In this first segment, we are going to be talking about Gail Massey’s novel The Girl from Blind River. It came out in 2008 teen the book follows a teenager who is living with her uncle and her brother because her mother had been in prison.

Gramel

It was an awesome book, one I probably never will forget, it was a book that I probably read one night and read about four o’clock slap got up started reading again at eight o’clock and finish that night because it just I couldn’t put it down. It was just very well written. And I just have to tell you, it is great. I love a book or movie or story that everything comes together and clip and sets together prepares you for the next step. I think it should be made into a movie and Fincher action. She uses her brain instead of her body. So it’s not like a Tom Cruise. But it’s more like Julia Roberts would play.

Tyler 1:47 

They play a lot of poker. And Jamie is particularly very good at poker.

Gramel  1:53 

Her brother doesn’t seem to be all that good at it. He’s got all kinds of problems.

Tyler 1:58 

Her brother who’s still in high school.

Gramel  2:00 

Mother’s out of prison as a starting of the book, but they still live with an uncle was very mean and ignorant. And his name is Loyal.

Tyler 2:12 

He’s loyal to one person specifically. He’s loyal to money and greed. Jamie likes to play poker. And have you ever played poker?

Gramel  2:21 

Yes, I think you could put all my poker together. And I could tell you that probably played three hours of poker in my 77 years.

Tyler 2:29 

I’ve never really gotten into poker. I don’t even really know the rules yet. You know how to play the game. I don’t remember though. The rules. How old was I when hen that happened?

Gramel  2:39 

the summertime and we get a change. And you were probably like eight or nine. And we decided that we stayed in our pajamas all day. And when grandpa got home from work, we played poker, and my mother came out and said that I was going to ruin you. And you. And I said Mom, it’ll be fine. And we played poker all night. But then I get time to eat or go to bed or something. And we put all our change in Dixie cups and never played again. So we didn’t learn Tyler

Yeah, I thought that was a gin rummy.

Gramel  3:19 

No, I haven’t ever played around me that I remember.

Tyler 3:22 

I think card players and Loyal their whole life was that was playing cards and making money and cheating people. I think that’s something that I found really interesting because I don’t know the rules of poker. But I think Gail did a really good job. Like I didn’t need to know the rules, I still understood what was happening. And she didn’t explain it in a way that was like too much, or I was getting bored. I mean, it was pretty fast pace with that. And she was talking about like the numbers game and like the math that goes behind it. And they were cheating a lot. They did have some ways to mark cards and all of that kind of thing.

Gramel  3:56 

And I never heard so many different names for poker either, as they mentioned, just in passing, so to speak, but it was a doggy dog career to say the least. And it’s it fanned out to games that were illegal. They’re running an illegal circle.

Actually, it was a very interesting book. And it started out like there was just no redemption in anybody. Mostly, there was nobody she could trust her again, but she couldn’t really trust your brother because he wasn’t stable

Tyler 4:30 

He had a bad temper and his mom being in prison really affected him very deeply. And then their father was not around.

Gramel  4:38 

Yeah, they lived in squalor. And I mean, you know, you would think all the money that passed hands.

Tyler 4:44 

They were constantly drinking whiskey and beer and smoking cigarettes.

Gramel  4:48 

Yeah, I mean, you know, Pop Tarts was their breakfast. They did not eat well at all. did not eat anything that was good for them. So they had no home life, and even Her friends were kind of shady. It was very well written. And it was not at all predictable. I love a book that’s not predictable.

Tyler 5:08 

Well, in one way she did that as she switched perspectives and some of the chapters, those a third person narrator, but she would focus more on one of the characters in this chapter. She focused a lot on Jamie, but then she would also focus on the mom.

Gramel  5:24 

Yeah, that would be where the human interest would come in. The mother started growing on it to all those people were so messed up.

Tyler 5:33 

This book isn’t set in Florida. It’s set in a much colder part of the country. But the thing is, the character sees Florida, Jamie sees Florida as her second chance. She constantly wants to get down to Florida, so she can go to South Florida and play on the professional poker circuit. That’s a common theme that I see a lot is like Florida being the second chance for people and also with gambling. I mean, it’s a big part of the state’s history too, with the rumrunners. prohibition started in 1920. And it lasted until 1933. And then the rum runners would bring the alcohol, whiskey and stuff like that from all over and they would go down to the Caribbean. They’ve used Florida because Florida has a lot of coasts. And there were some famous rum runners. One specifically was named William bill McCoy. They got the term the real McCoy.

