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Posted by Gene Cartwright on November 25, 2009 at 5:27pm


I'm half Hawaiian, a quarter Italian and a quarter Pennsylvania Dutch.
I think Lono is also associated with fertility. I suspect my "muse" comes more from that angle, if any.
I moved from Portland to the Big Island as I was wrapping up the second Wiley book, so the third in that series is actually set in both places. Dark Paradise was written almost entirely while I lived over there, and my goal was to transfer some of what I was absorbing from that environment to my fiction.
Assuming that I actually succeeded in doing that (readers will render the ultimate verdict), I don't recall it being particularly difficult. You have to keep in mind that I was on a first-name basis with each of them. It might have been more difficult if they weren't all my children in the first place. As it happened, I knew everything they had ever thought, were thinking and would ever think.
One of the things that struck me immediately about Hawai`i is the popularity of basketball. Since I am an addict myself, I always have an eye out for my next connection. The Detroit-Los Angeles series was happening when the actual event which triggered my fictional story occurred, and you couldn't go anywhere on the Big Island at the time without seeing it on a television screen or hearing people argue about it. Originally, the presence of the series was mostly atmospheric, but by the time I was done it had become the organizational structure of the story and somewhat metaphoric as well. The difference between those two teams and the way they were popularly perceived was similar to the way the less-informed view the islands.
That actual event, by the way, was "the biggest drug bust in the history of the Big Island." That actually happened, including the attempt to follow the drugs that ended up in the car being abandoned at the mall drugs intact. As usual, truth is stranger than fiction.
See the previous question for the beginning of this answer. By the time I was revising the manuscript, my appreciation of the NBA playoffs at the time had deepened significantly as far as its application to the story is concerned. I think the characters are constrained by some arbitrary conditions they do not control, and the game parameters seemed like a way to symbolize those constraints.
I just read a headline which stated that Hawai`i is the second-happiest state in the country. That may be true, but only because joy seems to be implanted in the Hawaiian DNA. I think this happiness is overlaid on a very distressed core which has easily discerned symptoms--exceptionally high levels of substance abuse (including food, I believe), domestic violence, child abuse, etcetera. Locals are unlike their tourist visitors--they know both sides of this picture. Within that understanding, I think they do feel trapped to some extent. It is not a world of their own making, but leaving it means leaving family and cultural ties as well.
That's the beauty of the situation over there as far as writing fiction is concerned--both are true (and both are exaggerated to some extent for effect). I think they are two sides of the same coin.
The answer to that question is the same as the answer to this one: Will the Hawaiian Islands be all right? I hope so in both cases. Certainly both have the potential to go either way.
There is a lesson for my students in this book, both in its content and in the writing, but I do not encourage them to partake of it. In my school, I have to say Dark Paradise is not school appropriate. Fortunately for me, the superintendent of my school district is a fan of my books and hasn't run me out of town yet.
He (Dennis) sent several of his shirts (they are collectible Aloha shirts) to the graphic designer, who came up with the cover. Oddly enough, Dennis lived on the Big Island longer than I did and knows it very well.
Dennis wanted this book from the beginning, but it started out as a project with my editor at St. Martin's. That editor moved on right after I delivered it, and St. Martin's decided to pass on it. The book was an orphan for more than a year after that while my agent tried to find somebody other than Dennis to publish it (someone more mainstream, let's say), but after I couldn't stand it any more I said send it to Dennis. To be honest, he was my first choice all along--not because of the potential money he represented, but because of the passion and the reputation for excellence.
As it turned out, he gave me the most important kind of support--he published the book, and he did so beautifully. The rest is pretty much up to me, but I'm okay with that. It was all up to me in the first place, right?
I am embroiled in a screen adaptation of Dark Paradise now. Someone in Hollywood thinks there might be a great film in the book somewhere, and my daughter and I are about to start on our third draft of a screenplay for that producer. We think it's great that they haven't already moved in another direction for screenwriters, but we are still several light years away from a movie actually getting made.
Consequently, I don't have a clear idea of what my next book will be. I have been so immersed in the characters from Dark Paradise that it seems natural to work with them again. On the other hand, Wiley is on the Big Island now, too, and it seems likely that his paths would cross with theirs in the near future. Oh, well, I don't have to sort that out until we finish messing with this screenplay--if we ever do.
I'm currently working on a WIP that excites me very much. I wrote the first fifty pages in two weeks (and no, it wasn't NaNo time) and thought incessantly about the plot, the characters, and fun ways to kill off certain of those characters. Then, as always seems to happen, I ran into a quagmire of doubt, sluggish prose, and dialogue with less crackle than a bowl of Cheerios that had been soaked in milk for a few hours. My beloved project suddenly weighed me down and instead of anticipating my writing sessions, I dreaded them.
Started by Fran Lewis in I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK Nov 19.
Started by BookCaster in DISCUSSION. Last reply by Susan Whitfield Nov 19.
Started by Fran Lewis in EVENTS CALENDAR Nov 17.
Julie self-published her two mystery novels, Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders (2006) and Eldercide (2008). She tried the traditional route to publication for both books, but after a limited number of rejections, she found the process inordinately depressing and turned to print-on-demand technology instead, using the Texas publishing company Virtual Bookworm. She loves the control and involvement she’s had over the published product, including the fact that she was able to use her own cover illustrations for both books. Although she still hopes to land a traditional agent and publisher, she intends to do so on her own terms when the time and the match feel right.© 2009 Created by Morgan Mandel on Ning. Create a Ning Network!