Today in the ArtZany Radio studio Paula Granquist welcomes author Christopher Johnston to discuss his new novel Where you Come From is Gone, a family story set in Northern Minnesota that explores the bonds, pride, legacy, and life cycles of these hard-working commercial fishermen and mink ranching farmers. These characters cope with the trials of rural life, the dangers at work and play, and the games of politics. This story and their struggles will leave a lasting impression.
ArtZany! - Radio for the Imagination
ArtZany! Radio for the Imagination! Author Christopher Johnston on his new novel 'Where You Come From is Gone', 3-14-25
Northfield Arts Guild, visit our galleries, arts festival, and take in a performance at our theatre featuring a full season of dramas, comedies, and musicals. The Guild's gift shop showcases unique art from over 100 local and regional member artists. Come enjoy music from the Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra or the 411 Concert Series. We invite you to explore your creativity in one of our classes. All are welcome at the Northfield Arts Guild. To learn how you can be apart, visit northfieldartskill.org or call 507-645-8877. ArtZany, Radio for the Imagination, with your host, Paula Grandquist, is brought to you by the Northfield Arts Guild and by the Paradise Centre for the Arts. And now, ArtZany, Radio for the Imagination. Good morning, this is Paula Grandquist and you're tuned in to ArtZany, Radio for the Imagination. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the show that celebrates all things creating and stories. So let's get ready to tune our imaginations together. I once found a four-leaf clover in the yard of my great aunt Bessie's house in International Falls. And I set that lucky clover on a tissue and wrapped it in plastic wrap. And when I got home, I hid it in my copy of the Disney book The Million Dollar Duck. I thought I was so lucky. I forgot about it though after years, and then this kid Jeff in the neighbourhood asked to borrow that book, so I handed it over to him. Shortly after giving it to him, I remembered the lucky clover and went to his house to ask him for the book back. There was no four-leaf clover in the book. I asked him about it and he claimed there never was anything tucked into the pages of the book. I really wish I had that lucky charm. Someone out there has it. I really believe it's out there somewhere. I hope I find it someday, but maybe I'll find another one someday. But you know what I wish for more than that clover is more stories about my great aunt Bessie. I know so little, but what I do know is that she trapped critters to sell to the fur traders. She lived in rugged rural Minnesota. She told great stories and lived a life that most of us will never experience. I would ask her about what life was like as a female in that world. What were some of the scariest moments? Who were some of the characters she met on the way? How did she feel about trapping animals? How did she cope with that rough and tumble life? I wish I had her stories. And reading stories is one of the ways that I can try to enter that world. I love a good story that reveals a slice of life to us. We get to experience world, work, tools, relationships, families, lands, dangers and lives that we would normally not be privy to witness. And I'm so excited today because today on Artsini Radio, I am pleased to bring you one of those stories. Today on the show, I'm welcoming author Christopher Johnston to discuss his new novel, Where You Come From Is Gone. It's a family story set in northern Minnesota that explores the bonds, pride, legacy and life cycles of these hardworking, commercial fishermen and mink ranching farmers. These characters cope with the trials of real life, the dangers at work and play and the games of politics. This story and their struggles will leave a lasting impression. You can get more details at Christopher Johnston books dot com. Christopher Johnson has published short fiction travel writing performed as a storyteller on the moth main stage and writes changing gears on sub stack. He worked for 35 years as an engineer and management consultant which took him to rural communities with struggling businesses throughout North America and Europe and he was born and raised in Minnesota where he grew up around the family fishing and mink ranching business. Welcome to Artsini Radio Christopher, it's so exciting to have you here. Thanks Paul, it's great to be here. I'm so thrilled. This is such a big thing. I want to ask to start off with first tell us a little bit about yourself. If there's any more you want to add to that introduction about you as a writer or about things in your world and then let us know when did that story about your family start percolating for you that that might make a great novel. Sure. Yeah, first of all, I'm involved in a lot of some other activities, I'm actually going to be cycling with some of my friends later today, so I've got the bike and back in my car. Are you cycling in Northfield? Yes. Oh, there's a lot of great places. Did you do some gravel riding after we're done, so some of my old teammates are going to be showing up, so I'm looking forward to that. Exciting. Yeah, the novel really started percolating probably in about 2009, 2010. I started, I was in a short story class actually at the loft and I wrote a story about these two brothers that meet in a small town bar and they're discussing essentially what has happened to them and as I'd written this short story as it comes out, you find this isn't giving anything away in the novel, but this is where the story originated. These two brothers meet in a bar and you eventually learn as they're talking that both of their oldest boys have been killed in various accidents and mishaps that they're related to and they they've been estranged because of that and so that slowly reveals and while the writing instructor basically said you're trying to do too much in a short story and at that point that's where I thought, okay, he said this needs to be a novel and fill in the background and everything, so that's really the original seed of what became the, became the novel. And on your family business, did you, as you're living that life and, you know, Mink Rancher isn't something that a lot of people really know and understand, did you think this is a cool thing that most people don't know I should write about it? Yeah, absolutely, it's a, yeah, it's a lifestyle and way of life that just really very few people know about even people who live in Minnesota, it was a really some fairly