[Announcer] This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society, advancing the interests of women in the arts in Virginia and beyond.

[♪♪♪♪♪] -♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ [♪♪♪♪♪] -Welcome, I'm Rose Martin, and we are Write Around The Corner in Roanoke with author Amanda Cockrell.

Her book, Coyote Weather , takes us on a trip to California during the turbulent '60s, and tells us a little bit about Vietnam and what that was like also.

Hi, Amanda, welcome to Write Around the Corner .

-Hi, thank you for coming.

-Well, and thank you for inviting us here to your home.

I'm fascinated by all of the treasures that you've collected, and the stories behind all of them.

It's a beautiful, beautiful place.

-Oh, thank you.

-And so, not only these treasures, but you amassed some initial treasures because you were born in California.

-Yeah.

-In a little town, and what was that like?

-We grew up in Ojai.

I was actually born in Los Angeles, but when I was eight, we moved to Ojai to get out of L.A., essentially.

My father was a screenwriter and didn't have to be at an office every day.

So we moved to Ojai where, you know, I could have a horse and ride all over the valley.

It was lovely.

-And there's a story, you would actually ride to the library?

-Used to ride to the library.

There was a hitching post outside the library.

It may still be there, I'm not sure.

But you could ride right down Main Street, and we did.

And there were trails all over the valley.

I would take off on my horse with a friend and not be seen again until dinner.

-How fun.

So books and writing were a part of growing up.

-Yeah.

-Your dad being a screenwriter, and your mom was also a novelist, right?

-She was.

She was both a screenwriter and a novelist, mainly a novelist.

-And so, love of reading, love of books, was just ingrained from the very beginning.

-Oh, yeah.

I wandered through their library pretty much from the time I could read.

I probably read several unsuitable things because Mother wasn't very well organized in how the library was arranged.

-So was it different doing screenwriting to doing novels?

-It's very different, and honestly, was something I never wanted to do because I watched my parents, and the aggravation factor is huge.

If you think an editor can gum up your manuscript, imagine having an actor, a bunch of actors, a producer, a director, somebody doing the costumes that wants to update them, and a producer who wants a part for his nephew.

And... -Yeah, that had to be... -My father did a script once for a show called The High Chaparral.

-Oh, I remember that show.

-Well, the producer, his agent called him and said, "Well, Frank baby, the producer thinks this is great, but he wants another Indian in it."

And Daddy said, "Well, what should this Indian be doing?"

And his agent said, "He doesn't care.

He just wants another Indian in there."

So Daddy put another Indian in it.

All we could figure out was he had a nephew he wanted a part for.

-Oh, another character.

-We were never sure.

There was a famous story that ran in TV Guide by a very well-known screenwriter about a producer who wanted him to put a bear on the beach for added tension in a scene in the Caribbean.

-[Rose] Oh!

-And the fact that there weren't any bears in the Caribbean, he was undaunted by that.

-Yeah.

Did he end up doing it?

-I don't remember.

I don't remember.

-So it was also interesting that I was reading that being all the actors and growing up in the area, you could go to the local Goodwill or thrift shops, and you never knew what you would find, either movie pieces or people's discounted trousers.

-Yeah.

My husband had a lovely pair of white linen trousers for a long time with somebody's name in the waistband.

I forget who it was now.

That was probably a prop piece, but may have just been a dry cleaner's mark, it may have been his.

There were a lot of movie people who moved to Ojai because it got them out of LA, and also because people didn't bother them.

-Sure.

-We all politely pretended we didn't recognize them.

-Yeah.

Well, and you made your way to Roanoke and worked at Hollins-- -I did.

-[Rose] --for a while in creative writing.

And I read something really interesting.

You said, during the creative writing workshops at Hollins, the goal of teaching students to write like themselves and not like the creative writing professor.

And you say, that's harder than you might think.

So they want to emulate the professor, and it's hard to get people to find their own voice?

-Partly that, and partly it's very hard not to critique a manuscript according to what you would do with it.

