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moltenhair · 4 years

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Season 3 minus Gothel

So here’s the deal... I don’t have the energy to finish this complete rewrite. And I don’t know when i will... But I wanted to share what I’d written so far. Or most of it anyway. There’s still a lot I haven’t written- like where the canon Captain of the Guard comes in. I have explanations for everything that isnt featured here I just... Haven’t been able to get around to getting them in writing.

But here it is! My much talked about new backstory/rewrite for Cass that has absolutely nothing to do with being related to Gothel or even knowing her. Enjoy.

It was surreal. Like stepping into a different moment in time. Too real to be a dream. No.. This was a memory. But whose memory was it? And why was Cassandra here?

Olive colored eyes scanned the world around her. The door she’d walked through gone from sight and mind. Something inside her compelling her to drink in her surroundings. The sights, the sounds, the smells. A tiny farmhouse. A barely impressive plot of land but it looked like the owners were getting by. The land had clearly seen better days, the animals and crops were few and the home was crumbling at the foundations. But it radiated warmth and comfort. Cass couldn’t explain it but she was drawn to it. Like it was something she knew once. Like this place was safe.

“Hello, Cassandra.”

Cass turned quickly, her black hair whipping into her face as she looked for the sudden voice. Who was there? No one, at first glance. But then her gaze fell, and standing before her was a small child in a frilly gown. Ethereal in a way and an almost transparent blue. Like a ghost from another time. It stared up at the lady in waiting with big, shining eyes and a sweet, innocent smile. Tiny gloved hands folded as she waited for Cassandra to speak.

“Who are you?” Cass asked, her brow furrowing suspiciously. This was some magic trick, she knew it. And magic rarely worked in her favor. The ever stinging wound that was her right hand was a constant reminder of that.

“A friend.” The girl happily replied, walking around her, a bounce in her step that shook the twin buns atop her head. “Or at least I’d like to be.”

Cass watched her walk away toward that farmhouse, only for her to turn and look back. Waiting with an expectant look for Cass to follow. She glanced around before taking that first reluctant step. This was really weird but it didn’t seem like there was anyone else around to talk to. And even if Cass had to follow this child, at least she’d get a closer look at that farm. Find out why she had such a familiar feeling about it.

The two walked together up to the misty glass of the farm house and peered through. It was dimly lit inside. Whoever lived within clearly didn’t have the money for candles and relied on the sun for light. There was movement in the shadows but Cass couldn’t make out what it was. She leaned in, closer to the glass, and squinted to try and see. But that was when she felt small fingers curl around her hand. A gentle touch that drew her gaze away. The child’s smile remained as she pulled Cassandra toward the door. Guiding her through it. Literally. The wood gave no resistance and they passed through it with ease. Like it was nothing but smoke. Even if it looked very real. Something that would have alarmed Cass in any other moment.

Once they were inside, the woman could get a much better look around. The walls were bare except for some flowers that hung to dry and some shelves stacked with jars and baskets. The fruit of the home owner’s labor. Meager vegetables and preservatives. The air smelled like sweet bread. A rare treat from a distant part of Cassandra’s memory. She couldn’t recall a time she’d eaten it, but she could vividly remember the taste.

“What is this place?” Cassandra asked, taking a few more steps, “It feels so-”

She stopped mid-stride as that moving figure came back into view. A little girl, no older than 4 years old. Smiling brightly with one missing tooth and carrying a handful of fresh flowers. Her hair was long and messy, but those ebony curls and olive eyes were unmistakable.

“Do you recognize that child?” The ghost asked.

“That’s… Me.” Cass all but whispered as she continued to watch the child move about the room.

“I got some fresh flowers, Mama!” her past self chimed, holding the humble boquet up to an unseen figure behind a closed door.

Cassandra’s heart leapt into her throat. ‘Mama’? Her mother?

The creaky old door opened and a tired looking woman appeared. Her long brown hair tied up in a messy bun. Loose curls dangling in front of her face.. But despite her clear exhaustion, she smiled tenderly at the child before her. She took the flowers and brought them up to her nose for a long sniff. As if they were the finest flowers she’d ever smelled and not common wildflowers from the neighboring field. The sight pulled at something in Cass that she wasn’t aware she could feel. Or maybe it was something she’d always tried to suppress.

“These are lovely, Cassandra. Thank you.” She sighed, reaching down to smooth a hand over her daughter’s hair. “These will look very nice on the dinner table tonight. I’ll go fetch some water.”

