Lesley Weston lives in New York City. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ars Medica, Duck & Herring Field Guide, The Green Muse, GUD Magazine, Pisgah Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, UR Paranormal, and other journals. Two of her stories were finalists in Per Contra’s short fiction competition, one of which, “Happiness Runs,” appears in the current issue. “Breakfront” will be published in early 2008. Visit Lesley’s blog.

You recently completed, and are now revising, a novel in short stories which centers on a young girl named Lottie. Does this manuscript have a title? Tell us about Lottie, her adventures, and the process of writing her interconnected stories.

Oh, boy! Tell you about Lottie?

My girl Lottie is a tough little monkey-girl. She is passionate, funny, brave and has a stubborn streak. Above all, she is loving and capable of deep, abiding loyalty.

The stories begin when Lottie is seven. Her family has just moved from Philadelphia to the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

The first stories center on the development of Lottie’s very special friendship with a local boy, a Piney named Hess.

The next stories build up to and follow the tragedy of Hess’s death.

Lottie is deeply changed by the loss, by her own feelings of guilt and her unacknowledged anger at the adults who failed to intervene.

In the series of stories Lottie and her family move from the Pine Barrens to a middle-class suburban community. When her unsophisticated ways are ridiculed by her new classmates, Lottie becomes involved with a very wild and dangerous older girl.

Some very bad things happen to Lottie as a result.

The last stories in the collection begin when Lottie is a run-away, on her own, in New York City. They follow her reunion with her family and her return to the Pine Barrens.

I wrote my first Lottie story as a piece of flash fiction. Over the next six months she kept popping up, quick little glimpses. I am allergic to children. Break out in hives when I’m near them, but Lottie wooed me, made me love her, forced me to give her a voice and tell her stories.

I finally broke down and spent the last nine months on the twenty stories that now form the collection.

Unfortunately, Lottie remains mum when I beg her for the manuscript’s title, though she has told me at least three times while I’m asleep and dreaming. But my mate keeps moving my bedside tablet and pen!

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Prior to Lottie, you wrote a novel titled “Nancy Boy,” which was the first runner-up in the NextBigWriter’s 2006 novel competition. Do you have any plans for this novel? What is it about?

The “Nancy Boy” manuscript was my first attempt at writing. Talk about delusions of adequacy!

It was very encouraging to place in that competition but, truly, the manuscript is far from finished! I live in hope that my writing has developed over the last three years and intend to redraft the book once I’ve started the query process with the Lottie Collection.

Like the Lottie stories, “Nancy Boy” takes place primarily in the mid ‘60s and the protagonist is young.

Tom is fourteen years old when the story starts. Also like Lottie, he suffered a tragedy as a younger child. In this case, Tom’s older brother was murdered by a child molester, and Tom was the sole, silent witness. Tom’s parents believe their oldest boy’s death was an accident.

The circumstances surrounding Tom’s brother’s murder has a profound effect on Tom’s feelings about himself when he discovers that he is gay.

Also, the time period of the story has a huge impact on how things develop. (During the 50s and on into the late 60s homosexuality was considered a curable disease.)

When the high school coach witnesses questionable behavior in the boy’s locker room between Tom and his best friend, the school informs Tom’s parents. Professional help is suggested.

As many educated and affluent people did during that time period, Tom’s parents have great faith in science and medicine. They see doctors as nearly infallible, almost god-like authorities. They place Tom under the care of a psychiatrist who ultimately convinces them to admit Tom to a mental institution for the “cure”.

Most of the novel takes place inside the hospital, where under the auspices of therapy, Tom suffers calculated mistreatment by Doctor Kluge and his personal staff. He is drugged to make him compliant, punished with electro-shock and undergoes numerous, inhumane aversion therapy treatments.

When Tom finally breaks down, both physically and mentally, and reveals the truth about his brother’s murder, his situation is truly desperate.

And that’s all I aim to tell you about “Nancy Boy” just now!

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Your story “Tonsure” won first place in Dennis Mahagin’s erotica writing competition, which he hosted on his website. The contest was judged by Robin Slick, the author of Three Days in New York City. Is this a genre you often write in? How difficult is it to write good erotica?

“Tonsure” is my one and only piece of erotica, written from a prompt offered by another writer.

There is NO SEX in it. I doubt, given that, there is much of value I could tell anyone about writing good erotic fiction.

Truth is, when the slippery stuff gets going in a book, I skim over it.

Perhaps, I am jaded.

When I was twelve or thirteen, my father caught me reading a James Bond story and forbade me. He said it was inappropriate for a girl.

I fixed him.

I got a hold of The Story of O, and The Marquis de Sade’s Justine.

I read them for spite, sitting pretty as you please in the family living room, feeling awfully smug because poor Dad wasn’t “with-it” enough to recognize what I was reading.

I was a really dreadful child.

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Ultimately, what do you hope to accomplish with your writing?

I’m a tall, skinny woman who dreams of writing a BIG, FAT body of work before the ashes get scattered.

Short term: I want to sign a two-book deal with the Lottie collection and Nancy Boy. (I believe in BIG, FAT dreams!) Long term, I want the maximum time to write, so that means I have to publish (unless I hit the lottery!)

