Speaker 1: Hello and good morning.
Speaker 2: Good morning, this is Rick Squiat calling.
Speaker 1: How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Rick? Good How are you?
Speaker 1: Absolutely fantastic and very excited to share a conversation with
you because I love the way you write. How did
you learn how to paint mental pictures like this?
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of practice over a lot of years,
a lot of reading, a lot of listening.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you said reading, because that's one of
the things that when I sit down with the students
and stuff at these schools and they go, I don't
like your read I say, you have no idea where
that reading is going to take you. Well I don't
like it, Well, learn to like it so you can
grow is How did you start out as a student.
Speaker 2: Well, I started out hating school as it goes, but
I always had a facility with language, and I always
read a lot. My father was a reader, so I
was always interested in books. And out of college I
got a job as a newspaper reporter and started writing
then and have been making my way in life as
a writer ever since.
Speaker 1: How did this book come to you? Because you know,
my last book came to me when I was walking
through a mall. I was like, oh, my God, of
all places to receive a book, Where did you receive
this story?
Speaker 2: Well, I always as fascinated as a child with the
stories my parents and grandparents would tell me about the past,
and particularly about Prohibition. They was some family history involvement
in that, and my father saw his neighbor gun down
in a game lang killing. This is in North Saint Louis.
And also my grandfather, his father, my immigrant Polish grandfather,
was storying the barrels of whiskey in their flat in
their tenement until his wife, who was afraid of being deported,
started sleeping on the sofas, so he got rid of
the whiskey. My mother also labeled the baptub gin bottles
for her neighbors a little girl, so I was interested
in that, and also in the following years of the
Great Depression also World War Two, and heard all these stories.
So this book's sprang from that desire to revisit that
time and spend some time there with some of the
characters that are familiar with.
Speaker 1: What I love about this book is the fact that
you take a piece of our past and you make
it so modern, you make it like it's happening right now,
or at least that's where you planted my imagination.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of the things that people experience their
people still experience today, love and death and trying to
deal with the outside world, in this case military conscription
and going off to find a war, having to deal
with adversity. We all share these common things and are
collected unconscious and that's where a writer goes to the
stuff that we all feel and know. And that's what
you write about, stuff that really moves you. And I
feel if it moves me, it's going to move other people.
Speaker 1: Are you like a songwriter and it came to you
in pieces parts? Or did this all just fall into
place from beginning all the way to the end.
Speaker 2: Oh no, very messy process and lots of drafts. I
couldn't count them. And good writing as always rewriting, so
and I do. And thank thanks for computers. That makes
rewriting a lot easier than it was in the days
of typewriters, where I started out as a newspaper reporter,
where you had to put another piece of paper in
and do it again.
Speaker 1: Wow wow, Because with my writing, when I do the
computer and I have to go in there and I
have to do an edit. I'll sit there and I'll
completely save it into a different file. In other words,
it's so I can have the original and the changes
and the chain and the changes, because sometimes you just
got to pull back, you know, pull things back in sure.
Speaker 2: And also you don't want to throw away good stuff,
you know, and and you want to throw away the
bad stuff and the and the overriding and the self
adults and stuff. Of course, but you wanted Chris, and
you wanted honest and being honest with yourself. I find
it's one of the toughest things this a writer. You
can't fall in love with your own words.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Rick Squiyot coming
up next. The name of the book, The Bootlegger's Bride,
it's from Rick Squewat. Let's get back to that conversation.
How difficult was it to step back into the Great
Depression because you know those silent times, you know people look,
you know, my father would never talk about it, although
he did live in it, and so did my mother.
And it's like it's one of those things, is that
you know, and now you're bringing this forward.
Speaker 2: Yes, my father did talk about it, my mother too,
because they both were you know, this is a story
about working class people. And in those days, my father
would go down to the Hooverville on the Saint Louis waterfront,
and this was the largest encampment of homeless people during
the United States during the depression. There's only over five
thousand people living there in shanty on the waterfront. And
he would go there and visit with him and talk
with him. So, yeah, there was real deprivation around town,
people out of work, and so I always heard a
lot of stories about how tough those times were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mom would say that. I mean, she'd say,
you have no idea how dark the times were. And
I sat there and said, I would like to know.