So there is a lot of kind of illegal activity. And that has been part of the state’s history. And why some people come down here.

Gramel  6:36 

Well, to me, I saw Florida as her goal. The weather in Florida is so much better.

Tyler 6:44 

While the uncle is a very, there’s really seems to be not much redeemable about him. He’s not a great person. He’s very abusive and all of these things. I’m interested to ask her about his character, because do you think he was a closeted gay man?

Gramel  7:02 

Well, yeah, that’s what they can’t remember he did postcard business, that postcards that he got.

Tyler 7:08 

I think there’s room for debate with that. Because we don’t I mean, I think it’s pretty dependent text. But I’m also wondering if it’s saying, because he was closeted in a small town. That was one of the reasons why he drank so much, and why it’s such an awful person, because he didn’t get to live his out life.

He was mean and abusive, and all of these things. But he had, he thought he was doing the right thing at one point in his life, apparently. Yeah, buddy. Well, that if you want, well, I’m not thinking about it. And but because his whole thing was that he didn’t want the kids to go into foster care, which I think is some people do hold that belief that family, even if it’s bad, that’s your responsibility to take care of those kids. Do you think that decision was left up to him? Or was there a person in his life? Right, that wanted him to make that but why wouldn’t? That was my question, though, why wouldn’t he just go to Key West and with his man friends? Well, what stopped him from doing what period of time was this? They had internet, they were playing online poker.

Gramel  8:25 

And there, I do believe there were questions about different things. But their characters did not have too much loyalty. They weren’t really loyal to their friends. They weren’t really loyal to their mate, to a certain extent. I’m just gonna say it was kind of showing you the underbelly of people.

Tyler 8:53 

I think, too, when you’re having as many vices as these characters did when you’re drinking as much as they are, when you’re gambling as much as they are. Because you could lose $2,000. And a minute. Yeah. Or I don’t know how long it takes, but like, in a hand, yeah. Right. You know, and maybe some of them would go to call in or whatever. So when you have all of that adrenaline and then you’re drinking, and then you have this anger issues, and you’re doing things that are illegal, it’s probably hard to stay loyal to people because your loyalty shifts depending on their circumstances.

Gramel  9:27 

And it showed that people fell into that trap, no matter where they were from, no matter if they were Richard four.

Tyler 9:36 

And so they were mostly poor, except for a couple people.

Gramel  9:40 

I thought it was funny. I kept thinking that. Yeah, I’m a housewife, mother, that’s also had several careers and loved it, but the girl never mentioned doing the dishes, mopping the floor. Yes.

Tyler 9:53 

She was always cleaning up after her uncle. She was picking up trash, right? She wouldn’t do they lived in a trailer. It had broken windows and burn marks on the couch.

Gramel  10:04 

They had to me no sense of home. Right. But that was their home. And that was their family.

Tyler 10:13 

But I think too, I mean, it talks about loyalty, but loyalty can get you sometimes it’s not the best thing. I’m thinking for her for the protagonist, because if she was loyal to her family in certain situations.

Gramel  10:26 

I’m not talking about her. I believe she was loyal as loyal. She did the end. She was loyal. Right. You know, but it was other people. It was such a good book. Because the way that all came about was really good. There was this really good twists and turns that would totally believable.

Tyler 10:49 

Yeah. And I think everything was really set up nicely. Like you were saying, the dominoes were falling, but it didn’t feel predictable. And I was my heart was racing. Oh, yeah, I was concerned.

Gramel  11:01 

And it was like, every now and then the domino didn’t fall. Right. But Gale fixed it that that was fine, too. And it still continued on the track. And she was a good person. And I kind of think there was another couple or two people or three. Oh, yeah, there was several people in there that was there. Yeah.

Tyler 11:23 

I mean, yeah. And I think his circumstances would have been different. Maybe other people would have been able to be good people as well.