significant industry where both commercial fishing and Mink Rancher were fairly significant businesses in Minnesota, you know, starting the early 20th century until probably the 1980s and so it's a lifestyle that existed but I don't think a lot of people in this state heard about it or were familiar with it and so I felt it was really something that was a compelling, a compelling setting for a story. Absolutely, and you and I met, this is where a part of the story, I think this is something I haven't had the experience of being, well, I guess I have talked to Kurt from our group as well, and Peter, but we met at the Loft in the, what was it was called the Novel Writing Project, and that was taught by Peter Guy and we were both in that class working on our developing our ideas where it was a rough, the very early stages of putting it all together I think, and so what are some of the things that stand out from that novel writing class at the Loft for you? Really the, I guess the main thing was having to have pages done by a certain date, you know, one of the things that, you know, Peter emphasized and that was, you know, kind of a mantra in the class was, you know, okay, you've got to have, I think it was typically like 50 pages, you know, and we'd usually have what like, I remember it'd be like six weeks or eight weeks to get your 50 pages done to be ready for workshop, and I guess this comes from my bicycle racing background in a sense, I was not going to be the person who didn't have their pages done, so I wanted to make sure that I had them done, you know, whether they were, you know, good or bad or indifferent, but the thing that I think, that I really learned from that process of saying, okay, I've got to have my pages done by a certain date was really, I think of it almost like a sculptor or something where you got to have material to work with. So it almost doesn't matter how good it is that, you know, as they say, the crappy first draft. So it's like, okay, I'm just going to get material that I can work with. So just tell the story, get stuff out there, and then you've got something that you can work with that you can stretch, modify and make, you know, make it more artful and, you know, and all of those things. Yeah, I remember that pressure too, because it was, I had a mess of things and not everything was connected and there wasn't really a through line. I have no idea what was, you know, it was just, I just wrote these little ditties, right, if you will, and to try to shape them into a bigger piece. Undertaking the writing of a novel is something that is much harder than I think anyone ever imagines. Yeah, no, I agree. And another thing that I guess I mentioned earlier that I was, you know, an elite level racing cyclist, the one thing that my cycling coach always told me was, you know, just move the mountain a spoon full at a time. And in terms of training, you know, you're not going to be, you're not going to go from zero to great right away. So I also thought about that in terms of the writing the novel as well. It's just like, okay, I just need to write any given day, you know, do 500 words, do without a thousand words, maybe 1500. And then just, you know, just try to do that, get something out and just keep doing that day after day after day. And eventually you end up with a, you know, a massive, massive material. And then from that massive material, then you can start, you know, doing revision and editing and polishing and all of that, give yourself something to work with. Yeah. And that's, I can be witness to that for you because I saw some of those earlier drafts and then to read the completed published novel is very exciting. It's really wonderful. And so we should start talking about these characters. So you mentioned who showed up for you first on the page. And then you got this unwieldy draft. And how did you know what to do next? So who is going to tell the story? And how were you going to, you know, reveal this, this world to audiences that wouldn't be familiar to with it? Yeah. So speaking of the draft from the novel writing project, yeah, it originally start just to give us sense of the evolution of it. So it started, I remember right, it was about 330 pages and about 110, 120,000 words. And then the not the finish, just to compare it to the finished novel, the finished novels, about 60,000 words, it's a lot of pages. So it was a lot of cutting. But are also for people who maybe don't have a sense of that, the great Gatsby is about 56,000 words. So it's a little bit longer than the great Gatsby. So in novel terms, it's rel, you know, it's on the short, it's on the short side, which actually when I first met with Peter, at the beginning of the project, you know, he talks to each of the students individually. And I told him, you know, I wanted to, my goal was to write actually a kind of a Gatsby leg novel. And then, you know, I came out of the project with the first draft with this huge mammoth thing. And I'm like, Oh, what am I going to do? And so the night, you know, then, then it was into the revision, revision phase. So the first draft is you're talking about revealing the characters earlier. So that originally had nine first person narrators. I remember that. I'm my Faulkner comp, my little Faulkner complex, I guess, trying to write my own version of as I lay dying, I guess. I'm glad you didn't. No, I didn't. Yeah. So that was some advice I got both from, from Peter and from another, from another editor who just, you know, suggested that I cut it down to, you know, to one or two narrators. And, and yeah, that gets into that. And I think that was really great advice. And after I went through that process, I think, you know, I really understood why that was the case. It's really hard to write multiple distinctive voices. So getting it to two, I think it was, was, was good. Yeah, I felt that one of the things that was non-negotiable, though, in terms of this process was I wanted it, the novel to be in first person. And the reason for that is because I wanted as little or zero sort of authorial voice in it, I wanted the characters just in a sense to be speaking directly to the reader as much as possible so that there would be no intermediate party so that the reader would have an experience as if they were, you know, sitting in a bar or someone listening to this, each of the two main narrators telling them the story and what happened to them. I didn't realize that was one of your non-negotiables. But in the end, it turned out to be a really good choice because the novel is excellent. And folks, this