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Robin Jordan is the author of the forthcoming novels, Lovelady Road and Sunday’s Corners. Her distinctive, well-crafted combination of home-spun storytelling, tight, intriguing plots and unforgettable characters, all set to a delicious narrative voice, will keep her readers coming back for more. It also feels right at home in a Southern literary tradition populated with authors like Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor — all heroines of Ms. Jordan, who is an expert in Southern literature and will speak on the subject in January at the University of Nebraska. In this interview with Bob Yehling of Word Journeys, who edited both of her books after meeting her at the February 2010 Southern California Writers Conference, Ms. Jordan shares the qualities that make Southern storytelling such a hallowed tradition, as well as her mixture of real and imagined experiences in the crafting of Lovelady Road and Sunday’s Corners.

 WJ: First of all, could you tell us a little about your background, in particular how you fell in love with storytelling and the storytelling influences you had growing up?

Robin Jordan: I think first and foremost would be from my parents. They didn’t so much as tell stories as talk about the people they knew when they were younger, events they witnessed, or even things their parents told them. When I was a child, I didn’t care for their stories. I thought they were tedious and boring. Yet, as I got older, I realized that I associate much of my past and my heritage through stories such as those they told.

WJ: Storytelling is a huge part of your narrative voice, and your protagonists are good storytellers. What is it about telling a story that gives you so much joy and delight — which is obvious from the way you bring your tales to the page?

 RJ: For the most part, I find a lot of humor in things I don’t think other people see. The eccentricities of the South are fabulous. In Lovelady Road, I wanted those oddities to be out there, to let folks know that while the South has had its checkered past, there are also some really great things. In one chapter of Lovelady Road, I wrote about a squirrel getting into a church during a funeral and the chaos that ensued. I’ve seen birds in churches; why not a squirrel? I want to tell stories in which the reader comes away feeling something for the characters or the storyline. I want to inspire emotion in the reader.

WJ: In Lovelady Road, you use the point-of-view of an adolescent to convey some pretty serious, often intense adult situations. Why do you feel that we draw so deeply into adult stories told from the eyes of adolescents, in this case a very intelligent and precocious adolescent?

 RJ: As an adolescent, Ruth Anna says some things that most of us have said or wish we would have said before we grew into guarded adults. From my perspective, it seems most of us are drawn to adolescent stories because the character, the story, or the timeframe reminds us of a time when life was simpler, more innocent.

WJ: Lovelady Road sets classic, multi-layered Southern rural setting and atmosphere deep into the characters’ inner lives, as well as providing colorful background. This is a technique that we’ve come to known through the works of McCullers, Welty, Faulkner, O’Connor and others. Why is it that Southern settings make such great “characters” and add to the story?

 RJ: It seems everything in the South is more vivid than in other places. I think the South and the people in it are bigger. Southern folks are more outgoing than they are in other regions of the country, but they are also more judgmental. Here, the weather has such extremes, heat and humidity in the summer, ice and cold wind in the winter. Poverty is rampant in any area, but only in the South will you see junk cars on blocks! Of course, all of these elements added together make for a great story setting.

WJ: How much of Lovelady Road is informed by your background growing up in Tennessee?  

 RJ: Quite a bit of it! My grandfather was truly a moonshiner, and I do know how to make moonshine. I also have peculiar relatives! In the past, my aunt did go to the funerals of people she didn’t know, and my brother did build his house inside a garage.

WJ: Nearly every novelist embeds stories from their lives, at least a little, in their works. Could you share a couple that appeared in Lovelady Road and Sunday’s Corners.

 RJ: In both, Lovelady Road and Sunday’s Corners, I mention quilting. When I was young, my mother worked for an organization called LBJ&C. At that time, it was a federal program designed to promote community awareness. At least once every week, my mother would drive around and pick up older women and they would go to a central location where they would spend the day quilting. In the summer, my mother dragged me along rather than pay a babysitter, so I spent a lot of time listening to those women tell their tales, watching them stitch together quilts from rags, and eating a lot of good food. There was always a potluck lunch. Now, my mother is the only one of those quilters still living, but she has Alzheimer’s and can no longer remember any of it, which makes me the sole survivor to tell the stories. To my knowledge, I am the only one who has any of the quilts those ladies made – I think that’s worth remembering.

WJ: I see a novel brewing…

RJ: You never know!

WJ: Sunday’s Corners is an entirely different story than Lovelady Road, with a split location between wartime Paris and the South. What prompted you to come up with storyline of intrigue and mystery that was set in two widely different locales?

 RJ: Sunday’s Corners started off with a dream. I dreamed about a woman, wearing clothes from the 1940s, getting off a bus. That was all there was to the dream, but I was intrigued by it, so I started doing research. I wanted to find a woman charged with some crime during that era. What I found were American women convicted of treason following World War II. I took that tidbit of information and built Sunday’s Corners.

 As for Lovelady Road, it started out when I told a friend that I was considering a short story about a moonshiner with a broken finger. My friend’s first question was, “How did he break his finger?” At that point, I didn’t know how or why he had a broken finger but as the characters evolved they entertained me, and I just kept writing. Pretty soon, it was novel length!

WJ: The characters in Sunday’s Corners capture the essence of the Southern experience even more than the more tightknit crew from Lovelady Road. Could you talk about how you develop your characters, and what you are looking to achieve from them when you deliver their story on paper?

RJ: I start off by imagining what I think a character looks like. More times than not, they often physically resemble somebody I have known in my life. For personalities, I take a little bit of this from one person and a little bit of that from another and create an entirely new person. Sunday’s Corners was much harder to write than Lovelady Road. I think much of that was due to the time in which the story takes place. Many of the scenes and characters in Lovelady Road seem like places and people I’ve actually known. However, in Sunday’s Corners I had to improvise and imagine a lot of it, because I do not have personal knowledge of wartime Berlin or Paris of the 1930s.

WJ: One of the most impressive facets of your writing is the way you write so simply and beautifully, yet convey one complex situation after another. A lot of it has to do with the local vernacular you use in your narrative. Could you talk about how you developed this voice and how it helps you convey the story with greater immediacy to the reader?

RJ: I hear the story in my head, and I want the reader to “hear” and “see” the scenes as clearly as I do. I also want each scene to flow naturally and seamlessly from one to another. When I’m writing a scene, there are a few questions I ask myself: What do I hear? What do I see? What do I smell? Would I say that? Would I say it like that? There are a lot of colloquialisms and slang spoken in the South. To not include those in my writing would be to rob my characters of a lot of what makes them Southern.