Gramel  11:30 

When you have addictions that don’t always leave you with a clear mind. Even if you’re like my addiction to chocolate. Sometimes you don’t have a clear mind when you want chocolate real bad. They had some addictions and that. I don’t want to give it away, because I could tell you all about it, because now that my juices are flowing, but I want you to read it. I want people to read it. And remember, it takes all kind to make the world go round.

Tyler 11:59 

All right, well, that’s a little bit about the girl from blind River. And we will be talking with Gail in a bit.

Gramel  12:05 

Okay, looking forward to it. See, ya know, yeah, see.

Tyler 12:20 

In the last segment, we talked about Gale’s book, and now we’re going to talk to Gail, we’re gonna get into how she wrote about poker, how her writing has changed since quarantine. And we’re gonna get into a really in depth discussion about loyal the character that my grandmother and I were talking about earlier. We also talk about Florida. So you grew up in Florida and Pinellas Park, and then you moved, where did you go after that?

Gale  12:46 

So I spent 10 years in Pinellas Park. And then I spent eight years in St. Petersburg. And then I fled for the big city when I came out and turned the page and went to Atlanta, and spent 30 years in Atlanta, and I recently moved back here. I met my wife at a birthday party in Mexico. And she happened to live in St. Petersburg. So it was sort of like a full circle.

Tyler Gillespie  13:14 

Wow. I love that. Just like a random party.

Gale  13:18 

It was a friend’s a mutual friend’s birthday party. It was my best friend’s birthday party. And my best friend’s partner was liras best friend. So, we all congregated in person, which is a really fun place.

Tyler Gillespie  13:37 

I love that our dog is barking a little bit. So we’ve both read your book and thoroughly enjoyed it. And we do have some questions about the book and your writing. I was wondering if you could start just telling us a little bit about how this book came to be when you first started writing it and it’s kind of path to publication?

Gale  13:57 

Great. Yeah, I was working on a novel for years. And I finally decided that it was just not really going to be viable. It didn’t have a plot. It didn’t. It didn’t work in the way novels are supposed to work. So I put it in a drawer. But by that time, I had gathered a lot of writing skills, and I knew a lot more about clot and novels. I read a couple of books, I read the Queen’s gambit. And then I read Winter’s Bone. And also during that time, I had been learning how to play poker. So at what Yeah, so at one point, this idea for this character, Jamie elders, just sort of popped in my head. And I thought, this is a novel that can go the distance. I think I can make this long enough and a long enough story to be a legitimate novel.

So I started writing on it and it took me a couple of years and I had a friend read it, and I got some feedback and I took out about 100 pages and try it again, that took about two years to get the final first draft. And then then I got a real lucky break and got introduced to an agent and things went forward from there. But I always saw it as a trilogy. I think that my second manuscript is about Jamie elders, too.

And I envision a third one, the second one hasn’t found a home yet, but stay tuned, it will started writing the first one in 2013, and finished it in 2015. And then it’s sad for a while, because my mother had passed away. And I really lost all of my mojo for the project for writing diary. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it was a tough year, right. It’s always changes your mind about so many things. And it’s something you have to spend a little time metabolizing to get feedback on the ground again.

Gramel  15:56 

And normal becomes a different normal.

Gale  15:59 

Yeah, it sure does. Spoken as someone who has been through that wringer once or twice.

Gramel  16:06 

My most recent was my one and only sibling, my brother. Oh, yeah. But then I didn’t I had a son at 43. That’s still hard to talk about.

Gale  16:16 

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I bet it is. I’m sorry. That’s I always go straight there and interviews.

Tyler 16:25 

I mean, it’s also, you know, who doesn’t like a little cry in the interview? What’s wrong with that. But July is just a tough month, because he passed away in July, two summers can be kind of tough. At least July, we were talking a lot about the ending. And we think the ending of the book was really good. And we liked it. But we, you know, we were like, We wanted to know what the future looks like. So I think it’s interesting that you say that you saw it as a trilogy, because that kind of makes me happy to see what happens.

Gale  16:55 

Yeah, the next book, we all come back to Florida. So the whole book is set in South Florida. And I’m still very interested in themes of Uber wealth versus poverty, and male power versus impoverished female power. So those are, I guess, that’s my main interest in life, in writing life is to talk about those things. And I think gambling you know, brings a fun current to it, you know, because so much can happen and so much is left to chance for gamblers.

