May 24, 2025 • 58 mins
From the written word to the musical stage, Stephen’s artistic journey is nothing short of inspiring. He’s a novelist, musician, photographer, composer, cartoonist, and illustrator—with a rich background that includes teaching creative writing and literature as a college professor.
Stephen studied art under legendary sculptor James Hubbell, toured as a musician across the West Coast, Midwest, and Hawaii, and has published several captivating novels including The Last Book, The Last Orange Grove, The Queen’s English, and Echoes Over Water.
Join us as we dive into the mind of a multidisciplinary artist who’s spent his life telling stories in every form imaginable. This is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
Stephen studied art under legendary sculptor James Hubbell, toured as a musician across the West Coast, Midwest, and Hawaii, and has published several captivating novels including The Last Book, The Last Orange Grove, The Queen’s English, and Echoes Over Water.
Join us as we dive into the mind of a multidisciplinary artist who’s spent his life telling stories in every form imaginable. This is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the winning literary show Off the Shelf
Books Talk Radio Live with host Denise Turney, author of
the books Long Walk Up, Porsche, Love, More Over Me,
Spiral Love Has Many Faces, and Rosetta Us Great Hope.
Turn up your dial and get ready for a blast
of feature author interviews, four one one on book festivals,
(00:21):
writing conferences, and so much more. Ready, let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome, Welcome to this Saturdays Off the Shelf. I always
like to start every show by saying, for our listeners
who've been with us for over eighteen years, I just
thank you and thank you and thank you. And if
this is your first time listening to Off the Show,
I just want to let you know that, yes, you
are listening to the winning book podcast show Off the Shelf,
(01:00):
and we're so happy to have.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
You here with us.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I want to start this show with a quote, and
this quote is source Anonymous. To bring about change, you
must not be afraid to take the first step. That's
what we often get stopped. To bring about change, you
must not be afraid to take the first step. You
got to be persistent and try new things, like our
(01:25):
awesome guest just did.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
For our show today.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
But before I introduce you to our show, I just
want to it is something that I've been doing for
We're gonna start it. Somebody gave me, gifted me some
journals for Christmas, and this is I'm going back probably
over two decades, and it's really life changing to get
your emotions out and thoughts and write down your dreams
(01:50):
and just capture your amazing life story.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So, if you value.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Journaling and you want to do that inner work and
the work where it's non defensive, it's something you can
read that really strikes a chord and there's no walls
up so it can do that good work. I do
encourage you you can get that through song, poetry, short
stories of writing snippets. If that's valuable to you, I
(02:19):
encourage you to get a copy of Hell Gorgeous Wisdom
Within You Knows the Way. You can get it in
paperback and I think it's also available in ebook and
maybe an.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Audiobook as well. I encourage you to get a copy
of He'll.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Gorgeous Wisdom Within You Knows the Way, Oh yours truly
Denise Turning Today and now jumbro jumroll, let us go
and meet our very special office Chef guests, and this
today's guest is Stephen Klein. Stephen is a multi talented artist.
He is a musician, photographer, composer, and book author by
(03:01):
creative and additionally, Stephen is a retired college professor who
taught creative writing in literature, he studied art, even working
in James Hubbles studio. And in addition to being a novelist,
Stephen has worked as a cartoonist and an illustrator, which
really could come in here, especially if you do those
(03:21):
I forget what they call those those novels, graphic novels.
And as a musician, he has performed across the West Coast,
the Midwest, and in Hawaii. And Stephen Klein is the
author of the novels The Last Book, The Last Orange Grove,
The Queen's English, and Echoes over Water. Please check Stephen
(03:44):
Klein out and as Klein with a C. Please check
Stephen Klin out online at Stephenklin dot com.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
St E p h E n C isn't cat l
i n e dot com and again st E p
h e n C l i n e dot com.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
We're just so happy to.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Have mister Kline join us on off the Shelf Books
this morning. Welcome to Off the Shelf, Stephen, Thank.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
You, thank you with a lovely introduction. Yeah, I'm super
happy to be here talking to you. Thanks for inviting
me and.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Glad to have you here. So as we kick off
this morning at the Today's show, can you tell Off
the Shelf listeners where you grew up and what life
was like for you growing up.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Sure, I grew up in Manhattan Beach, California, which would
usually when I tell people that, they go, oh, because
it's become a very you know, moneyed place. But when
I was growing up, it was just you know, middle class.
The town was half empty. It was largely peopled by
(04:56):
families where the dad had been in World World War
two and come back and building houses on the gi
Bill and uh so just lots of you know, middle
class families. This is in the fifties and sixties, and
in a beach town and lots of emptied lots, and
you know, we could walk to the beach and so
(05:16):
we had this very sort of beachy kind of life.
And uh my dad was a great swimmer and bodysurfer,
and so he had my brother and I on his
back bodysurfing when the tiny kids and so it was
a it was a really lovely childhood. Lots of families,
you know, and back in those safe days when you know,
you could jump on your bike and ride a couple
of miles away to play with your friends and there
(05:38):
were no worries.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
And my dad was he was a trumpet player. I
mean he had he had a real job, but he
was also a trumpet player. And when it was time
for us to come home for dinner, he would stand
on the front porch and play Revere, you know, a
bugle call, and you could hear it miles away when
time to go home.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Oh god, that sounds that sounds fun. I couldn't know.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
My dad I used to do this whistle and we
know when we were younger, time to go in? Or
what Stephen inspired your love for writing books?
Speaker 5 (06:19):
That's a good question. I would just say books. My
my parents were big readers. My mom was a psychology professor,
and but so she read all kinds of stuff and
she would periodically give me stuff that she thought I
was ready for some sci fi book. It's time you
read this, you know, and kind of worked me through stuff.
(06:41):
My dad loved historical fiction. And I remember when I
was I don't know, junior high, he gave me he
had this big collection of the Horatio Hornblower series of
historical English sailing novels and U and then so it
was it was a reading household. And in seventh grade
(07:05):
I read the complete Sherlock Holmes and and then our school,
my high school, was a really good public high school,
a really great lit so I had, you know, all
the all the classic literature through the years. And uh.
And then when I was in college, I was actually
(07:27):
majoring in history and and minoring in art, and so
I've been involved in art all my life. But then, uh,
then I transferred to to another school and I just
couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to major. And
and then I realized, well, you know, uh, in in
in a lit department, you get to read novels, you know,
(07:51):
so you get to read good books and then when
you talk about them, there's really no wrong answers. So
I thought, well, that sounds fun. So anyway, I've just
been immersed in in literature my whole life. And but
then I've gone on to have different jobs and stuff,
and and uh, after I got my BA. I realized
that you can't do too much with a BA in
(08:12):
English a lit. So I was at a lot of
other jobs. But then my mom talked me into going
back to school and and uh uh and getting my
master's and and I did that and and that's and
that's when I started teaching college, which is what she
told me. You know, you've got all these all these
you know, talents and stuff, but if you're a college professor,
(08:35):
you can you can use a lot of them, uh
in the in your job. But then you also have
a ton of free time to you know, in summers
and stuff to to you know stuff. So that's when
I got really into writing when I was in grad
school and and uh and then I started doing short
(09:02):
short pieces both. I mean, I wrote some academic stuff
that were published, and then I did a bunch of
fiction pieces that I had out, and then some non
fiction pieces. So I just got the ball rolling. But
it's all comes out of you know, my family home
(09:23):
and the reading and all my schooling. The reading, it's
just you know, language.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Okay, Now, how to studying and teaching writing influence your
actual novel writing?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Today?
Speaker 2 (09:38):
You studied it, you've taught it. How do you see
it influencing.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
The way you craft a novel today?
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Yeah, a good question. In grad school it was a
double major, and so literature for sure, but it was
also a rhetorican composition, which really helps getting a job
at a community college teaching composition. But it's the history
(10:06):
of rhetoric, is the history of writing, of communicating, of
developing ideas, and so reading all that, I was just
sort of immersed in that that processes and that those
ideas of developing, developing ideas, developing logic and that kind
(10:29):
of thing. But at this around that same time, I
received a National Dominance for the Humanities fellowship to go
study for summer the earliest versions of the Arthurian legends
that are based on Celtic stories out of Wales, and
(10:51):
they're really kind of primitive stories. They're not the sort
of the Arthur's stories that we've come to know. And
so that opened the door to Celtic mythology for me
and all these weird stories they have, and so that
kind of those two things, you know, the studying of
(11:12):
writing and how writing works and how it's put together,
the studying of literature, and then the study of Celtic mythology.
It was like these little doors were opening, and then
I started having ideas. And that process of having ideas
is really a lot of what the Last book is about.
(11:34):
So you know, then I just started following those ideas,
and as you were talking about in your intro about
journaling and stuff, I just started writing. You know, you
get these ideas and you go, oh, I don't know
what that is, but I'm going to write it down,
you know, and then it starts developing.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yes, can you introduce us to your novel, the Last Book?
And I love that title. Can you please give our
listeners an old review of the book. The book.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
It takes place just slightly into the future, not specified,
but just a little bit bumped up into the future.
And the reason I did that is so I can
introduce some more technology. So it's a college professor, surprise,
and his name is Charles and and he also is
(12:28):
a musician. You can see that a lot of times writers,
and I think I've heard another one of your speakers
talk about you know, you do draw from your personal experience,
so it's it's sort of a weird combination of of
autobiography and imagination. You know. So, so this this guy, Charles,
(12:49):
he's also a musician, but he's an English prophet. He
noodles around on guitar and he goes into this music
repair shop to get his guitar work done, and he
meets this elkly gentleman. Is. It's a real very old
world shop, you know, kind of dark and musty and
all these instruments everywhere, and this elderly gentleman greets him.