is Paula Granquist on Art Zany Radio. We're talking about where you come from is gone by Christopher Johnston. And you can check out his website at christopherjohnstonbooks.com. If you want to get some more information, take a look at the cover image, which is also, we'll talk about that story maybe a little bit later too. And so you found a way to tell the story and then the characters, you know, like you said, you said, was it nine originally? Originally, you had nine first person narrators in the original first draft. One thing people don't always think about is how do you make decisions about letting go of those characters? Because when you first crafted it, you thought that they had a piece of the puzzle that needed to be revealed and you wanted to have that in there. So I would love to hear from you how you made those choices because all of them were memorable, interesting, fascinating, had their own piece of that little world up there in Northern Minnesota. Yeah, it was really difficult to figure that out when I first faced that challenge, you know, when I came to the conclusion, it's like, okay, there's got to be, you know, one or two narrators at most. And then it's like, okay, who stays and who goes. So that was really difficult. But ultimately, I came to the conclusion that it would be the father and son. And because ultimately, I felt the core of the story is about these two, these two men and actually three, it's actually three men, really, the kind of the family patriarch who's not a narrator, but he's important in the story. So I felt that those two were the most important to include so that they'd essentially play off each other, but it also really conveyed this idea of identity and legacy and how it evolved from one generation to the next and how it changed because of the circumstances that are both internal to the family in this novel, as well as the external forces that get applied to them, which, you know, they really have no little or no control. So we should share an excerpt so listeners can get to hear your voice and to tell, begin to tell the story of these characters. It takes place. As we mentioned, 1960s, Northern Minnesota. It's a, I believe this, this isn't a real town. It's not. No, no, no, I made it, I'm, I made it up. That's a discussion we can have if you like, so it's based on, it's based on a real place, in a sense, like Sinclair Lewis based main street on, on, um, Sock Center, he calls it Go for Prairie. So there's kind of, or, or to flatter myself, it's got Fitzgerald, you know, takes the West End of Long Island and calls it East End and West Egg. Yep. And even though you can look on a map and kind of see it. So yeah, and I did the same, employed the same kind of strategy. Right. So what did, what would you like to read with? We talked about a few, there's like several different selections that are possible in the beginning, okay, close to the beginning. And just to set it up. So this is our, our main character, Peter Brennan. This is, it's his first day back. He's just come back from the army from Cold War, Germany and the end of the summer in 1960, it's his first day back working with his father out on the family fishing boat. And so they've gone out on, they've gone out onto the lake. They've started working and, and here we go. Here's what happens. So Pete, wake up. You've let the takeoff cable go slack. It's come off the pulleys. Dad glared at me. Get your head out of your ass. The dipper floated in the pound with a tangle of cable piled on the handle. My heart hammered and my shoulders tightened. I thought I'd shed those adolescent feelings of failure in the army. Instead, disappointing my father still brought a stab of shame. Moose brought the slack cable on board. I rethreaded the cable through the winch pulley on top of the pilot house. On deck, I reattached the cable to the power take off. Ready? Moose nodded. Jim lowered the dipper into the pound and gave the thumbs up. I engaged the power take off and that was it. The cable looped up to my left knee, tightened and sawed through my leg. Searing pain spread upward from my knee. I collapsed backward onto the fish covered deck. A bloody loop of cable flew up. Jim appeared from around the fish boxes. Arthur, hold him down. After that, I remember fragments rolling over face down into the thrashing fish on the deck. Jim and Dad yelling. My belt snapping when it got pulled from my pants. Moose's eyes wide and glazed. A frightening tension in my forehead. The buzz of Swedes airplane. I'm going to pass out. It took concentration. Took full concentration to say each word. Bullshit Jim's face hovered over mine. Stay with me. You're going, you're doing great. I heard guys in the Pacific make more noise over less. His voice started to sound slow and stretched. Just look at my face. I need a drink. My teeth slammed together. Jim pride opened my mouth and Dad splashed in whiskey from his flask. Slanch a son. You're going to make it, God damn it. A warm sensation spread from my throat to my chest. The boat's engine roared to life. Jim tightened my belt around my thigh. Cold spray came over the gunnel and the wind blew it dry on my face. Hundreds of dying fish writhed against my arms, twisting as they gasped for life. I became one of them, twisting, nearly dead. Hoping to be swept over the side to water and salvation. Jim slapped the side of my face. Pete, drink this. He pushed my jaw apart with his fingers. Luke warm coffee driveled down my throat. The engine wine shifted lower, almost there, almost there. I spotted the buffalo point dock pilings. Jim hooked his arms under my shoulders, moose, get your arms under his behind. They lifted me onto the dock, another bolt of pain shot from my knee up into my thigh. Overhead I saw the blue and yellow wing of Swede's plane rocking with the waves. Two middle-aged men looked down at me through the plain side windows, a perfect outdoor catalog photo. Swede strapped me down in the back, next to the male bag, a float cushion under my head. The plane rose, twisted and dropped over and over again. Radio chatter and Swede's voice blended with the drone of the engine. I desperately wanted some water. I tried to count backward to stay conscious, only to find I'd drifted off each time my head bounced on the cushion and jolted me awake. They rolled me through the emergency entrance at the back of the warland hospital. A green-eyed nurse leaned over the gurney. You're going to be okay, we'll take care of you. The gurney slammed through the emergency room doors and I blacked out. That is such a good scene and I