Gramel  17:32 

Well, I watched this one program on TV, sometimes it’s people become millionaires, and then they want to buy a new house.

Tyler Gillespie  17:38 

Lottery Dreamhouse

Gramel  17:41 

I’m surprised how many of those people are jackpot poker jackpot winners, I wonder if people when they’re young, you know, oh, I want to be a gambler.

Tyler 17:59 

When I think to in Jamie’s situation, she didn’t really have as many opportunities to get out of the situation that she was in. So poker kind of seems like it became that for her.

Gale  18:10 

Yeah, yeah, I wanted a character, you know, how you, you put a character in the worst possible scenario and watch them try and get out. That’s sort of what I had in mind with taking away all of Jamie’s options, and leaving poker as her only viable way to see the future for herself and to pursue a future for herself. So that was that was sort of the premise that I was working on these other characters from as sort of ways to, like, you know, push her down further, because the further you push a character down, you know, the more interesting the story gets, unfortunately.

Gramel  18:51 

In it, it was very interesting and seeing her slow, but sure growth, I think a lot of her challenge was that she was so loyal to her dysfunctional family. And so she wasn’t going to just get out of it. And I found she was actually even kind of loyal to her uncle. So she had to also almost fight against that loyalty to these characters that wasn’t doing anything but dragging her down.

Gale  19:21 

I’m very interested, perhaps even obsessed with family dynamics, and family loyalty and what you’re taught what love is, is love really loyalty or are those different things? And how does some young woman pursue her own future and her own mental health in the face of a very dysfunctional family?

Gramel  19:46 

And then I like the way basically, I would call it our protagonist actually started bringing out the good in her I think, I think she saw the detective as somebody debt, maybe could finally change her path.

Gale  20:05 

Yeah, I like the dynamic between Jamie and Garcia in that she has been taught her whole life, not to trust law enforcement, because they’re the ones that puts the elders in jail. But she has, that’s really kind of the crux of her of her change is when she begins to get an inkling that maybe he’s someone she can trust. Yeah, the development of a little bit of trust there. Yeah, that’s, that’s a nice memory to revisit. Jamie and elder and Garcia,

Tyler 20:43 

I wanted to ask you, so what got you into playing poker you said, because what I found nice about the book too, is there is a lot of poker and there and I don’t know the rules of poker. I mean, I know aces, a good card, Queen, I, you know, I just have never played, but I wasn’t getting lost, because I thought you were explaining what was happening enough for me to understand. So what got you into playing poker? And then how did you manage that in the writing?

Gale  21:11 

Well, my wife is a really good poker player. So when I got together with her about 13 years ago, I saw that I needed to understand what poker was because she loved it. So I started playing with her and her friends and and learning more about it. And I think it’s fascinating to go to a poker room and play, because you’re going to play with 99% men, and they can find ways to be intimidating and sort of gang up, and all of the dealers are male. So there’s this whole other dynamic about being in a poker room or at a poker tournament. And then I started learning the poker language, it’s beautiful. It’s like any sport, it has all these short nicknames for various moves and card combinations. It’s really fascinating. So in my first draft, the book was full of poker language that nobody would understand, except a poker player.

So I had to work on that pretty hard actually, to get it to a point where there was still some of the flavor of poker language in there. But it flowed enough to where, you know, the most of the readers would not understand the lingo, right? So you have to sort of find a way to, like, say what it is, and then use the lingo and then move on without having tripped up your reader to the point that they’re just stuck, or they or they leave the book and they go to Google and try and figure out what a full houses or something. It’s a tricky little thing. It took several drafts several edits, to go back through it and get it as well as it is. And I still had some complaints that people you know, weren’t thrilled with the poker aspect.

Tyler 23:08 

I found it really readable. And I liked that that aspect, because I was kind of learning as I was going about.

Gramel  23:14 

Well, I found it very easy to read Also, my daddy played poker, back in the day. That’s what people did for entertainment. As I got married, and things were tight, you play cards as a cheap way of entertainment. Yeah. And then I’m not in the club now. But I was in they only had meetings, I swear, or they could play cards after.