(13:10):
It's like an old world at Tilier. And so they
have this lovely conversation and they talk about stories. The
old guy is talking about stories, that that's what we
humans do. We do stories. And then and then Charles
is gone, huh, and the guy goes on to say, well,
you know, we go to work and we come home
(13:33):
and we tell our family or spouse whatever of our day,
a story of our day. And then we uh, you know,
in the evening we read a book or watch TV
stories and then and then we go to bed and
we dream what stories. So it's what we do. Humans do. Stories.
(13:54):
They get together, you know, how was your weekend and
what does your friend do? Tells you a story? So
we do st So they're having that conversation and they're
really hitting it off. And then the old guy gives
Charles this old book and says, I think you'd like
this here, read this, and he takes it home. And
the guy implies that it's a weird book, that there's
(14:16):
something mysterious about it, but we never really do know
the explanation of its mysteriousness. But he starts reading this
book and he reads a story that he really really likes,
and then he closes the book and he sees the
title on the cover of the book fade away, and
(14:39):
a new one pops up, and he opens a book.
It's a different story, and so he reads that and
it happens like three or four times that night. He's
just like, what the heck? This book is generating a
new story every time. And it happens that every time,
every story I really like. It's like it's really suited
to me. That's the property of the book. Every time
(15:02):
you open it up, new story. And somehow that story
just seems, you know, to sort of really be I
don't know, slanted toward the reader, not overtly, but subtly.
And so after a while he gets he gets it. He
(15:22):
starts feeling a little nervous about it. It's like, what's
the deal with this anyway, And so he goes to
visit the old guy who is sort of mysterious about it.
He comes home and the book is gone, and he
realizes that, oh, somebody has come in and stolen the book.
And then that just brings him into this whole a
(15:43):
sort of exciting, weird thing where finds out that different
people want that book for different reasons, and he ends
up sort of allying himself with the old guy's daughter
who's grown up with that book, and they they're both academics,
and they both love literature, and they both are very
(16:06):
into the mystery of literature, of creativity of and they
sort of identify with the different cultures that that talked
about muses, you know who you know, inspire the artists
to create. And but these other guys want the book
(16:30):
and their technology guys and they're trying to you know,
advance the world of technology or dependence on it, and
they think that the book will give them some sort
of image of the world that they're trying to create.
And so there's this whole cat and mouse kind of thing,
and you know, some some real I don't know, pretty
(16:53):
intense conflict stuff going on and bubbling underneath it is
is budding romance. But really the heart of the book,
the heart of my book is the mysteriousness of this
book and it comes to sort of symbolize for these
guys that it's like this ancient wellspring of creativity and
(17:17):
it comes in. And the other reason I pushed it
into the future a little bit is, you know, it's
coming at a time where people are reading fewer and
fewer long form books. And this comes from my own teaching.
You'd see these these students would come in and you say, well,
(17:40):
what was the last book you read? You know, and
they had all kind of like, uh, what did you
read in school? And it was like their responses were
getting thinner and thinner, And I had had the feeling
like some of these people the last book they read
was The Cat and the Hat, you know, So so
(18:02):
you know there was and that's probably you know, the
genesis of part of the book is that that sense
of like, well that and just living in you know,
the modern world. You know, you go anywhere and what
are people doing. They're looking at their phones, you know,
and they're reading, Yeah, but they're not reading anything long,
(18:23):
they're not reading Dickens, you know, so it's playing playing
with that. You know, we are on a sort of
a custom society societal change, and part of that change
is our larger use of technology and are decreased use
(18:48):
of really reading and writing for that matter, because now
you can you know, make a video, you know, yeah
next yea. So Charles goes on a couple of rants
during the book about this. You know, he's going, we're
becoming a post literate society, which you know you can
(19:13):
make an argument for. So anyway, that's that's you know,
that's that's the basis of the book.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Describe Charles Sutton.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
How does he you said, he's a college professor, what
drives him? What's his bo is his background like? And
who is this romantic interest in the story?
Speaker 5 (19:32):
Okay, well, he's he's a little bit anachronistic because he
is maybe of a certain age. Maybe he's like in
his late forties fifties. He does still sort of have
one foot in the sort of older ethos of of
(19:55):
as I grew up in and as I was telling
you earlier about going to schools where they were very
lit based and uh, being very much book culture, and
so that's kind of his background. But being having been
a professor for some time, he has seen that sort
(20:16):
of decline and feeling like his his job has changed
as well. It's not to teach the great literature, is
not to teach the time period so much. It's more
to teach the skills. And having been a I've taught
a lot of you know, like freshman camp, you know,
basic writing kinds of stuff, and and there is that
(20:40):
sort of sense of like, just you're here to teach
some basic skills. And so he struggles with that because
he'd really rather teach, you know, the bigger literary stuff.
And I've always felt myself is that people when people
read this book, they go, oh, your vocabulary is so big.
(21:02):
It's like, well, I don't know what to say about that.
I didn't ever study vocabulary, but I have a big vocabulary.
And it's because I grew up reading stuff. You know.
I mentioned Charles Dickens, you know, those those writers back
in the day, you know, you know they didn't mince words.
(21:23):
My yeah, and so you know I absorbed that, you know,
so I learned you know, sort of complex sentence structure
and stuff, not from my English classes, but from reading.
So anyway, he's he's sort of of that and uh
(21:44):
sort of mindset, and so he feels a bit conflicted
in his in his career and in a little dubious
about the changes in culture that seems so headlong, let's
race into the digital future and you know, and now AI,
you know, and never mind that the AI may may
(22:05):
replace humans. So he he has those feelings. So the
as as to the the romance thing, it's it's a
girl's name is Celeste, and she is the daughter of
the instrument and repair guy, mister Lafey, and so she
(22:26):
grew up with this book and so she's been struggling
against the the sort of tech thing too. She's she
she is an academic in in literature and in uh
lit cret as we call it, but she's also minored
in in technology and I T So her ex boyfriend
(22:52):
is this tech wizard and he turns out to be
a bad guy and and he's the guy that is
trying to get the book because he learned about it
from her, and so she ends up she's the one
that steals the book from Charles, but they end up
getting together and they sort of realize they're in some
kind of war against these guys, you know, and so
(23:13):
they team up to sort of try to you know,
subvert these tech guys in some of their more nefarious things.
And they are nefarious indeed. And so as they work together,
you know, they find, you know, through their commonalities that
they begin to have a relationship. But it's halting, and
(23:37):
she's conflicted as well, and it's not smooth sailing m interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Without giving the story away, do does anyone ever discover
why this story sheeps changing every time you go to
reread the last books?
Speaker 5 (23:56):
The answer simply is no, Oh wow. And and that's
and and the thing about you know, there there are
those who want to uh solve the puzzle, you know,
want to take the book apart or to figure it out,
and Charles and and so less they're more of like,
(24:19):
you know what, it's a mystery, and we're okay with that.
Miss There are mysteries in the world. And there is
paradox in the world where two things can be this
true at the same time that are otherwise seemingly mutually
uh exclusive or you know, contradictory, and so and and
(24:45):
that kind of gets back to what I'm talking about
earlier with where do ideas come from? Where you know,
what is it? You know you can't pin down imagination,
you can can't pinned down creativity. You know it is,
And so they're comfortable with that. Yeah, I mean it's
(25:07):
there's something sort of you know that polls that you
wanting to know. But ultimately they're like, you know, it's
a beautiful thing history and paradox and where the creativity
comes from. So and that part of that comes from
my own sense of like, I don't know. People say, well,
(25:28):
how can you be so creative? It's like, I don't know.
You know, you get ideas, but I have had. When
I was in grad school to tell you this quick
little story, I was working on my master's thesis, you know,
and you know, formal academic thing, and I was about
halfway through it and I was stuck, and you know,
(25:51):
just classic writer's block. I don't know where I'm going
at this deadline looming, and so I just went, I'm
just too fried to con I'm just gonna go take
a nice long, hot shower. And so I go in
the shower, and you know, you go in the shower
and there's all this steam, you can't see anything, and
there's all this noise, and in essence, you can't hear anything.
(26:14):
It's just white noise. And so your two main senses,
your eyes and your ears, are basically cut off. You know,
you're not using those in a hot shower. And then
for me, I store my tension in my neck, you know.
So I've got this hot water pouring down on my
neck and I'm just zoning out. And as I was,
after like five minutes, these little ideas started bubbling up
(26:36):
that would be helpful for my thesis. Boom bow, and
I'm like, oh, that's good, I'll remember that. And then
another one would pop up, and I link those together
and I write it a little sentence in my head,
and then I going, but I'm relaxing. I just you know,
lean back against the water. And finally I got so
many ideas I had to like jump out of the
shower write this stuff down, you know, soaking wet on
(27:00):
the on my bed. You know, when we can kind
of turn off that analytical part of our brain, the
left brain, whatever it is, and let the other side,
that creative, right braining kind of thing free reign, then
the ideas will come but I think you know, a
(27:21):
lot of times as writers, you know, we're a little
too critical, or we're trying to plan too much. I
know people who write that they're just hanging to this
this outline. You know, they've got it all mapped out,
and that doesn't leave a much room for serendipity, right.
(27:43):
Serendipity is like one of the best things ever. You know,
you're writing, and it's something excuse me, it's something I've
learned from James Hubble, the artist that I used to
work for. We were building this this building, this amazing
curvel linear artistic thing with all these stained glass windows.
(28:04):
It's a really amazing thing. And I was helping him
and I said, well, how much is this is planned?
I knew he had some he had some drawings and
he had a little model, and he goes, well, I
planted about two thirds. You got to know where the
electricity is going. And he goes, but that extra third
I leave unplanned because as you're working, an idea will
(28:29):
pop up, that will you'll go, oh we should do
this right here.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
And so you leave room for that serendipity. So anyway,
that's that's all that is fits into this sort of
this last book and it's mysteriousness it is. It is
that sort of right brain creative source.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Okay, now, what's happening at the start of your novel
Echoes over Water.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
Okay, let's see what happened at the start the story.
