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Barbara Kennedy has been in the investment advisory community since beginning
her career as an inter-bank money market broker at Two World Trade Center in 1980. She was inducted into the National League
of American Pen Women in arts and letters in 1994, and graduated from New York Medical College in 1996. She lives in Arizona
and New Mexico. Second Chance Ranch is her first novel.
Second Chance Ranch is a “2005
Southwest Book of the Year"
WHEN DID YOU WRITE SECOND CHANCE RANCH?
I wrote the story over ten years.
WHEN DID YOU BEGIN WRITING?
I decided to be an
author on The New York Times bestsellers list when I was about four--at that age life is linear. And I was a dreamer. Native
Americans in the southwest have visions, dreams. There is no recent or historical reference to magical thinking on either
side of my family, no witchcraft, still the wind curled up to me and it said: Stop making the books and start telling the
stories.
WHERE DID YOU GROW UP?
I grew up in the Northeast. I migrated to the Southwest
about ten years ago. Arizona and New Mexico are rich with culture, history and lore.
WHO HAS INFLUENCED
YOUR WRITING MOST?
It varies. Everything I know I learned from someone. Every book is different. In Second Chance
Ranch, I quote writer Lillian Smith, "I went on this journey to find an image of the human being I could be proud of.
I had to find what I believe, what is meaningful in human experience, for me; what is the creative meaning of ordeal?"
I quote Milan Kundera, Ayn Rand and Eugene O’Neill. I consider myself in fine company.
WHAT
DOES THE TITLE SECOND CHANCE RANCH MEAN?
I titled the book Second Chance Ranch because it was the name of the
actual place where the story took place. Second Chance Ranch was the place of the sickness, of the praying, the hoping, the
anger, grieving and redemption.
IS IT A NOVEL?
Yes. And I emphasize novel in order
to de-personalize it. It has some autobiographical content but it is not a singular story; it is a collective narrative; the
vignettes are everyone’s story, and are all-and ever-prevailing.
WHAT IS NARRATIVE FICTION?
Narrative Fiction is making a come back, according to reviewers of Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking. I didn't
know it went out of fashion frankly. Narrative Therapy can be an effective method of grieving. Go to the things that formed
character, go to the disappointments that shaped personality.
Speak your story. First person is narrative.
IS THERE A SURPRISE OR A HAPPY ENDING TO THE STORY?
There is thankfully a happy ending.
WHAT HAVE SOME READERS OR REVIEWERS SAID ABOUT THE BOOK?
One reviewer said she read until
3 in the morning, she couldn’t put it down. A reader said, "That could have been my story. I teared throughout."
It has a five-star rating on Amazon.com.
WHO DIDN’T LIKE YOUR BOOK?
There was
one agent, with a haughty toss of his curls, said he wasn’t grabbed by it, he wasn’t moved enough to want to read
on. I should show more, tell less, he advised me. I don’t even know what that means frankly. Once I would have asked
him if he knew what narrative meant. Instead, I try to guess how old he is.
WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?
Baby boomers are my audience. One of us turns fifty every eight seconds notwithstanding. Baby boomers coming into gray,
addressing traumas, un-grieved, facing losses, un-grieved. For all baby boomer couples, without exception, bereavement is
a universal and integral part of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows
summer.
PROFITS FROM THE BOOK ARE BEING DONATED? TO WHOM?
Hospice Organizations and
The Make-A-Wish Foundations will benefit from the profits of the sale of this book. A separate accounting of Second Chance
Ranch is an open book.
WHAT ABOUT THE BOWLS?
In the book I talk about making papier
mache bowls in my kitchen right after my husband died. I refer to them as vessels of grieving. I made one each day for two
months--sixty in all. A few of them will be featured in PaperWorks Magazine February 2006 issue -The Art of Papier Mache.
WHAT IS YOUR NEXT PROJECT ABOUT?
I have a new book, The Holding Pen - A Collection of
Unusual Love Prose, which is a collection of short prose about relationships, loving relationships. It comes out in January
2006 in time for Valentine’s Day.
It has already been reviewed –
It is a book
that is meant to be a "keeper."
Don’t let your own copy out of your sight, it won’t
be returned.
A classic.
IS THAT A GOOD REVIEW?
I am humbled.
