Last night we ate one of my pedestrian suppers of spaghetti and meat sauce. Cooking the meat sauce required cutting an onion. Cleaning up after supper(trust me, I promise this is going somewhere), I turned on the garbage disposal and started carefully jamming the onion skins down the rubber mouth of the scary disposal monster.

 As I’m listening to the grinding, hoping that the crunches I’m hearing are not one of my rings or a spoon or the sponge, I heard my father, who died almost ten years ago, reminding me about the dangers of onions in the garbage disposal. Then I remembered, no, he didn’t mean white onions; he meant green onions. From there, I faded to my first apartment, a newlywed, cooking one of my first dinners. I plunged my hand in the sink full of soapy water and came up with a bloody thumb, my bloody thumb. Drops of blood rained from my hand, pelting the frothy soap bubbles.

 Then, I saw myself in a picture taken the night my father surprised my mother with her first (and only) mink stole. Thirty-three years ago. She was the last in her trio of friends to own a mink. It was, to her, a luxurious article she thought she would never own.

My father was wearing a suit. They were going out to dinner. My mother, so astonished, she’s actually covering her open mouth with both hands. Even though she has been dead now for twenty years, I heard the echo of her saying, “Oh, Johnny. You shouldn’t have.” The unspoken: “…but I am so thrilled you did” conveyed by the lilt in her voice and the delight in her eyes.

 I flicked the disposal off. With its stopping, so did the swish of memories, like Ezra Pound’s, “In a Station at the Metro”: The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black bough. Pound himself said of his “image poem”:

 “I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.”

Who knew sending onions down a garbage disposal would bring me to my parents? It was a moment; their petal faces on the wet black bough of memory. And my first thought, as I hurriedly dried my hands, was to look for a pen and my notebook. To capture what I could remember; to not lose my parents and this unexpected gift of them in the ordinary drudgery of dishwasher loading and towel folding and paper grading.

This, I believe, is why I write. It’s what makes me a writer. It’s what leads me to the keyboard, to the journal, to the notebook. God can set in motion the most mysterious workings to lead me to the most precious thoughts, but I have to show up. I have to pay attention.

I have to trust that even onions can lead to joy.

Christa’s latest novel Edge of Grace is available now!

I’m excited about today’s Fiction Friday Interview with author Roger Bruner. Roger’s latest novel, Lost in Dreams, is available now.  

PW: Welcome to The Literary Mama, Roger. Tell our readers a little about yourself.

RB: I’m so pleased to be here for Fiction Friday. Since I could tell you enough about me to bore everyone, I’ll try to stick to your request for a “little bit.” *grin*

At almost sixty-five, I’ve worked as an English teacher, a job counselor/interviewer, and a programmer/analyst. I retired at sixty-two to write full-time. I have a wonderful wife, Kathleen, who’s still ten years away from retirement; a twenty-four-year-old daughter, Kristi, who’s getting married next month and is listed as the co-author of my first two books; and two slightly older stepdaughters, one of whom lives in Las Vegas and the other in NYC. I’m active in the church choir and play guitar in the early service praise team as well as at our weekly nursing home ministry. I’ve been writing my own Christian songs since I was in high school (you do the math! *L*). I like going on mission trips, taking pictures of everything under the sun, doing web design, and—of course—reading.

PW: What is Lost In Dreams about?

RB: Lost in Dreams is a continuation of the first book in the Altered Hearts series, Found in Translation. That book ended with Kim Hartlinger and her friends on the bus returning to San Diego from a two-week mission trip to a tiny Mexican village. Lost in Dreams begins at the San Diego airport as Kim prepares to fly home to Georgia. Almost immediately upon landing, Kim experiences such a severe problem that the guilt she feels about it throws her health and well being into a tailspin. The rest of the book deals with how God freed her from her (unnecessary) guilt and made her whole again.

PW: What sparked your initial idea for Lost In Dreams?

RB: Because the Altered Hearts series is missions-themed, I needed another mission trip. Involving some of the same characters from the first book made sense. I used to do prison ministry, so a mission trip that involved a prison made sense. Kim came home from Mexico so determined to have a closer relationship with her parents (especially her father) that I almost had to do something that would affect that. Kim experiences a problem similar to one my daughter had when she was in the eighth or ninth grade, although hers had nothing to do with guilt. So I guess you might say that my initial ideas came from a number of places.

PW: If this book were made into a movie, who would play the lead characters?

RB: You’ve heard the old song “The Impossible Dream”? Well, you’ve asked me the impossible question. *laughing* My wife and I don’t watch TV at all and don’t go to very many movies. So other people can name dozens of current actors, but I’m at a total loss.

I can describe the ideal actor to play Kim, though. She would be short, have dark eyes, and have long wavy black hair. Her skin tone would be slightly darker than most Caucasians because of her mother’s Vietnamese heritage, although her facial features would reflect her father’s American heritage. Ideally, she would have a slightly Latina look. This actor would be attractive, but trim, and in her late teens or early twenties. An authentic Southern accent would be an asset.

I’ll let the readers of this book suggest an appropriate actor for Kim and the other lead characters. I’d be especially interested in who you come up with for Aleesha, the super-talented African-American who became Kim’s best friend on the trip to Mexico.

PW: How did you get started writing fiction? What was your road to publication like?

RB: I’ve been writing all my life. Poems, short plays, technical articles. Even a short story or two. I always thought I’d write a novel when I retired, but I had no idea what it would be about. I didn’t even think in terms of writing more than one. When the place I’d been working almost nineteen years downsized, I wasn’t old enough to retire, but I was too old to have an easy time finding work. (This was before today’s economy got so horrible.) When I ended up working part-time at a Target store, I had time I hadn’t counted on. Then an idea for a novel struck me, and I was off in a flash.

I self-published the first book because I’d heard so much about how hard it is to get published. For me, that was a definite mistake, because I didn’t want to spend much time marketing; I wanted to get busy writing the next book.

And so I did. My third manuscript won a contest at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference, and I thought publication would surely be forthcoming. But it took probably another three years to get an agent, and it took him a year to sell Found in Translation to Barbour Publishing. Getting Terry Burns of Hartline was the key, though, and it happened because an editor at a publishing house that couldn’t use Found in Translation loved my writing so much that she actually went out and found Terry for me.

That was a definite God-thing.

PW: Do you have any other novels we can look forward to reading?

RB: Absolutely! And they’re not all young adults novels, either. Of course, it’s up to God working through publishers to determine which of my manuscripts will ultimately see the light of day. Although I hope Barbour will contract at least two more books in the Altered Hearts series, they’re also potentially interested in an incomplete manuscript about two teen preachers’ kids. I’m trying to appeal to teen boys with that one. But I also have manuscripts aimed at middle-aged adults.

PW: How can readers get in touch with you?

RB: I’m always happy to have visitors at my website, RogerBruner.com. But I’d also love to have you join me on Facebook. My author page is listed under “Roger Bruner (Author).”

PW: Thanks for stopping by, Roger!

RB: My pleasure, Preslaysa. You’re a very gracious hostess.