Vanessa Cuti on Her Debut Novel "The Tip Line"

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Vanessa Cuti, author of The Tip Line, an unsettling thriller that asks just how far you should go to find love.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

Yes! The original idea came from my experience working as a tip line operator. I was so fascinated by the things that callers would tell me. It was almost strange how intimate it was. I knew I had to write a book involving it in some way.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

It really came down to character for me. Once I figured out Virginia (the main character) and her voice and really got into her head, her story just kind of unfurled.  

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Oh, absolutely. And I guess that’s sort of the magic but also the frustration of plotting a novel. You have something that you think is working…only to find out that it doesn’t. At all. 

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

It’s kind of like feast or famine for me. I’ve come to fear the famine periods but try to console myself with knowing that they will pass. With hoping so, anyway.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I jump back and forth between things. Which is a sort of maddening way to do it. But I do this until I find my way into the work, be it story or novel. I always imagine it like finally being able to open a stuck door or window. Once I find that, it’s like I can just walk right in to the project. And then I’ll know that it’s the one I should move forward with. But I do find lots of things die at this stage, sadly. 

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I have a very little but very loud writing buddy: a Pomeranian named Teddie. She chooses the most inopportune times to want to be a lap dog and yet I always let her.

Vanessa Cuti’s fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2021, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, West Branch, Indiana Review, Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Rumpus and others. She received her MFA from Stony Brook University and lives in the suburbs of New York. The Tip Line is Vanessa’s debut novel. You can find Vanessa on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.

Gretchen Cherington on Puzzling Together the World of "The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy-A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry"

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Gretchen Cherington, author of The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

The origin for my new memoir came from listening to my father’s stories of growing up in Austin, Minnesota in the early 1900s. His father, Alpha LaRue Eberhart, the “fall guy” in my story, was recruited by George Hormel, the “butcher”, to help build what is now the multi-billion dollar conglomerate Hormel Foods. Hormel hired the “embezzler,” quickly promoted him to comptroller of the company, and through a ten year stretch from about 1912-1921, stole almost $1.2 Million from the company coffers and nearly brought it to its knees. 

My father described these events from his childhood in nearly mythological terms and these three men were regularly displayed as full-fledged characters on our family stage. Rumors circulated that my grandfather was “in cahoots” with the embezzler. My father cast George Hormel as the villain of the story since he’d forced my grandfather’s resignation after the embezzlement was discovered. But I’d spent my career advising CEOs and senior executives and knew men in power were rarely so easily construed. In my early fifties I picked up the story and began to write. 

Five years ago, as I was finishing my first memoir Poetic License, I’d embedded about 10,000 words of this story in the book. Brooke Warner, my developmental editor, however strongly suggested they didn’t belong there. No, she said, this is your second book. From fall 2020 to fall 2022, I freshened the research I’d done twenty years before, and entirely rewrote a new book which comes out on June 6. 

So in one sense this story has been on my mind for many decades, but in another way it didn’t really turn into a book until Covid kept me inside!

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

This book required a lot of research. Not only was I trying to uncover the truth of what happened, but I was writing about a brand name company. I wanted to be as diligent and careful as I could be with the information I was gathering. I made three trips to Austin. MN (pre-Covid) to interview people who’d known about these men, get a feel for the place, the soft plains of southern Minnesota, and the culture of the small Midwestern city. I spent hours poring over historical documents about the three men involved, as well as reading records of US history, early nation builders, and economic and political swings of the early 1900s. And I was fortunate that my father had kept four cardboard boxes filled with my grandfather’s business letters and documents from that time. 

It wasn’t until I had a thorough understanding of all the characters and the period that I began to build the plot. Intuitively I thought a braided story of these three men, the embezzlement, and the near default of the Hormel company, coupled with my own story of awakening to my family’s history and the myths would be the way to go. But I also had to consider how to unveil the crime story, how to build tension through the narrative, and how to deal with some last minute information that came as a surprise (no spoilers here!). All this plotting work was done during the developmental editing phase. After that, it was about polishing and sharpening the words, getting rid of extraneous graphs and scenes, and trying to come to final conclusions about what I think happened. It was like puzzling together a mass of facts, memories, and speculations, along with plot points to come up with a readable whole. I had great fun writing this book! I don’t mean it was easy because it wasn’t, with many considerations about conveying three characters I’d never met, but coalescing the evidence into a coherent story was a space I’m very drawn to. 

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Yes! My starting narrative was that my grandfather had done no wrong; rather, George Hormel had wronged him; and the embezzler was a wily, pointy-eyed megalomaniac. But from my career working with CEOs, I knew that was too simple a conclusion. The story is really about the myths we hold about people in power and reconciling with our complicated legacies. Late in the process, I happened upon critical information that required a partial rewrite. And then there was a poem of my father’s written about these events that I wanted to include—but where to put it and how to frontload it to make sense were pieces of the puzzle that stymied me for weeks. Finishing the last four chapters took many revisions!

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I find fresh, book-length material, hard to come by. A writing friend recently spent days on Cape Cod and plotted an entire new historical novel on her flight back to Seattle. How I wish stories came to me like that. I think my talent is best served by taking true stories and shaping them into books that readers can become engrossed in, examining their own history while finding their own insights.  

My third book (in the works) is a novel, involving another true crime and very complicated family legacies, but it won’t be about my family! I’ve mined that quarry for now. 

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I have another nonfiction book percolating but I’m not feeling the obsession to pounce on it right away. Perhaps it needs more percolating. My two memoirs and the novel have all captured my intense interest since I began to think about them. That seems to be the way I work best. To be so obsessed by something I’m willing to devote whatever number of years it requires. While still a “new” author, I’m thankfully getting smarter and more efficient in the process of writing itself. 