“Okay!” the little girl scurried out of the way to dive into the kitchen cabinets to find a vase. There weren’t any but she found a wooden cup that worked just as well.

Cass watched, emotions bubbling just beneath the surface as she watched this happy little family go about their lives. Without a care in the world. Her gaze followed her mother. When she came closer Cass could see her mother’s eyes matched her own. But they were tired. Worked to the bone, all alone on the farm. Cass’ father… His absence said everything Cass needed to know about him. Everything she never cared to remember. But her mother… It flooded back. The love she had for Cassandra in her youth. The days slaved so that her child could have a good meal or new clothes. Her mother had worked so hard for her…

“They look happy, don’t they?” The ghost spoke again, her voice almost somber. “You had a wonderful family, the two of you… Didn’t you?”

Watching her mother strain to carry a pail of water back into the house, a small, gentle smile curled Cassandra’s lips. Yeah… They do look happy. They were happy. It wasn’t much… But it was all they needed.

So what happened?

“I don’t understand… If this was my life, why don’t I remember this?”

“We all have things we repress to protect ourselves…” The ghost told her, big eyes turning to her once more. A sadness Cass wasn’t used to seeing directed at herself. “You made yourself forget her so you didn’t have to remember how you lost her.”

Lost? Cassandra’s confusion must have been apparent on her face, because the spirit child continued as if she knew.

“The fire.”

The world shifted suddenly. In a bright flash, like lightning striking where they stood. In the blink of an eye the home around them changed. The roof opened up to reveal a dark, reddened sky. Pillars of smoke reached for the heavens. Red flames licked at the walls and climbed toward the crumbling rafters. Like a great, ravenous beast it devoured the house. The beautiful flowers the little girl picked lost forever to the flames.

Cass looked around to try and find her younger self. Was she trapped? Where was her mother?

“Mama! Mama, where are you?!”

“Cassandra!”

It almost happened too quickly to see. A beam broke free, falling heavily from the roof. Beneath it stood a frightened little girl looking desperately for her mother. It was only with the quickest of reflexes that her mother dove in to save her. Taking the four year old into her arms. Her mother shielded Cassandra with her own body as she ran through the smoke and fire. Her shoulder collided with the front door and broke it free so she and her child could get out. Never flinching at the pain it must have caused, nor letting her ragged coughing slow her down.

The grown Cassandra was in awe. She’d never realized her mother was so brave.

But they’d gotten out… What happened? Why didn’t her mother stay with her?

Cass followed. The flames passed right through her as she chased. It looked so real but she felt none of the heat. All that mattered was finding the truth. Learning what happened to her mother. Why Cass had ended up alone. How she ended up as the Captain’s daughter. How her life had gone so wrong.

She followed her mother down the dirt road. She watched as her mother looked desperately for a Guard with young Cassandra held tight to her chest. For anyone to help her and her child. Then, in the distance, guards on horseback came into view. Armed with crossbows and riding furiously through the woods. On a mission from the king.

“Sir, please help!” Cassandra’s mother called, running up to one of the men. An older man with white hair and a taller helmet than the rest. The old captain, maybe? Cass couldn’t remember anyone but her dad ever being Captain. “My house. You have to-”

“Ma’am there’s no time!” The man growled, yanking on the reins of his horse to move around the frantic woman, “The princess has been taken and we need every guard to track down the kidnapper. By order of the king!”

Cassandra’s mother’s face paled. Her heartbreak clear as the man just rode away. Leaving a pleading woman and her child standing alone in the darkness… Helpless as their home and livelihood burned to the ground. And Cass felt as gutted as her mother looked.

She fell to her knees, eyes wide and shining with stinging tears as she watched her home burn beside her mother. How could this happen? How could the king order all of his men away from their posts and leave the rest of his people defenseless? For Rapunzel? For one girl? She was more important than all of his citizens? Didn’t the people who lived in Corona matter too?

“I’m so sorry this happened to you, Cassandra.” The ghost murmured, joining her at her side once more. “Do you remember now…? How you lost your mother?”

… Yes… She did.

“She… She had to give me up.” Cassandra croaked, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Without the farm she… Sh-she couldn’t provide for me, s-so-”

“So she left you in an orphanage. In the hopes that someone could give you a better life.” The spirit child added. Cass squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to remember. “But they never could, could they? All your life you’ve had to face that you would never matter as much to them as Rapunzel..”

Bitterness swelled inside Cass, mingling with the pain in her heart. Maybe the fire could have been fought if every last guard hadn’t been looking for Rapunzel. Maybe if the people in charge hadn’t decided that the citizens didn’t matter. All they cared about were their own people. Anyone less than royal was disposable.. They always had been.