I mean, they did a lot of good. And I was impressed because they did do a lot of work. But they play cards

Tyler 23:48 

I used to work with love to playing cards. Oh, yeah. They had to like skirt the rules of the gambling because where I was working, you weren’t allowed to gamble. But they had like 50 cents. I don’t I don’t even know what was happening. But they somehow got around those rules.

Gale  24:04 

Yeah, I grew up learning to play ordinary games like spades and hearts and Uno. And my mother loved playing cards. She would just she would just play cards for hours. If she could get someone to stay with her, stick with her for a game. But she liked to make up her own rules as she went along. So you never really knew what the rules were.

Tyler 24:30 

Because she was always winning to probably right they switch to put her in the lease. I just have never had the mind for poker. And I don’t like to gamble. I like to keep my money where I can see it. So I’ve never been drawn to the game.

Gale  24:45 

Yeah, yeah, it’s a game. I think it costs a lot of money to learn how to play poker well, and by the time you’ve learned the game well enough to achieve at it. You’ve spent a ton of money you’ve spent five figures for sure.

Tyler 25:04 

And I really I also really enjoyed the part where they were counting cards and stuff like that, because I know enough about it to know that that’s a thing that happens. And so I thought that was a really cool aspect too.

Gale  25:19 

Yeah, there’s so many really fun, illegal poker stories that actually happen every day and casinos all across the country. And I guess the world but poker players are there a lot of really nice poker players, but they don’t make interesting stories write ones that are cheating and taking bad advantage of other people.

Gramel  25:47 

That’s a more much more interesting story added in that you add the football player in there in the in the way the ring became so important to the story.

Gale  25:55 

My good friend read it. And he gave it back to me. And he said, You need a dead body.

Gramel  26:02 

Hmm. And every story, a dead body.

Gale  26:09 

I was I had never written anything about a dead body before. So but I knew I needed one. And I sat down and I wrote TJ banger and lots of alcohol and that that poker game at the judges house and it was not as hard to write as I thought it was pretty well. It’s

Gramel  26:27 

kind of scary. Yeah.

Gale  26:29 

Yeah, hello, revealing

Gale  26:33 

more dead people.

Tyler 26:35 

I wanted to ask you about the third person narration and how it kind of switches characters at certain points. Where in the writing, did you make that choice? And why did you make that choice?

Gale  26:49 

For me, this was a natural way to move the story along. My first choice was to be devoted to the story more than to any of the characters, but I knew who my protagonist was. And that was Jamie. So whenever I switched up point of view, it was to provide the reader more information that maybe Jamie didn’t have access to. So some people gravitate to writing first person, I find that really hard for a full length piece of work. So switching characters, for me, it was just the easiest access point I had to getting the full story on the page. The characters were organic, her mother, her uncle, her brother, in the well, in the first draft. Tyler, her uncle had a point of view, but that was taken out in the final draft. And then Garcia was somewhat, you know, he I needed him, I needed someone outside the family. I needed someone investigating someone in the law. So he was sort of he fit a lot of a lot of the bill for the fifth character.

Tyler 28:02 

I think it helped us understand the characters and relate to them and feel for them in a way that maybe we wouldn’t have if it was just from Jamie’s point of view. One character we spent a lot of time discussing was loyal. The uncle, she was saying that she doesn’t see any redeemable qualities from him. And he’s just kind of the main bad abusive person. A

nd I was wondering about the kind of queer subtext that we were getting from him and kind of saying, maybe it wasn’t even subtext. Maybe it was text with some of his relationship. And I really saw it as him staying in a town where he wasn’t able to be his out self and how that may have pushed him into some of these more dark places. But maybe that was just me as a queer reader reading into that I was wondering about you writing that character and kind of your thoughts on him. That is there was text and subtext started out as subtext. And then it developed further.

Gale  29:04 

And that’s one of the whew, it’s not quite a regret, but his point of view him speaking from his own mind, yeah, I really regretted losing that, but I feel like I was able to capture most of who he was. And keep that in the book. I wanted to sketch a character who was living the impact of not being able to be his true self, and not being able to pursue the love that was offered to him in this lifetime, through Bobby and Key West. And the impact of that on him, and also the choices that he made to raise the kids you know, what were those choices really based on? Were they based on love? Were they based on pride and I think loyal made his decisions based on pride and the follow through was less than adequate.