know how hard you worked on trying to figure out when to put that in the story, how the story gets told, and it's just, I mean it's gripping, right? It's just a phenomenal opening to his story because now we know he's in danger. I don't know if we'll tell him what's next. What you've done so such a great job in this novel is the managing the details of the fishing boat or the mink farm and all the different equipment and I have never been on a commercial fishing boat. I've been in little tiny boats casting off and doing tiny lake fishing but as a reader you never get mixed up but you're so authentic in that so it's that combination that makes for a really good read. Thank you, thank you. Commercial fishing, I mean, if I'm not mistaken it's either the most dangerous or one of the most dangerous occupations there is. I think if you look at OSHA data like it has the most fatalities and so on because you're walking around on a deck where there's just all hazards of every kind. I mean the surface is slippery, there's fish, you know, skidding around on usually on a metal or a wooden deck. It's really slippery. There's all kinds of cables and equipment and stuff around so there's just an infinite number of ways to get yourself in trouble. Yeah and there are waves in the boat. Right and you have to remember it's all moving. You know it's all going up and down and twisting and everything so you're on this slippery surface fish all over the place. That was my favorite line from that section when he was laying and all the fish were, you know, flopping around and you know their last dying breath. That was really, really wonderful. Thank you. And you do this so well and it's the story of, you know, it's a masculine work world in this story on both both those places. Not that it's not a family business but it's definitely a family business. And so the drama comes from both of those places, the danger of being in those working environments and then the relationships between all of the different characters in the family. And it's kind of a, I thought what was really interesting was just the interior world and the quiet world of this, these men in this family and the women are there too but they have just intentionally just a supportive role in the business. So you kind of played with those dynamics. I did. That's interesting that you bring that up. Yeah in the first I'll call it the first or initial more expansive drafts. We get more of, more of these men's wives and partners and more of their interiority and detail. And I felt that that was something ultimately that I thought it was really added depth and was significant to the story but at the same time it was outside the, I'll call it the main line or the main plot. So essentially what I did as people readers is, as we say, moved some of it off stage so that you hear about it and you learn about it but you don't get sort of seen chapter and scenes with it. But I liked that it was just this working world. And they had jobs and they had things to do that a world I wouldn't have ever entered and you really portray that in a way, not just the work but then alongside of that you've got all the complications of family that are playing out and the relationships between the brothers and the one sister and the parents and all the people on the boat. And I think you did a really good, there's not a lot of books out there that really get into that world. So that's I think something really interesting. Well that was really another, you know I mentioned the non-negotiable of having the book in the first person. Another sort of non-negotiable or really important point in my writing the novel was that I feel like in contemporary, a lot of contemporary fiction people don't work. The plot or the action involves people who are either extraordinarily wealthy or some other circumstance where you don't really get a view into their working lives or whatever their occupation is. And the reality is that's where most people spend the vast majority of their time. You think about it. The typical work year for my management consulting days is about 2100 hours over the course of a year. That's a lot of time. And in fact for most people 60 to 80 percent of their waking hours and so I feel like that's not something that should be ignored in fiction. You know I think that's something that really needs to be addressed but I think modern fiction really just does not. And you know it bypasses it and makes it easy. And I think one of the reasons is our culture, you know our American culture despite its, in a sense it's kind of a contradiction. At the same time we're a culture that's obsessed with money and finance and wealth but at the same time it's something we don't talk about. I mean we hesitate to talk about it more than sex. Yeah and so I was pleased to be able to read a book that encompassed that. And I will say the other thing that's interesting is sort of because it's that you know there's a seasonality to each of these businesses that becomes a part of the story too. And I think one of the most fascinating things is that it just so happens Thanksgiving is always the time where oh gosh how do we delicately say it? Peltings. Okay that's kind of the term yeah it's peltings. And so we do have to as readers go into that world and that was uncomfortable for I mean and but I think you again did really a brilliant job of just showing the work that needed to be done and how they were able to sort of process that you know that that was their livelihood right? Yes. All of and the fishing too was just to feed the mink and so it was all linked. Oh yeah they were both linked so yeah the way this and this was not or I'll say it was common but we'll say it was a standard business model in that in that up in that region up around Lake of the Woods it was not unusual for people who were had mink farms to have a commercial fishing operation that supported it because it feeding mink fish and hence the quality of the fur but also you know if you're able to essentially provide the bulk of your own feed supply of course you're not shipping feed from you know literally hundreds of miles away because again for some listeners it may not know exactly I mean Lake of the Woods is up on the border with Canada it's it's literally what it's about 200 miles from Winnipeg and it's almost 400 miles from from the Twin Cities so it's not by anything so it's not easy to ship you know food supplies anything so it's very it's very remote and so writing that how did that feel to write about the pelting season and the process of having I mean just try to