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Laura Responds to FAQs About Beginner's Luck

Is the main character Hallie Palmer based on me?
In a novel written in the first person and also the present tense the author's voice tends to become more entwined with that of the main character than if a story is told in the third person and set in the past. However, I enjoy the immediacy of the present and the feeling that events are unfolding in real time. Also, I'm not creative enough to pull everything out of my imagination like a science fiction writer, and so I have selectively borrowed from my life and times.

Here's how Hallie and Laura are different…
Hallie is from a large traditional hands-on two-parent Christian family. I'm the only child of parents who divorced when I was a teenager. My parents were both minimalists when it came to child rearing, and thus I wasn't subjected to any of the rules or expectations that Hallie is. From the time I was 8-years-old my mother was either going to school full time or working as a nurse and so I usually had the house to myself. Both my parents are Unitarian Universalist, which is about as far from the Christianity of Hallie's parents as Greenwich Village is from Peoria. Lastly, I never felt conflicted or unsure about what I was going to do with my life.

How Hallie and Laura are the same…
Skipping school, gambling, issues with authority, independent, reliance on friends and neighbors for food - guilty on all charges.

Where did the idea for "Beginner's Luck" come from?
I love stories. And thus I try to create ones that I would enjoy reading. For the most part they have at least one larger-than-life character, plenty of humor, and yet still make some small comment on life these days without toppling into all comedy for the sake of comedy. I don't care for dark stories because there is so much darkness right outside the door, and oftentimes inside our doors - cancer, poverty, alcoholism, depression, abuse and so on. My characters live inside my head full time and so I like them to be kind, interesting, and lots of fun, the sort of folk I wouldn't mind having as friends. As for Hallie's large family, my hometown is 75% Catholic and so I grew up in a neighborhood where aggressive procreation was the norm. Though it's worth adding that a story about an only child, especially a latchkey kid, is not particularly interesting - after school you go home, put pizza in the oven, pet the dog and turn on the TV.

Another seed for the idea came from a friend whose Aunt had a very large house in Rutherford, NJ. When my friend showed me the house she pointed to a child's room. But I knew that her Aunt didn't have children. It turned out that the boy next door had such a large family that his house was bursting at the seams and he'd somehow moved in with this woman completely unrelated to him. And they lived that way quite happily until he grew up and went off to school. Having a business background I'm always intrigued by the way supply and demand enters so many facets of life.

Is the character of Ms. Olivia modeled on anyone?
I've had several terrific teachers and mentors throughout my life. I've also known many "Type A" personalities, gamblers, bohemians and eccentrics. And I must confess that for the most part I'm charmed by all of them - their terrific energy, idealism, creative vocabulary and love of life. Also, growing up in the Unitarian Universalist church exposes one to a large number of peaceniks, protesters, petitioners and so on. The great thing is that the UU's actually get a kick out of being gently teased and laugh at themselves harder than anyone else. However, I'm going to get into trouble for referring to Olivia as just "Unitarian." The Unitarians merged with the Universalists back in 1961 and so one is supposed to say the whole thing (ten syllables!) or abbreviate with UU, but the former is too lumpy for a novel and the latter sounds like a college. So I apologize in advance.

Is Cosgrove County a real place?
No. The past decade most of my outdoor time has been spent in East Harlem. Therefore I'm heavily dependent on the few birds, trees and flowers I recall from my youth in upstate New York. Thus in my books and novels I operate in this "Midwest triangle" using Minnesota, New York and Ohio as the corners, and this way I don't accidentally drop a woodchuck or an elm tree into a part of the US where you're more likely to find a roadrunner and some tumbleweed.

I grew up in The Rustbelt and so I'm comfortable with abandoned steel mills, auto plants, a cadre of civil service employees, utilitarian architecture, and the Great Lakes waterfront. That's why I chose Cleveland, Ohio, as the major nearby city and then made the town where the story is set about an hour from there. The name of Hallie's town was originally Maycomb, which I enjoyed because of the slight play on words, "May Come," as in, he may come, he may not, you may be rescued, you may not be. Especially since Hallie's family is Christian. However I looked on a map and found a Maycolm in Georgia. I prefer not to use the names of places that really exist. Additionally, I eventually recalled that Maycomb is the town in "To Kill A Mockingbird" and so it was definitely off limits. It took a long time to come up with another name that I liked and one that wasn't listed in my Atlas. I became so desperate that I turned to the last names of people I've known. Cosgrove happens to be the last name of a judge who my father worked for back in the 1970s.

The same goes for the names of characters. I don't often reach for great symbolism, especially with the smaller parts. So there's a 90% chance that any secondary character is named after someone I sat next to in high school.

Who has influenced me?
I think that like most people who enjoy comedy I've taken great pleasure from the writings of Mark Twain and Damon Runyon. And I enjoyed Fannie Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café," "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns and "The Egg and I" by Betty MacDonald. However, I don't think I'm a capable enough writer to actually be influenced by someone else's style. The people who know me and even my former English teachers say that I write exactly the way I speak, especially when it comes to dialogue. So I'll just consider myself very lucky if the characters don't all sound alike.

What was I trying to say in the novel?
"Beginner's Luck" is a story about belonging, and the love and courage that being a part of something larger than one's self instills within the human heart. And paradoxically, the freedom and independence that a sense of belonging kindles in the soul hungry for life. It's also about learning and how education is paramount, but that there are different ways to acquire knowledge. And finally, that a house filled with music, flowers, dancing and laughter, especially laughter, is a wonderful place to live.