[Rose] Hmm.

-I can't help reading other people's books and thinking, well, that's not the way I would write that scene.

But that's the way the author wrote the scene.

But teaching students to find their own voice has been a hallmark of the Hollins program since I was a freshman at Hollins.

I ended up at Roanoke by a roundabout way, but I went to Hollins as an undergraduate.

-How did you find your voice?

-Long experimentation, and finally getting, and reading other people.

I mean, you have to read other people and see how they've done it.

But figuring out what is really the way I speak on paper.

And I don't know how to define it except... -Do you think it's different how you speak on paper to how you speak in regular conversation?

-Oh, absolutely.

And dialogue.

You don't want dialogue to sound like people really talk.

But you want it to sound like the way they would really talk if they were very polished.

Didn't say "um" and "uh" and "like" and "man" every three words.

-I know.

That's annoying, isn't it?

-And a conversation that really mimicked human speech would be ghastly.

But a stiff conversation that sounds like somebody writing narrative isn't believable either.

-You know, I read something else you said that writing is the only thing I actually do well.

And writing fiction never bores me.

So you're quite a writer.

You've done things in Roman history.

You've gotten yourself, you know, a wide range of topics.

So, is it fiction that doesn't bore you, or is it the writing process that you enjoy?

-Both.

-[Rose] Okay.

-Both.

I like creating a story.

It really is the only thing I do well.

All my jobs have had something to do with writing.

I wrote for what were then the women's pages in a newspaper right out of college.

And I wrote commercials for a radio station.

-Yeah, I read that.

Like, okay, featuring the Singing Pickles and ladies' panty girdles, and a book about bad paintings from California.

-I did.

I did.

I wrote a book.

That one I do not have a copy of, which is probably okay.

It was my first and only ghostwriting job.

And I was hired to write the narrative to a book of this man's wife's paintings maybe.

I don't remember, it's been so long.

But, yeah, I wrote those.

I'd forgotten all about that.

-So let's talk about your process.

So, you said you love to create and love to write.

Is it organic?

Do you just make outlines?

Walk me through that process for you.

-I start with the idea of the story I want to tell.

I do make an outline.

Essentially, to start off, it's just notes.

I know where I want it to start, and probably what the ending is.

And as I go, I develop the outline so that the outline for the book I'm writing now was two pages when I started.

It's now about a dozen because I'm three-fourths of the way through, and I'm getting more and more ideas of what I want to do specifically.

-So it develops all the way through the process for you.

-It does.

It does.

I don't know everything when I start.

And if I did write an outline of everything from the start, I would end up changing it as I went along.

-And I read somewhere that you said, good editors really make a difference.

Get a good editor no matter how good of a writer you are or what your history has been because you're kind of close to it, right, and you're not quite sure what to do with it.

-You're way too close to it, and a good editor is a gift, and I have been lucky to have two wonderful editors currently.

The editor at Canelo, the British publisher that publishes my Roman books, is wonderful, and I adore him.

And the editor of Coyote Weather was marvelous.

When I queried her on the book and sent her the first 25 pages, which is what her website asked for, she asked for the whole manuscript, and I was thrilled and sent it.

And she rejected it with a very long email specifying exactly why she rejected it, and saying she would read it again if I wanted to address what she saw as those problems.

And I had been working on this blasted book for probably 20 years, and I was way too close to it.

So I thought she was probably right and was seeing the things I hadn't seen.

And in any case, if anybody turns your work down and says they'll read it again if you revise, this is good.

This is not bad.

This is good.

Send it to them again.

-And be willing to take those hits and not be so close to it because they're seeing it from a different point of view, and is really going to make it a much better piece and a much better book.

Right?

-Absolutely.

So I revised it, and I sent it back, and she said something to the effect of, well, this is almost there.

I'm still having a problem with a couple of things.

And so, I said, "Okay, here are some things I could do about those."

And she said, "Well, how about this one?"