WJ: You will be speaking and reading at the University of Nebraska soon for your work on Southern literature. What are the most endearing characteristics of Southern lit to you, and what do you think keeps us coming back for more?

RJ: It seems that the peculiarities of the Southern people are what most folks outside the South love about the region. Developing characters with oddities that a reader can love or hate is what compels the reader to pick up the book and, then, keep turning the pages. Southern people are down to earth. In a time when everything is so complex, it’s a pleasure to sit down and read about characters or settings that are simpler.

WJ: Will we be seeing the characters from Lovelady Road or Sunday’s Corners in any future novels down the line?

 RJ: It’s possible. There are always other characters and storylines to be explored.

During the 18 months I worked on George Lucas’ Blockbusting book as a researcher and ghostwriter, one recurring storyline captivated me over and over: the origins of various moviemaking techniques and genres. With all due respect to Thomas Edison, the Lumiere brothers and Edwin Porter, the moviemaking we know today threads back to a single source: the magical French filmmaker Georges Melies. The eccentric former stage magician brought storytelling, imagination, color, fantasy and magic to the big screen more than 100 years ago, as best known in his seminal one-reeler from 1902, Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), loosely based on Jules Verne’s 1865 classic sci-fi novel, From the Earth to the Moon.

On Friday, while looking for a good movie to attend, Martha and I saw the trailer for Martin Scorsese’s new film, Hugo. It had “great story” written all over it: a boy and girl embark on an adventure within the clock towers and inner walls of Paris’ Montparnasse (central train station) to discover the mystery behind an automaton found by Hugo’s late father (I want to be careful here not to give away too much of the plot). In chasing this mystery, they come across a discovery that changes the lives of everyone concerned — and brings some very important history back to life. For two hours, I marveled at the intersecting storylines, the use of classic page-turner dialogue like “it wouldn’t be an adventure if there wasn’t danger,” the rich characters and settings, and the way Scorsese masterfully wove colorful 1920s Paris into his deeper story.

That’s the essence of the plot line. Here’s the treasure: within Hugo, we became reacquainted with the great Melies (again, I won’t tell you how).  For 500+ movies (of which approximately 80 remain), Melies wrote, directed and co-starred in his movies, painted and designed his sets, and splashed color and magic throughout his studio. Beginning in 1896, two years after cinema’s inception, he made movies for the thrill of seeing his imaginations and stories in live action — and for the way they enlivened his adoring patrons. Now, thanks to this incredible gift from Scorsese, Melies comes to life again for a time and generation in dire need of reconnecting with their imagination and their ability to live their dreams. Everyone who wants to reconnect with the pure pleasure of making stories would do well to learn everything you can about Melies and the gift he gave the world through his filmmaking.

If you have ever wondered about the starting point for real movie-making, or about the way great stories are told, see this movie. We experience the tale of how one person can change the world — told over and over again, through the actions of several characters. This movie is a celebration of what makes pure storytelling so much fun, both for the creator and the reader/viewer: coming up with ideas, letting your imagination run with them, and letting the characters play them out, no matter how fantastical, colorful or magical they might be.

Hugo is a modern cinematic masterpiece by a masterful filmmaker who never makes the same movie twice. There are no bombs, profanities, car chases, inane characters or clichés. Rather, there is magic, imagination, adventure, deep character interaction and the sweetest qualities of romance. Somehow or another, with everything else having been done, Scorsese found an original thread in one of his favorite playgrounds — bringing history to life. In the same season he brought us the George Harrison documentary on HBO, he comes up with Hugo. Wow!

Whether you love movies, love stories, write stories or love adventure, mystery and imagination, Hugo will take your heart and inform as well as entertain you. For anyone who writes stories, shoots photos, makes movies, paints or engages in any other creative form, this movie is a must-see.

On this Thanksgiving holiday, 10 reasons to give thanks for this particular writer:

1) For two parents and two grandparents who showed me the love of books and story at the earliest age, and ignited my love for the written word.

2) For Tom Robertson, freshman English teacher at Carlsbad (CA) High School in 1973-74, who replaced a boring study of poetry with six weeks of rock music lyrics from the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Cream, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, David Bowie, T. Rex, The Kinks and others … and ignited my love for poetry.

3) For NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which has me up at 3 in the morning writing my next novel, “Open Mic Night at Boccaccio’s.”

4) For the students at Ananda College of Living Wisdom, so passionate about their writing that they have stoked the creative spark of an old teacher… and for the faculty, an incredible mixture of minds and souls with whom conversation is not merely a stream of words, but a learning experience … may we shepherd souls towards their highest potential for many years to come. Thank you for welcoming me into the family.

5) For independent booksellers and fellow lovers of the PRINTED PAGE … may we remain together until eternity, e-books or not.

6) For my friends at the Southern California Writers Conference, in particular directors Michael Steven Gregory and Wes Albers … thanks for bringing me in, and thanks for continually believing in new writers.

7) For Richard Jaffe, Holly Youmans, Marsha Aizumi, Steve Victorson, Kevin Hines, Christian Monroe Holliday Douglas, Timothy Dean Martin, Debbie Haas, Perry Martin and Isaac Lomeli, whose books I have edited and worked on this year, whose stories and experiences are matched only by their wisdom — wisdom and stories that the reading world will get to see in the next 12 to 18 months. Congrats to all of you on your wonderful work.

For my bosses at the Blade-Tribune newspaper, many years ago, who saw some teenage talent and gave me assignments in every section of the newspaper. The versatility continues to manifest: In 2011, I have written blogs, poems, essays, fiction, magazine articles, online courses, prescriptive writing, travelogue, narrative non-fiction, video scripts, book jacket copy, websites, promotional material, photo essays and, beginning this holiday weekend, collaboration on a motion picture script. Thank you, Bill Missett and Steve Scholfield, for letting me roam in the newsroom.

9) For my friendships with Gary Snyder, my favorite poet for over 30 years, and Taylor Mali, one of the finest spoken word performers on Earth … thank you for the times we’ve shared, the talks we’ve had, the poems we’ve read, and most of all, the way both of you continue to teach young people how to convey their passions in words and how to love learning.

10) For my love, Martha, to whom the deepest writings of my heart & soul are addressed … thank you for stoking this writer’s fire, for sharing those long-ago high school classes in freshman English and senior Creative Writing, and for putting up with the wee-hour writing sessions.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Curl up near a fireplace or under a blanket with a book (or, in Southern California this weekend, on a beach chair), and let your favorite author take you into another world while the masses crash and collide on Black Friday.

