1)      So, of course, the first question always is: When did you have the first inkling of this idea of two disjointed individuals who are actually journeying toward one another, each without the other’s knowledge?

The joining of the two occurred more as the book evolved. I started writing the book first from the point of view of Lory Lewellyn, then I began to write a lot of pieces from the point of view of the father. The two started building up in separate files. And it was only gradually, as I began to reorganize and revise, that I began to see how the two could make a common journey.

2)      I’d like for you to talk a little bit about the New Age nature of the book, because it feels in many ways, I think, to be a kind of New Age novel. You have a great, even-handed way of portraying the festival of the Harmonic Convergence as this silly, sort of, yeah – it’s kinda silly, but here in the middle of it are these two people who have real stakes in it and are really reliant on the outcome. So there’s this duality to the festival that mirrors the duality of the story.

I guess it happened circumstantially. A couple of years ago, when the book was just starting to take off, I went to a Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow in a town called Eureka Springs in Arkansas, and in many ways it’s a New Age town. They were having this festival and everybody was talking about the Harmonic Convergence. There are all these places that give tarot readings and healing massages and whatever. So that was in the environment while I was writing the book.

I’ve very dubious about that culture. I think in many ways it’s very strange, and insincere, and zealous in some odd way. I wanted the book to sort of satirize it. And the more I worked on the book, the more it became about resistance. Sanderson comes from the real culture that used to be in western North Carolina. There’s reference to his grandfather being a preacher who would lay his hands on people as a method of healing. So that’s the real culture. I was pitting that against the trendy kind of New Age.    

3)      Sam Sanderson’s constant transformation is interesting to me. He’s the ghost in the novel, and it’s great the way that he feels so much like a ghost because he’s constantly changing form in Jason Sanderson’s mind. How did that come about for you? Was Jason a good father, or was he sort of dismissive of his son, and didn’t understand what he was about? It seems that through Lory, toward really the end of the novel, you get so much more about Sam than through his father. So I’m wondering if Jason’s struggle is a struggle not just to let go of his son, but to forgive himself as well.

I think it’s absolutely a struggle to forgive himself, and a struggle for him to feel something. I think that he has learned to shut down, and I think that he’s incapable of seeing himself, much less his son. I think that both of them have shut down in some way. Sam’s reaction to that was to hit the road and turn to all these new experiences. Jason’s was to turn inward to this sort of tidy life.  

4)      The Motel is the connection point for the two, and it features prominently in the story, but more as a symbol. There are a lot of symbols in the book. The Motel, the boy Mick, Grandfather Mountain, do you have like a rolodex of literary symbols? What is your process for coming up with such great non-clichéd stuff?

I have this incredible memory for things I’ve seen. Mick, who you liked so much, just came from being in my grandmother’s house. And she had all these dolls that she keeps under plastic. It was really creepy. So many things just come from things that I’ve seen.

5)      Could you tell me a little bit about your process for research in the novel? How do you go about finding, not just the facts that you present, but just the routine things that you’d have to know to paint such intimate portraits. I was intrigued by how you went into such strong detail of Sam’s death.

This whole book evolved from a short story I wrote a number of years ago called ‘The Motel of the Stars’. It originally took place in the forties or fifties, and it was about an ex-soldier who was sort of a drifter. The focus of the story was this one particular night in which he’s left his wife and is driving along this country road and he finds this burned down house. And in that scene, there was a person sitting in this chair, and it’s all that’s left. Just a metal chair, a table, and a dictionary. So originally, I’m starting to work on this story, and having it open in the point of view of this man. But then I got really interested in who was sitting in that chair. And that became Lory Lewellyn.

Also, around this time I had met John, who later became my husband. I had finished a memoir (‘Surrendered Child’) about the relinquishment of my son, and about the grief of that. So I met John, and his own personal loss is his son, in the military, in a helicopter crash about ten or twelve years ago. So that story began to weave its way into Jason Sanderson’s story, and of course the reason he was driving became his repo job. And Lory’s story became that she was the girlfriend of this lost son. So elements all fell into place, I guess, over the time that worked on the book which was four or five years.     

6)      I’m not going to reveal the ending here, of course, but I want to ask you if you think that these characters deserve a sequel and if so what would the continuing story be?

Honestly, I have not considered it. I don’t know what it would be. I can’t imagine making another novel about the both of them. I might be able to follow one of them, particularly Lory, but I’ve never really considered a sequel.

        Karen McElmurray will be going on sabbatical this year in Washington D.C. where she’ll be working on her next novel. I’d like to thank her for speaking with BookReview.com about her latest book, ‘Motel of the Stars’, which you can find on Amazon.com or at Sarabandebooks.org.

-Eric Jones

Books: Motel of the Stars