DESCRIBE THE HOLDING PEN—A COLLECTION OF UNUSUAL LOVE PROSE
It is a body of work (five short
stories, an essay, a poem and an excerpt) about relationships of all kinds—with husbands and lovers, and children lost
and found, relationships with friends, neighbors, and natural enemies, with spirits and even with God.
WHAT
MAKES THEM SO UNUSUAL?
The characters are not what you would normally expect. A dancer and a vampire try to
develop a loving relationship—it’s fraught with stereotypes and conflict, as you may well imagine. A hawk and
a fox try to create a mutual friendship—the bird and the mammal view the world rather differently, notwithstanding,
he has an attitude and she has fleas.
How do we relate to one another in this culturally and politically
diverse world? What preconceived notions and prejudices do we bring to the proverbial dinner table--beautifully set with scented
aerides odorata orchids as a centerpiece? Who do we love? Who do we hate?
Who and what do we believe to be
true--and what is truth?
WHAT CAN BE WRITTEN ABOUT LOVE THAT HASN’T BEEN WRITTEN ALREADY?
The world is different every day. Relationships, conflicts and resolutions are always different, but basically the same.
There is an art to getting along--compromise and mediation are more important than ever. There is a lot at stake. There is
much to say about love. Much.
YOU HAVE A VERY STRONG YET FEMININE VOICE. IT’S NOT A CONFLICT,
RATHER A REFRESHING CHANGE, ALMOST EXPERIMENTAL.
Both my writing and my painting have been cited as Experimental
Expressionism my whole life. I have always colored outside the lines. I mention this in Second Chance Ranch. Chagall did it.
Picasso did it. Women not so much. We seem culturally penned in by convention. Stories are how we pass down our family and
personal lore, who we are, and how and where we fit in the world. But before literary women can journey toward autonomy, it
is said, we must come to terms with a pervasive intellectual imprisonment and break out of the holding pen--with a hard thrust
and a lot of seminal ink.
SEMINAL?
Creative. It’s a play on words. <grin>
As is the very title, The Holding Pen, and all of the stories. Laina and the Vamp, Just Desserts, Renegade Spirit…
Some are tongue in cheek. They entertain, but they make you think. A reviewer said: You will never look at a piano the same
way ever again. I will leave it at that.
THERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM YOUR UPCOMING NOVEL, CHELSEA MATINEE?
Yes. I use one scene, a love scene that pretty much sums up their relationship.
It’s steamy and it’s
funny.
HUMOR IS SEXY?
Oh, yes. But Chelsea Matinee is not a humorous story. A
young woman from Wisconsin goes to New York City in the seventies to study art. She meets a man of questionable character
and falls hopelessly in love. It changes everything. She learns to paint from memory as a way of expressing her emotions in
her art, and similarly she writes this story thirty years later, again from memory, in order to ‘paint’ what it
felt like to be hopelessly and passionately in love in her youth.
YOU WRITE BOOKS FOR WOMEN?
I write first person narratives. Therefore I have, as you said, a feminine voice. I guess I write for women--mature, worldly
women. But men read my books as well and have reviewed them quite favorably. I would say that I write for the baby-boomer
generation, of which I am a proud member. We have a rather interesting perspective, and, thus, voice. One of us turns sixty
every eight seconds—but more about this later!
DO YOU DESIGN THE COVERS OF YOUR BOOKS?
Yes. These books are artfully crafted in letters.
I am an accomplished painter. My first One-Woman Art
Show was a retrospective of oil paintings at the E.C. Potter Gallery in Greenwich, CT, where I lived when I was finishing
my master's at New York Medical College in the early Nineteen nineties. The late E.C. Potter was a local sculptor whose
literary lions grace the steps of The New York Public Library.
WHAT DID YOU DO BEFORE THAT?
I worked on Wall Street for more than 20 years as a bond trader, and before that I had a little shop in Locust Valley on
Long Island. It was called Ruby Stars, Inc. I designed children’s clothing.
TELL ME ABOUT A
PERSON WHO INFLUENCED YOU ALONG THE WAY.
One I would have to say is Rose Van Sand. She was my first professional
mentor. It was through her that I met many extraordinary people. I started writing a book, which I am still writing 30 years
later, at her home in Southbury, CT, where once Katherine Ann Porter wrote Ship of Fools. I was her junior by sixty years. |
