241. Living and Writing in Alaska, and Making Your Own Fun: An Interview with Cathy Pegau

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 241 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today are author Cathy Pegau and author and writer Carrie Sessarego. We’re going to talk about, well, a lot of things, to be honest with you. Cathy Pegau writes lesbian science fiction and historical mysteries, and she also lives in Cordova, Alaska, so we talk about living in Alaska, as Carrie lived for several years in Bethel. We talk about the Alaskans’ love of the Anchorage Costco, and we ask very important, crucial questions like, can you go to Target or Costco for just one thing? And also, what is the plural of Pegasus? We also cover life in Alaska; weird questions from people who live Outside, which is the Alaskan term for the lower 48; what life is like in very rural small towns; and the strong feelings they have about what constitutes good boots. We talk about the romance of running water and, of course, Cathy’s series, which has truly gorgeous covers.

Now I have a couple of important notes: first, oh, my voice. I apologize in advance. I was battling a cold, and as I was listening to this to edit it, I was like, wow, I should not have been talking. So I apologize in advance for the quality, or lack thereof, of my voice during this interview. Number two, if you are building a podcast drinking game, this episode does include my dog Zeb losing his little doggie mind at a squirrel, so I guess that’s worth a couple of points at least.

I want to issue a very mild trigger warning: there is a very brief discussion of mental illness and neglect and a brief discussion of the historical murder of a prostitute and her child which inspired Cathy’s series. There’s nothing particularly graphic, but if that is going to upset you, when we start talking about the inspiration of her series you might want to skip ahead.

And speaking of her series, as I record this on Monday, April 3rd, 2017, Cathy’s first book in her series, Murder on the Last Frontier, is $1.99 digitally, and I am hoping when this episode drops on Friday it will still be on sale! It would be really awesome if that were true, so I’m crossing my fingers and sending many, many polite requests to the eBook Sale Goddesses that this will still be on sale so you can go try it out. Carrie loves this series.

And speaking of series that we love, I need to tell you that this episode is brought to you by The Unyielding by Shelly Laurenston and by Kensington Books. New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shelly Laurenston capitalizes on her trademark humor and kickass attitude in The Unyielding, which is the third installment of the Call of Crows series, which features a band of tough-as-nails female warriors resurrected from the dead and the alpha males who aren’t afraid to give them a taste of their own medicine. As usatoday.com puts is, “Laurenston has a gift with words and humor,” so answer the Call, ‘cause sisterhood of Crows is waiting for you in The Unyielding by Shelly Laurenston, on sale now wherever books are sold and on kensingtonbooks.com. And if you saw my review, you know I like this series a lot and recommend it most vociferously.

We also have a transcript sponsor this month. [Yay! – gk] The transcript for this episode is being brought to you by The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life, a new book from Flatiron Books by author Sharon Pywell. As a young girl, Neave was often stuck in a world that didn’t know what to do with her. Her small town home of Lynn, Massachusetts, didn’t have a place for a girl whose feelings often put her at war with the world, and often this meant her mother, her brother, and the town librarian wanted to keep her away from dangerous books she really wanted to read. But through an unexpected friendship, Neave finds herself with a forbidden copy of The Pirate Lover, a steamy romance, and Neave discovers a world of passion, love, and betrayal. And it is to this world that as a grownup she retreats to again and again when real life becomes too much. When Neave and her older sister Lilly are about to realize their professional dream, Lilly suddenly disappears. Neave must put her beloved books down and take center stage, something she has been running from her entire life. She must figure out what happened to Lilly and if she’s next. The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life is a story within a story within a story. There’s a pirate romance, a powerful bond between two sisters, and a world determined to hold them back. The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life is one of the most original, entertaining, exciting, and chilling novels you will read this year. It is available now wherever books are sold.

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.

And as always, you will be able to find links to the books and other things we talk about in this episode at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast and at iTunes.com/DBSA. We have our own dedicated iTunes page! It’s really cool!

