction “from the woman’s point of view.” To such demands, one can only say, “Go away and don’t be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle.”

After that spicy extract, I include a scene from a play about Mary and Martha, then end the chapter with some paragraphs from “The Human-Not-Quite-Human,” a magazine article from 1941, where she talks about how Jesus treated women:

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man – there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious.

So you can see that each chapter is composed of extracts from Dorothy’s pungent writing on the theme.

The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers is part of a series from Plough Publishing House. Can you describe the series a little? Are there more books planned?

The series started with anthologies of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, then George MacDonald and Gerard Manley Hopkins were added. Dorothy L. Sayers is the most recent. I know that Plough wants to keep the series going, though I don’t know who might be next. Shakespeare, perhaps? Victor Hugo? I do know that the series has been appreciated and popular.

What did you learn from editing this book – either about the subject of the book or the editing process – that most surprised you?

I didn’t realize what a genius Dorothy Sayers really was. I knew some of her mysteries, and loved them – kind of a mixture of Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse – but wow, you read her essays, and this lady is really a smart, smart cookie.

What do you like to read? What books are on your nightstand right now?

I like big fat books, like Irving Stone and James Michener. I’ve got Love is Eternal, Irving Stone’s biography of Mary Todd Lincoln beside my bed right now. It is a terrific story, it should be a movie.

What is the most valuable advice you’ve been given as an editor?

Keep it consistent, keep it focused. Cut the rest. Probably good life lessons in there!

THANK YOU, CAROLE!

THE GOSPEL IN DOROTHY L. SAYERS IS AVAILABLE ONLINE, OR ASK YOUR LOCAL BOOK SELLER TO ORDER IT!