"Lost" in the Newsletter

Over the course of the last two weeks, Walt McElligott, editor of Chicagowrites Clarion, the Chicago Writers Association's monthly newsletter, has been conducting an interview with me, by email correspondence, about my fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy.

I've never met Walt, but after the many, many emails we've exchanged for this interview and leading up to it, I feel as if I've known him all my life.  That's the mark of an expert interviewer. They get you to let your guard down. Walt did that with me. And anyone who knows me can tell you that's not an easy thing to do. The result is, I think, a wonderfully candid interview that gives readers a snapshot of who I am and what led me to write my first novel.

Walt, getting Lost with you was a great adventure. Thanks for taking me along for the ride.   

Here then, without further adieu, is the text of the interview in its entirety:

Interview of Chicagoland writer: Randy Richardson's "Lost in the Ivy"

 

Although Randy's "Lost in the Ivy" is officially due out later this month, he tells me "Lost" is already available on Amazon.com or BN.com. I found out Randy has another fan in my household, as my wife, Joan asked me a couple weeks ago where we (& others) will be able to purchase your friend's book.

 

Because Randy was seeking good preparation for his first radio interview, July 29 on an AM morning show out of New York, I decided to complete this gentle grilling as advance preparation for the big time. We'll allow NY to keep this title until we help Chicago take it away. Randy simply wants to be better prepared for questions about "Lost in the Ivy" than Scott McLellan has been for questions concerning Karl Rove and Valerie Plame.

 

CWA Editors: Randy, most of early CWA members have met together, but many of the new members and non-Chicagoans, like me have never had the privilege, except via the electronic world. Please introduce yourself to those of us, old & new, who will undoubtedly become readers of "Lost"?

 

Randy Richardson: First, thank you for inviting me to take part in this interview. I must confess to feeling slightly intimidated, though. Following last month's terrific interview with Kim Gordon, author of "Woof-Man: A Woman's Guide to Her Man's Inner Canine," I feel like I should be doing dog tricks just to maintain the interest level. But here it goes... I'm 43 years old and live in Evanston with my lovely wife, adorable 2-year-old son, and a Siamese cat named Camus (named after the French existentialist Albert Camus). I made full use of the state's higher education system, earning a law degree from Northern Illinois University, an MS in journalism from the University of Illinois, and a BA in economics and political science from Illinois State University.

 

CWA: Please tell us a bit about your youth?

 

Randy: I was actually born in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac from D.C., but we moved away before age 5. I did attend the JFK funeral procession at age 2. From Virginia, I moved to a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisc for about 2-3 years before moving to the south burbs in the winter of '69.

 

CWA: When did Chicago first come into the picture?
Randy: I lived in Chicago's south burbs through high school, but moved to Northern California after graduate school to begin my journalism career at a number of dailies in the California/Nevada region. This was beautiful country but there just wasn't much for a single male to do there, so I scratched my itch and returned to the south burbs without a job. Shortly thereafter I began stringing for what was then called The Hammond Times (now it's The Times of Northwest Indiana). At The Times, I began covering the Illinois bureau's courthouse beat, a gig that convinced me that I could be an attorney.  After law school, I moved to Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood.

 

CWA: What was your inspiration for "Lost in the Ivy," which is set against the backdrop of Chicago's storied Wrigley Field?
Randy: Do you want my short answer or long answer to that one? The short one is that it was a neighbor's death. The long one is that in the mid-1990's, when Lost is set, I was living in a studio apartment that is basically the studio apartment that the protagonist Charley Hubbs has stumbled into at the onset of the story. Like the apartment in the book, my studio bordered Wrigleyville and Boys Town, two very different neighborhoods living, somewhat uncomfortably, next to each other. While I was living on the border of these two divergent neighborhoods, there had been a spate of hate crimes - or gay bashing incidents - against gay men in Boys Town. Against that backdrop, a neighbor of mine died in his apartment. Initially, there had been rumors that he had been killed. Then the story was that he had committed suicide. Eventually the story became that he had died of a drug overdose. I knew very little of this neighbor other than that he was gay and threw some pretty wild parties - at least they were wild in my imagination, as I had only overheard them through the thin apartment walls. After moving out of that apartment, my neighbor's death kept gnawing at me. My overactive imagination got me wondering about other scenarios. What if he really had been murdered? And what if signs began to point to his quiet, unassuming, new neighbor as a suspect in his murder? With those thoughts in mind, the seed was planted for what would become Lost in the Ivy.