On Saturday, I walked into one of my greatest pet peeves in the book world: a signing at which the customers were treated like second-rate citizens. This happened at Barnes & Noble in Oceanside, where I entered the fray a willing participant and walked out feeling like I was part of a cattle drive.

The occasion was an appearance and signing by Ace Frehley, the lead guitarist of KISS. After seeing a sign advertising the event a few days prior, I called my friend Robert Munger, the webmaster of RockChoice.com and a much more ardent KISS fan than me, and we decided to meet up at the signing.

I haven’t listened to a KISS song in 30 years, but they were a major part of my teenage years. I saw them twice in concert, and I always felt a sort of affinity for “The Spaceman,” Frehley’s costumed alter ego. As a huge music fan and saluter of high achievers in general, I like commiserating with musicians known to be nice, engaging and creative people. I also like taking an occasional ride down memory lane (or reclaiming lost memories, to be more accurate in this case) by reading memoirs from people who helped make those times.

When my lady, her son and I arrived 40 minutes early, the line already queued 100 feet from the table where Ace would sign. Already, my first hope was dashed: that Ace would give a talk about his memoir, “No Regrets,” and then sign. I bought a book for a friend’s Christmas gift, and stood near the front of the line with Robert until the signing started, at which time I moved to the back and prepared to stand for the next 60 to 90 minutes. No problem. The line was filled with excited fans sharing KISS stories and concert memories. Always a fun line to join.

A half-hour after the signing started, I was twenty feet from the signing table. That was fast: I was probably #240 of the 250 or so people on hand. How could Ace sign so many books so quickly, and banter with his fans?

The answer: store management didn’t really let him banter. When I got close to the table, two B & N employees and three security guards were on hand. “Open your book to the page you want him to sign,” one of the employees said. “No, he won’t personalize for anyone.”

With that, the man took my book and planted it on the table, behind two other books. Clearly uncomfortable with the arrangement, Ace made sure to shake everyone’s hand and chat with them for a second, and take in whatever they had to say — usually, favorite KISS concert moments delivered in the 10 or 15 seconds they had before being moved on. As I said, he was very engaging, just as friendly as I would have expected, and clearly delighted to meet long-time fans. I respected and appreciated him not only because of his music, but because of his continuing desire to create new music and his commitment to sober living — which, if you know anything about his past, is quite an achievement. So when I got up there, I shook his hand and said, “Thanks for the music and keeping your creative force alive.”

“Along with the rest of me,” he quipped.

We had a quick exchange, and then I was moved out of there by the book signing posse.

A moment on that. The B & N crew, hell-bent on efficiently running people by the table as quickly as possible, created a countercurrent to Ace’s obvious desire to interact with his fans and readers. As an author who loves to talk with people who read my books, and as one who’s purchased hundreds of books from B & N stores nationwide (and had books on their shelves for years), I couldn’t sit silently and watch this. I turned to one employee and said, “You know, we’ve already purchased our books, and this man might not have been someone you looked up to, but he was that person to a lot of people here. How ironic that the dude who quit KISS because the band became more about profit than music is subject to the way you’re doing this book signing.”

Naturally, my comments fell on deaf ears. Ten minutes later, just 50 minutes after it began, the signing was over. B & N was happy — in and out in less than an hour. Another item checked off the to-do list. Efficient.

But no way to run a book signing. Part of the reason to get a book signed is to share a moment with the author, connect with the person whose book you’re about to read. I guarantee you, that is what everyone had in mind when they arrived. Thankfully, the author did everything he could to accommodate them, even though he was flanked by a personal assistant on one side (of course) and two security people moving people away from the table (totally unnecessary).

As an author, educator and one who works on behalf of many authors, and has been to much bigger B & N signings (when I saw Tom Robbins in New York in 2004, nearly 1,000 people showed up. The employees couldn’t have been more supportive), I felt perturbed by the scene. What made it more irritating was that the featured author wanted to talk with each of his fans as he signed their books, but they kept moving the line. By my rough count, 250 people stood in line with books they’d just purchased for $26. That’s $6,500 that would not have happened without Ace Frehley’s presence.

One would think the booksellers would be a little more appreciative of that fact. I know one thing: had this signing taken place at an independent bookseller, the result would have been much different.

Let’s start remembering why you’re so massive, Barnes & Noble: Because of we, the readers.

In 1993, when I was working on One Giant Leap for Mankind, the silver anniversary commemoration publication to the Apollo 11 lunar landing that I developed and edited, Apollo 10 astronaut Thomas Stafford used a term I’d never heard before: “The forcing function.” In Stafford’s view, if you want to create something truly innovative or creative, you need a forcing function — an outside force that propels you past your own preconceived notions or limitations and into higher performance and excellence. In the case of Stafford and his fellow Apollo astronauts, the forcing function was laid down in 1961, when President Kennedy proclaimed the mission of landing on the moon before the decade was out.

I think of the forcing function often, especially during some of the innovative, deadline-based projects on which I have worked. It is true that when our backs are to the wall, many creative types put together their very best work. We suspend our doubts, distractions and tangents, focus deeply on the matter at hand, and put together books, pieces of music, paintings, sculptures, dance performances and illustrations that reflect our higher potential. Since I grew into adulthood while on a daily newspaper staff, I know all about forcing functions: we faced them every day, required to produce pages and stories between 6 and 9 a.m., when the newspaper was typeset and plated for the presses.

Some things never change.

That’s why I love NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month. What became an honorary month for novelists has grown into a program that celebrates the novel-writing process and encourages writers of all ages and persuasions to sit down and create a work of fiction — by using the forcing function as an impetus. By signing up on the official website, you become part of a supportive world of other writers in your region that are trying to do the same thing — write a novel in a month (or at least much of a novel). It has been deeply inspiring to read emails and Facebook posts from writing friends who have cranked out 10,000 to 30,000 words this month in their efforts to complete their work of fiction.

As of today, more than 1.75 billion words have been composed by authors nationwide as part of the NaNoWriMo program. Jump in and add to it!

As for me? Crazy writing, client and teaching schedule and all, I’ve taken the plunge. I finally signed up yesterday and am 3,000 words into my next novel, “Open Mic Night at Boccaccio’s,” which I have wanted to write for a couple of years. Will share excerpts on here in future blogs, but suffice to say, the forcing function kicked in and I’ve got 12 days to shape this idea into the makings of a novel.

Which reminds me: time to sign on to the NaNoWriMo website, log my word count to date, and write some more.

