Finding Felicia

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It’s Saturday, in case , like me, you have no idea what day it is anymore. But there are some things you can rely on in life, seriously, there are. 

And one of those things is the genuine wonderfulness of Art Taylor. Art’s probably blushing now, and I hope so. Not only is Art Taylor jaw-droppingly talented -- (HOW many awards have you won? Seriously, tell us. Multiple Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, Macavity--and the Edgar! )—but he’s also simply the best of guys. Generous, thoughtful, inspirational. And his terrifically talented wife, Tara Laskowski, as you know, has her big big big first novel out now, One Night Gone—a Mary Higgins Clark award nominee! (And of course, she’s stalwartly staying home, her celebratory events cancelled. Xoxox) And then, their son Dash, who is an absolute paragon.

We are so thrilled to talk with Art today. His new collection—and I am giving away TWO copies today—is fabulous and innovative. And his brain is—relentlessly and irresistibly fascinating. Art’s events for the new book are cancelled, too. With is so sad, in a sea of sadness.

So today—let’s celebrate Art Taylor, and all the contributions he’s made to this students, and his readers, and the writing community, and to all of our lives. 

And apparently, there’s this girl. Felicia.

So Who’s Felicia?

Or: Follow Your Interests and Obsessions—Because You Will Anyway

    by Art Taylor

In his very generous (and much appreciated) review of my recently released collection The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense, Kristopher Zgorski of BOLO Books pointed out that two of the stories feature characters named Felicia: one Felicia a small side-character in the title story and the other taking a more central role in the story “The Care & Feeding of Houseplants.” 

“This is almost certainly a coincidence,” Zgorski wrote, “but in another example of how Art Taylor’s work harkens back to similar themes and motifs, these two Felicias could actually be the same individual at different stages of her life.”

Here’s the kicker: There’s actually a third Felicia, or at least a third use of the name, in another story: “Murder on the Orient Express,” my first published story for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine from back in 1995.

I didn’t realize I had three Felicias here until this reviewed called my attention to them, but it’s easy (maybe) to defend them, to defend my having forgotten I’d used the name before. The stories were published over a span of twenty-five years, after all—with at least a decade, in fact, between each Felicia’s appearance in print! And I purposefully didn’t make any major changes to these stories from their original publication—preserving them as they appeared.

Still… why Felicia?

Or better yet: Who’s Felicia? …because there is one.

Back in elementary school (way back!) in Richlands, NC, I had a crush on a classmate named Felicia. Honestly, I remember very little about her now—what she looked like, for example— only that she lived outside of town, too far for us to see one another afterschool, and that we were never really friends, much less boyfriend and girlfriend (too young for even some early form of that).

What I do remember—clearly: One afternoon, I was sitting in the bathroom (TMI, I know, but it’s necessary), and my brother or one of the guys next door knocked on the bathroom door to tell me to hurry up. Felicia had come over, he said, and she was waiting outside for me to get done.

Spoiler alert: She wasn’t. It was only my brother or one of those friends rushing me along and teasing in the process.

But even today, across all those years, whenever I think about that moment, the feeling of it rushes back—the mix of emotions: excitement, confusion, embarrassment, anticipation, desire, self-consciousness. 

For all their differences, the Felicias in my stories—each of them, as you’ll see—are all touched by some mix of those emotions. But I hadn’t realized it myself until Kris Zgorski pointed it out.

In recent years, several students in my writing workshops at George Mason University have fretted about their fiction being repetitive. “Each of my stories has the same kinds of characters,” they might say, “or the same conflicts or the same themes.”  They talk about being drawn again and again to certain characters or storylines, about not being able to pull themselves away.

The irony here is that these students—these very students—are the ones often producing the best work. And for the record, their stories each to the next never look the same to me.

Rereading my own stories from over a period of 25 years, I see both the many differences—in character and situation and style and structure—but also the core similarities too: Most, if not all, of my stories are ultimately about relationships, whether romances or friendships or family ties, and about what happens when someone betrays that relationship. As I said at the book launch for The Boy Detective and the Summer of ’74, sometimes it seems like I’ve written just one story—and then kept rewriting it in new ways.

All this in perspective, I always tell those fretful students not to worry. Their skills will develop, their storytelling will evolve, their stories won’t all sound the same. They only need write in those directions they’re already pulled toward—following those storylines and themes they keep obsessing over, those characters they can’t shake.  

But in the future, I’ll add an asterisk to that advice: Just make sure not to give too many of those characters the same name.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I absolutely want to name everyone Elliott. Or Eli. Elias. It’s –crazy. (But do I know any Elliotts? Or Elis? My grandson, certainly. But I pushed the name.)  And my books are about—huh. Betrayal. 

SO what is that? When someone or something you rely on gets pulled out from under you. And bizarrely and surprisingly, and often with NO conscious intent, about mothers and daughters. But every single book I’ve written—and that be true?—have those themes. But they are very different.

Your students are so lucky, Art!  

(OMG. I just realized my newest main character is Ellie. Never, until this very moment, did I realize that. Okay, moving along.) 

In the summer of 74—I was working for Rolling Stone Magazine (with Hunter Thompson)  in Washington DC. What were you doing, Reds and Readers, in the summer of 74?

 

And a copy of  The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 to TWO lucky commenters!

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Art Taylor is the author of the story collection The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense and of the novel in stories On the Road with Del & Louise, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. He won the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Short Story for "English 398: Fiction Workshop," originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and he has won three additional Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, three Macavity Awards, and three consecutive Derringer Awards for his short fiction. His work has also appeared in Best American Mystery Stories. He is an associate professor of English at George Mason University.