It's really a two. There are two stories in Echoes
over Water that over that go back and forth. One
is modern and the other is ancient. And so in
the modern story is some Californian guy is not really
(29:26):
happy with his with his job. He's been been divorced
and stuff, and he gets interested in his his roots
and he learns from his old family Bible, which we have.
We have in this old family Bible that goes back
has the birth and death in it and goes back
to the seventeen hundreds to Great Britain. The fascinating to
(29:47):
look at it. So he has one and he looks
at that and he decides he wants to go back
and research, you know, his his his forebears. And so
he signs up on a boat delivery service out of
Maine and they take this big motor sailor over to
(30:09):
Great Britain to get delivering this boat from Maine to
Great Britain, and so they go across the North Atlantic,
but the island hop so they go out of Maine,
they go to Newfoundland, they go to Greenland and Iceland
and then on over. So it's that story, and he
has adventures, he meets people across the way. Particularly he
(30:31):
meets a woman in Newfoundland who teaches him a lot
about Celtic mythology. So this gets back to that anyh
thing I learned about the Celtic mythology, So the other story.
So it goes on for a while, and you know,
his story goes on for maybe five chapters, at which
point it starts book two. And you're in Great Britain
(30:53):
and there's an ancient guy and the Saxon's you know,
we're kicking, you know, celts out and the ancient stories,
I mean, we still have. You could go into a
bookstore and get the Voyage of Saint Voyage of Saint Brendan,
(31:14):
and it's a it's a story that was written in
Latin that we still have, we just have. You can
get an English translation of it, and it tells the
story of these these these kelt guys leaving the British
Isles and these little boats and sailing to the west,
and they have all these adventures, they meet all these
(31:35):
weird things. And they go to an island where a
guy goes ashore and everybody's laughing, and he goes the
store and he's laughing too, and he gets back on
the boat and he can't remember why he was laughing.
And then they say, al On, this is in this
is in the Brendan story, and they describe they sailed
around the silver pillar in the sea, and you're going, oh,
(31:57):
that's trippy, and then you realize is oh iceberg. That's
how they described an iceberg. And so there are these
stories and they finally they get to this island of
m Hayne, the island of women, where immortality and happiness
and you know that kind of stuff. And it's also
(32:18):
called Avalon, and Avalon is the Isle of Apple's and
if you know you're you're King Arthur and stuff. He
you know, he goes to Avalon and and and the
Tolkien stories at the end, the elves they all go
over to the western aisles. So it's a persistent myth
(32:38):
in Celtic mythology that if you sail to the to
the west and south you get to you know, these
more period icicle islands and stuff. And so that's what
these guys are following. They've got Brendan's book and they
are sailing across the North Atlantic Island hopping Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland,
(33:02):
and at Newfoundland they encounter the Beothic Indians who were there.
So the two stories overlap. So one guy's going west
to east, the other guys going east to west, and
they aren't they aren't linked, but there is some ineffable
(33:27):
connection between these two guys. They have kind of similar
experiences and so you what you end up seeing is
the parallels and people in development. Barbara Tookman, the great historian,
She had a book called A Distant Mirror, meaning we
look into history, we find echoes, mirrors of how we are, conflicts,
(33:53):
we have the same sort of human universals that we
encounter people in the past encountered, and so you can
you can use the past as as a mirror to
our own experience. And so that's what that that whole
book is about.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Now, how long was he living in the United States?
He just wanted to research his family history. How long
was he Alan Griffin how long was he in the
United States when he just decided to take off to do.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
This island hopping and to study more about his own ancestors.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
He raised born and raised in California, you know, grew up,
had had a job, got married, and at some point,
you know, in his probably late thirties, that marriage falls apart.
He he loses his job. His life just kind of
(34:48):
falls apart, and he's like, well, now what And so
he realizes that he's, you know, he's sort of footloose
and rudderless, and so that's what he gets interested in
that and said, well, what the heck, there's no time
like the present. I'm going to go check this out.
So he research this boat delivery service.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Oh, without giving this story away echoes over water. Does
does Alan find what he's what he went after? Does
he find what he saw?
Speaker 5 (35:22):
Basically, yes, okay. I never like to write too neat
of an ending. You know, everybody kicks their feet up
and goes, yeah, that was great. So there's always a
little bit of ambiguity, but basically, yes.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Oh good, okay, okay, So he's he's satisfied at the
end of his story, at least somewhat now here's another
story of yours. You wrote with the two words the last,
and it is the last Orange Grove. Is this the
work of fiction or nonfiction?
Speaker 5 (35:53):
It's it's not. I mean, it's fiction. Yeah. All these
are novels.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Okay, can you give us an overview of the last?
Speaker 5 (36:01):
Yeah? This is actually the first book I wrote. And
as my mom said, when I was done, she said, Okay,
every writer needs the write their coming of age story.
You've done yours now, and I look forward to seeing
what you do nextg Mom. But it was my family
(36:22):
is well, I'm in Hawaii now, but my family was
in California since the eighteen eighties, and so that's pretty
early for you know, for white folks to be there anyway,
and so it's like four generations. And so that story
is about a guy growing up as I did, in
(36:46):
a little, you know, quiet beach community, and as Manhattan
Beach did. It sort of got discovered and it went
from a little quiet beach community to a pretty ostentatious,
crowded hip place. So he's he's trying to deal with
(37:06):
that now, just trying to accommodate the changes. And I
think we all do that. I heard another one of
your guests talking about her her childhood town, the little
town she grew up, and then she was talking about, oh,
it's all changed now, you know. It's all you know,
it's different than when we grew up, and it's a
whole different society, and it's much more crowded and built up.
(37:31):
And that's the same, you know. I know a lot
of people have had that experience. I've got some friends
that lived in Connecticut. They they worked in the city,
and they lived in Connecticut and went into the city,
but they were complaining and they're going, oh, my gosh,
Connecticut is getting so built up. And it's the same complaint,
(37:54):
you know. And it's probably the complaint that every generation makes,
you know. Young people nowadays, they just don't get it,
you know. Or I remember when I used to be
able to walk from the trees, you know. So it's
it has a bit of that, but you know, for
(38:15):
all that, it is a real societal shift. You know,
when you know, they say you can't go home again,
but you know, when home is unrecognizable and and that's
and and that happened in kind of an amplified way,
I think to Manhattan Bee. So I don't know, anybody
that I grew up with that could afford to live
(38:37):
in that town. And on top of that, all the
old houses they've all been bulldozed, and now there are
these mansions just cheeked by jowl. You know, we used
to you know, there used to be empty lots, you know,
all around us, and and everybody had a big yard
and the family played in the yard. And and now
the houses kind of take up the whole foot friend
(39:00):
of of a lot. And and you don't see the
kids racing around on bikes, you know, and and that
kind of thing. So the guy in that story, he's
just trying to process that and uh and and he's
a surfer and uh and still has connections to kind
(39:21):
of the local surfing community. But it's a it's a
it's a an area in flux and change.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
How are you able to end a story?
Speaker 2 (39:33):
And I'm wondering, if there's an older character and a
younger character who connect.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
How are you able to capture capture the.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Older history and its modern day California reality. And it's
one book, the last Orangebrow good question.
Speaker 5 (39:50):
Well, I'm older than I look, so I mean I
know a lot of that just from my own experience,
but all so, my parents grew up there. They grew
up in a part of Hollywood called Hancock Park, and
they moved down to the beach in nineteen forty four,
(40:11):
and people thought they were nuts because there was nothing
down there. Why would you go down there? And to
get there it was before freeways and stuff. You had
to go through countryside and farms and swamps, and so,
you know, their stories. I grew up hearing their stories.
And my dad's dad, my grandfather, he was a very
(40:34):
well known architect in la and so he built a
lot of municipal buildings and homes and things like the
Japanese Cultural Center and stuff like that. And his father Ross,
he was the first guy client to come to California,
(40:54):
and he was a regional manager for I think it
was the Wabash Railroad when they came in like eighteen eighty.
And in fact, on my wall up above me, I
can see I'm walking over to it now there's a
picture of these guys sitting in a Pullman car and
(41:17):
they you know, they're wearing natty suits, and my grandfather's
in the middle. He's clearly the you know, the kind
of the leader of the group, and standing nearby is
a little alarm agency. Is the colored waiter, you know,
the classic pullman, you know waiter. And so you know,
(41:37):
there's those stories as well that that I've drawn on plush.
If you grew up in California back in the day,
I don't know if they still do. In fifth grade
you studied the Spanish missions and Father Sarah and the
development of the Spanish missions, and so I've written on that.
(42:02):
I wrote a short story for a surfing publication about
about Father Sarah seeing these Indians canoe surf in central California.
But so I drew on that and did more research
about the Spaniards and that sort of filters through and
the Spanish rancho system, and so you know, I researched that,
(42:28):
and I have a friend who is the great great
great grandson of the Domingus clan who had a big
rancho in southern California. So you know, you take all
these things and throw them at a pot, you know,
and and sort of storm up and try to come
up with a story. And so that's basically what I did.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Okay, now you're both the Queen's English. It seems somewhat comedic.
Was that, and so why did you choose that particular
approach it.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
Uh, you know, I just I put that out. It's
just sitting on a on a site you can you
can find it online. Actually it's free now. But I
keep thinking I'm going to pull it back and and
and rework it a little bit. But it is a spoof,
and it is kind of a spoof on the English Department,
(43:26):
but it's it's it kind of is patterned after some
of the old medieval stories that were quite funny and body.