And so, I did those, and they eventually took the book, but the beginning and ending of the book... just the first page and the last page, were not there when they took the book.

That was added later at the suggestion of the other editor at Northampton House who said, "There's something still in the structure that doesn't feel finished.

How about this?"

And I thought, ooh.

-And it did, and it just wrapped the package perfectly.

So in Coyote Weather , I read that, you know, what sinks you into a good book are characters and the sense of place.

And with Coyote Weather , you had a lot of research to do for it, but you've got some beautifully developed characters.

So what was the research part of it like?

So, you know, we're in California, so there's a familiarity there because you grew up there.

There's the turbulent '60s, which is such a big topic to figure out how to weave that in.

And, by the way, I enjoyed the songs and some of the music, some of the references that were in there.

And then you had, obviously, to deal with the controversy and the Vietnam War, and weaving that into that.

So what was the research like for Coyote Weather ?

-Well, there were several sort of pieces to it.

One was, I talked to every man I could get to stand still of my generation and said, what's your Vietnam experience?

And they would usually tell me.

And I did discover that there is almost no one of my age who, male, and some female, who does not have some kind of mark left from that, physical, psychological, even just a certain kind of survivor guilt because he got a high draft number, and his next-door neighbor got sent to Vietnam.

It laid some kind of fault line across the whole culture.

So, talking to people outside of my own experience, was part of it.

Part of it was researching things I didn't know.

-Like the commune?

-The commune, yeah.

-Okay.

-Yeah, that... a lot of that comes from an absolutely wonderful book by Peter Coyote called Sleeping Where I Fall , brilliant book.

And a lot of the commune stuff, he actually read Coyote Weather and said, "Wow, that really rings true."

And I said, "Well, that's probably because I stole most of it from you."

-Well, and as I was reading it, and Carol and I talked about this.

I mean, I felt like I was walking into the commune and knew kind of what that was like.

But then, you also had those other movements that were happening simultaneously, like the Hare Krishna movement or whatever movement, politically or socially, was happening at the time period.

-Yeah.

-How did you weave all those into the story?

-Well, I unwove some of it because I have a bad habit of haring off after secondary characters.

And the character who joins the Hare Krishna's, that was originally a whole couple of chapters on her.

And I read a number of books on that movement.

And I cut it back down.

Again, my editor said, "This is Ellen and Jerry's story.

You can't go chasing rabbits."

So, it's got to be their point of view.

I had one of the secondary characters at the 1968 Democratic Convention.

I couldn't have Ellen there because I needed her to be somewhere else.

I really wanted to do that.

And I have Linda there.

And I cut that and just had Ellen and Jerry watch it on television.

-Let's introduce everybody to Ellen and Jerry.

So, the book is Coyote Weather .

We've already talked about where it's set and what's happening.

So, introduce us and tell us, you know, the idiosyncrasies about both of them, and how they're so different.

-Well, Ellen has led a very not entirely conventional life because like me, her parents are screenwriters, and she lives in this artsy little tourist town.

-I don't know.

I see some similarities.

I'm hearing some similarities between Ellen and Amanda.

-Oh, well, certainly.

Although Ellen has way more adventures than I ever had.

-Okay.

-Ellen, I think, is the woman I should have been, maybe.

But anyway, she feels like everything is coming to pieces around her.

The boys she knows are getting drafted and sent to Vietnam.

She's terrified that Jerry's going to get drafted.

All Ellen wants is what her parents have.

She wants a stable marriage, an interesting marriage to an interesting guy that's stable, and children, and normality.

Jerry thinks the world's going to hell in a handbasket.

He's convinced that we're all going to get blown up by a bomb, if nothing else happens.

And he doesn't see any percentage in making plans.

And of course, the Vietnam War accentuates that split for both of them because Jerry has got the draft board after him, and has no intention of joining the army because he thinks if he did, he'd be insane in six months, which he's probably right about.

And also, he thinks that particular war is immoral.

Ellen is terrified he's going to get drafted and sent to Vietnam and killed.