This piece is dedicated to my dear friend, Nakula Cryer

 Last Friday night, I won a “guess the age” raffle. How did I know? When the birthday boy surprised 70 people at his party by stepping up to the microphone and began singing:

When I get older losing my hair,

Many years from now,

Will you still be sending me a valentine

Birthday greetings bottle of juice? (substituted for “wine”)

Like countless other Baby Boomers who have memorized Paul McCartney’s wonderful song “When I’m 64”, I wondered what it would be like to attend your own 64th birthday party and serenade your spouse or significant other with this song. I found out at Ananda College of Living Wisdom, where I teach writing, social media and online communication. The students and Nakula’s wife, Ananda College Chairperson of the Board Nischala Cryer, declared a party with a hippie theme — reminding me very much of my surprise birthday parties when I turned 30 and 40 — and we gathered to honor the college president, Nakula Cryer.

If I’d been out till quarter to three

Would you lock the door,

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I’m sixty-four?

Nakula spent the week playing coy about his age, even creating a “guess my age” raffle. I played coy with him, too, bolstered by an intuitive hunch that this was his year, the year many Baby Boomers consider magical because of this magical song on The Beatles’ magical Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. More on that in a moment. We decked out the dining room in full party regalia, and the cooks prepared pasta with alfredo, marinara and pesto sauces for the expected crowd.

oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo

You’ll be older too, (ah ah ah ah ah)

And if you say the word,

I could stay with you.

We gathered and ate, students and faculty dressed in various forms of hippie garb, the guests looking like they’d missed their ride on the fashion time machine. Soon, it became apparent this was more than a party. This rainy night blossomed into a musical, entertaining, poignant, humorous and creative tribute to a man who, with Nischala, acted upon the quite remarkable vision of uniting yoga philosophy, forward-thinking Education for Life practices, liberal arts and inspirational arts into a four-year college that now draws students from throughout the world. I know one thing, realizing there is some bias in this remark: I would do anything to attend this college. Not only do brains get informed, but lives get transformed and deepened here.

After a fine musical performance by guest singers, members of the faculty took turns roasting Nakula in a soft, gentle way through song and funny lyrics. Everyone laughed, including the guest of honor. Then my prized poetry student, Bardia Behmard, recited a piece about nicknames he composed for the occasion; seems Nakula tagged him with the nickname “The Bard.” Appropriate, considering this young man’s gift for verse. The way he writes, I sometimes wonder if someone reached back into the hallowed deserts of Ancient Persia and transplanted him in the Sierra foothills.

I could be handy mending a fuse

When your lights have gone.

You can knit a sweater by the fireside

Sunday mornings go for a ride.

The next bit of entertainment stirred our hearts: Kamran, the principal-in-waiting at Ananda’s Living Wisdom (High) School and a former teacher at Huntington Beach (CA) High School, reciting Walt Whitman’s immortal ode to Abraham Lincoln, “O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done…” During his recitation, all of the students stood up on chairs, recreating the closing scene of the great Robin Williams movie Dead Poets Society, and paid tribute to the captain of their collegiate ship. Beautiful.

Kamran’s performance of “O Captain! My Captain!” moved us, but the next few minutes surprised and delighted us: Nakula, along with our resident master soloist and music mentor, Chaitanya Mahoney, and two guitarists moved to center stage with their “band.” Nakula stepped up and belted out “When I’m 64” in perfect pitch, perfect meter …

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,

Who could ask for more?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I’m sixty-four?

Afterward, Nakula and the others sang the front and back of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, along with “With A Little Help from My Friends,” the Who’s “My Generation,” and of course, The Beatles’ rowdy “Happy Birthday.” (We also sang the more traditional version, complete with three birthday cakes that were wheeled out for Nakula and Kayla, one of our students, whose birthday was the following day). I sat back, marveling at the beauty of this occasion — a 64-year-old man singing lead at his own birthday party, surrounded by people ages 3 to 88 who love him dearly.

Sitting at the back of the room, my heart warmed with deep gratitude for the twists and turns that landed me here to teach such attuned and brilliant students. This college focuses on the qualities that bring out the best in us as individuals, and helps us to bring out the best in each other. We not only offer these students the richest and most attentive college education you can imagine, but also inspire them to lead with their hearts. We prepare them to go into the world ready to raise the spirits and touch the dreams of everyone they meet or with whom they do business. If there is a teacher’s heaven, I’m in it.

Every summer we can rent a cottage

In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear

We shall scrimp and save

Grandchildren on your knee

Vera, Chuck, and Dave

After the rousing musical performance, Nakula drew the “guess my age” raffle ticket. After a few misses that prompted sour looks — 67, 68, 66 — he held my ticket. He called me up to the front, and shared with all of us the only poem he ever wrote — a six-line nod to a gardener at Tassajara, the Zen Buddhist retreat in Big Sur. I knew his age all week. This birthday party’s theme song had been playing in my head the whole time. But I didn’t stand up there with an ear-to-ear smile because of winning a raffle. I looked out at the people and thought to myself, “This is what everyone was singing about and yearning for in the ’60 and early ‘70s; these people figured it out.”

With that, Nakula thanked everyone for coming to his party — and we wiped the floor clear of tables and chairs and really cranked it up. The speakers popped with the soundtrack of our generation. We sang along and danced, Nakula and Nischala often in the middle of their circle of friends, moving to the music that defined our journeys into adulthood. More than once, I looked over to the students, some of whom were dancing with faculty, some with each other. To a person, they were blown away at the way our generation took over the dance floor and owned it. For two solid hours, we celebrated the Beatles, Moody Blues, Doobie Brothers, Hendrix, Allman Brothers, Kinks, Monkees, Beach Boys, Five String Electrical Band (remember the 1971 mega-long hair hit, “Signs”?), Tower of Power, Sly & The Family Stone, until we brought the house down with a rousing sing-a-long of the finale, Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World.”

Ken Rauen, our resident DJ, was dialed into the night. It showed in his song selection. Every tune carried messages of love, joy, happiness, peace, the power of dream, heart, beauty and/or hope. So much for those who think all rock music is a dark, Satanic rhythm. Think again.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,

Stating point of view.

Indicate precisely what you mean to say

Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.

 At around 11, we erased the dance floor, pushing the tables back into place. A weary but elated Nakula hugged me, then he and Nischala said goodnight and walked to their house. I walked toward my abode, and saw three students sitting on a couch in the lounge. One was Chitra, my soon-to-graduate student and web designer for Word Journeys. She sat there, buzzing but exhausted after dancing her heart out all night, dressed in full hippie regalia — skirts, beads, colorful top, headband.