“I know it hurts.” The child soothed, resting her small hand upon Cass’ shoulder. “But there is a way you can make that pain go away... To make sure it never happens to anyone else.”

Cass’ eyes opened. Staring ahead to the smoldering remains of her childhood home. The images of herself and her mother were gone. Leaving Cass alone in the smoke and rubble.

“How?”

A/N delete later: (there is a reason the Captain we know is absent.)

_______

Power surged through Cassandra’s veins. Burning like the fires that destroyed her life and of her passionate hatred. Years of being walked on, cast aside and belittled had all come to this. This moment of sweet catharsis. After twenty years of being passed by in favor of people with “power”, now she would be the one with real power. And a kind of power money couldn’t buy. An authority no birthright could give her.

THIS was her destiny.

“Cass… I had no idea what happened-”

“Of course you didn’t!” Cass snapped, the moonstone embedded in her breast flashing with violent, angry light. “It never mattered. I never mattered.”

Rapunzel stepped forward, hands raised and eyes pleading. Her hair had stopped glowing the moment Cass seized the opal for herself. Now it hung loose off the bridge they stood upon. Dipping into the darkness below. Behind her Eugene, Lance and Adira looked on in awe and horror.

“Of course you matter, Cass-! I’m your friend! But this is dangerous! The moonstone-”

“-Is the only way to fix the damage done by people like your father. By people like YOU.” Cass cut her off, clutching the stone tightly. Rapunzel’s eyes widened and she froze in her step. Shocked at the words she was hearing. “I thought when you came back that maybe YOU might change things. That maybe you might actually care what I had to say.”

Black spikes, glowing with blue energy burst from the ground around Cassandra. Illuminating the inky black armor that now consumed her from head to toe. Covering any weakness she may have held.

“But I know now that trying to make your kind listen only leads to pain.” She held up her right hand. The grave injury now concealed behind stony armor. “But no longer...”

“Cass-”

Rapunzel took another step forward only to be met with a spike jutting out toward her. Her hair illuminated, shining bright and golden as it moved to defend her. The princess flew back at the impact, tumbling painfully against the ground and into Eugene’s arms. He caught her, eyes wide and horrified at what he was witnessing.

“Blondie-! Rapunzel, are you okay?”

Adira jumped into action, placing herself between the princess and “fishskin”. Her shadowblade drawn. Without a shred of hesitation or fear for her own life she lunged at Cassandra, pinning her back to the black rocks with the flat side of her blade.

“Release the Moonstone, Short Hair. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

Rage flared in Cassanra’s chest, the opal flashing with white-blue light as her glowing eyes narrowed. Still people dared tell her what to do? Still no one would take her seriously?! “No… YOU have no idea what YOU’RE dealing with.”

In a blast of bright light and black stone, Cass threw the other warrior away. Adira’s previously superior size and skill now useless to save her. Her back struck the wall and the air was knocked from her lungs. She collapsed into a slump on the ground. Lance- the clinging fool he was- rushed to her side. Cass didn’t care what he had to say to Adira. None of them mattered now. She took up Adira’s sword, dropped after that pathetic attempt to stop her. A fitting weapon for Cass to shape the world with.

Rapunzel groaned, her hair falling out of her face as her eyes opened. She was hurting in more ways than one and winded… But she was okay. It was Cass she was worried about. As she sat up, Cassandra charged the bridge, running in a sprint. Each step summoning black rocks to guard her. To keep her “friends” from getting too close. But Eugene was on his feet regardless. Ready to stand his ground and square up with one of his best friends. To defend Rapunzel’s honor and possibly the entire world-

But chivalry was cut short as a large black spike shot upwards before him, colliding hard with his body and sending him flying backwards into the wall. The wind knocked from his lungs, he fell to the ground with a groan. Cass didn’t look back as his pained noises reached her ears. She only ran further. Away from her “friends” and onward toward freedom. Everything inside her was twisted and angry. Angry at Rapunzel, at Eugene, at this broken world, at herself. But she couldn’t stop so soon. Not after finally having the tools she needed to do what needed to be done.

No one would stop her now. No one COULD stop her now.

#rapunzel's tangled adventure #tangled the series #cassandra #Season 3 minus gothel #my art #sorta #I do have art to add to this later #it's just in sketch form #it's the first full chapter #I have one more full chapter but Cass isnt in it

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hope-for-olicity · 7 years

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Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - September 1st, 2017

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them.