give people a sense of the scope of the number of mink right so yeah so the process it's the process of just to start it's the process of turning you know a live animal a mink into a pelt or a fur like you'd see on a like you'd see on a coat you know on a mink coat and so yeah obviously it's it's in the sense of the scale I mean typically most of the mink farms would probably have anywhere from like 10 to 30,000 animals and usually they would they would raise kits in the spring you know which are the the little ones and then they would do peltine which is where they let's just say separate their fur from their body kill them and separate their fur from their body which as you can imagine is a is a rough process and that's you know it's portrayed pretty fully in the in the novel and the people doing it so and I think again it's one of these processes that you know I wanted to put forward so that readers could really see how difficult and challenging and everything that that this kind of work is so you get a sense again I wanted to portray people's occupation and what it really involves not only the the difficulty of the labor but also you know the emotional impact it has on on these people and kind of the the physical and emotional scars leaves on them and how it affects their their their lives outside of their occupation so I felt that was really really important and also portraying kind of the difficult conditions under which it all occurs again we're talking about the fishing boat peltine mink is also up there at that time of the year it's it's you know usually really cold winter sets in early up there so it'll be near near zero so there's people you know walking around in really cold weather doing this process of killing mink and bringing them in and bringing them into a building and you know doing the peltine process itself and yeah so it's a it's a it's strenuous work under difficult conditions and it's the same thing there's all kinds of different equipment and all kinds of different ways to injure yourself right so everything that they did there was danger in in that and and so it's it's not just about the business this is a family business so it's a lot of the story is the arc of of the characters in in this business what I find interesting is that not one of them really wanted to be like that business wasn't the chosen it was just this is what we did and so then it it was the um the way that the way that they survived right and and the way that they made made their living and so talk about kind of developing those those character uh relationships and how you know you you do do a really good job of showing that generational um I don't know just the the stress of having that family business yeah all right um so yeah the patriarch of the family arthur um just to give the audience a sense of background so there's arthur who's kind of the founder of the of the business and then his son Pete who we just read heard the scene from who's on the boat and loses his leg from the cable taking his leg off and then and then he has a son later on he has a son named j so arthur comes back you know he's an educated man which is unusual in this small community um he goes he he meets a friend of his gym who's on the boat who's a native american who's in a jibwe and they he learns how to snare learns how to snare mink and that's how he starts this mink business and you know he saves enough money to go to college and he goes to college you know in the late 20s and gets a degree in in mechanical engineering but he comes back when he finishes college it's in the at the worst of the depression so he has no options and so he decides to go back and try to make this you know the mink family and fishing business you know his his way of life even though he didn't really want to do that you know he wanted to go be a mechanical engineer and design airplanes and you know do that so circum again external circumstances kind of force him into this lifestyle and then his son you know pea grows up amongst that and he comes to love it even though his dad really doesn't and so there's this dynamic you know of the father who sees it as practical and the son who really becomes this becomes part of his identity and it's the only thing he wants he wants to fish he wants to fish he loves being outside he loves being on the lake he likes the whole the whole lifestyle and so yeah so there's that tension between his father and son and in that first chapter he has he talks about you know his father's expectations and and how they have a clash of expectations and all of that so there's that tension there and then there's a similar dynamic which i won't necessarily go into at this point between peed and his son jay as well but the the the lifestyle and and living up there and continuing the business and how to continue it and all that and then there's a tension too of the so there's another brother who comes back from the military and kind of just ends up there because that's basically you know Wayne is his name and he's um it kind of doesn't have another choice just like his dad right so what he does yeah so his his his situation is um yeah Pete's brother Wayne is he goes to he goes to college you know which his father really emphasizes and he's a hockey player and he goes and he but and he he plays he's not giving anything spoilers away he ends up he plays for the gophers but he gets badly he gets badly injured while he's playing hockey and he's not able to really play any more and he gets depressed because he can't play hockey anymore and doesn't finish college and ends up drafted and goes to Alaska and comes back and and when he comes back he doesn't really know what to do with himself and so Arthur the patriarch basically tell you know gives him the job of running the mink firm and he's you know kind of not sure what to how to cope with that or what to do and just sort of drifts and and yeah i won't give him more plot away but he starts to drift and yes things happen to him and so there's his story and then you've got another brother who does go out east for college and then lives that life maybe that they all thought they wanted really yeah so there's so yeah there's so there's three brothers just to really put it all in context so Arthur the patriarch of the family and then there's he has three sons and a daughter Pete who we've heard about and then Wayne who just talked about and then he has his oldest son named Lance who actually does kind of fulfill his father's expectations almost too well and go in fact that he does fulfill them too well and leaves leaves