I'm thinking like Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, the Cameron,
which are stories there about the Cameron that when people
(43:50):
would would during the plague, they would leave the city
and go up into the uh you know, away from
the away from the contagion in the cities, and you know,
they would have all these kind of like sexy uh
interludes and stuff. And it's just so funny to read
these these stories that are that are a body like that,
(44:11):
but it's all in this really euphemistic language. And with
the other one.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
I also studied in grad school the the the Troubadours
who invented the sort of courtly love, the music of
courtly love, and you always think of it as being
so elevated, you know, love with the capital L.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
You know.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
But you but you start reading the lyrics and some
of them are really racy. You're like, wow, really and
so but but again, it's all in this kind of flowery,
convoluted euphemistic language. And so I just started writing this
spoof on you know, using those kinds of tropes. And
(44:56):
so it's it's set in the future and the the
US has had all kinds of geological change, and so
New York is now at the at the latitude of
like Florida, and so there's palm trees in Central Park
and it's no longer you know, our form of government.
(45:20):
It's uh, it's a kingdom or a queendom. And the
queen she's not only the governmental queen, but she is
also you know, kind of like in England where the
where the king or the queen they're they're also the
head of the Church of England. In this case she
is she is like the head of the English language.
(45:43):
And so she makes all these decisions, uh she and
she goes to progress through her through her realm and
has these uh, these sort of gatherings of the local communities,
and and people come and come to her and ask
if they can make different changes to the crazy English
language that we have. And it's real. It's just very
(46:07):
lighthearted and I don't know what else to say about it.
It's a funny adventure. There's a term for a kind
of a book that where the main character travels around,
like in Don Quixote. It's where don Quixote goes around
(46:29):
and has all these adventures, and the adventures are sort
of loosely connected by this journey, and that's called picuresque.
And so it's a picuresque lighthearted tale that you know,
has these these little body interludes and all this kind
of funny stuff. And there's a narrator who is super wordy,
(46:50):
you know, And so in terms of it being a
spoof on on the English department, I'm writing all these
really long, comvoluted sentences with parentheticals and stuff, and they're
all correct, but they sort of and this narrator is
is wordy and but discreet when you're saying, oh, well,
(47:11):
they disappeared in well, I won't tell you what happened
in Behind Closed Doors, but uh so, you know, it's
it's uh it's an amusing tale, but also in it
it's like throughout the book, I'm just name dropping pieces
(47:33):
of literature and characters right left and center. And I
have that I was just kind of going, you know,
as if I was writing for the English Department and said,
see if you get that reference, you know, get this reference,
I gotta get you on this one. And and so
throughout the the story and these places they go. In
one place, they finally get out to California and they
(47:57):
see all these people on the beast playing and and
and the queen realizes it's all these characters from from literature.
Speaker 4 (48:05):
You know.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
It's it's like it's the heaven of literary characters who
have died in books.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
You know.
Speaker 5 (48:12):
So it was great fun to write.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
It sounds like it.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Do you combine storytelling and music when you perform live
as a as a musician? Do you combine those two
storytelling and music in your life performances?
Speaker 5 (48:29):
I often do. There there is a bit of a
danger to that because a lot of times you'll hear
somebody performing and they'll say, well, I wrote this story
about blah blah blah, and they go on this long thing.
It's like just play the song, dude, you know, so
(48:51):
you know, I want to be careful about that. But
there are times where that that information can be any
number of things. It can be amusing, it can help
illuminate the song. There was one song that I have
(49:12):
called Sunset News and it came about from I was
sitting on a beach in Carpentria, California, and I was only,
I don't know, a few hundred yards away from this
old sycamore tree by this stream, and it is the
site where when the Spaniards came up the coast, they
(49:34):
found the Chu Mash Indians sitting there building a canoe
and they called it Carpenteria, which means the carpenter shop.
And so I was sitting there and I was imagining.
I was looking out at the ocean, and there's some
sailboats out there, and I was imagining what it must
have been like for those two Mash guys. They're sitting
(49:55):
there building their boat and they're looking out the sea
and one of them turns the other, Oh, dude, look
at the big boat. You know, you know what that's like.
You know, the same thing happened in Hawaii, and you
know happens you know all over and it's where you know,
one culture intersects with another culture, often too with bad results.
(50:19):
But it is a fascinating thing. Something I've always been
fascinated is is when two cultures come up against each
other and what happens, how they communicate, what misunderstandings they have,
and what languages they use. And like in Hawaiian, there's
a there's a pigeon. People speak Hawaiian pigeons combination of English, Hawaiian,
(50:46):
little Japanese, maybe a little Portuguese. And so people say, well,
you know, do you speak pigeon or they are talking pigeon.
Technically speaking, it's not a pigeon. A pigeon that has
been spoken by more than one generation is a creole,
like they speak in New Orleans. It starts out as
(51:07):
a bridge language between two groups that don't speak each
other's languages, and they craft a simplified version of both,
and so the verbs get stripped down, the articles and
conjunctions and all those kinds of things kind of get
stripped out, and you have a very sort of basic,
(51:29):
user friendly language. So anyway, I don't go into all
that detail. I'm going to tell the song. Sing that
song but I will say talk about sitting on the
beach and imagining what it was like for those guys,
because I want to put the the image in people's heads.
And for me, that is a big, big part. Whether
(51:51):
it's songwriting or it's writing novels, it's putting the imagery
in people's heads. So like when I'm writing, I'm thinking
about when I want to write, and I close my
eyes and I try to picture it, and you know,
I can get to the point where I'm watching it
like a movie and then I feel like, Okay, I'm
(52:14):
just going to transcribe that. And you can do that
with characters as well. You know, once your characters are developed,
they kind of take on their own personality and you
can close your eyes and listen to them talk. You know,
the way they might inflect the sentence, you know, their
attitudes who come through, and then you know the writer
(52:35):
is kind of described, you know, transcribing the stuff they're seeing.
It's exhausting, but you know, that's that's how I do it.
So I really tried to think in sort of cinematic terms.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Okay, now as we come start the close out Today show,
can you please share three to four steps Steven that
you personally have found to be effective at getting the
word out about books.
Speaker 5 (53:02):
Uh, well, you therefore, which I which I very much
appreciate it. It's been great talking to you. Other than that,
you know, that's not a part that I'm very good at.
You know, I'm really good at the creative side, but
I'm really not a salesman. So I tend to, you know,
(53:23):
push things and put things out on Facebook and and
do some marketing things like through Mascot. They have, you know,
a good department where they contact booksellers and and that
kind of thing. So that's helpful. Yeah. I have also
(53:44):
spoken at a couple of writing groups. So I was
one of the lead speakers at the Vashon Literary Festival
they had a couple of years ago up on Vashon,
I in Washington. And what else? I don't know. I
(54:08):
can't think of anything else.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
Are you working on any new books?
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Now that you can give us a glimpse into what
you're working on?
Speaker 5 (54:17):
People people ask me what's your what's your what's your
next book going to be? And I go appoint to
this book and I go, what's that say? They go
the last book? I go, yeah, that and sometimes there's
a there's a scene in Hamlet where Hamlet and Horatio
are teasing this guy who's sort of an officious guy
(54:38):
who's always using big words, and he stumbles to a halt,
and Horatio, I think it is, turns to Hamlet and says,
all his golden words are spent. Sometimes I feel like that,
oh my golden But because I do other things. What's
really I really like this is, you know, it is
(54:58):
such a huge task to write a book, and it
takes for me, it takes years, and so when I
get done, it's really nice to go, I'm going to
write a song. We'll take me a week. And so
right now I'm I'm kind of deep in that, and
I've been writing and recording stuff and that I'll be
putting out here pretty soon. And it's really fun because
(55:22):
my son is a really great musician and engineer and
he lives overseas and we collaborate. And his daughter, who's fifteen,
is just a stunningly good singer. Wow, Charlotte, she's singing
classical stuff. In fact, this last night in Singapore, her
(55:43):
school did Mozart's Requiem and she had a song. So
I've had her sing harmonies on some songs, and and
I just wrote it. She loves musical theater, so I
just I don't write musical theaters up. But I just
wrote a song that could be maybe you know, a
(56:03):
sort of a slow song and a musical theater kind
of thing. And I want her to sing it. And
so when she comes in summer, you know, we'll do that.
So that's what I'm doing now, apart from I mean,
instead of writing a book, which is so daunting.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
Oh wow, where can all the self listeners get a
copy of your books and your music?
Speaker 3 (56:22):
If you already do have some music, If.
Speaker 5 (56:25):
People go on that website, they can see I think
there are maybe six albums that are up there. But
if you go on Apple Music or iTunes or Spotify
and if you put in my name, there are a
lot of my albums out but also singles. But a
(56:46):
lot of people aren't doing albums anymore. They just release
singles because you know, we don't play on CDs anymore,
so it doesn't really have to be an album. So
if you if you type my name in like if
you go to say Apple music and but Stephen Klein artist,
you'll see a ton of my singles, both instrumentals and songs.
(57:07):
And then on Amazon you can find both this book,
Last Book and Echoes over Water. So those are some places. YouTube.
If you go on YouTube, I've got a ton of
music videos and stuff like that. Or as we see
in Hwai lat aut.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
Oh, my goodness, what a pleasure we have had the
absolute pleasure, full enjoy of having on here on off
the shelf books today Stephen Klein and that's client with
a C, and Stephen he is. Oh, he's very creative musician, photographer,
we didn't touch on photography, composer and book author and
some of the Novelty's written that we did discuss today,
(57:52):
or the last Book, the Last Orange Grove, The Queen's
English and Echoes over Water. And I encourage you to
check Steven. He's also a musician and as he just said,
he has music out here albums and singles. But please
check him out online at Stephen Klin dot com. S
T E p h e n c l i n
(58:14):
e dot com. Again, that's s T E p h
E n seasoncat l i n e dot com.