And he won't go back to school.

And he won't do any of the practical plans that she has that would take care of this.

-Right, because their love story is, you know, it's intricate, but yet it's filled with conflict because they're coming from two different worlds.

-They're coming very much from two different worlds.

-Yeah, and then there's a third character, Randy.

And what's Randy's role in the book?

-Randy, to me, it's a way to follow someone who does get drafted, and see what he goes through.

It's also a way to follow someone who is, even more than Jerry, totally unsuited to the army.

Randy is the last person in the world who should be scooped up and sent to boot camp.

It just destroys him.

And all he wants is to come home to this valley, to Ayala, which is a very thinly disguised version of Ojai.

So, I really didn't have to research Ayala, I just wrote the town I grew up in.

-Right, well, and it's such a time capsule of the '60s based on not only what people were dealing with, but, for example, you know, Ellen made half the pay as her husband.

And, you know, the newspaper, you know, getting things thrown in the trash for her ideas.

And she could cover the dresses and, you know, the fluffy stuff, but nothing more substantial, what she really had her eyes on, right?

-Yeah, exactly.

And that was something that happened to me.

I did take some film of Ojai's only war protest turned riot.

That scene is pretty much out of my experience.

And I did take some film of it, and I did give it to the city editor of the newspaper where I had a summer job, and he did toss it in.

-Wow, so that's a real story.

-That was a real story.

Some of Ellen's minor experiences are out of my own, because that's, you know, that's kind of how you research the time, is you think, well, okay, what went on?

-How about some of the other characters?

-Nobody else is really based on it.

Her friends are not my college friends, I hasten to say.

-Hmm-mm.

-Jerry's friends are not anyone that I knew.

Teak is a loving recreation of a friend of mine who I knew since I was four.

Our parents were best friends.

And she died about almost 20 years ago now, but we were best buddies.

She did not do what Teak does in the book, but she was one of these women who men just... fall in love with.

-Mesmerized by her.

-Mesmerized by her.

-So, I was fascinated with the story because it is a time capsule of the '60s, but it takes us through the lives of Ellen and Jerry and Randy, and their families and their friends, and some of the things they experienced, their struggles, maybe how they resolved problems or conflicts.

And then, I was struck by the title.

I'm like, Coyote Weather .

I wonder where that came from.

And so, I started thinking, okay, well, a coyote's really adaptable.

And this was a time period that was in flux for so many things happening.

But now I want to hear, I've got my own ideas, but tell me about Coyote Weather .

-Well, I was desperately looking for a title.

This book has had a lot of really terrible titles until I hit on this.

Because it did seem to me like it was kind of... kind of like a weather pattern, what was going on in America then.

It was like, you know, predictions of high winds and damaging storm.

And coyotes are not only adaptable, they're hungry, they're feral.

And it just seemed like the Vietnam War was eating men of my generation.

-Well, and I took the idea of weather as the seasons of life, and how you wove the seasons of their lives into that.

-That too.

-And then, along with the storms and the seasons, it was just beautifully woven in throughout the story.

What do you think are some of the big takeaways of the story?

-Oh, Lord, I never know how to answer that.

I've tried not to have anybody in it really just be a bad guy, for the sake of being a bad guy.

And there aren't any really bad, bad guys in there anyway.

A couple of Ellen's bosses are jerks, but they're of their time, and their time has built them.

I think one of the takeaways, and I don't know what to do with it, is that the culture was so divided then, and we are now.

And it just seems to me like we're doing it again, only sort of differently.

-You know, you have an interesting character, the Ghost, in the book.

And how does the Ghost weave through the story, and what do you think that representation means for all of us reading the story?

-Mm, that's a hard question.

I think he's, to some extent, just the bewilderment of the times.

How did I get caught up in this?

How did we get caught up in this?

How is this happening?

Why is this happening to me?

I don't want this.

I don't know what to do with it, and I just want to go home.

-Yeah.