She smiled and shook her head. She looked at her fellow students, then at me. “We might wear the clothes, listen to the music and talk the talk, but you guys really know how to rock!”

 Yes, we do. We also know how to love and how to live.

 Give me your answer, fill in a form

Mine for evermore

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I’m sixty-four?

Whoo! 

Happy Birthday, Nakula. May 64 be your greatest year yet.

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Sometimes, new books simply release at the most crucial time. Call it perfect timing — timed perfectly.

So is the case with marketing consultant Elizabeth Allen’s new e-book, The Economy of One, which comes out during a time of double-digit unemployment in most of the country. It also comes out during a jobless recovery in which entire career segments and occupations have been eliminated from the workforce — thus forcing career workers to reinvent themselves for an economy built on speed, technological savvy and versatility. In The Economy of One, Elizabeth combines her proprietary CODE (Communicate-Organize-Document-Evaluate) sales and marketing program with an “All Hands on Deck” approach, showing the unemployed, underemployed and those considering career chance to think and act with an entrepreneurial mindset. This book and its subject matter have been praised by the likes of the Wall Street Journaland bestselling business author Michael Gerber.

The Economy of One

Since we were involved with the initial editing of The Economy of One manuscript, as well as ongoing book promotion, we’ve decided to share with you Elizabeth’s longer responses to questions asked for the Economy of One’s media materials. This deeper look will give you a strong idea of how vital and valuable this book is — not to mention the author’s deeply caring, compassionate approach to helping men and women around the country reinvent themselves and their work skills.

 Q: At what point in the past few years did you fully conceptualize this idea of The Economy of One, and how that would be the ultimate solution to finding success in this changed economy? 

Elizabeth Allen: I came to the conclusion when I was asked to present my sales process, the CODE, to unemployed people.  While it was originally developed for companies, I came to realize that these people represent our single largest uninvested national asset, and that they needed the skill sets to re-engage and think differently in order to capitalize on their value. In working with them, I realized they had forgotten their value and lacked a process by which to change their mindset about their circumstances.  They needed a new way to think in order to leverage their wealth of knowledge, know how and skills.

Q: What is the most challenging and/or most vital aspect of the marketing piece for people to grasp when they have to market themselves after years of working in a career position? 

EA: That what may have worked in the past, in terms of finding a job, simply isn’t working any more.  The system as we know it is “broken”.  If they will confront the reality of the problem, then they can take responsibility for themselves providing themselves permission to explore other options.

Q: Which leads to The Economy of One, which is rooted in successful approaches you developed and truly informative case studies.

EA: The Economy of One was crafted from the perspective of what does work.  This program was designed after nearly a decade of cutting-edge industry research defining “best practice” as it relates to how entrepreneurs “think and sell”.  It breaks a highly fluid and intuitive process into specific and actionable steps. It’s not a huge mystery; it’s a set of skills and processes that can be learned. The Economy of One applies no matter whether you are simply looking for a job, are considering being a contractor or exploring opening a small business.  It’s a new way for individuals to confront and overcome “the system” that is broken.

 Q: What do you feel distinguishes an entrepreneur from an unemployed career worker with highly valuable job skills?

EA: Having served the entrepreneurial community for decades, I realized that there was only one difference between someone who is unemployed and someone who is an entrepreneur – the entrepreneur has decided they have something to sell.  That’s it!  The skill most fundamental to entrepreneurs is that they’ve given themselves the permission to engage and try to sell something.  The challenge is that they do this so intuitively, that it’s difficult to break the behavior down into specific roles and processes critical for success. The Economy of One translates this highly intuitive process into very simple steps that provide an immediate solution to people desperate for a new method in which to engage.

Q: It seems that the ability to sell yourself and your skills is perhaps the most important competency anyone can have these days.

EA: This issue of selling is now mission critical for both our country and our people, because whether they choose traditional employment, contract work or self employment (or any combination), people must know how to effectively sell themselves, their capabilities and their value.  Whether people use this skill of selling for themselves, or present it as a skill they’ve developed to potential employers, it opens a new solution to people who need a method to move forward.

Q: How did all of your work with CODE among small- and mid-sized businesses over the years help you to define and share the core competencies people need to reinvent themselves and be successful again?

EA: My passion is entrepreneurs and the companies they build.  Fundamentally, there are three roles that are required for sales: That of the Prospector, Technical Expert and Closer.  The companies I’ve worked with frequently need to train everyone in their company how to support the sales process, because now more than ever, it’s time for all hands on deck as it relates to creating customer loyalty and sustaining a predictable sales pipeline.  The very issues that company leaders face in translating these three skills to their employees are the same issues that people in general face in terms of adapting these skills for their own personal use.  The process of mindset adjustment is the same.  Where in the past employees have claimed that “sales isn’t my job, I’m just a technical expert,” companies are saying, “It’s not enough.” They are now requiring everyone who has anything to do with the customer to take increased responsibility for the care and support of that customer, and this is a challenge to people who don’t see it as their job.  They have to change their mindset.

Q: That seems like an action we need to take across the board — changing our mindset.

EA: People who are considering transition or are unemployed also have to “change their mindset” because what’s worked in the past simply isn’t working any more.  According to the US Bureau of Labor, by the year 2019 40% of the US workforce will be Free Agents (people working contract to contract). So beyond this short term issue of how to create jobs and get people engaged with the process, having a method by which to predictably engage and position and sell your skills will become increasingly vital.

Q: What is the potential benefit for a reader who embraces the precepts of The Economy of One and targets leads and opportunities? 

EA: For people “stuck in transition,” this process will help them to recognize and take control of their own economy.   We all realize that we individually have ” God-given talents, resources, skills and know-how. The question is, how do you create demand for what it is you can supply? The Economy of Onetakes you through a simple, step-by-step process designed to empower people to better position and sell what they have to offer, whether they are looking for a full time job, considering contract based work, or thinking of starting a small business.

Author Elizabeth Allen

TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF EARLY RELEASE OFFERS FOR THE ECONOMY OF ONE:

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One of the many advantages of teaching at a small college concerns the amount of one-on-one time we enjoy with our students. There is no amount of book study, assignments, online tutelage, lecturing or study groups that can equal the interaction between a caring teacher and a willing student.

With the creative writing program I’m helping to develop at Ananda College of Living Wisdom, we’ve ramped it up a step further  — individual courses for individual students.

It didn’t start out this way. The plan was to have group classroom study, followed by independent study sessions. However, when the roster came together for the 2011-12 school year, Dean of Academics Celia Alvarez realized that the students varied greatly in their writing experience, topical and genre interests, grade levels and approaches to learning. So she popped the question in an email the week before I returned to campus: “Can you create a separate course for each student?”