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Thank you so.
Speaker 5 (58:22):
Much, Yes, yes, connect and look for to.
Speaker 2 (58:30):
Your other music. As I tell you, our listeners, I
just thank you so much. You are incredible, You are amazing.
Go out and create a fabulous week in for yourself.
See you back here next Saturday on Off the Shelf
book Stephen. I'll send your link to the show when
it finishes.
Speaker 5 (58:48):
Streaming sounds great. Heloha, thank you, Bye bye.
You're listening to the winning literary show Off the Shelf
Books Talk Radio Live with host Denise Turney, author of
the books Long Walk Up, Porsche, Love, More Over Me,
Spiral Love Has Many Faces, and Rosetta Us Great Hope.
Turn up your dial and get ready for a blast
of feature author interviews, four one one on book festivals,
(00:21):
writing conferences, and so much more. Ready, let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome, Welcome to this Saturdays Off the Shelf. I always
like to start every show by saying, for our listeners
who've been with us for over eighteen years, I just
thank you and thank you and thank you. And if
this is your first time listening to Off the Show,
I just want to let you know that, yes, you
are listening to the winning book podcast show Off the Shelf,
(01:00):
and we're so happy to have.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
You here with us.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I want to start this show with a quote, and
this quote is source Anonymous. To bring about change, you
must not be afraid to take the first step. That's
what we often get stopped. To bring about change, you
must not be afraid to take the first step. You
got to be persistent and try new things, like our
(01:25):
awesome guest just did.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
For our show today.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
But before I introduce you to our show, I just
want to it is something that I've been doing for
We're gonna start it. Somebody gave me, gifted me some
journals for Christmas, and this is I'm going back probably
over two decades, and it's really life changing to get
your emotions out and thoughts and write down your dreams
(01:50):
and just capture your amazing life story.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So, if you value.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Journaling and you want to do that inner work and
the work where it's non defensive, it's something you can
read that really strikes a chord and there's no walls
up so it can do that good work. I do
encourage you you can get that through song, poetry, short
stories of writing snippets. If that's valuable to you, I
(02:19):
encourage you to get a copy of Hell Gorgeous Wisdom
Within You Knows the Way. You can get it in
paperback and I think it's also available in ebook and
maybe an.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Audiobook as well. I encourage you to get a copy
of He'll.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Gorgeous Wisdom Within You Knows the Way, Oh yours truly
Denise Turning Today and now jumbro jumroll, let us go
and meet our very special office Chef guests, and this
today's guest is Stephen Klein. Stephen is a multi talented artist.
He is a musician, photographer, composer, and book author by
(03:01):
creative and additionally, Stephen is a retired college professor who
taught creative writing in literature, he studied art, even working
in James Hubbles studio. And in addition to being a novelist,
Stephen has worked as a cartoonist and an illustrator, which
really could come in here, especially if you do those
(03:21):
I forget what they call those those novels, graphic novels.
And as a musician, he has performed across the West Coast,
the Midwest, and in Hawaii. And Stephen Klein is the
author of the novels The Last Book, The Last Orange Grove,
The Queen's English, and Echoes over Water. Please check Stephen
(03:44):
Klein out and as Klein with a C. Please check
Stephen Klin out online at Stephenklin dot com.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
St E p h E n C isn't cat l
i n e dot com and again st E p
h e n C l i n e dot com.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
We're just so happy to.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Have mister Kline join us on off the Shelf Books
this morning. Welcome to Off the Shelf, Stephen, Thank.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
You, thank you with a lovely introduction. Yeah, I'm super
happy to be here talking to you. Thanks for inviting
me and.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Glad to have you here. So as we kick off
this morning at the Today's show, can you tell Off
the Shelf listeners where you grew up and what life
was like for you growing up.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Sure, I grew up in Manhattan Beach, California, which would
usually when I tell people that, they go, oh, because
it's become a very you know, moneyed place. But when
I was growing up, it was just you know, middle class.
The town was half empty. It was largely peopled by
(04:56):
families where the dad had been in World World War
two and come back and building houses on the gi
Bill and uh so just lots of you know, middle
class families. This is in the fifties and sixties, and
in a beach town and lots of emptied lots, and
you know, we could walk to the beach and so
(05:16):
we had this very sort of beachy kind of life.
And uh my dad was a great swimmer and bodysurfer,
and so he had my brother and I on his
back bodysurfing when the tiny kids and so it was
a it was a really lovely childhood. Lots of families,
you know, and back in those safe days when you know,
you could jump on your bike and ride a couple
of miles away to play with your friends and there
(05:38):
were no worries.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
And my dad was he was a trumpet player. I
mean he had he had a real job, but he
was also a trumpet player. And when it was time
for us to come home for dinner, he would stand
on the front porch and play Revere, you know, a
bugle call, and you could hear it miles away when
time to go home.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Oh god, that sounds that sounds fun. I couldn't know.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
My dad I used to do this whistle and we
know when we were younger, time to go in? Or
what Stephen inspired your love for writing books?
Speaker 5 (06:19):
That's a good question. I would just say books. My
my parents were big readers. My mom was a psychology professor,
and but so she read all kinds of stuff and
she would periodically give me stuff that she thought I
was ready for some sci fi book. It's time you
read this, you know, and kind of worked me through stuff.
(06:41):
My dad loved historical fiction. And I remember when I
was I don't know, junior high, he gave me he
had this big collection of the Horatio Hornblower series of
historical English sailing novels and U and then so it
was it was a reading household. And in seventh grade
(07:05):
I read the complete Sherlock Holmes and and then our school,
my high school, was a really good public high school,
a really great lit so I had, you know, all
the all the classic literature through the years. And uh.
And then when I was in college, I was actually
(07:27):
majoring in history and and minoring in art, and so
I've been involved in art all my life. But then, uh,
then I transferred to to another school and I just
couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to major. And
and then I realized, well, you know, uh, in in
in a lit department, you get to read novels, you know,
(07:51):
so you get to read good books and then when
you talk about them, there's really no wrong answers. So
I thought, well, that sounds fun. So anyway, I've just
been immersed in in literature my whole life. And but
then I've gone on to have different jobs and stuff,
and and uh, after I got my BA. I realized
that you can't do too much with a BA in
(08:12):
English a lit. So I was at a lot of
other jobs. But then my mom talked me into going
back to school and and uh uh and getting my
master's and and I did that and and that's and
that's when I started teaching college, which is what she
told me. You know, you've got all these all these
you know, talents and stuff, but if you're a college professor,
(08:35):
you can you can use a lot of them, uh
in the in your job. But then you also have
a ton of free time to you know, in summers
and stuff to to you know stuff. So that's when
I got really into writing when I was in grad
school and and uh and then I started doing short
(09:02):
short pieces both. I mean, I wrote some academic stuff
that were published, and then I did a bunch of
fiction pieces that I had out, and then some non
fiction pieces. So I just got the ball rolling. But
it's all comes out of you know, my family home
(09:23):
and the reading and all my schooling. The reading, it's
just you know, language.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Okay, Now, how to studying and teaching writing influence your
actual novel writing?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Today?
Speaker 2 (09:38):
You studied it, you've taught it. How do you see
it influencing.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
The way you craft a novel today?
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Yeah, a good question. In grad school it was a
double major, and so literature for sure, but it was
also a rhetorican composition, which really helps getting a job
at a community college teaching composition. But it's the history
(10:06):
of rhetoric, is the history of writing, of communicating, of
developing ideas, and so reading all that, I was just
sort of immersed in that that processes and that those
ideas of developing, developing ideas, developing logic and that kind
(10:29):
of thing. But at this around that same time, I
received a National Dominance for the Humanities fellowship to go
study for summer the earliest versions of the Arthurian legends
that are based on Celtic stories out of Wales, and
(10:51):
they're really kind of primitive stories. They're not the sort
of the Arthur's stories that we've come to know. And
so that opened the door to Celtic mythology for me
and all these weird stories they have, and so that
kind of those two things, you know, the studying of
(11:12):
writing and how writing works and how it's put together,
the studying of literature, and then the study of Celtic mythology.
It was like these little doors were opening, and then
I started having ideas. And that process of having ideas
is really a lot of what the Last book is about.
(11:34):
So you know, then I just started following those ideas,
and as you were talking about in your intro about
journaling and stuff, I just started writing. You know, you
get these ideas and you go, oh, I don't know
what that is, but I'm going to write it down,
you know, and then it starts developing.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yes, can you introduce us to your novel, the Last Book?
And I love that title. Can you please give our
listeners an old review of the book. The book.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
It takes place just slightly into the future, not specified,
but just a little bit bumped up into the future.
And the reason I did that is so I can
introduce some more technology. So it's a college professor, surprise,
and his name is Charles and and he also is
(12:28):
a musician. You can see that a lot of times writers,
and I think I've heard another one of your speakers
talk about you know, you do draw from your personal experience,
so it's it's sort of a weird combination of of
autobiography and imagination. You know. So, so this this guy, Charles,
(12:49):
he's also a musician, but he's an English prophet. He
noodles around on guitar and he goes into this music
repair shop to get his guitar work done, and he
meets this elkly gentleman. Is. It's a real very old
world shop, you know, kind of dark and musty and
all these instruments everywhere, and this elderly gentleman greets him.
(13:10):
It's like an old world at Tilier. And so they
have this lovely conversation and they talk about stories. The
old guy is talking about stories, that that's what we
humans do. We do stories. And then and then Charles
is gone, huh, and the guy goes on to say, well,
you know, we go to work and we come home
(13:33):
and we tell our family or spouse whatever of our day,
a story of our day. And then we uh, you know,
in the evening we read a book or watch TV
stories and then and then we go to bed and
we dream what stories. So it's what we do. Humans do. Stories.