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Your background is in the performance arts. Can you tell us what you’ve done, and are currently doing, in this field? What made you shift your focus to writing?

My mother and father were both involved with the arts to varying degrees.

My mom acted and directed, and was also a couture level seamstress. (She hated doing laundry and when I was young often made me something new to wear simply to delay wash day.)

Before I came along, Mom still operated a small theater company in Philadelphia. She actually broke water backstage the night I was born.

The performing arts seemed my destiny.

I started in ballet, but gave it up when I hit six-four in toe-shoes. (Not many roles for Amazon ballerinas!)

I came to NYC when I was seventeen to study acting at Julliard. While I was there, I sometimes worked odd jobs in their costume department.

Ultimately, the technical side of stage-craft claimed me.

For 28 years I’ve been involved with the production of theatrical costumes, first working in independent shops building for ballet and Broadway, then hired on the permanent staff at the Metropolitan Opera. For the lat 17 years, I’ve directed the Met’s in-house costume department and my crew (80 really talented people) constructs more than a thousand costumes each year.

Despite the fact that I’d been promoted to the point where all the more creative parts of the work were done by the people working under me, it was satisfying. And totally consuming.

However, in 2003, I got very sick. It was a long recovery, and I wasn’t at all happy with my progress.

I hadn’t died, but I felt dead.

I started writing to save my life.

I started writing because I needed a creative flow to carry me back to the living.

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Since you came to writing later in your life, I’m wondering: Did you read as a child? As a teenager? If so, what were your favorite stories? Once you started to write, did your tastes in literature change?

I was always a voracious reader. I don’t remember when I learned to read. It was before starting school. Also, my mother or father read to me every night. Wind in the Willows, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, The Secret Garden were among my favorites. Also, anything by Jack London.

I recall reading aloud to my cousin when I was six. The Little Left-Over Witch. Actually a pretty complex story. Damn me if I can’t still recite the opening paragraph!

By the fifth grade I’d read everything in the children’s library and was given an “adult” membership card. At that point I was deeply in love with Steinbeck and Dickens and biographies of fierce women. Not much later, they got beat out by Pynchon and Kerouac.

What’s changed about my reading habits is more a question of time limitations that tastes changing. I’ve always been somewhat eclectic in my reading habits.

I do read more short stories than I used to, also added lots of Flash. So, the biggest difference, and I feel a little guilty confessing this, is that until I started writing myself, I made no effort to remember the title of the book or the name of the author. I didn’t use to think such things important. Now I make an effort to remember.

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You’ve been a member of Zoetrope Virtual Studios, a writing group, since 2004. Have you belonged to other writing groups? How have they differed? How important is it to find a community that fosters the dedication and perseverance it takes to be a writer?

Oh, I think we all need any help and support we can find. And yes, that obsessive-compulsive need to boot up and click onto the site does seem to help bolster my dedication, and keep me moving forward.

Maybe the click, click does something to my brain. Makes me drool words or something– like Pavlov’s dog, maybe.

I was lucky to find Zoetrope after about nine months of writing.

I also joined The Next Big Writer a year after joining Zoetrope. They have a great format for posting novels in that workshop. I’ve gotten some very valuable feedback from the members and hopefully offered some in exchange.

But, my heart belongs to Zoe. I’ve found some true friends there, as well as a lot of writers whose work knocks my socks off!

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You live in New York City. Does the bustle ever overwhelm you? Do you have a place you escape to in order to regroup? Or are you able to maintain your sanity and perspective among all the buildings and people?

Who says I maintain sanity and perspective?

I moved to NYC when I was sixteen. I loved it for maybe ten, twelve years, tolerated it another ten and now I hate it most of the time.

Noise, dirt, noise.

Too many people.

Too many people and too many kids in strollers.

It seems to be illegal for children to walk on their own two feet before they are in college. I’m old and cranky now.

I have a cabin deep in the woods upstate. Thirty-one acres of trees, a winding ¼ mile dirt road through the trees. No phone.

Heaven.

When I can finally afford to dedicate all my time to writing, I intend to drive down that dirt road and lock the gate behind me.

For entertainment, I’ll sit on my porch with my shotgun and shoot anyone who dares climb over my gate.

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New York City must have an abundance of quality bookstores and other venues for writers. Do you have any favorites? Do you attend readings a lot?

Did I mention I’m an old, eccentric hermit? I buy my books second hand, at thrift shops and rummage sales or on-line. When I was younger, I spent days in Strand Bookstore, but I can’t strand crowded aisles, now.

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What is your favorite color and why?

Jeez! One color?

Okay, my favorite color is FRUIT. Any color you can find inside or outside a piece of fruit.

I especially like PLAID FRUIT!

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Contact Lesley

Read:

“Happiness Runs”
finalist in the Per Contra short fiction competition

“Bird Tree”
published by SmokeLong Quarterly

“Palmistry”
published by UR Paranormal

“Paparazzi”
published by UR Paranormal

“Whale Song”
published by UR Paranormal

“The Gift” and “Missing Plank”
published by Flashfiction.net

“Elemental Changes”
published by TheNextBigWriter Publishing



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