A Message in a Bottle multi-chapter by @vaelisamaza - Felicity Smoak has come home to run the family farm and tasting room when an unexpected visit from a member of the Queen Family gives her the opportunity to re-examine her career and choices in life. http://archiveofourown.org/works/6514822/chapters/14907403

A Series of Unexpected Surprises multi-chapter by @green-arrows-of-karamel - Oliver and Felicity have a series of unexpected surprises after spending a wild night together. http://archiveofourown.org/works/11472201/chapters/26896815

Blue Eyed Angel: Ask by @tdgal1 - Amy and Mark's Wedding http://archiveofourown.org/works/11069859/chapters/26896260

Felicity Smoak's High School Reunion by jesileigh - Oliver and Felicity attend her ten year high school reunion and Felicity learns that karma can feel really, really good. (post-season 5) http://archiveofourown.org/works/10630953

This Love by @anthfan - Future season 3. When Felicity thinks the worst has happened how does it change her relationship with Ray and with Oliver? http://archiveofourown.org/works/2593895

If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don't Want To Be Right) multi-chapter by @smkkbert - They live in a society where the Ministry for Procreation decides who you get to marry. Once you get the letter with the contact details of your partner, you are supposed to marry within few months. Sexual relationships with any other partner are forbidden, even before you receive the contact details. Everyone who disobeys that law will be punished brutally. Oliver and Nyssa have come to terms with that. Although they are married, Nyssa can secretly be with Sara, and Oliver can do whatever he wants to do. When Oliver decides to make changes, he falls madly in love with Felicity. Therefore, his life takes a pleasant turn because although they cannot publicly be together, at least they can be in secret. Things soon get complicated, though, when Felicity receives a letter that shall change her life. http://archiveofourown.org/works/11847900/chapters/26747613

The Strong Do Not Always End Up On Top multi-chapter by @godswritingfool - Having passed as a Beta all her life, Felicity Smoak had desired normalcy with a little taste of thrill every once in a while. IT girl by day, hacker by night. Or maybe weekends. Was that too much to ask? Turns out the Bratva Captain, overbearing CEO of Queen Consolidated Oliver Queen, is her Alpha Matched Mate! If that wasn't bad enough, Felicity's revenge against the Triad left a power vacuum in the criminal underworld of Starling City. When the turf war ends, the dust settles, and the new mob takes control, sick and bizarre events and even more disturbing and crazy crimes escalate in Starling City. Can the Bratva and remaining criminal organizations get a handle on the newcomers who are spreading chaos in the streets? Underneath it all, while dodging the Triad, Stalkers, Jealousy, the new Mob, Possessiveness, and Outside Forces, can Reluctant Omega Felicity Smoak and Territorial Alpha Oliver Queen get over their issues and stubborn pride and finally accept their soul deep connection? http://archiveofourown.org/works/7701490/chapters/17547565

All You Have To Do Is Ask multi-chapter by @wherethereissmoak - Felicity has a guardian angel - scratch that - he's more like "Oliver the Friendly Ghost." http://archiveofourown.org/works/11918604/chapters/26933799

Tonsil Hockey by @felicityollies - Oliver discovers felicity's wisdom teeth scars during a particularly intense make out session. http://archiveofourown.org/works/6610375/chapters/26940618

Family Outing multi-chapter by @geneshaven - Things go wrong when the team goes on a family camping trip. Part 5 https://geneshaven.tumblr.com/post/164672428024/family-outing Part 6 https://geneshaven.tumblr.com/post/164769408634/family-outing

Time for a Story multi-chapter by @smkkbert - This fic shows Olicity and their life as a (married) couple with family. Although Olicity (and their kids) are the protagonists, other characters of Arrow and Flash make appearances. YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE. http://archiveofourown.org/works/3912157/chapters/8757172

You Had Me at Hello multi-chapter by @tdgal1 - Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak met at a Gala and had an instant attraction but Smoak Technologies and Queen Consolidated have to work together. Can they make that sexual chemistry work and still work together.http://archiveofourown.org/works/11075379

Did He Call You Mom? by @laurabelle2930 - So this is a little drabble about a conversation between William and Felicity that takes place when Williams sixteen. http://archiveofourown.org/works/11918241

Thursday by @someonesaidcake - There is something about the girl next door that Oliver Queen is only now noticing... Felicity is moving to college just down the road from where Oliver is a senior. He suddenly becomes very protective of the girl next door. Thursday night dinners might not ever be the same again. This story gets better and better! http://archiveofourown.org/works/10688658/chapters/23670255