This episode has a lot of different things going on, and it was a really fun conversation, so let’s get started without any further delay. On with the podcast!

[music]

Cathy Pegau: Okay! My name’s Cathy Pegau, and I’m sitting here in snowy Cordova, Alaska, right now.

Sarah: Ha. I’ve been saying your name wrong, and I’ve been saying Carrie’s last name wrong, so I’m super proud of me!

Cathy: [Laughs] How do you say your last name, Carrie?

Carrie Sessarego: Sessarego.

Cathy: Sessarego, okay.

Carrie: Yes.

Cathy: How, how have you been pronouncing my name, Sarah?

Sarah: Peg-ow.

Cathy: Close enough, yeah. That’s okay. Peg-aw, Peg-ow. It’s actually, yeah, it’s German. We’re also very often misspelled. I mean, it’s five letters, and we get Pagan a lot.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, totally!

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: Pegasus. That’s a good one too, yeah.

Sarah: You’re only two Ss away from Pegasus.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s kind of cool.

Cathy: It is!

Sarah: Are you going to write fantasy next?

Cathy: Well, you know. Well, I do write fantasy, actually! Or did.

Sarah: That’s true! You do!

Cathy: I do.

Sarah: I don’t remember any Pegasuses, Pegasi.

Cathy: No. Pegasi, yeah. That would be, the plural of that would be. [Laughs] Yeah, it should be, like, my Patronus, right? The Pegasus?

Sarah: Totally!

Carrie: Yeah!

Sarah: All right.

Carrie: Nice.

Sarah: Carrie, would you introduce yourself, please, ma’am?

Carrie: Hi. I am Carrie Sessarego, Carrie S. on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and I am the author of Pride, Prejudice, and Popcorn, and I am the, the geek reviewer for Smart Bitches.

Sarah: Yes. We are all nerds and geeks in various directions.

Cathy: Yaaay!

Carrie: Yes. I, I’m also kind of enjoying the fact that this is, like, the podcast of ailing people, because –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes.

Carrie: – I am on day two of a migraine, and Sarah is sick, and when I wandered out of the room I came back and you guys were discussing arterial bleeding, so –

[Laughter]

Cathy: We’re all good, we’re all good.

Carrie: Everybody, like, pull up your lemon, cups of lemon tea, and join us.

Sarah: Oh, yeah. Don’t forget the tea and the cookies. Cookies are a requirement.

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: So Carrie is a –

Carrie: Yeah!

Sarah: – fan of yours, Cathy, as am I.

Carrie: I am!

Cathy: Okay, thank you very much. I’m fans of yours too, so that works out really well.

Sarah: So while we’re all sick, geeky, and fangirling, I wanted to start by asking you both about Alaska, because, Cathy, you live in Alaska, and Carrie –

Cathy: Yes, ma’am.

Sarah: – you’re always telling us stories about, well, when I lived in Alaska, and I, you know, I built my own yurt and killed a moose –

Carrie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – with the back end of a bear. And I –

Cathy: Okay, I’ve never built a yurt. [Laughs] Just saying.

Sarah: I just like to say the word yurt. [Laughs]

Carrie: Yeah, no, I’ve never built a yurt. I also feel like, in full disclosure, I should confess that the last time I was in Alaska was twenty years ago, okay, so it’s been a long time. I was there for five years, and I was in Bethel, which is like a special category of –

Cathy: Oh, oh, that’s, okay, let me tell you, when we were moving back here – we were in Oregon for a while – when we were moving back here, my husband was like, well, where do we want to go? I said, not Nome, and he said, okay, not Bethel, so those were the only two places that were on our yeah, no list.

Carrie: Well, like, I, I loved living in Bethel, but Bethel is –

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: – definitely, like, a special category of Alaska –

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: – and then to confuse things, because I’ve been gone so long without even a visit, it’s, like, frozen in my mind like Brigadoon –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: – and, and actually, I, I check it out on Facebook. Like, things have progressed in Bethel. Life continues to happen in Bethel in my absence, but I have it, like, frozen like in a crystal ball, the, the twenty-years-ago Bethel. As though if I went back, everyone would be the same age, right, like –

Cathy: Nobody’s aged, nobody’s had kids in twenty years, or, you know, they’re still, yeah.

