Peter Ferry, author of Travel Writing, Anne Roiphe, author of Epilogue: A Memoir and Heather King, author of Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding.

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(Broadcast date: October 29, 2008)

Alexandra Penney, author of Magic Words: 101 Ways to Talk Your Way Through Life’s Challenges and Donna Albrecht, author of Buying a Home When You’re Single.

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(Broadcast date: Unknown)

Our last day in Mammoth. I could live here all winter. It’s been a good time, writing-wise, I’m happy to say. I do believe my writing self has caught up.

Hard to believe it’s 2009, isn’t it? Yikes.

Instead of resolutions, this year I’m thinking of five new things I want to do. Resolutions have never worked for me–not beyond a few days or weeks. But new things … I like that.

I was reading through an old notebook from 1979-1980 and found this quote, which I still like very much:

“We cross invisible borders and never know they were there, until we look back.” – W.H. Manville

I’m still mulling over what my five things will be, which borders I will cross, knowingly or not.

How about you–resolutions? Five new things? Ten? Even one….

In any case, here’s wishing you a stellar ’09. May it be the best yet.

Marrie Stone interviews Laurence Gonzales, author of Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things and John Demos, author of The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-hunting in the Western World.

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(Broadcast date: October 15, 2008)

Since I read this interview a few days ago, in the Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III, it’s stayed with me–especially this excerpt:

Interviewer: Where do your stories come from, then? I’m especially asking about the stories that have something to do with drinking.

Carver: The fiction I’m most interested in has lines of reference to the real world. None of my stories really happened, of course. But there’s always something, some element, something said to me or that I witnessed, that may be the starting place. Here’s an example: “That’s the last Christmas you’ll ever ruin for us!” I was drunk when I heard that, but I remembered it. And later, much later, when I was sober, using only that one line and other things I imagined, imagined so accurately that they could have happened, I made a story–“A Serious Talk.” But the fiction I’m most interested in, whether it’s Tolstoy’s fiction, Chekhov, Barry Hannah, Richard Ford, Hemingway, Isaac Babel, Ann Beattie, or Anne Tyler, strikes me as autobiographical to some extent. At the very least it’s referential. Stories long or short don’t just come out of thin air. …… Of course you have to know what you’re doing when you turn your life’s stories into fiction. You have to be immensely daring, very skilled and imaginative and willing to tell everything on yourself…A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

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A lil tidbit for you to dwell upon as this year segues into next …