(13:54):
They get together, you know, how was your weekend and
what does your friend do? Tells you a story? So
we do st So they're having that conversation and they're
really hitting it off. And then the old guy gives
Charles this old book and says, I think you'd like
this here, read this, and he takes it home. And
the guy implies that it's a weird book, that there's
(14:16):
something mysterious about it, but we never really do know
the explanation of its mysteriousness. But he starts reading this
book and he reads a story that he really really likes,
and then he closes the book and he sees the
title on the cover of the book fade away, and
(14:39):
a new one pops up, and he opens a book.
It's a different story, and so he reads that and
it happens like three or four times that night. He's
just like, what the heck? This book is generating a
new story every time. And it happens that every time,
every story I really like. It's like it's really suited
to me. That's the property of the book. Every time
(15:02):
you open it up, new story. And somehow that story
just seems, you know, to sort of really be I
don't know, slanted toward the reader, not overtly, but subtly.
And so after a while he gets he gets it. He
(15:22):
starts feeling a little nervous about it. It's like, what's
the deal with this anyway, And so he goes to
visit the old guy who is sort of mysterious about it.
He comes home and the book is gone, and he
realizes that, oh, somebody has come in and stolen the book.
And then that just brings him into this whole a
(15:43):
sort of exciting, weird thing where finds out that different
people want that book for different reasons, and he ends
up sort of allying himself with the old guy's daughter
who's grown up with that book, and they they're both academics,
and they both love literature, and they both are very
(16:06):
into the mystery of literature, of creativity of and they
sort of identify with the different cultures that that talked
about muses, you know who you know, inspire the artists
to create. And but these other guys want the book
(16:30):
and their technology guys and they're trying to you know,
advance the world of technology or dependence on it, and
they think that the book will give them some sort
of image of the world that they're trying to create.
And so there's this whole cat and mouse kind of thing,
and you know, some some real I don't know, pretty
(16:53):
intense conflict stuff going on and bubbling underneath it is
is budding romance. But really the heart of the book,
the heart of my book is the mysteriousness of this
book and it comes to sort of symbolize for these
guys that it's like this ancient wellspring of creativity and
(17:17):
it comes in. And the other reason I pushed it
into the future a little bit is, you know, it's
coming at a time where people are reading fewer and
fewer long form books. And this comes from my own teaching.
You'd see these these students would come in and you say, well,
(17:40):
what was the last book you read? You know, and
they had all kind of like, uh, what did you
read in school? And it was like their responses were
getting thinner and thinner, And I had had the feeling
like some of these people the last book they read
was The Cat and the Hat, you know, So so
(18:02):
you know there was and that's probably you know, the
genesis of part of the book is that that sense
of like, well that and just living in you know,
the modern world. You know, you go anywhere and what
are people doing. They're looking at their phones, you know,
and they're reading, Yeah, but they're not reading anything long,
(18:23):
they're not reading Dickens, you know, so it's playing playing
with that. You know, we are on a sort of
a custom society societal change, and part of that change
is our larger use of technology and are decreased use
(18:48):
of really reading and writing for that matter, because now
you can you know, make a video, you know, yeah
next yea. So Charles goes on a couple of rants
during the book about this. You know, he's going, we're
becoming a post literate society, which you know you can
(19:13):
make an argument for. So anyway, that's that's you know,
that's that's the basis of the book.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Describe Charles Sutton.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
How does he you said, he's a college professor, what
drives him? What's his bo is his background like? And
who is this romantic interest in the story?
Speaker 5 (19:32):
Okay, well, he's he's a little bit anachronistic because he
is maybe of a certain age. Maybe he's like in
his late forties fifties. He does still sort of have
one foot in the sort of older ethos of of
(19:55):
as I grew up in and as I was telling
you earlier about going to schools where they were very
lit based and uh, being very much book culture, and
so that's kind of his background. But being having been
a professor for some time, he has seen that sort
(20:16):
of decline and feeling like his his job has changed
as well. It's not to teach the great literature, is
not to teach the time period so much. It's more
to teach the skills. And having been a I've taught
a lot of you know, like freshman camp, you know,
basic writing kinds of stuff, and and there is that
(20:40):
sort of sense of like, just you're here to teach
some basic skills. And so he struggles with that because
he'd really rather teach, you know, the bigger literary stuff.
And I've always felt myself is that people when people
read this book, they go, oh, your vocabulary is so big.
(21:02):
It's like, well, I don't know what to say about that.
I didn't ever study vocabulary, but I have a big vocabulary.
And it's because I grew up reading stuff. You know.
I mentioned Charles Dickens, you know, those those writers back
in the day, you know, you know they didn't mince words.
(21:23):
My yeah, and so you know I absorbed that, you know,
so I learned you know, sort of complex sentence structure
and stuff, not from my English classes, but from reading.
So anyway, he's he's sort of of that and uh
(21:44):
sort of mindset, and so he feels a bit conflicted
in his in his career and in a little dubious
about the changes in culture that seems so headlong, let's
race into the digital future and you know, and now AI,
you know, and never mind that the AI may may
(22:05):
replace humans. So he he has those feelings. So the
as as to the the romance thing, it's it's a
girl's name is Celeste, and she is the daughter of
the instrument and repair guy, mister Lafey, and so she
(22:26):
grew up with this book and so she's been struggling
against the the sort of tech thing too. She's she
she is an academic in in literature and in uh
lit cret as we call it, but she's also minored
in in technology and I T So her ex boyfriend
(22:52):
is this tech wizard and he turns out to be
a bad guy and and he's the guy that is
trying to get the book because he learned about it
from her, and so she ends up she's the one
that steals the book from Charles, but they end up
getting together and they sort of realize they're in some
kind of war against these guys, you know, and so
(23:13):
they team up to sort of try to you know,
subvert these tech guys in some of their more nefarious things.
And they are nefarious indeed. And so as they work together,
you know, they find, you know, through their commonalities that
they begin to have a relationship. But it's halting, and
(23:37):
she's conflicted as well, and it's not smooth sailing m interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Without giving the story away, do does anyone ever discover
why this story sheeps changing every time you go to
reread the last books?
Speaker 5 (23:56):
The answer simply is no, Oh wow. And and that's
and and the thing about you know, there there are
those who want to uh solve the puzzle, you know,
want to take the book apart or to figure it out,
and Charles and and so less they're more of like,
(24:19):
you know what, it's a mystery, and we're okay with that.
Miss There are mysteries in the world. And there is
paradox in the world where two things can be this
true at the same time that are otherwise seemingly mutually
uh exclusive or you know, contradictory, and so and and
(24:45):
that kind of gets back to what I'm talking about
earlier with where do ideas come from? Where you know,
what is it? You know you can't pin down imagination,
you can can't pinned down creativity. You know it is,
And so they're comfortable with that. Yeah, I mean it's
(25:07):
there's something sort of you know that polls that you
wanting to know. But ultimately they're like, you know, it's
a beautiful thing history and paradox and where the creativity
comes from. So and that part of that comes from
my own sense of like, I don't know. People say, well,
(25:28):
how can you be so creative? It's like, I don't know.
You know, you get ideas, but I have had. When
I was in grad school to tell you this quick
little story, I was working on my master's thesis, you know,
and you know, formal academic thing, and I was about
halfway through it and I was stuck, and you know,
(25:51):
just classic writer's block. I don't know where I'm going
at this deadline looming, and so I just went, I'm
just too fried to con I'm just gonna go take
a nice long, hot shower. And so I go in
the shower, and you know, you go in the shower
and there's all this steam, you can't see anything, and
there's all this noise, and in essence, you can't hear anything.
(26:14):
It's just white noise. And so your two main senses,
your eyes and your ears, are basically cut off. You know,
you're not using those in a hot shower. And then
for me, I store my tension in my neck, you know.
So I've got this hot water pouring down on my
neck and I'm just zoning out. And as I was,
after like five minutes, these little ideas started bubbling up
(26:36):
that would be helpful for my thesis. Boom bow, and
I'm like, oh, that's good, I'll remember that. And then
another one would pop up, and I link those together
and I write it a little sentence in my head,
and then I going, but I'm relaxing. I just you know,
lean back against the water. And finally I got so
many ideas I had to like jump out of the
shower write this stuff down, you know, soaking wet on
(27:00):
the on my bed. You know, when we can kind
of turn off that analytical part of our brain, the
left brain, whatever it is, and let the other side,
that creative, right braining kind of thing free reign, then
the ideas will come but I think you know, a
(27:21):
lot of times as writers, you know, we're a little
too critical, or we're trying to plan too much. I
know people who write that they're just hanging to this
this outline. You know, they've got it all mapped out,
and that doesn't leave a much room for serendipity, right.
(27:43):
Serendipity is like one of the best things ever. You know,
you're writing, and it's something excuse me, it's something I've
learned from James Hubble, the artist that I used to
work for. We were building this this building, this amazing
curvel linear artistic thing with all these stained glass windows.
(28:04):
It's a really amazing thing. And I was helping him
and I said, well, how much is this is planned?
I knew he had some he had some drawings and
he had a little model, and he goes, well, I
planted about two thirds. You got to know where the
electricity is going. And he goes, but that extra third
I leave unplanned because as you're working, an idea will
(28:29):
pop up, that will you'll go, oh we should do
this right here.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
And so you leave room for that serendipity. So anyway,
that's that's all that is fits into this sort of
this last book and it's mysteriousness it is. It is
that sort of right brain creative source.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Okay, now, what's happening at the start of your novel
Echoes over Water.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
Okay, let's see what happened at the start the story.
It's really a two. There are two stories in Echoes
over Water that over that go back and forth. One
is modern and the other is ancient. And so in
the modern story is some Californian guy is not really
(29:26):
happy with his with his job. He's been been divorced
and stuff, and he gets interested in his his roots
and he learns from his old family Bible, which we have.