Carrie: My old apartment would still be there, like, you know, it’s, so, yeah –

Cathy: Right.

Carrie: – so my, my vis-, my memories of Alaska are, are, are not necessarily representative of its current state.

Cathy: But, but to, you know, to a degree, things move slowly up here, so you could be pretty darn close, actually. It could be close to what you remember from twenty years ago. And the only reason why I, I nixed Nome and he nixed Bethel was that access is horrible – [laughs] – as far as getting in and out.

Carrie or Sarah: Oh, my.

Cathy: It’s bad enough here, but yeah, if you’re traveling, it is brutal, and I was like, yeah, we’ve got little kids now.

Carrie:  I had a friend, when I lived in Bethel I had a friend who lived in Morocco, and he was doing Peace Corps in Morocco, and so one year I realized that it only cost slightly more to get from Bethel to Morocco than to get from Bethel to Sacramento, California, where my family was.

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: So, yeah, so, like, I did a trip, and then, like, my flight itinerary got all screwed up, and it was actually like this really bizarre trip, but it was also really cool. But it was like the kind of adventure that you only have in your twenties, I must say. But, but, like, that just blew my mind. Like, to get from Bethel to another, entire other, you know, continent was, you know –

Cathy: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, and, and timewise – [laughs] – it’s –

Carrie: Right. I mean, you know –

Cathy: – just nuts.

Carrie: Yeah, and then, you know, and of course with Bethel you’re always going through Anchorage, so that’s the deal is going through Anchorage.

Cathy: With everything, just about. Well, not from here, actually. We can get to Seattle without going through Anchorage, but that’s, you know, it still takes forever and costs –

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: – an arm and a leg and, you know, so, anyway.

Carrie: Now in Cordova, if you visit Anchorage, do you still have the same thing, like, when we went to Bethel, you know, that, I, I mean, sorry, when I lived in Bethel and we would go to Anchorage, Anchorage is known in the States for having beautiful mountains and moose and glaciers –

Cathy: Uh-huh.

Carrie: – but in Bethel, Anchorage is known for having a Costco.

Cathy: Oh, yes!

Carrie: Yes. And –

Cathy: Oh, yes.

Carrie: Yeah, so if, you know, when I flew home from Anchorage, and by home I mean to Bethel, like, one year my carry-on luggage was a big container of kitty litter and a giant container of, like, toilet paper.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: And nobody gave it a second glance, ‘cause everybody had the same kind of stuff. Like –

Cathy: Uh-huh.

Carrie: So was that, like, part of the Cordova way, or not so much ‘cause –

Cathy: It is, it is. We’re lucky; we have, we have ferry access, so we don’t have to –

Carrie: Oh!

Cathy: – just fly, which is lovely. Unfortunately, if the planes are not flying or the ferry breaks, we’re kind of screwed. But, yeah –

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: – oh, the Costco run? It, we go, we try to go every three or four months and do a big run. My husband fills the back of his pickup truck and the back seat of his pickup truck and, yeah, go do a big Costco run; I send him with a huge list, and – but if he’s flying, sometimes he’ll, he will fly back with a fifty-pound – ‘cause it’s a fifty-pound weight limit – he’ll fly back sometimes if we’re desperate with a fifty-pound bag of dog food –

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: – or something like that, yeah. So –

Sarah: Priorities, man.

Cathy: It is! You know, the dog’s going to eat! [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, our Costco is less than a mile away. Like, I’ve gone to Costco for just one thing?