Nobody Else Could Love Me Like You Do multi-chapter by @charlie-leau - Five years ago, Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak were engaged but now they don't know each other anymore. They used to be Hollywood's Golden couple but now they are just two souls who have drifted apart. Everything changes when director John Diggle comes to them with a script that could either bring them back together or break them further apart LOVE THIS SO SO MUCH!!!. http://archiveofourown.org/works/9804014/chapters/22015709

I Wrote Your Name in My Heart multi-chapter by @alanna-the-lionheart - Oliver is kidnapped and returns a different man. Heartbreaking and beautiful! http://archiveofourown.org/works/7642798/chapters/21136286

Oliver's Journal (Wedding's Eve) by @geneshaven - Oliver's thoughts the night before his wedding https://geneshaven.tumblr.com/post/164805190539/olivers-journal-weddings-eve

Little Girls by @felicityollies - Oliver's daughter wants a kitten. http://archiveofourown.org/works/11958351

She Wakes Up by @lostolicityscenes - 6x01 speculation fic https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/164833593351/when-she-wakes-up

Blue Eyed Angel: Choose by @tdgal1 - Oliver and Felicity take their relationship to the next level. http://archiveofourown.org/works/11069859/chapters/27042612

The Mirror in the Attic multi-chapter by @sophie1973 - When Felicity Smoak inherits a house from the late Oliver Queen, she struggles to understand why the old man would leave her his home. They are at least two generations apart, and as far as she knows, they have never met. Until she walks into the house and experiences the weirdest feeling of déjà vu, and discovers Oliver and her actually know each other very well. Just in another lifetime. - This a MUST READ!!! http://archiveofourown.org/works/11331471/chapters/25363236

We Loved With A Love That Was More Than Love multi-chapter by @wrldtravler - When Felicity's father leaves her and her mother behind, she loses all her faith in the very idea of soulmates. After Donna Smoak remarries into the Merlyn family, events are put into motion that bring Felicity into proximity the very destiny she never wanted to be apart of, and the family she never knew she needed. After years of unknowingly fighting and dancing around her fate, Felicity finally receives her soulmark on her 18th birthday. With the truth revealed, Felicity's fate is left in her hands, and only she can decide whether to let him in before it's too late. http://archiveofourown.org/works/10216829/chapters/22672961

// @almondblossomme // @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @quant-um-fizzx // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 // @wrongshipper //

#FabulousOlicityFanficFriday #olicity fanfiction #fic recs

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how2to18 · 5 years

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CRABAPPLE, PRICKLY GOOSEBERRY, bittersweet, and devil’s walking stick — are these the names of thorny old monsters in some dark children’s fairy tale? Nope. They are simply the flora that vine the paths of the forests and hollers of the Smoky Mountains. A brave five-year-old girl named Ernestine must journey through these persnickety snatchers in the early morning shadows in order to deliver mason jars full of fresh milk to the neighbors who live far away. It is 1942, and the husbands are away at war. The wives and mothers run the farms, raise the children, milk the cows. These country neighbors take care of one another in their time of need.

This is the framework for Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s Ernestine’s Milky Way, an achingly poignant tale of independence, resourcefulness, and good old-fashioned neighboring as seen through the eyes of a strong-willed little girl in the wartime South. The illustrations, by Emily Sutton, brush the pages like the powdered wings of butterflies. There are sturdy rock houses and old wooden fences, hand-sewn blankets and dusty banjos, everything surrounded by watercolor bursts of soft country colors — trees, leaves, grass, and plants. Flowers and vines are like their own characters. The facial expressions of the people make you ache for home. Any city-dwelling child is bound to look up at the parent, or teacher, or sibling, or babysitter reading them this story and ask, “Can we please go the woods tomorrow?”

I met Kerry Madden-Lunsford during my first MFA in Creative Writing Residency at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately drawn to her; she emanates a warm and welcoming vibe, with sparkling blue eyes and a wide, down-home smile. She dresses like a hippie teenager from the ’60s who has met her future self, an older, wiser earth-mother. Currently she directs the Creative Writing program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she covers the desks and tables of her classrooms with books — dozens of picture books and chapter books, and middle-grade and YA, and, sprinkled in between, weathered copies of classics, like cherished relics from a magical library. Reminiscent of your favorite elementary school teacher, she actually writes out the lessons — infused with words of wisdom and anecdotes — in a comforting cursive on the board. She connects with everyone. She connects with their work. She was my first workshop leader, and her editorial letter about the 20 pages I had submitted told me everything I needed to know about her — namely, that she was a very old soul with a very young heart. You can sense this about her. You can feel it flowing from the pages of her books.