What a challenge — but what a joy. Two weeks into this rather maverick approach, I sit here buzzing over the spiritual and intellectual stimulation this has created. Not only does my versatility as a writing instructor receive the ultimate test, but it also brings into play all the books I’ve read, the different genres in which I’ve written, and the various skills I’ve learned to inspire, motivate and help students (both scholastic and professional writers) gather their thoughts, find the structure that suits them best, trust their instincts and voices, and lay one word out in front of another. For instance, in this term alone, assigned books include all-time favorites like Annie Dillard’s masterful Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Portable Beat Reader anthology, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road,  Gary Snyder’s The Practice of the Wild, Coleman Barks’ The Illustrated Rumi, and new favorites like Susan Casey’s The Wave and Barbara Kingsolver’s Small Wonder, poignant essays she wrote right after 9/11.

The courses this fall are certainly varied. One is a study of the fabled Beat writers — all of whom had distinctly different styles, voices and works. We’re studying them as writers, not as readers — a far different approach that requires tapping into the Beat writers’ motivations, structures and voices as well as their words. Another is a freshman course that combines creative writing with instruction on developing and composing academic research papers. So that’s two courses in one.

Thanks to another student’s wishes, my poetic senses are being filled by teaching a poetry writing class with an emphasis on spiritually infused poets like Gibran, Hafiz, Rumi, Snyder, Yogananda, Khayyam, Sun-Tzu, Li-Po, Basho, Waldman and Tagore, along with Mary Oliver, David Whyte, Denise Levertov and a few other modern-day bards. The beauty of that course is that I finally get to utilize the book-length website I wrote in 2008,  Poetry Through the Ages, as a teaching tool (thousands of teachers and students throughout the country have sourced the website for its content and plethora of teaching suggestions, assignments and projects).

Enough already? Not so. My fourth writing course, an essay and narrative non-fiction class, involves the interweaving of personal story and experience into informational pieces (those who have worked with me at writers’ conferences and workshops know this course by different titles). And finally, I’ve brought a web content writing component into the social media class that I teach, with an emphasis on something every writer who builds a website should know up front: web and social media content writing is not a creative writing exercise. It is all about marketing and knowing what to write, how to use keywords, how to write posts and messages, and where to place them.

Put it all together, and it’s resulted in two weeks of gathering materials, writing syllabi, meeting with students, and already sharing some magical moments that can only be experienced with one-on-one learning. For example, my freshman student and I talked all about the way an ocean wave looks from the inside — when you’re being covered up in a tube ride while surfing, bodyboarding or bodysurfing.  Then he went off, wrote for 90 minutes about it and painted a beautiful wave (he’s also an artist). The next day, I sat with a senior — the young man who burns to write as much as Jack Kerouac did — and read him perhaps the longest sentence in modern literature, Kerouac’s 1,200-word riff in The Subterraneans that has the staccato pace and rip-roaring rhythm of a Charlie Parker be-bop jazz solo. The point? To demonstrate what stream-of-consciousness writing sounds like, which gives the budding writer of what it feels like to write so freely and openly.

How does it feel to be part of this very far-forward exercise (which, truth be told, has a lot of the simple charm of the one-room schoolhouse setting to it)? I feel like the most fortunate and privileged person on earth. I feel like the hundreds of workshops and classes I’ve given online, at retreats, conferences, workshops and libraries all feed this opportunity to help change and inform lives. I also feel like the 45 years since I started writing stories, and all the writing assignments, books, poems, essays, articles I’ve written and books I’ve read and edited come into play, right here, right now. It is the best mindset for teaching that I can think of: fully present, required to be fully present, with every skill or bit of knowledge that preceded this moment ready and available to be used as needed.

There’s so much more. Because of the uniqueness of what we’re doing with the creative writing program at Ananda College, I’ve decided to keep a journal log of the classes, what we discuss, reading materials, feelings, assignments and experiences, and post the highlights on my Scribd.com account every week. That will also include highlights of the students’ writing. It’s just something I want to throw out there as one person’s contribution to a greater educational process.

Bell’s ringing. Time to get back to class.

Like his protagonist, David Perry, Pretty Flamingo author Perry Martin has a background as a recording and touring musician within and beyond his native Australia. That included a 15-month tour of his own in Vietnam, entertaining the troops. Like David Perry, he also re-settled in Orange County, CA.  Beyond that, his life and the fictional experiences in Pretty Flamingo take much different paths.

I spoke with Perry about his background and inspiration for this intriguing, gripping novel about the power, devastating impact, and ultimate liberation of resurrected memories. What began as a simple discussion about the book turned into a conversation that offers plenty of insight for writers of fiction, memoir and essay — not to mention a behind-the-scenes look at his fantastic opening novel, now available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Scribd.com (download), bookstores nationwide, and all online book and e-book sellers. You can also view a wonderfully produced preview trailer of the book on YouTube.

1) First of all, Perry, music plays an important part in David Perry’s growing-up years in Pretty Flamingo, obviously with some autobiographical moments in there. Could you talk about your long background in music?

I started at a very young age and was lucky enough to have some “brushes with greatness” during the course of my musical career.  I’ve worked with such people as Sheb Wooley of Rawhide fame, (the TV show that helped launch Clint Eastwood’s career), country legend Lefty Frizzell, pop/rock bands The Bee Gees, Ambrosia and Little River Band and, more recently, country greats Hal Ketchum and Lonestar.

Between 1968 and 1969, I had a 15-month stint in Vietnam with country showband The Donnie James Show ­– which is where I came into contact with Sheb Wooley, Left Frizzell and his daughter, Leta.  We went places no other band had ever gone in Vietnam and, because of that, we became so popular AFRTS gave us our own weekly TV show, Nashville Vietnam.

From 1970 to 1971, I toured Southeast Asia with my father as part of a three-piece music and comedy cabaret act.  We traveled to Japan, Okinawa, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and the Philippines.  My father and I eventually settled in Hong Kong where I embarked on my own music career, which spawned three albums of original material.

I left Hong Kong in 1983 for the U.S.A. and have lived here ever since.  Between 1990 and 1997 I was with the band Two-Way Street.  We were the opening act for B.J. Thomas, Ambrosia and Little River Band, among others.  More recently, I have been part of the country band Marshalltown and have had the pleasure of being the opening act for Hal Ketchum and Lonestar.