and becomes a very successful business executive and that creates sort of a whole I'll call a class dynamic because he becomes very successful and very well off lives in this lives in the Twin Cities and has all the accoutrements of of business success and well and so it creates this tension where yeah they're very in a sense very proud of him but it also creates this kind of resentment and that is that is the heart of the story is how do you how do families deal with that how do we you know make sense of that and then there's other pressures of just the challenges that the politics we won't get into this but what's happening here to the business the community and what you know the competition if you will of other successful businesses and just just that whole nature of everybody everybody's just trying to survive and it's so so it's it's really just like it's a very impactful story very there's just so many moments in it where you can you know you just feel for this family you get connected to the family so when you when did you know that you okay this is the version I've worked at it because I know you worked for years to to rearrange and find out those narrators voices and whose story was it going to be that you you wanted to put it out in the world and you want to you know connect with agents and publishers and editors and all and all of that how did you know when that was ready yeah I worked with a there was an editor a freelance editor I worked with who had actually been a acquiring editor at Penguin Random House you know one of the big New York publishers so I worked with her over the course of probably two years or a year and a half of going back and forth and refining it and so on which was really an enormous help and then once I'd been through that process I guess they'll say made that made made changes sent him to her I'd get feedback and and then ultimately there was a point where you know we just kind of you know really mutually agreed it's like yeah I think it's done I think it's you know it's really the final version after you know cutting down the shortening it reducing the number of narrators putting some plot lines some things offstage and you know so on and I think one thing people don't realize is like every word is like you have to decide it's not just a you know take a few you know adjector adverbs out right you're questioning what is this work doing work in the story how is this advancing what's going on I mean it's arduous it is yeah it's really a process I mean at least for me it's really going making multiple multiple passes and your or as George saw George Saunders would say I never talk about writing without talking about George Saunders is you go through and you interrogate you interrogate as Paula knows you interrogate every sentence and every word and every paragraph to is it carrying it's is it carrying its weight is it conveying something that's important to this to the story something that's important to the characters so each you're you're really testing each thing or I I don't know if Hemingway really said this but I suspect say like if you pull it's almost like a house of cards in a sense like if you pulled one word out or if you pulled one sentence out the whole thing and come apart that's what I was that's what I was trying for and going through it over and over and over again is making sure that there's nothing there that's non-essential and that's also part of the in a sense in character with the with two narrators because they're these sort of reticent northern Minnesota men you know who are not I won't say they're not they're they're not inarticulate to be double negative but they are they they are not inarticulate but they are also not emotive necessarily and so that's I really wanted to capture that and capture that laconic nature in the in the hole in the writing and everything and and I felt that one of the best ways to achieve that is to really make it I won't say quite spare I won't say spare necessarily but make it so that there's nothing extraneous yes you know so that it's very minimalist and not overly you know overly flowery language or anything like that you've captured that and that I think that's what's what makes it such a fascinating novel folks if you're tuning in this is Pellegrancrist on art zany radio where you come from is gone the book by Christopher Johnston the novel is what we're talking about today and it's just I'm so excited that this managed to get published and that this is out into the world now and for we could do a whole show probably hours maybe a whole series on publishing yes publishing and we've had lots of long conversations about that and but I think a lot of people who write don't realize that that's like another job you get another job when you get into that world yeah so the the I said I've quite put it this way but the it's almost like the easy parts writing the novel but the whole going through the process of getting published is is really where in a sense you have to have your wits about you and have have some persistence and fortitude because if you're if you're if you're not comfortable with rejection it's going to be really difficult um I actually wrote a post on sub stack about this about my journey I'll call it yeah tell the cliche so in his summary so I did this sub stack post and I list one part is I list these bullet points of all these other novels and how many rejections they got and and they'll all say is there's some really you know iconic novels that got rejected many times and so I'm not necessarily putting myself in the category of iconic but mine this mine novel got reject this novel got rejected I if I remember right it was about 120 times a little over 120 times by various agents and editors and you know of course it's really disappointing um I went through a pretty thorough process of vetting you know potential editors and agents and publishers and so on you know so I wasn't like submitting to just anyone you know I really was going okay I think this would be a good fit for my for my book and and all of that and so yeah it was really disappointing each time and the worst part about it in a sense is that the way a lot of agents and editors now are getting so steady so many submissions that they don't even respond I mean their policy is you know if you don't hear back from us you know like in four weeks or eight weeks then you know we're not interested so you're it's just this kind of void yeah it is and it's kind of there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense yeah and it's frustrating but you have