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

Sometimes I wish I had a dog or cat sitting at my feet but the birds and critters outside my windows keep me company. I love seeing wild beings pass by on foot or under wing. They inspire me with their color, their sounds, and their daily routines like nest building and searching for food. What a wonder the world is!

Other than that, I’m best served with a view of the ocean or a deep forest, the aroma of my husband’s spectacular sourdough bread baking in the kitchen, or urgent plans to get outside for a hike or bike. But wait, I have to finish this chapter! Overall I like few auditory distractions while generating pages. I can handle more when I’m revising. This may in part be due to having Ménières Disease through which I’ve lost about half of my hearing. This makes listening to conversation, music, ambient noise, etc., requires about 30% added effort than for those with good hearing. Quiet is as much a balm for my imagination as it is for constant stimulation.

Still, a cuddly puppy or kitten is immensely joyous!

Gretchen Cherington’s first view of powerful men was informed at the feet of her father, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Richard Eberhart, and his eclectic and fascinating writer friends, from Robert Frost to Allen Ginsberg to James Dickey. As an executive management consultant, she figured out what made powerful men tick by working alongside nearly three hundred of them in their corner suites during her 35 year career. Her first memoir, Poetic License, has won multiple awards; her writing has appeared in Crack the Spine, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Women Writers/Women’s Books, MS. Girl, Yankee and more; and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay “Maine Roustabout” in 2012. Gretchen and her husband split their time between Portland, ME, and a saltwater cottage on Penobscot Bay.

Kathryn Crawley on Nancy Drew Meets Zorba the Greek

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Kathryn Crawley, author of Walking on Fire, the story of a young woman who moves to Thessaloniki, Greece for work in 1974, just after the fall of a dictatorship, and how her experiences with love and politics challenge everything she thought she knew about the world.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

In 1974 I was dropped into a boiling cauldron of anti-Americanism in Greece following the collapse of the Greek dictatorship. I had been hired as a speech pathologist in a center for Greek cerebral palsied children. At the end of two years, I’d become fluent in the Greek language, been schooled in international politics, and had fallen in love with the country and with a charismatic Greek communist student. After my return to the US, stories of those days rumbled within, waiting to emerge. Zillions of words from writing classes and writing groups kept the memories alive and details fresh. A planned memoir metamorphosed into fiction, as I found my writing flowed more freely using the third person than first person form. Each day my writing became a quest into the deeper significance of those pivotal two years of my life in Greece. For me, fiction provided a pathway to a deeper truth and understanding. My novel, a coming-of-age, loss-of-innocence love story, Walking on Fire, came to  life. 

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I used my own experiences as a starting point and then fictionalized them. There were actual events where I was met face to face by anti-American sentiment and feared for my safety, but I wanted to create suspense and adventure for my protagonist to further develop her character and for a more exciting read. Undercurrents of 1970’s feminism affected her evolution and self-actualization, as did my own inner Nancy Drew. A key turn of plot development came with the scene of a religious fire walking ceremony I’d witnessed. My protagonist is unexpectedly abandoned by her lover in this surreal setting, and the remainder of the story ran away from there to events I couldn’t have imagined at the outset.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

More often than not. Freewriting has long been my passport from the subconscious to words on paper. That journey inward is one of my favorite aspects of writing, and unexpected ideas from that place can solve plot problems. How will my protagonist create her own agency in this particular predicament? What inner needs compel her to act against her own self-interest? How will she maintain her hard-earned sense of independence in the face of the magnetic force of her lover? Inner alleyways lead to new destinations.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I have more story ideas than, unfortunately, I will ever have time to use. My mother saved all the letters I’d ever written, from Girl Scout camp through college to my years in Greece. Thirteen notebooks and two carefully annotated photograph albums chronicling my father’s years in World War Two are stacked in my dining room. My great-grandfather was rumored to be the gunman of a vigilante group in the wilds of Texas outlaw days. Shelves are filled with notebooks of stories from on-demand prompts of my weekly writing group. I am blessed with material; I hope to be blessed with enough time to venture into more of these stories.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

By starting. I gather information, photographs, and sensory items (music, fragrances, objects), and see where I land. The story has a chance to move forward during freewriting, followed by more careful attention to what’s on the page. After several days I look to see if the story has come to life. If not, I put it away for another day, take a short break, then move on to something else, usually changing genres, from non-fiction to fiction, poetry, or a perhaps a personal essay.

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

Sadie the Wheaten Terrier has been a constant companion during my morning writing sessions, as she stretches out on the window seat beside my desk. Because she IS a terrier, Sadie carries the responsibility of guarding the street outside our window. Ryan the Mailman, Jordy the King Charles Spaniel, and a host of disrespecting squirrels are prime targets. Once spotted, they must be scolded. As she insists on access to the yard to fence-guard, I return to my keyboard, accompanied by the music of her tenacity. Not a distraction but rather an element of the rhythm of my writing practice.

Kathryn Crawley was born of pioneer stock and raised in the small West Texas cotton town of Lamesa. She received undergraduate and graduate degrees in speech pathology from Baylor University. Unforeseen events and an adventurous spirit led her to Wyoming, Colorado, and to Greece, where she worked with Greek cerebral palsied children. She later established roots in Boston where she continued her career as a speech pathologist. Today, she enjoys life with her partner Tom, daughter Emilia, and two dogs. Walking on Fire is her debut novel.