2) And your writing background?
I remember wanting to be a writer when I was kid, long before I developed an interest in music.  I wrote stories that I would pass around to friends and family and I seem to recall starting a novel when I was about 12 years old.  Lord knows what happened to it.  I think what happened was that I started noticing the attention musicians got from people – particularly girls – and that swayed me in the direction of music!

I think writing has been lying dormant in me, all these years, waiting for the right time to surface. I still had the urge to create artistically.  I believe that’s when I resurrected my dream of becoming a writer.

3) How do you feel your skills as a musician and songwriter lend to your storytelling capabilities as a novelist?

As a musician, if you want to be good, there’s a certain discipline.  You have to be willing to practice, practice, practice and you have to honestly compare yourself to those musicians you respect and admire.  That helped me develop my skill as a writer.  I basically used the same approach.  I read books by top authors and studied how they wrote, much the same way as I used to study how my guitar heroes played guitar, and then I would compare what I wrote to the authors whose work I admired and also most closely matched the kind of storytelling I wanted to achieve.  I also studied books on writing, character development, etc which kind of parallels the music books I used to study.

As a songwriter I always tried to write songs that would affect the audience emotionally.  It was also important to engage and interest them quickly.  You have a lot less time to do that in a song than you do in a book, but it’s a similar thing.  Grab the reader within the first paragraph, if possible.  And, most important, affect the reader emotionally just as I’d tried to do with my songs.

'Pretty Flamingo' author Perry Martin

4) Could you tell us about some of your other experiences that either made their way into Pretty Flamingo or informed them?
Well, the first thing I should confess to is that, although I consider myself an Aussie at heart ­– and certainly have that persona – I was originally born in England and then moved to Australia at a very young age.    As far as experiences go, there were a slew of incidents during my time with the country band in Vietnam that could be the subject of a whole book!   For instance, the motorcycle accident that the central character of Pretty Flamingo, David Perry, has when he’s in Vietnam.  That was based on actual personal experience.  I was in Saigon and I’d had a few too many beers and had no business riding home on that bike.  Many of the streets had large, wooden-framed, barbed-wire barricades that were positioned at presumably strategic points.  I managed to run my bike into one of them, flew over the handlebars and hit the road ­– hard.  I gashed my head pretty badly and it required several stitches above my left eyebrow.

There were also numerous occasions where the country band went to places no other band had been to.  We played for a Green Beret unit based very close to the Cambodian border.  Halfway through the show, we were rushed into a bunker because the base was being mortared.  The pedal steel player and I became the heroes of the evening as we grabbed a couple of cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon on our way to the bunker.  We sat out the attack, which was successfully fended off, of course ­ after all, we’re talking Green Berets! ­ and then went back to the club to finish off the show.

It was experiences like that, I think, made me grow up pretty fast, By the time I arrived back in Australia, I was a pretty mature sixteen-year old.  I portrayed David Perry that way in the book because, later on, he has to make some very adult decisions.

5) What are the elements of the Manfred Mann song “Pretty Flamingo” that worked for you as the theme to this book?
Well, for one thing, just the song in general evokes so many memories for me ­– both good and bad ­– that it seemed a natural choice.  It made it easy to write around because it was a part of my life at a time where events occurred that had a profound impact on me.  It reminded me of some very good friends and a family I cared very much about; they weren’t my family but they treated me that way.  That’s why I wrote them into the book.  For me, it’s also a very visual song.  Every time I hear the line, “crimson dress that clings to tight” I can see this gorgeous girl walking up the street that everyone on the block called “Flamingo”.

6) Without giving away the entire plot, you have written a story about an Australian now living in California who has a recall experience about something so shattering that he’s blocked it out for 35 years. What is it about sudden recall experiences that you find so intriguing and captivating that you’d wrap an entire story around it?

Wow, that’s a great question. First, like many people I know, I love a good mystery.  So, the idea that there is something buried in someone’s past that has been subconsciously affecting his decisions throughout his life was intriguing to me.  You could call it a “hidden influence”.  A movie that comes to mind is Conspiracy Theory, where the central character keeps buying the same book over and over again and has no idea why he’s doing it.  We eventually find out why when he finally remembers what happened.  It started me thinking along those lines.  How much of our lives might be influenced by forgotten events?  How many things are we doing or not doing because of something like that?

7) Once David has the shattering wake-up experience of déjà vu, you proceed to unravel the recall experience slowly … and then launch us into an incredible series of events for any two teenagers. What narrative issues did you work out before settling on this slow roll-out of the life-shattering event — as well as the decision to weave before-and-now chapters as you do?
I wanted to create conflict, mystery and suspense.  Some of the conflict comes from within as well as without and I wanted to show David wrestling with his own doubts and fears ­ which were his personal, internal antagonists – as well as the other antagonists he encounters along the way.   I found that rolling it out slowly, initially, helped create the mystery throughout the book.  Each time you discover the answer to one thing there are still other questions still not answered and, as I’ve been told by numerous people, this is what kept them turning the pages – which was what I wanted to do.

The decision to weave before-and-now chapters was also part of the whole idea of creating a mystery.  We see how, even the first few glimpses of previously forgotten memories, start to affect the main character. We watch him undergo a gradual transformation while, at the same time, we are able to go back and gradually discover how it was that he became the person he was at the start of the book.

In this book, you’ve got a full package on the human condition — mad teen love, more complicated mature adult love, a compelling mystery, exotic adventure, music, an unspeakable crime, and more. What do you feel are the important factors — or were the deciding factors in Pretty Flamingo — of writing such a story to maintain its believability?
Nobody in this book is perfect – because, let’s face it,  nobody is.  That’s what makes us human.  My characters have their flaws, and they don’t always make the right decisions but, except for the villains, they are basically good (as I believe most people are) and they try their best to do the right thing, at least from their point of view.  I purposely didn’t gift my characters with eloquence, excellent vocabularies or the best social graces, because that’s not the kind of people they were – especially the Aussies.  They are a down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is bunch of people and I think that makes them likeable and believable.

9) What about the characters of David Perry and Lisa Morgan made them both ideal for this “perfect storm” of a tale?
Well, without giving anything away, I think I can say that they had some things in common although they arrived at those things in different ways.  They both had experiences that forced them into a maturity beyond their years.  They also had some idea of themselves as spiritual beings, something more than just flesh and blood. That, for me, was the element that would eventually create the unbreakable bond between them.