managed to find a way to bring it out into the world and you are you know in the process is just early days of having this released and so what's the response been I'm curious what are you what are you finding now that you can hold this in your hand and well it's an amazing feeling and one and one of the reasons is that I guess from my cycling experience being persistence is a necessary quality and bike racing too you know because if you're facing you know 200 kilometers or 120 mile road race you know you've got to have this idea that okay it's you know I'm going to be out on the road for five hours and you know have that sense of persistence and the training and everything or 12 hours it works right and that came in yeah that's amazing distance to bike race so that came in that psychology that mentality really came in handy for this process so it's like okay this is this I know this is going to be difficult I know there's those parts of it that are going to that are going to hurt there's going to be setbacks and I just have to accept that so yeah that was really a challenge you know a challenge so I can't review the reception for your family how do they feel that some of their businesses is in here have you been up to your hometown to promote the book so the challenge so there's been a a wide range of response frankly there's some people who just like got to you know into chapter two or three and like couldn't go any further there's other people who read it and and that's not because of the writing it's because of the subject matter so yeah I've I think it's in one of the again somewhat of a Hemingway fan not of the in a sense not of the man but of the writing yeah and there's a there's a in one of his lesser novels I can't remember it's it's into the woods and through the trees or something like that it's very lesser no novel from the early 50s late in his career and he has that there's a paragraph at the beginning where he says as as is prone these days people are people are people are he puts it in some kind of funny way but people are prone to looking for the the the real people and the real places and the real situations and fictions and trying to you know connect the dots and all this stuff ah so I know there are some readers you know who are engaged in doing that and I think it's a it's I understand that propensity but it's also I think a distraction they may they are turning into a game right right can I find myself can I find my family can I find this you know how much you know what's what and and and I think um yeah I think that's a a distraction I understand it you know I understand it I mean people did that you know like the classic cases like the Sun also rises anyways book you know because he basically wrote about this group of real people that you know he went down to Pamplona from speris with and partied with and gave him fictional names and basically the rest was pretty real so you know scholars to this day are still you know playing the game of figuring out you know who was who and all this stuff so you know I know that that exists but yeah overall I guess I hope that people would I mean I understand that propensity but I also hope that it's not in most cases not too much of a distraction that people can focus on the overall arc of the story and what happened and and understand the understand the experience of what this what this family went through and and and that it's not only and the overall arc I would say is not unique to this place or this town I think it's common all over the country in different towns it's just different different industries different businesses different situations I mean so yeah this this family happens to be in fishing and and mink farming which is somewhat unique which I thought was you know would make it make it more compelling but it happens you know to people who are you know farming corn and soybeans and and raising cattle and so on a similar kind of dynamic plays out and across rural America all over the you know all over the United States so I think it's a story that's relevant not only to you know just this particular place in these particular industries but also to the country as a as a whole I would say so too it's it's it's eye opening right to look at the value of hard work and you know if that the sense of family the and legacy and you know we're all just trying to make it make our way through and trying to do the best we can and sometimes it goes great and sometimes there's trouble and you know how how do we cope with those those moments and so it's definitely in here I read that you had a launch party just just a couple weeks ago I did and I love that I don't know this place but Brother Justice Whiskey Distillery sounds like an incredible place it's an incredible place it's yeah it's a it's a it's a whiskey distillery in in the Twin Cities up in Northeast for those familiar with Minneapolis it's a really nice venue it's got a it's in an old kind of a warehouse and it has a fireplace and a little library at one end and kind of a long rectangular hall and so yeah it ended up being on March 4th and in the snow we ended up having a snowstorm or blizzard but still I had a good a great actually a great turnout it was really fun I had a great conversation with Peter Guy who you know led the novel writing project and was an integral part of this process so yeah Brother Justice was a it was a great great venue and as you may have picked up there's a um in the scene I read they the family drinks whiskey at different points of the of the novel that's kind of a motif that's through it when different things happen and so I thought it was really appropriate to have it at a whiskey distillery because it plays such a role throughout the novel yeah let's talk about the the toast because I want to hear from you the correct pronunciation of the the Gaelic word oh so slantia is the slantia is what it is and it's a it's a Gaelic word for health and it's used like you know in other cultures like you'll hear you know Italians and say salute or something it's kind of a word that's used with that a celebration for for for it with family and friends and and so on for to good health so that comes up and so now say it one more time for us slantia slantia that is not how I was saying it so I'm glad you said it to me so I know how to say it and let's just quickly talk about the cover art because I think that's something most authors don't get the chance to be a part of and this is real based on a real photograph it is a really interesting thing that you've got to be able to have that as your