I really would, And so I rely on books like
this to give me at least that perception of what
it was like.
Speaker 2: Well, this is historic historical novel. And one of the
things about writing this sort of book is that it's
not a history book, because history books usually deal with
big events and big people and what and this is
a history of people who are unhistory generally, So you
get to see what day to day life is like,
and what they ate and what they drank, how much
things cost, what was in style, what was prohibited, the
way they talked to one another, the way they interacted.
You don't get that sort of a close and personal
field for historical moment when you're reading history books.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in building the characters inside this book, is it
based on people that you know? Or is it like
a dream? We really don't see people in our dreams.
It's just people we pass by on the street.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a bit of dreaming and imagination, but it's
also people I've known. My father plays a role as
a parish part of the part of the character and here.
But they're all composites. It's people we know and people
you've known in books and read about or seen in
the movies. Are other experiences you have personally and things
you dream about. Things this come out of out of
your your your unconscious I know when I some of
my best writings done in the morning, I like to
get up and work first thing, because that's when I'm
coming out of my sleep and my subconscious mind is
really alive at that time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I totally get that, because I can't do anything
until the writing is done in the morning. Then we
can go about this day.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and then the afternoon I can do rewriting where
I have more of an analytical, sober, analytical frame of mind.
Speaker 1: See, I always call those wine glass moments where you
can go in there with even kool aid and sit
there and say, Okay, we're gonna sit back, we're gonna
we're gonna do some editing right now, and we're going
to get away with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the when I used to teach creative
writing in the university, I would tell my students that
one of the things I always try to do when
I have a draft or a book or a short
story that I really love is I try to wait
till someday when I'm really maybe terribly hung over, not
feeling very well, and read it again. There's nothing like
having a hangover. Let's just say the truth about your writing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know I love that idea and the
reason why it's like radio. You've got to put yourself
in the position of where your listener is when they're
picking up on it. So therefore you're writing. I mean,
how many people during a hangover, are not feeling well,
are sitting there saying I need it up, and so
they grab your book. So you're putting yourself right there
where that reader is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but as you know as a writer that
it's just it's a very convoluted, very demanding, and very
very sloppy thing to try to put a book together.
Speaker 1: In your heart. Who is Hazel Robinson?
Speaker 2: You know, they're a bit of my ex wife in there,
who was a bookish woman, and other women that I've
read about and known, but no one quite as let's say,
dreamy is this woman? Yeah, because she's a very much
a romance and so this, like all my characters, she's
a composite of all women and men that I've known,
their aspects of that and they're dreaming men around too
that she received embodies that, and so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a murder mystery. Plus it's also a coming of
age tail. How did you find balance in that? Because
I mean, I mean so much focus would be like
me as a reader going oh, who did it? Who
did it? Who did it? And then it's like, oh
wait a second, this this guy's changing.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that with that way how it came
about because I started out and started out with it
with one concept and then it more often something else.
And so in this case, the actual protagonist of the book,
AJ is a young man who loses his parents his
father in World War Two in the D Day invasion
of his mother, who later commits suicide to protect his
legacy from a from a blackmailer, and so it becomes
his book. And I got interested in that into the
life of orphans and did a lot of research on
opens and found some surprising things. But it was it
really grew in a much different direction than I originally
envisioned it.
Speaker 1: That's the fun of writing. I think our second grade
teacher said that just go do it, Go have fun,
go build a world.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the greatest pleasure that I have had in
my life is doing my writing for myself, for my books.
It's also the most painful thing at times because it's.
Speaker 1: So where can people go to find out more about you, Rick,
because I want them to jump into the storyline and
create the conversation.
Speaker 2: Well, you can find out about me at my website
rixsquiat dot com and all my books are linked there
and listed, so you can usually find him and order them.
And by the way, my name is still the sk
w i OHD. So it's Rick Schlee. It's a it's
a strange name.
Speaker 1: I love it. Hey look at my name Arrow. That
who names a kid Arrow? Yeah, you got to come
back to this show anytime in the future. Rick, The
door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, ro I appreciate it. Enjoy chatting with you.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, thanks