10) David Perry and Lisa Morgan are compelling in entirely different ways. They’re also decidedly Australian, with a bit of swagger and persona that has been intriguing to American audiences for the past 25-30 years. As an Aussie who has lived in the U.S. for quite a long time, what do you feel it is about the Australian persona that draws us to seek it out in our movie and fiction characters?
I think there is a “no worries,” laid-back feel to the Aussies that is very attractive.  There’s also a refreshing honesty to them that I think we like. They are some of the friendliest, down-to-earth people you’ll ever meet..  There’s definitely a lack of political correctness, by and large, and I think it reminds Americans of how things used to be in this country.  To this day it’s still a bit “wild and wooly” in Australia and there’s that rebel streak that kind of says “take me or leave me, I don’t give a s–t!”  That’s the kind of attitude Americans used to have and it helped them kick the Brits out back in 1776 and grow to become the greatest nation on earth.  I think we’ve lost that here, to some degree, and the Aussies kind of remind us of what it was like to be that way.

11) What redeeming qualities or statements do you feel the characters and story of Pretty Flamingo make about love, forgiveness, redemption and the power of memory?
Overall, I think that the book demonstrates that the vast majority of us are good people and that the power of love can overcome anything.   It’s as important to forgive ourselves as it is to be forgiven, for we sometimes hold ourselves accountable when there is no longer any need.  Also, to know that nothing is truly forgotten – it may be buried, hidden or otherwise blocked out, but it is still there.  For you “not to remember” something implies that there must be “something there” to be forgotten.

12) What are your future writing plans?

I am actually working on another book right now, Savannah.  It’s a little different than Pretty Flamingo although there are some similarities inasmuch as there is once again a mystery aspect to it and the protagonist has had a troubled past.  It’s a story about childhood friendship, integrity and redemption.  There’s a spiritual aspect to it that’s quite interesting, too.  I’ve pulled a lot more from my experiences as a musician for this book and I’ve tried to give the reader some insight as to what it’s like to be a struggling musician.

The cover of Saluting the Spirit of American Unity

On several choice occasions during my 35 years as a professional writer, I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a project that makes me pinch myself and thank the heavens for all those years I read books, wrote in different styles, listened to teachers, worked newspaper desks and dreamed of meaningful undertakings in life.

To say that I am humbled and honored by my most recent writing and editing job is an understatement. On Friday, the magazine I had the privilege of co-developing and editing, Saluting the Spirit of American Unity: 9/11 Remembrance Publication, hits newsstands nationwide. Already, the distributor asked for a press run well in excess of what publisher Charles Warner of Innovative Properties Worldwide had forecast.

My relationship with this magazine began seven weeks ago … or, more likely, 10 years ago, when Chuck Warner and I sat in a magazine office in Clearwater, FL and watched together with horror as the second plane hit the South World Trade Tower. Chuck, an Army veteran, called me in late July — some 4 ½ years after I’d last worked on a magazine — and asked if I’d saddle up for one more ride. Honestly, I would’ve felt unpatriotic had I said “No.”

What followed was a month of August that … well, when you’re driven to do something for a cause greater than yourself, and you believe wholeheartedly in it, you find the energy and magnetism, and the right people find you. How else can I describe the magical series of events we just completed that enabled our tiny core team of Chuck, administrative assistant Ellen Somerville, advertising director Jonathan Wilson, creative director Stacy Kovatch, my associate Lisa Maine (who doubled as photo editor), the sales force and I – plus some fine contributing writers and photographers – to push reasonable deadlines aside and not only get this done, but to get it done with style, class and excellence?

“The most important thing I wanted to convey as a veteran, is that supporting our troops and first responders is more than just saying you support the troops, or hitting a ‘like’ button on a website,” Chuck said, explaining his vision and purpose for creating the publication, which is aligned with the 9/11 Remembrance Las Vegas commemorative events taking place Sept. 9-11. “We want actions to speak louder than words through volunteering, donating, or spreading information about causes and creating awareness.”

The beauty of this 80-page tribute to 9/11 begins with its full-color content and gripping photography. While we recalled the horrible events of a decade ago, we also focused on the hope, sense of community and spirit of a people who turned tragedy into opportunity and renewed life purpose. We interviewed first responders and others who survived 9/11, worked with military servicemen and women who have served multiple tours, and got to know the many service organizations that now help returning veterans overcome their injuries (Wounded Warrior Project), find jobs (HirePatriots.com), find homes (Homes for Veterans), as well as organizations that fund other groups (AmericanFoundation.org, whose co-founder, Sergeant Major of the Army (Ret.) Jack Tilley, wrote our welcome letter). We also delve into traumatic brain injuries — the “signature injury” of the past 10 years of war — talk with people who send care packages to the troops, and interview musicians who have changed the face of meaningful music just as 9/11 changed the face of their lives.

But for me, two interviews I conducted reminded me of just how deeply 9/11 brought a greater spirit of service and camaraderie to this country. I interviewed Kevyn Major Howard, who played Rafterman in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 classic Full Metal Jacket. Kevyn has poured his life savings into Fueled by the Fallen, a collection of American muscle cars with which he tours the country to honor the fallen — the 3,000+ 9/11 victims, the 343 first responders who died at the World Trade Center while trying to rescue the trapped, the 6,000 servicemen and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and police officers who have died in the line of duty in the past 10 years. Their names are painted on the sides of the cars.

In talking with Kevyn, you get the sense of how absolutely committed this man is to keeping the names of the fallen alive in our minds and hearts. It’s his form of service. “What tickles me is that a four- or five-year-old kid will see the cars, love the cars: ‘Look Mommy, look at those cars!’ and then get around to asking a curious question, ‘Why are those names on the cars?’ That’s when both the kid and the parents experience the ‘Wow’ factor,” he says. “That’s when the dialogue and awareness start. “

The other comment that really struck me came from David McBride, marketing officer for Thorlo Socks, which provides environment-specific socks to the troops. McBride and I share something in common — fathers who served as officers in Vietnam, and were subject to the horrible treatment many citizens gave them upon returning home. I asked McBride about this. “I feel good about what we’re doing now,” he said. “Whether you agree or disagree with these wars, these people volunteered to help us. I feel good about helping them. And I feel good about the way our country has supported them since 9/11.”

Amen.

Like millions of others, I will spend Sunday partially in silence, partially in quiet conversation, reflecting on the day that changed the world as we know it. I will also be forever thankful that I was called upon this summer to serve in a different way — by commemorating, through this publication, the hope and spirit of community that emerged from 9/11. It’s one of those endeavors for which my late father would’ve offered up an “atta boy,” and one is never too old to receive those.

Saluting the Spirit of American Unity is available Friday on newsstands nationwide. You can also order copies directly by going to the website at www.goipw.com, or by emailing ellen@goipw.com.