I recently visited Kerry at her home in the hills of Echo Park. We sat together over bagels and coffee with her husband Kiffen and their dazzling little dachshund, Olive, to talk about her latest release, the aforementioned Ernestine’s Milky Way, as well as her prior work.

She is the author of eight books, including the lauded Maggie Valley Trilogy set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. The first in that series, Gentle’s Holler (2005), was a PEN USA finalist in Children’s Literature, and it’s easy to see why. The book shares some strands of Ernestine’s world as it explores the life of a 12-year-old girl and her adventures, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1960s. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. Imagine a mash-up between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Coal Miner’s Daughter, and you’re nearly there. Mountain country folk ridden with worries about money and bellies swollen from hunger are the characters that anchor Madden-Lunsford’s work. But the families in her stories rely on mutual affection and a resourcefulness that flows like pure mountain spring water to get them through the rough times.

Her December 2018 essay in the Los Angeles Times, “The Christmas Suit,” is a blistering meditation on family addiction — a deeply caring mother’s despairing attempt to stave off the crippling inertia of frustrated emotion. It’s a different side of Kerry, a flip of the coin. It reveals something tender and truthful about a majority of authors who write picture books, middle-grade, and YA: that they are seasoned individuals whose brave flights of fancy trying to survive adult life are the pearls of wisdom hidden in the sealed-shut shells of books that celebrate innocence, or the end of it.

TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

KERRY MADDEN-LUNSFORD: That is a complicated question, though it shouldn’t be. The short answer is that I grew up the daughter of a college football coach, and we moved all the time. For years I said that I lived in 12 states, but my daughter, Norah, reminded me that it’s actually been 13 states. Alabama is lucky number 13. I used to remember all the states by mascots and teams rather than towns. My father’s first coaching job was for Father Lopez’s Green Wave (High School). He married my mother in between football and basketball season.

He was both the coach for both outfits, so he had the basketball season printed on the wedding napkins to build up team support. “Follow Janis and Joe on the Green Wave.” Always the coach, he informed the principal, Sister Annunciata, that the school dance should be held in the library, so the students wouldn’t mess up his gymnasium floor in fancy shoes. He only told me this story a few weeks ago or it would have been in Offsides, my first novel about growing up the daughter of a football coach. Sister Annunciata shut that suggestion down flat, and the dance was held in the gym. I asked him if he chaperoned, and he said, “Hell, no.”

Because some people are going to think that I am the daughter of John Madden, which I am most definitely not, I finally had to write an essay called “I Am Not John Madden’s Daughter.” My father has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia and he sometimes wakes up from naps, talking old football plays or what defense he ran at the Sugar Bowl in 1977 as the defensive coordinator. He did this while we were in Rome a year ago, and my mother said, “Snap out of it! You’re in Rome!”

How did you come to writing?

I’ve told this story once or twice, but I really do credit my fourth-grade teacher, who told me I was a good writer. It was the first time a teacher ever said any such thing. They usually said, “Aren’t you a nice tall girl who listens well?” They said this because I was shy. So it was a relief when a teacher noticed more than height or shyness. That day, I walked around my neighborhood of Ames, Iowa (Iowa State Cyclones), noticing everything, and wrote a story called “The Five Cents,” thinking it was about the “the five senses.” I never was a good speller. I remained a shy kid, and later some of the nuns began to suggest I might have a vocation to join the convent. I wrote about everything, but mostly I read — I read all the time and that absolutely formed me as a writer.

Who are your greatest influences?

My parents were great influences for humor and resilience, but I rebelled quietly because I was not a girly-girl or an athlete (unless field hockey in ninth grade counts, along with golfing on the boys’ team in high school), so I set out to find ways where I could create my own identity away from the gridiron.

I was definitely influenced (terrified) by Helen Keller and facing her fate when I had to get glasses in third grade. The doctor told my mother, “she’s blind without them,” to make a point. When I sobbed in my father’s arms about my horror of going blind (I think I also threw up in the bathroom), he shouted, “By God, nobody is going blind in this house!” I cried, “But how do you know?” “Because I said so!” It made no sense whatsoever, but I believed him.