Tyler 30:04 

And I think that what was interesting to just about location where we have Jamie seeing Florida as her opportunity and to be on the poker circuit in South Florida and in Key West, which is such an icon gay place in Florida, you know, so it was like interesting how geography was also for specifically Florida has this chance to be yourself or like, some kind of freedom that you might have?

Gale  30:30 

Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great point, Florida does give people a lot more freedom to be themselves, then a lot of other places, especially like a small blue collar town, and mid-state, New York, where you know, you have one high school graduating class of 30, or 40, people who are homophobic and the opportunity that loyal gives up to Botha, Florida, but he stays to raise the kids. And that doesn’t necessarily end up making him a better person. It maybe it makes him a more bitter person. And then when Toby, I wanted to look at the enter the play between generations of homosexuals who got to do what they got to pursue their true identity and versus generations, where people did not have that opportunity, and the anger and resentment that might come from that. It’s, it’s something that’s on my mind. And that was definitely on my mind when I was writing Toby, and loyal.

Tyler 31:35 

So what was the decision to cut Loyal’s perspective then, in what draft stage did that come in?

Gale  31:43 

So the publisher bought it. And one of the agreements we made before we signed the contract was that I would take the point of view characters from seven to five. So that was something that was an external, you know, rule put on put on the manuscript. And when I was going through it trying to do that, loyal had four chapters, and someone else had five. So it was kind of just an economic decision at that point.

Tyler 32:13 

So the publishers were kind of like from a marketing standpoint, or from a readers, they can deal with five perspectives, but six or seven, that’s asking too much.,

Gale  32:25 

Tommy Orange’s book that just one out of one, something huge, has 47 perspectives. But as a debut writer, I was listening to their marketing scheme and their plan. And that’s what they thought. So that’s, that’s how that went.

Gramel  32:41 

And now you mentioned you have a say, you had a second book out, and you’re on your third.

Gale  32:48 

Right. Um, so I have a collection of short stories coming out next spring. And my second manuscript regarding Jamie elders, is finished, and it’s being shopped around right now, looking for a publisher.

Gramel  33:02 

Oh, so it’s not out yet? Not yet. Now? No, see, I had the different aspect with them. lawyer. I only thought he took the children basically, the judge got his hand in it, and had a way of getting the money, add something on loyal or whatever. And so I didn’t come out gleaming that loyal was a good guy at all.

Gale  33:30 

Yeah, there’s that that part of the thread too. He was getting government funding Social Security death benefits for the has for their father. That was woven in there, too. Yeah.

Tyler 33:42 

That’s something that’s kind of cool about us reading the same books is we can have completely different reads because we, you know, have two different points of view. So you said that you have a short story collection coming out in the spring, what theme of collection or do we see any of the same characters or what’s kind of going on with that?

Gale  34:01 

You’ll see Toby.

Tyler Gillespie  34:03 

Oh, yay.

Gale  34:04 

Yeah, love Toby.

Gramel  34:06 

I figured that he had to go into an institution.

Gale  34:09 

Oh, well, he doesn’t,

Tyler Gillespie  34:12 

That’s why I’m really glad to know what’s happening next, because I felt concerned for his well being.

Gale  34:21 

Everybody is concerned about Toby, I really kind of left Toby in a bad spot. People are very interested in you know, what becomes of him. He’s in the second manuscript too. But in the collection of short stories, he’s there and most of the short stories are written from girl or, or woman’s point of view. And it’s about a lot of it’s about mother daughter dynamics and father daughter dynamics. There’s a story in there about racial tension within a family and story about a young woman. going off to Iraq, in the war. So it’s a collection of 13 stories. And I’m, very excited about it. Yeah, I am.

There’s one story, it’s called rising. So that’ll be the title of the collection. Great. It’s a good title. I’m just trying to write as true to my experience of life in the US as I can.

Tyler 35:33 

And I think that’s great to have an authentic point of view and not be kind of worried about what this imagined reader might want. Because then it can be maybe expected or not as true to life.

Gale  35:44 

Well, I think you know, as a writer, you have to find, you have to find your own voice. And if you’re if you constantly have a an audience in mind, I think you’re going to just get blocked. Writing is like alchemy, you’re just pulling thoughts and out of your mind and putting them into words. I mean, some people do really well, with an audience in mind.