We have in this old family Bible that goes back
has the birth and death in it and goes back
to the seventeen hundreds to Great Britain. The fascinating to
(29:47):
look at it. So he has one and he looks
at that and he decides he wants to go back
and research, you know, his his his forebears. And so
he signs up on a boat delivery service out of
Maine and they take this big motor sailor over to
(30:09):
Great Britain to get delivering this boat from Maine to
Great Britain, and so they go across the North Atlantic,
but the island hop so they go out of Maine,
they go to Newfoundland, they go to Greenland and Iceland
and then on over. So it's that story, and he
has adventures, he meets people across the way. Particularly he
(30:31):
meets a woman in Newfoundland who teaches him a lot
about Celtic mythology. So this gets back to that anyh
thing I learned about the Celtic mythology, So the other story.
So it goes on for a while, and you know,
his story goes on for maybe five chapters, at which
point it starts book two. And you're in Great Britain
(30:53):
and there's an ancient guy and the Saxon's you know,
we're kicking, you know, celts out and the ancient stories,
I mean, we still have. You could go into a
bookstore and get the Voyage of Saint Voyage of Saint Brendan,
(31:14):
and it's a it's a story that was written in
Latin that we still have, we just have. You can
get an English translation of it, and it tells the
story of these these these kelt guys leaving the British
Isles and these little boats and sailing to the west,
and they have all these adventures, they meet all these
(31:35):
weird things. And they go to an island where a
guy goes ashore and everybody's laughing, and he goes the
store and he's laughing too, and he gets back on
the boat and he can't remember why he was laughing.
And then they say, al On, this is in this
is in the Brendan story, and they describe they sailed
around the silver pillar in the sea, and you're going, oh,
(31:57):
that's trippy, and then you realize is oh iceberg. That's
how they described an iceberg. And so there are these
stories and they finally they get to this island of
m Hayne, the island of women, where immortality and happiness
and you know that kind of stuff. And it's also
(32:18):
called Avalon, and Avalon is the Isle of Apple's and
if you know you're you're King Arthur and stuff. He
you know, he goes to Avalon and and and the
Tolkien stories at the end, the elves they all go
over to the western aisles. So it's a persistent myth
(32:38):
in Celtic mythology that if you sail to the to
the west and south you get to you know, these
more period icicle islands and stuff. And so that's what
these guys are following. They've got Brendan's book and they
are sailing across the North Atlantic Island hopping Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland,
(33:02):
and at Newfoundland they encounter the Beothic Indians who were there.
So the two stories overlap. So one guy's going west
to east, the other guys going east to west, and
they aren't they aren't linked, but there is some ineffable
(33:27):
connection between these two guys. They have kind of similar
experiences and so you what you end up seeing is
the parallels and people in development. Barbara Tookman, the great historian,
She had a book called A Distant Mirror, meaning we
look into history, we find echoes, mirrors of how we are, conflicts,
(33:53):
we have the same sort of human universals that we
encounter people in the past encountered, and so you can
you can use the past as as a mirror to
our own experience. And so that's what that that whole
book is about.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Now, how long was he living in the United States?
He just wanted to research his family history. How long
was he Alan Griffin how long was he in the
United States when he just decided to take off to do.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
This island hopping and to study more about his own ancestors.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
He raised born and raised in California, you know, grew up,
had had a job, got married, and at some point,
you know, in his probably late thirties, that marriage falls apart.
He he loses his job. His life just kind of
(34:48):
falls apart, and he's like, well, now what And so
he realizes that he's, you know, he's sort of footloose
and rudderless, and so that's what he gets interested in
that and said, well, what the heck, there's no time
like the present. I'm going to go check this out.
So he research this boat delivery service.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Oh, without giving this story away echoes over water. Does
does Alan find what he's what he went after? Does
he find what he saw?
Speaker 5 (35:22):
Basically, yes, okay. I never like to write too neat
of an ending. You know, everybody kicks their feet up
and goes, yeah, that was great. So there's always a
little bit of ambiguity, but basically, yes.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Oh good, okay, okay, So he's he's satisfied at the
end of his story, at least somewhat now here's another
story of yours. You wrote with the two words the last,
and it is the last Orange Grove. Is this the
work of fiction or nonfiction?
Speaker 5 (35:53):
It's it's not. I mean, it's fiction. Yeah. All these
are novels.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Okay, can you give us an overview of the last?
Speaker 5 (36:01):
Yeah? This is actually the first book I wrote. And
as my mom said, when I was done, she said, Okay,
every writer needs the write their coming of age story.
You've done yours now, and I look forward to seeing
what you do nextg Mom. But it was my family
(36:22):
is well, I'm in Hawaii now, but my family was
in California since the eighteen eighties, and so that's pretty
early for you know, for white folks to be there anyway,
and so it's like four generations. And so that story
is about a guy growing up as I did, in
(36:46):
a little, you know, quiet beach community, and as Manhattan
Beach did. It sort of got discovered and it went
from a little quiet beach community to a pretty ostentatious,
crowded hip place. So he's he's trying to deal with
(37:06):
that now, just trying to accommodate the changes. And I
think we all do that. I heard another one of
your guests talking about her her childhood town, the little
town she grew up, and then she was talking about, oh,
it's all changed now, you know. It's all you know,
it's different than when we grew up, and it's a
whole different society, and it's much more crowded and built up.
(37:31):
And that's the same, you know. I know a lot
of people have had that experience. I've got some friends
that lived in Connecticut. They they worked in the city,
and they lived in Connecticut and went into the city,
but they were complaining and they're going, oh, my gosh,
Connecticut is getting so built up. And it's the same complaint,
(37:54):
you know. And it's probably the complaint that every generation makes,
you know. Young people nowadays, they just don't get it,
you know. Or I remember when I used to be
able to walk from the trees, you know. So it's
it has a bit of that, but you know, for
(38:15):
all that, it is a real societal shift. You know,
when you know, they say you can't go home again,
but you know, when home is unrecognizable and and that's
and and that happened in kind of an amplified way,
I think to Manhattan Bee. So I don't know, anybody
that I grew up with that could afford to live
(38:37):
in that town. And on top of that, all the
old houses they've all been bulldozed, and now there are
these mansions just cheeked by jowl. You know, we used
to you know, there used to be empty lots, you know,
all around us, and and everybody had a big yard
and the family played in the yard. And and now
the houses kind of take up the whole foot friend
(39:00):
of of a lot. And and you don't see the
kids racing around on bikes, you know, and and that
kind of thing. So the guy in that story, he's
just trying to process that and uh and and he's
a surfer and uh and still has connections to kind
(39:21):
of the local surfing community. But it's a it's a
it's a an area in flux and change.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
How are you able to end a story?
Speaker 2 (39:33):
And I'm wondering, if there's an older character and a
younger character who connect.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
How are you able to capture capture the.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Older history and its modern day California reality. And it's
one book, the last Orangebrow good question.
Speaker 5 (39:50):
Well, I'm older than I look, so I mean I
know a lot of that just from my own experience,
but all so, my parents grew up there. They grew
up in a part of Hollywood called Hancock Park, and
they moved down to the beach in nineteen forty four,
(40:11):
and people thought they were nuts because there was nothing
down there. Why would you go down there? And to
get there it was before freeways and stuff. You had
to go through countryside and farms and swamps, and so,
you know, their stories. I grew up hearing their stories.
And my dad's dad, my grandfather, he was a very
(40:34):
well known architect in la and so he built a
lot of municipal buildings and homes and things like the
Japanese Cultural Center and stuff like that. And his father Ross,
he was the first guy client to come to California,
(40:54):
and he was a regional manager for I think it
was the Wabash Railroad when they came in like eighteen eighty.
And in fact, on my wall up above me, I
can see I'm walking over to it now there's a
picture of these guys sitting in a Pullman car and
(41:17):
they you know, they're wearing natty suits, and my grandfather's
in the middle. He's clearly the you know, the kind
of the leader of the group, and standing nearby is
a little alarm agency. Is the colored waiter, you know,
the classic pullman, you know waiter. And so you know,
(41:37):
there's those stories as well that that I've drawn on plush.
If you grew up in California back in the day,
I don't know if they still do. In fifth grade
you studied the Spanish missions and Father Sarah and the
development of the Spanish missions, and so I've written on that.
(42:02):
I wrote a short story for a surfing publication about
about Father Sarah seeing these Indians canoe surf in central California.
But so I drew on that and did more research
about the Spaniards and that sort of filters through and
the Spanish rancho system, and so you know, I researched that,
(42:28):
and I have a friend who is the great great
great grandson of the Domingus clan who had a big
rancho in southern California. So you know, you take all
these things and throw them at a pot, you know,
and and sort of storm up and try to come
up with a story. And so that's basically what I did.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Okay, now you're both the Queen's English. It seems somewhat comedic.
Was that, and so why did you choose that particular
approach it.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
Uh, you know, I just I put that out. It's
just sitting on a on a site you can you
can find it online. Actually it's free now. But I
keep thinking I'm going to pull it back and and
and rework it a little bit. But it is a spoof,
and it is kind of a spoof on the English Department,
(43:26):
but it's it's it kind of is patterned after some
of the old medieval stories that were quite funny and body.
I'm thinking like Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, the Cameron,
which are stories there about the Cameron that when people
(43:50):
would would during the plague, they would leave the city
and go up into the uh you know, away from
the away from the contagion in the cities, and you know,
they would have all these kind of like sexy uh
interludes and stuff. And it's just so funny to read
these these stories that are that are a body like that,
(44:11):
but it's all in this really euphemistic language. And with
the other one.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
I also studied in grad school the the the Troubadours
who invented the sort of courtly love, the music of
courtly love, and you always think of it as being
so elevated, you know, love with the capital L.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
You know.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
But you but you start reading the lyrics and some
of them are really racy. You're like, wow, really and
so but but again, it's all in this kind of flowery,
convoluted euphemistic language. And so I just started writing this
spoof on you know, using those kinds of tropes. And
(44:56):
so it's it's set in the future and the the
US has had all kinds of geological change, and so
New York is now at the at the latitude of
like Florida, and so there's palm trees in Central Park
and it's no longer you know, our form of government.