I adored my babysitter, Ann Kramer, who was a wild tomboy in Ames, Iowa. I loved the coaches’ wives because they were such good storytellers. I was incredibly influenced by my first best friend, Pattie Murphy, in high school because she was so funny and irreverent, presenting a good girl persona to the powers-that-be and then whispering to me filthy things that were horrible and hilarious. We got caught cracking up laughing in the worst places — in class, at midnight Mass, on stage in Ten Little Indians. She was the first friend to make me laugh. We were miraculously “the new girls” at almost the same time in a school, Knox Catholic, where the kids had been together forever; even their parents and some grandparents had attended Knox Catholic.

I was very influenced by my Aunt Jeanne, who gave me books, and my Uncle Michael, who taught me about art. I lost them both to suicide when I was very young, and I wrote about them in Offsides as a way of atoning for not paying more attention. I wrote an essay about that this past summer.

I do think I was most influenced by getting to study abroad at Manchester University my junior year in college. A group of British drama students adopted me and showed me a whole world of art and theater, and I worshipped them for their hilarity and brilliance. I also had wonderful professors in England, who paid attention to me in ways I had never experienced during my first two years at the University of Tennessee. Plus, nobody in England cared if I went to church or watched football. They wanted me to write plays and “drop the grotty trade school occupation of journalism,” and I was very happy to oblige. I’m now writing a novel inspired by that time called Hop the Pond, which also has themes of addiction and features the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

When I returned to the University of Tennessee from Manchester, I often pretended to be a British exchange student (yes, I was insufferable because I couldn’t bear leaving England for Tennessee). I changed my major to theater, and I came to know my professors in Tennessee who taught us theater history, acting, directing. I was grateful for the encouragement and attention they gave me as a student (and a girl in the South) who wanted to write plays. The only contemporary playwright I knew of at that time was Beth Henley, and I hadn’t yet heard of Wendy Wasserstein.

Our theater department was still cranking out suggested scene study pairings of mostly Inge, Albee, and Williams, and maybe, once in a while, Lillian Hellman. I wanted to write plays, so I stayed in Knoxville after graduation and began an MFA in playwriting. I was the only student in the course at the time, but it gave me two years to learn to teach “Voice and Diction” and to write plays while working at a bookstore. Those two years in Knoxville influenced me because that is when I fell in love with Southern literature. I dropped the faux British accent, and my patient friends were grateful.

Finally, I think my greatest influence just happened this year. She is my cousin, Maureen Madden O’Sullivan — or, simply, Mo. We met for the very first time last May; her grandfather and my great-grandfather — Patrick and Joseph Madden — were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland. Mo and I have lived parallel lives in Los Angeles for 30 years, with many friends in common. She has been sober since 1982, and I have a family member who suffers from addiction, so she has taught me how to really let go — to breathe, to meditate, to eat better, to make gazpacho, to take walks by the sea. She also has stage-four cancer and is doing everything to live and take care of herself, from chemo to acupuncture to meditation to plant medicine to sound therapy to massage to simply taking joy in everything. She is the light of my life, and when I complain about us not meeting sooner, she says, “We met at the perfect time.” She is more evolved than I am.

I have gathered all the letters and texts we have written to each other since May in a compilation, and it’s currently 440 pages. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I don’t know what the project will be, but I am so grateful for Mo. I know I’m a mother, and I love being a mother, but around her I am not a mother. I’m just me again. A friend said I should call the book or whatever it’s going to be: 23 and Me and Mo.

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles?

I’ve been living this unplanned dual two-state life since 2009. I wrote an essay about making the decision to accept a tenure track teaching job in Birmingham, Alabama, and living on an air mattress for a while. I came alone the first year; the second year, my sixth-grade daughter, Norah, joined me and she was like a little cultural anthropologist. She came home from school the first day and said, “We played the name game and we had to say what we liked. And all the kids said they liked only Auburn or Alabama. I know they like their state and ‘auburn’ is a very pretty color, but what I am supposed to choose? When it was my turn, I said, ‘I’m Norah and I like books.’” I realized I had given the child no information about Alabama, so we had a crash course in football so she could catch up. Whenever I hinted at wanting to return to Los Angeles, she would say, “You can go be with Daddy. I like it here. I love it here. All my friends are here. Alabama is great!”

When I realized we were in it for the long haul, we got a rescue dog, Olive, who flies back and forth with me to Los Angeles. I had a terrible flight before we got Olive, awful soul-sucking turbulence, and Norah thought I was crying out “Hell Mary’s” instead of “Hail Mary’s.” After the trip, I vowed to drive or take the train, but it only took a four-day train ride from Los Angeles to Birmingham sitting up in coach class to get me back in the air. Then I got Olive. She has rescued me in countless ways every single day. And she truly is my emotional support animal on planes, along with the occasional emotional support Bloody Mary or glass of red wine.