Tyler Gillespie  36:08 

And so how has your writing practice kind of change in these past few months of quarantine?

Gale  36:18 

I was going downtown to an office that I loved. Every day I was going down, I was getting five or six really productive hours every day, I gave the office up, and I work at home now. And that’s, that’s really different. I mean, when you find a place that you really love, you know that the energy and the light is just right for you. It’s really hard to give that up. But I’ve given it up until the spiking decreases, and perhaps until we have better treatments and a vaccine. So I’ll be writing from home for the next foreseeable six, seven months, I think.

Gramel  36:58 

I worked at home when I did medical transcription. And it’s a whole different ballgame working at home. And people don’t always respect that. And it’s really so hard. You end up working all the time.

Gale  37:18 

Yeah, that’s true.

Gramel  37:20 

You don’t have a eight hour or like you said you were stayed there for six hours. Yeah. Which is ideal. And I see where you could get much more done.

Gale  37:32 

Yeah, I just I finished my second manuscript downtown. I, it was the most productive environment I’ve ever been in. I’m definitely going to go back as soon as it’s safe. has changed yours?

Tyler Gillespie  37:48 

I’m doing a podcast instead of writing. So maybe I could.

Gale  37:55 

I think the podcast is a brilliant idea.

Tyler Gillespie  38:01 

It is kind of cool, though. Because some of our episodes that we do the author chats, but then we kind of alternate and they’re more storytelling and like what’s going on in the news. So there is a storytelling aspect. And I’m still feeling creative. It just sitting down to write, it doesn’t. This just seems like something I’m more wanting to do.

Gale  38:20 

Follow your heart. Follow your creative spirit. Nothing worse. Yeah, nothing worse than trying to make yourself right When, when, you know, the energy’s not there.

Tyler 38:33 

And I’m kind of in between projects. And the next project I want to work on is going to involve probably a lot of interviews and stuff and being out, going to visit places. So I kind of really can’t do that kind of work that I that I want to do right now. So it’s a time of reflection, reading, hanging out with my grandmother, all of those things.

Gale  38:53 

Yeah. It’s also a good time. I just finished up two classes, two online classes with authors, writers that I really admire. So that’s, that’s been great. You know, I learned some some really wonderful things, just in the last two weeks. So what what’s nice is that you can have access to some of the writers that you really admire because they were traveling the country now they’re at home doing zoom, and that can be a good thing.

Gramel  39:24 

Well, I just I’ll just say, I think would make a wonderful movie, and it would be kind of a chick flick movie, but very action filled.

Tyler 39:35 

We like chick flicks in this house.

Gramel  39:37 

I just found your book was very, very interesting too, and would make a wonderful movie. I haven’t decided who should play the lead yet.

Tyler Gillespie  39:53 

In your message to me, you said there’s maybe some interest or some momentum to maybe seeing that happen.

Gale  39:59 

It’s a shopping agreement with a screenwriter in LA. So she’s putting together an outline and a pitch to take it around to the producers in LA or the production companies. So nothing could come out of that, or, you know, something could happen tomorrow. It’s one of those Hollywood deals where you just never know what’s going to happen, I think hopes the Thank you. I’m pretty, I’ve always seen this as a movie. So that’s how I wrote it was sort of like as though I had a camera on top of my head filming, you know, the things I was making up in my mind.

Gramel  40:37 

Well, that’s interesting. So you saw it as a movie.

Gale  40:42 

I think, my main teacher in like 2013, and 14 is, is a Hollywood screenwriter, and producer. So he had a large impact on how I saw writing, writing and scenes and plot. So yeah, I had that frame of mind when I wrote it.

Tyler Gillespie  41:05 

Well, thank you so much for chatting. I have thoroughly enjoyed speaking and hearing your process.

Gale  41:11 

Thank you so much for having me. This is it’s always fun to set to talk about The Girl from Blind River because, you know, I’ve written two manuscripts since then. And it’s a joy to go back and see people who enjoy those characters.

Gramel  41:26 

Oh, yeah. And I, I’m looking forward to the next book, because I know these guys. Yeah, I’m really excited about it. And it was a really delight to meet you. To meet the author of a great book. You did a great job.