(45:20):
It's uh, it's a kingdom or a queendom. And the
queen she's not only the governmental queen, but she is
also you know, kind of like in England where the
where the king or the queen they're they're also the
head of the Church of England. In this case she
is she is like the head of the English language.
(45:43):
And so she makes all these decisions, uh she and
she goes to progress through her through her realm and
has these uh, these sort of gatherings of the local communities,
and and people come and come to her and ask
if they can make different changes to the crazy English
language that we have. And it's real. It's just very
(46:07):
lighthearted and I don't know what else to say about it.
It's a funny adventure. There's a term for a kind
of a book that where the main character travels around,
like in Don Quixote. It's where don Quixote goes around
(46:29):
and has all these adventures, and the adventures are sort
of loosely connected by this journey, and that's called picuresque.
And so it's a picuresque lighthearted tale that you know,
has these these little body interludes and all this kind
of funny stuff. And there's a narrator who is super wordy,
(46:50):
you know, And so in terms of it being a
spoof on on the English department, I'm writing all these
really long, comvoluted sentences with parentheticals and stuff, and they're
all correct, but they sort of and this narrator is
is wordy and but discreet when you're saying, oh, well,
(47:11):
they disappeared in well, I won't tell you what happened
in Behind Closed Doors, but uh so, you know, it's
it's uh it's an amusing tale, but also in it
it's like throughout the book, I'm just name dropping pieces
(47:33):
of literature and characters right left and center. And I
have that I was just kind of going, you know,
as if I was writing for the English Department and said,
see if you get that reference, you know, get this reference,
I gotta get you on this one. And and so
throughout the the story and these places they go. In
one place, they finally get out to California and they
(47:57):
see all these people on the beast playing and and
and the queen realizes it's all these characters from from literature.
Speaker 4 (48:05):
You know.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
It's it's like it's the heaven of literary characters who
have died in books.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
You know.
Speaker 5 (48:12):
So it was great fun to write.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
It sounds like it.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Do you combine storytelling and music when you perform live
as a as a musician? Do you combine those two
storytelling and music in your life performances?
Speaker 5 (48:29):
I often do. There there is a bit of a
danger to that because a lot of times you'll hear
somebody performing and they'll say, well, I wrote this story
about blah blah blah, and they go on this long thing.
It's like just play the song, dude, you know, so
(48:51):
you know, I want to be careful about that. But
there are times where that that information can be any
number of things. It can be amusing, it can help
illuminate the song. There was one song that I have
(49:12):
called Sunset News and it came about from I was
sitting on a beach in Carpentria, California, and I was only,
I don't know, a few hundred yards away from this
old sycamore tree by this stream, and it is the
site where when the Spaniards came up the coast, they
(49:34):
found the Chu Mash Indians sitting there building a canoe
and they called it Carpenteria, which means the carpenter shop.
And so I was sitting there and I was imagining.
I was looking out at the ocean, and there's some
sailboats out there, and I was imagining what it must
have been like for those two Mash guys. They're sitting
(49:55):
there building their boat and they're looking out the sea
and one of them turns the other, Oh, dude, look
at the big boat. You know, you know what that's like.
You know, the same thing happened in Hawaii, and you
know happens you know all over and it's where you know,
one culture intersects with another culture, often too with bad results.
(50:19):
But it is a fascinating thing. Something I've always been
fascinated is is when two cultures come up against each
other and what happens, how they communicate, what misunderstandings they have,
and what languages they use. And like in Hawaiian, there's
a there's a pigeon. People speak Hawaiian pigeons combination of English, Hawaiian,
(50:46):
little Japanese, maybe a little Portuguese. And so people say, well,
you know, do you speak pigeon or they are talking pigeon.
Technically speaking, it's not a pigeon. A pigeon that has
been spoken by more than one generation is a creole,
like they speak in New Orleans. It starts out as
(51:07):
a bridge language between two groups that don't speak each
other's languages, and they craft a simplified version of both,
and so the verbs get stripped down, the articles and
conjunctions and all those kinds of things kind of get
stripped out, and you have a very sort of basic,
(51:29):
user friendly language. So anyway, I don't go into all
that detail. I'm going to tell the song. Sing that
song but I will say talk about sitting on the
beach and imagining what it was like for those guys,
because I want to put the the image in people's heads.
And for me, that is a big, big part. Whether
(51:51):
it's songwriting or it's writing novels, it's putting the imagery
in people's heads. So like when I'm writing, I'm thinking
about when I want to write, and I close my
eyes and I try to picture it, and you know,
I can get to the point where I'm watching it
like a movie and then I feel like, Okay, I'm
(52:14):
just going to transcribe that. And you can do that
with characters as well. You know, once your characters are developed,
they kind of take on their own personality and you
can close your eyes and listen to them talk. You know,
the way they might inflect the sentence, you know, their
attitudes who come through, and then you know the writer
(52:35):
is kind of described, you know, transcribing the stuff they're seeing.
It's exhausting, but you know, that's that's how I do it.
So I really tried to think in sort of cinematic terms.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Okay, now as we come start the close out Today show,
can you please share three to four steps Steven that
you personally have found to be effective at getting the
word out about books.
Speaker 5 (53:02):
Uh, well, you therefore, which I which I very much
appreciate it. It's been great talking to you. Other than that,
you know, that's not a part that I'm very good at.
You know, I'm really good at the creative side, but
I'm really not a salesman. So I tend to, you know,
(53:23):
push things and put things out on Facebook and and
do some marketing things like through Mascot. They have, you know,
a good department where they contact booksellers and and that
kind of thing. So that's helpful. Yeah. I have also
(53:44):
spoken at a couple of writing groups. So I was
one of the lead speakers at the Vashon Literary Festival
they had a couple of years ago up on Vashon,
I in Washington. And what else? I don't know. I
(54:08):
can't think of anything else.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
Are you working on any new books?
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Now that you can give us a glimpse into what
you're working on?
Speaker 5 (54:17):
People people ask me what's your what's your what's your
next book going to be? And I go appoint to
this book and I go, what's that say? They go
the last book? I go, yeah, that and sometimes there's
a there's a scene in Hamlet where Hamlet and Horatio
are teasing this guy who's sort of an officious guy
(54:38):
who's always using big words, and he stumbles to a halt,
and Horatio, I think it is, turns to Hamlet and says,
all his golden words are spent. Sometimes I feel like that,
oh my golden But because I do other things. What's
really I really like this is, you know, it is
(54:58):
such a huge task to write a book, and it
takes for me, it takes years, and so when I
get done, it's really nice to go, I'm going to
write a song. We'll take me a week. And so
right now I'm I'm kind of deep in that, and
I've been writing and recording stuff and that I'll be
putting out here pretty soon. And it's really fun because
(55:22):
my son is a really great musician and engineer and
he lives overseas and we collaborate. And his daughter, who's fifteen,
is just a stunningly good singer. Wow, Charlotte, she's singing
classical stuff. In fact, this last night in Singapore, her
(55:43):
school did Mozart's Requiem and she had a song. So
I've had her sing harmonies on some songs, and and
I just wrote it. She loves musical theater, so I
just I don't write musical theaters up. But I just
wrote a song that could be maybe you know, a
(56:03):
sort of a slow song and a musical theater kind
of thing. And I want her to sing it. And
so when she comes in summer, you know, we'll do that.
So that's what I'm doing now, apart from I mean,
instead of writing a book, which is so daunting.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
Oh wow, where can all the self listeners get a
copy of your books and your music?
Speaker 3 (56:22):
If you already do have some music, If.
Speaker 5 (56:25):
People go on that website, they can see I think
there are maybe six albums that are up there. But
if you go on Apple Music or iTunes or Spotify
and if you put in my name, there are a
lot of my albums out but also singles. But a
(56:46):
lot of people aren't doing albums anymore. They just release
singles because you know, we don't play on CDs anymore,
so it doesn't really have to be an album. So
if you if you type my name in like if
you go to say Apple music and but Stephen Klein artist,
you'll see a ton of my singles, both instrumentals and songs.
(57:07):
And then on Amazon you can find both this book,
Last Book and Echoes over Water. So those are some places. YouTube.
If you go on YouTube, I've got a ton of
music videos and stuff like that. Or as we see
in Hwai lat aut.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
Oh, my goodness, what a pleasure we have had the
absolute pleasure, full enjoy of having on here on off
the shelf books today Stephen Klein and that's client with
a C, and Stephen he is. Oh, he's very creative musician, photographer,
we didn't touch on photography, composer and book author and
some of the Novelty's written that we did discuss today,
(57:52):
or the last Book, the Last Orange Grove, The Queen's
English and Echoes over Water. And I encourage you to
check Steven. He's also a musician and as he just said,
he has music out here albums and singles. But please
check him out online at Stephen Klin dot com. S
T E p h e n c l i n
(58:14):
e dot com. Again, that's s T E p h
E n seasoncat l i n e dot com.
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Thank you so.
Speaker 5 (58:22):
Much, Yes, yes, connect and look for to.
Speaker 2 (58:30):
Your other music. As I tell you, our listeners, I
just thank you so much. You are incredible, You are amazing.
Go out and create a fabulous week in for yourself.
See you back here next Saturday on Off the Shelf
book Stephen. I'll send your link to the show when
it finishes.
Speaker 5 (58:48):
Streaming sounds great. Heloha, thank you, Bye bye.
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