book cover it is yeah it is based on a real is a painting based on a real on a photograph of my relatives out fishing out on Lake of the Woods and the on their fishing boat and the boats kind of described in its processes in the is in the book but um yes and then the other reason I want it and this is something I really worked with the publisher on was I don't remember if it was part of that section I read but Mary the the the sister of these main characters and the novel is a painter and so and one of the things she does is she paints people working and so and it's even though it's not ever explicitly stated or anything and I guess the idea was is that what you that I wanted the cover to kind of be a paint you know a painting like she would have done yeah and it's a really very captivating image that should draw people in the book again is where you come from is gone a novel by Christopher Johnston and I'm so excited to be able to bring this story to all of our listeners and I hope that they will you can find it at local bookstores it's everywhere um you can buy it at local bookstores you can get it at bookshop.org you know if you want to buy online through your local bookstore you can get it and then of course you can get it at the behemoths you can get it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and then also I will be at the Rosemont Writers Festival tomorrow so come out and I'll be there to sign books. Oh I didn't realize that was tomorrow already so the date date on that is March 15th 2025. I'll be there all day tomorrow. That is a fun festival I've been there many times a lot of great great folks there so that's just right up the road I'm so thrilled for you and I want to thank you so much for coming into Art Zany radio to share this story and hope people pick up a copy of the book it is a good read it's a good read for everyone to understand the value of work and the difficulties of making life work you know wherever you are. Thanks Paula it's great to be here in the studio with you. Yes folks this is Art Zany radio for the imagination I thank you so much for joining us I'm going to come back after a quick closing announcements and tell you about some events happening in our community that I want you to know about so I'll be right back on Art Zany radio. You've been listening to Art Zany radio for the imagination with your host Paula Granquist. Art Zany is brought to you each week by the Northfield Arts Guild and by the Paradise Center for the Arts in Farable. The Paradise Center for the Arts is a vibrant cultural and artistic gathering spot in historic downtown Faribault. The Paradise is committed to offering high quality visual and performing art opportunities for Faribault and our region. Regular events spotlight some of the best artists, musicians in our area and throughout Minnesota and the upper Midwest. Our beautifully restored facility includes art galleries, classrooms, clay and textile labs, a gift shop and rehearsal spaces in addition to a 300 seat auditorium. Visit paradisecenterforthearts.org for a full schedule of events or call our box office at 507-332-7372. This is Paula Granquist. We're back and I've got some announcements to make about some events. One I want to talk to you about is the Culture Crew Story Hour event that's Thursday the 20th of March 2025 at 7 p.m. That's at the Armory Square Event Center. Starts in the low down I think that's where the no I'm sorry I've got it right backwards. It starts at 6 in the tiki bar for a happy hour and then moves to the low down for the story hour and it's a partnership with the Library, the Art Skilled and the History Center. It's where storytellers will share a true story and it's it's we'll call it moth-like because this is we did have some folks from that organization come and help us this started a year ago and one of the things I want to talk to Christopher about is because he's done a couple of moth events. What advice do you have for the folks who might be presenting to tell their stories because it you don't get to use notes. It's a true story and it has to be really short. I think our stories are like four to five minutes long. Yes that saw the moth is is when I did it it was true stories told live without notes that was kind of the tagline and then when you do the main stage they're a little longer they're about 10 minutes but the slams you know which are every monthly in the Twin Cities for those who don't do that are five minutes. So yeah I did the main stage and I did the main stage you know that I worked with they had producers come out from New York the main organization and do it. Advice for people who are going to do it write yourself a script, work you know practice and then but but don't feel like you have to when you're performing don't feel like you've got to you know stick to it or memorize it you know just get to the point where you where you've mastered it I would say so you can just tell it in a in a in a in a very informal way and so that also you can be engaged with the audience because it's really important that you can you know kind of have a sense or a feel for how the audience is receiving it and and sort of adjust based on that so be in the moment and so I hope people will come and listen to that again Thursday the 20th at 6 p.m. happy hour starts stories at 7. There's another event happening on that I want to bring to your attention. This is a one I couldn't find my notes for last week. Dantranard is going to be here with Thomasina Petrus at the Singer's Voice event at the Northfield Arts Guild. That's Sunday the 16th at 7 p.m. at the Arts Guild Theater. You can get tickets now through northfieldartskill.org. Thomasina is just I've listened to a few of her songs they are just incredible I've been to the other events. It's an evening at intimate song and stories. It's just a great opportunity to see an artist in a new way and I hope you'll do that. I've also got a news from Randy Ferguson and he has a at the Northfield Depot on Saturday March 15th at 7 p.m. a program on the history and evolution of the guitar from the stately court music of Renaissance Europe to the exciting syncopated dance rhythms of Spanish flamenco. He's got all his guitars. It's a beautiful space for acoustics and so he's very excited to be able to perform so I hope you will join him for that. There's a lot there's always a lot happening in our town so I hope you'll always remember to go out there and enjoy your imagination and of course find some time for some art zany. Enjoy weekends with Wendy Saturday and Sunday morning's here on The One!