 

CWA: is your Hero-reporter, Charley Hubbs, who is caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, based upon any particular one of Chicago's many great journalists?

 

Randy: Charley's based on one of Chicago's great journalistic failures, who traded in his muckraking days for a blander career as an attorney. In other words, he's based on me. Prior to my law career, I worked off an on for several years as a reporter at newspapers in Northern California and in the Chicago metropolitan area.

 

CWA: I assume, that Charley is like most typical North Siders, very familiar with the two types of baseball seasons played out in the ivy-covered walls of the century-old Cubs' park known as Wrigley Field, one of futility and the other of hope? 

 

Randy: Because the storyline is set against the backdrop of Wrigley Field and the protagonist is a die-hard Cubs fan, I decided to have the story arc follow the heart of a Cubs fan. The Season of Futility is the fall, when baseball season comes to an end. For Cubs fans this has since 1908 - the last year the Cubs won the World Series - meant heartbreak. Not surprisingly, nothing seems to go right for the protagonist Charley Hubbs during this Season of Futility. In baseball, a new season begins each spring. There is always the hope of next year. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that the outlook for Charley seems a lot brighter in the Season of Hope - although there always seem to be some dark clouds on his horizon.

 

CWA: How did you explain Charley's girlfriend, Liz to other readers of Lost in the Ivy, and especially your wonderful wife?

 

Randy: All men like Liz. I get more questions about her than about any other character. They want to know: (1) where can I meet her? And (2) what does your wife think of her? The answers are: (1) she doesn't exist; and (2) she doesn't seem bothered by her, or at least she's never told me that she is.

 

CWA: Without revealing the books exciting conclusion, please tempt readers a little further by telling them how Charley unlocks the mysteries of his past?

 

Randy: Love and luck mostly. Charley has to open his heart again before he is able to unlock those mysteries of his past. And a little bit of journalistic luck doesn't hurt.

 

CWA: Will Charley be able to find whether such hope (for the Cubs, anyhow) truly does spring eternal?

 

Randy: If you're a Cubs fan, like Charley, hope is really the one thing that you have to cling to. If you didn't have hope, it would make life as a Cubs fan even more miserable than it already is.

 

CWA: Have you completed other (published) writing in the past years?

 

Randy: "Lost" is my first stab at fiction. Currently I'm writing the DadLibs column for SanityCentral.com, a parental humor website. And, as I indicated earlier, I worked for several years as a newspaper reporter in my pre-law days.

 

CWA: When not writing, how do you spend your 9 to 5 weekdays?

 

Randy: In my day job I'm an attorney in the Social Security Administration's disability appeals branch. Basically my job is to screen disability claims and weed out the bad from the good.

 

CWA: For our readers, please tell us what writing projects you have on the fire?

 

Randy: I haven't gotten very far yet but I'm working on a second novel that will be quite different from "Lost". It's a coming-of-age story, set in the south suburbs in the late seventies, involving two teens whose friendship is put to the test when a road trip to a rock concert goes bad. 

 

[Before this interview went to press, Randy mentioned that his New York radio interview Friday morning, July 29, 2005 went well and he didn't even stumble over his own words. He said, "The most humorous moment that came out of my New York radio interview this morning came from the sidekick on Frank Truatt's show, who came up with this quip: 'I think I already know who the murderer is... Steve Bartman.'" We all know who Mr. Bartman is don't we? Ed.]