I love my job as the director of Creative Writing at UAB. I love my students. I learn from them all the time. They come from all walks of life and many of them are first-generation college or they are returning to college later in life. I do miss living with my husband, who has four more years until he retires from LAUSD, but we get to spend summers and holidays together. We also cook and watch movies together. We do this by saying, “One-Two-Three — Go!” and then we hit play at the same time and mostly we’re in sync on Netflix. And because he is a wonderful man, he also goes to visit Mo, and we all have dinner and Skype together.

Our son is in Los Angeles, our middle daughter is in Chicago, and our youngest lives in the dorm at UAB. During the academic year, I live with Olive in what I call my “Alabama Retreat House.” Lots of sweet students and kind faculty drop by from time to time and other friends, too. Birmingham is such a cool city — a bright blue dot in a big red state. One of my L.A. friends visited, and she looked around the house and said, “You’ve created a little Echo Park in Birmingham.” I have filled the place with books and art from mostly “Studio by the Tracks,” where adults on the autism spectrum make art. Started by Ila Faye Miller in what used to be an old gas station, it’s a fantastic studio located in Fannie Flagg’s old neighborhood of Irondale.

I’m currently working on three novels — two are children’s books and one is for adults. I’ve adapted Offsides into a play, and I’m writing a little poetry and always picture books. I am thrilled that Ernestine’s Milky Way, written in this Alabama Retreat House and edited in a 1910 bungalow in Echo Park, has found a home at Schwartz & Wade.

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

I think they’re valuable because they allow students to find their people. I didn’t find my people in an MFA program, because I was the only student in my program at the time. However, I kind of made my own MFA with a writing group in Los Angeles — we met for 15 years, regularly. Those writers are still some of my dearest friends. I’ve also joined an online group of children’s picture book authors, who are brilliant, and a wonderful local group here of smart women writers. I find I need the feedback and connection with other writers — a kind of forest-for-the-trees thing with all the teaching I do. We also show up and support each other when our books come out.

That is the most valuable aspect to me of the MFA program — finding our people and getting to teach upon graduation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have taught in both a traditional BA and MA program here at UAB and a low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

I hope I encourage my students to trust themselves — to know that they do have a story to tell. I use play in the classroom (storyboarding and making book dummies) and I get them to take risks or chances with writing sparks, exploring narratives. I also talk about the importance of showing up for each other when success comes along. In other words, go to the reading, buy the book, go to the play — it’s such a long and lonely road to go alone, so I encourage them to cheer each other along the way and offer a hand. It’s so much better than being competitive and harboring jealousy.

Of course, it’s natural to feel envy, but I have been so fortunate to have friends who show up and are genuinely pleased, and I hope I do the same for them. I encourage my students to be good literary citizens and also to spend less time online. I offer the advice I need to listen to myself, especially when I fall into the online rabbit hole.

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

I read to our three kids all the time. My son’s favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. I even read that book last year to a group of incarcerated men at Donaldson Maximum Security Prison who had never been read aloud to before. I wrote an essay about that experience.

Anyway, I loved reading to our children when they were small, and my husband was a fantastic reader, too. I used to seek out books with great writing and stories. I hid the Berenstain Bears from the kids because I hated books where we had to learn a lesson. I never really thought of writing for kids because I was writing plays and novels for grown-ups. But I began falling in love with stories like Swamp Angel by Anne Isaacs, and anything by William Steig. The kids loved Chris Van Allsburg, as did I, and of course we loved Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Roald Dahl, Ann Whitford Paul, Cynthia Voigt, Eve Bunting, Jacqueline Woodson, and Lane Smith’s The Happy Hocky Family. There are too many to begin to even name. One of their favorites was “What Luck A Duck” by Amy Goldman Koss, who later became a friend.

We read stacks of books, and as they grew older, they began to tell me what books to read. My son, Flannery, begged me to read The Giver and The Phantom Tollbooth. My daughter, Lucy, fell in love Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak. She wasn’t a huge reader at the time, but she liked that book a lot and said after school one day, “Mom, I felt like reading it at the lunch-table with all my friends around. What it is up with that?”

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to them and we watched the movie together. Norah used to have a little shelf of books in the minivan, because she was terrified of finishing one and not having another at hand. She used to ask me, “Can I bring three books?” and I would say, “You may bring them, but I am not carrying them.” When we moved to a different house a few years ago, we donated 20 boxes of books and it still has not made a dent in all the books we have.

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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