I think what I'd love to do is have you read a section for us.

Would you be willing to do that?

-Sure.

-Okay.

What did you choose?

-Well, I actually chose a chunk of the chapter called Ellen and the Pill.

-Okay.

-Because it seems to me to be sort of appropriate, you know, based on current news and events.

This is just a little snippet.

She's going to a birth control clinic.

"Ellen had a story prepared about being engaged.

"She couldn't summon up the nerve "to just come out and say "she wanted to sleep with her boyfriend.

"Taking the Pill at all was controversial.

"Some doctors wouldn't prescribe it for anyone.

"Apparently, if you were female, "it was immoral to want to have sex just for fun, "even if you were married.

"The clinic was shabby and made her feel furtive.

"She sat in an orange plastic chair "with her ankles crossed, "and made sure the little diamond "her godmother had given her showed on her ring finger.

"'...and, well, my mother thinks I should "because we might get married pretty quickly.'

"Was she talking too much?

"The doctor looked attentive but suspicious, "with some kind of form in his hand.

"'What is your fiancé's name, please?'

"Ellen froze.

Was he going to write that down?

"She couldn't tell him Jerry.

What if somebody saw that?

"She blurted 'Carl Leeman.'

He was safely distant.

"The backs of her thighs were sticking to the plastic chair.

"She felt light-headed.

"What if she fainted in the examining room?

"She imagined dropping, sweeping with her "the glass jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors, "a whirlwind of glass settling on the greasy rug.

"'Of course, you understand "we'll need your parents' permission to prescribe,' "the doctor said.

"'My parents are divorced,' she said.

"Her parents had been married forever.

"'You can call my mother at work.

"She's expecting the call.'

"She gave him Teak's number.

"'I see.'

"The doctor turned it over in his fingers.

"'Tell me, what does your fiancé do?'

"'He's in school,' Ellen said, panicked.

"'At Stanford.'

Why had she picked Stanford?

"Nobody would believe Carl had gotten into Stanford.

"Was he going to want an address?

"The doctor stuck his head out of the examining room, "possibly to call in a fearsome nurse, "the woman Ellen had seen in the hallway, "who had a permanent wave like her P.E.

teacher "and would disapprove of premarital sex.

"'Call Mrs. Callahan at this number "for permission to prescribe for her daughter,' he said.

"Ellen held her breath.

"'I'll be back in a moment,' the doctor said.

"He was back in 20 minutes, "long enough for Ellen to decide he was calling the police.

"He'd gotten her parents' real phone number from Information.

"She ought to climb up on the examining table "and crawl out the one high window.

"But it had chicken wire in the opaque glass "and looked as if it was painted shut.

"'These'll start you off.'

"He placed a cardboard disk with 21 pills "in individual bubbles in her hand, "along with a prescription slip.

"'You can take this to the pharmacy next door.

"They'll give you a six-month supply.'

"He patted her hand absently and left.

"He hadn't examined her "or even asked any questions about her periods.

"She drove back to Ayala "and hid the pills in her dresser drawer.

"The doctor hadn't believed a word she said, she realized.

"He didn't care if she was sleeping with her boyfriend.

"If he thought premarital sex was immoral, he wouldn't be running a birth control clinic."

-Great passage, and I think it captures the time capsule of the '60s, the friends growing up and some of the things that we're dealing and so important during that time period.

Amanda, thank you for inviting us to your home to learn about Coyote Weather , to learn about the '60s, and to share this beautiful space with us.

Thank you.

-Oh, thank you.

Thank you so much.

-My special thanks to Amanda Cockrell for sharing Coyote Weather with us.

If you'd like to go through a time capsule of the 1960s, make sure you pick up her book.

And why don't you check out our extended conversation online, and tell your friends all about us.

I'm Rose Martin, and I will see you next time Write Around The Corner .

[♪♪♪♪♪] -♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ [♪♪♪♪♪] -♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ -♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society, advancing the interests of women in the arts in Virginia and beyond.