Bigfoot Blues
1) What can you tell our readers about your new books Redneck Goddess and Bigfoot Blues?
Redneck Goddess is the story of a young woman from rural Georgia who falls in love with an aristocrat from the Republic of Panama and brings him home to her big, rowdy, quirky, parochial, loving family. The book takes a humorous look at the way we cling to the past and struggle with a world that changes faster than we can adjust and if you think all the intolerance in the story comes from the southern redneck family, you definitely need to read the book.
Bigfoot Blues follows the adventures of a bigfoot hunter’s daughter as she finds her own path through the culture into which she was born. The book is humorous in parts, but it’s layered with issues of faith and love of family and the difficulties of becoming your own person without rejecting the people who raised you.
2) Where did your inspiration come from for your two novels?
My mother used to tell me, “Pamela, you can tell the truth or you can make it interesting.”
I write fiction in order to tell the truth.
3) You have a B.A. in economics and philosophy, so when did writing become your passion?
In the sixth grade I wrote a novel about a graceful nine-year-old girl who never fell over her own feet and exposed her underwear to the gorgeous new boy on the block, a beautiful girl-child without siblings whose parents hung on her every word and who never, ever argued or drank or ignored her.
So, I’ve always written my way out of reality. But I didn’t become disciplined about writing until I was living in a little house in the lush jungle of Panama. Exotic birds and monkeys are wonderful, but I was lonesome and ached to speak English. Nuanced, complex English.
I began writing six hours a day. That was six years ago and writing is now my life. I am completely obsessed with the craft. A day without writing leaves me with a little flutter of anxiety, two days and I’m jonesing like a true addict.
4) Who do you most like to read?
I go to the library once a week and return with about a dozen books. Now some of those books are non-fiction, and I confess, I typically read the first fifty pages or so and then decide I know all I need to know about the life of a CIA operative or how raise pygmy goats for fun and profit. But I fall in love with five or six of the fiction books and devour them.
I love books written in first person with deep point of view and a sense of place that transports me to another world. I read mostly contemporary fiction and want to know about ordinary people who struggle through life’s twisted maze of life and manage to find joy and promise in everyday, normal occurrences.
5) Which authors have inspired your writing?
I fell in love with John Steinbeck when I read Cannery Road in the sixth grade. Steinbeck celebrates the ordinary man and that’s what I try to do in my work. My favorite contemporary author is James Lee Burke. The man is a genius. His characters are epically flawed and his sense of place is so real that, curled up with one of his Dave Robicheaux novels, I can smell the Louisiana swamps. I do my best to create a sense of place as complex and rich as Burke’s and I allow my own flaws and insecurities to flow freely into my characters.
6) Redneck Goddess is set in Georgia, why did you choose this as the setting for your novel?
My husband is from Americus, Georgia. I loved the town from the first time he brought me there twenty years ago. Beautiful antebellum mansions, towering magnolia trees and gracious people. Being from California, I was like an obnoxious anthropologist with my questions and poking and prodding about life in the south.
My husband’s friends and relatives were gentle and only laughed a little at my Yankee accent. They shared their life with me kindly and with great openness. Though it should be noted that at that time I thought the phrase, “Well, bless your heart. . .” was a compliment.
7) When did your interest in Bigfoot begin?
When I was a child, and this was before I began school so I wasn’t even five-years-old yet, I spent a couple of months each summer with my grandmother and grandfather who lived on the edge of the Indian Reservation out beyond the little town of Peckwan. Bigfoot was a part of that world in much the same way that Jesus is a part of the world of a fundamentalist Christian. He was an entity whose existence was taken for granted. Some people felt closer to him than others, some individuals encountered him on a fairly regular basis, some heard the sound of his movements through the woods on dark nights, some knew him only through the stories of others.
8) What is your writing process?
Think of an iceberg. When I begin a book, I have a clear vision of about ten percent of the tale. Ninety percent of the story is still below the waterline, waiting in my subconscious. My job is to transfer that clear, exposed image into words. I do not worry about the details hidden in the plot line, am not concerned about how a character is developing. I write. Everyday. And, as the words appear on the screen, the story is revealed.
About a quarter of the way through the story, I have a clear, bright vision of the entire story. After that, I write like someone possessed. Now, that’s not to say that each day I’m not met with surprises. I sit down thinking my character is going to go here, and the character plants her feet and goes there. I suddenly understand the importance of some minor character who simply would not go away earlier.
I don’t create the novel. I allow the story to be told through me.
9) What is next in store for your fans of your two other books?
My agent, Jeannie Pantelakis at Sullivan and Maxx, is looking for a publisher for a sequel to Bigfoot Blues called Limited Visibility as well as for a gritty woman in jeopardy novel, The Perfect Victim. In 2013 Pen-L Publishing will release On the Move with Chesty and Rocca, the humorous true story of how my husband and I moved to The Republic of Panama with two giant service dogs who traveled with us everywhere, even in the passenger cabin of the planes.
10) Your Grandfather saw a group of bigfoots while building a mountain road in Bluff Creek, did this have anything to do with wanting to write your book?
My grandpa, Fritz Brockmueller, was logging partners with Bud Ryerson. Anybody who knows the history of Bigfoot in the Humboldt County area knows the name Ryerson. Bud’s sighting was the first report of bigfoot in the local Times Standard. The newspaper article appeared in 1967, but the encounters had been going on for at least fifteen years be then.
I know this for a fact because I was four years old when my grandpa returned early from a logging trip with the story of how he and Bud’s road building equipment had been destroyed, cement pipes that weighed well over five hundred pounds tossed around like Lincoln Logs, a road grader pushed sideways and the seat torn off. White faced and shaking, grandpa told about how there were footprints everywhere. Giant, bare feet that left deep impressions in the mud.
A fictionalized account of this encounter is in Bigfoot Blues and I’ve done a number of blog posts about it.
Living for a few weeks a year in a culture that accepted Bigfoot as a neighbor and being present when my logical, straightforward grandfather stumbled home with this tale definitely left a lasting impression on me.
Female First Lucy Walton