Cathy: I see that, and I, ‘cause we’ll go in, yeah. I see that, and I see people walking out with a gallon of milk. I’m like, are you kidding me?!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Well, the day I did that, I went to customer service because my card still said that I lived in New Jersey, and it had expired, and so I had to get, like, a whole new card and a new picture and everything, and he’s like, all right, so go shopping, and I’m like, honestly, sir, I’m only here for one thing, and the whole customer service bank of employees looked at me and were like, okay. Go ahead. We’re watching you. We want to see you walk out of here with just one thing.

Cathy: One thing.

Sarah: And it’s, it’s attached to a shopping mall. Like, it’s a reg-, it’s attached to a mall, like a regular mall.

Cathy: Uh-huh.

Sarah: There’s also a Target, so it’s like a dual-end matrix of danger.

Cathy: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Sarah: ‘Cause there’s a Target at one end and Costco at the other, and you can’t really go into those places and only get one thing. It’s really difficult.

Cathy: One thing! What are you thinking?! [Laughs]

Carrie: I always feel like, if I really want to put my daughter through college, like, loan free, what I should do is, every time I drive past a Target, I should take a twenty-dollar bill and stick it in a jar.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: I mean –

Cathy: Instead of going in. [Laughs]

Carrie: – that is the minimum that I will spend if I walk inside the door, right? Like, the minimum.

Sarah: So, Cathy –

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: – your husband and you decided, we’re not going to Nome, and we’re not going to Bethel. How did you end up in Cordova?

Cathy: Well, we, actually –

Sarah: You really like fish, that’s it, right? You really –

Cathy: We like fish, thank God!

[Laughter]

Cathy: Fish, because that is what my free-, freezer is full of right now, and after a while you’re going, all right, yeah, salmon again, that’s great. Now what do I do with it?

Sarah: Oh, no, we, we would never say that –

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: – ‘cause when my husband –

Cathy: I know! I know.

Sarah: – used to go to Alaska for thirty-six hours at his old job, which was really weird –

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: – but he totally did it –

Cathy: Right.

Sarah: – he would be done at 9 a.m., so he’d go to one of those places where they just caught the fish, like, twelve minutes before, and then they would flash freeze it and mail it to us. So he would beat it –

Cathy: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: – because he was flying on a commercial jet, but he would get home, and then the next day we’d have, like, this massive box of fish!

Cathy: Monster fish. My hus-, we have a river not too far from us, obviously, but, yeah, my husband’ll go fishing in the morning before he goes to work for a couple hours and pull up three silver salmon and drop ‘em off on his way into work and go, can you freeze these up for us? All right, sure. So, yeah, you get a lot of –

Sarah: Do you have to clean them, or do you just sort of chuck ‘em in –

Cathy: He cleans them; he cleans them.

Sarah: Oh, bless him. [Laughs]

Cathy: Thank God. He cleans them, and he filets them usually, and, or at least cuts, and he’ll just bring ‘em in in, like, a plastic, clean plastic garbage bag and, like, hand ‘em to me or –

Sarah: I love you, honey!

Cathy: – put ‘em in the fridge. I love you, here you go.

Sarah: Here’s some intestines.

Cathy: -what we’re having for dinner. But – I forgot what the question was.

Sarah: How did you end up in Cordova?

Cathy: Yeah, why did we get to Cordova? [Laughs] So, we actually met in Fairbanks, way, way, way, way back in the day going to school together in Fairbanks and got married later on, and Scott was actually – that’s my husband’s name – Scott was basically raised up here, raised in Nome and a couple other places from the time he was five years old, and he’s always considered Alaska home. So when we were down, he was doing grad school down in Oregon when we got married. Had our first kid, had our kids down there, both of them actually, and then when he was looking for a job, wanted to go back up to Alaska, I’m like, sure! Let’s go! And we moved to Homer first –

Sarah: Whoa.

Cathy: – which is on the road, at the end of the road, and we were there for five years, and then the job that he had was changing in ways he wasn’t too keen on, so he was looking for a new job and this one here in Cordova opened, and we went, sure! Let’s go! [Laughs] So here we are.

Sarah: So, I think a lot of people in the, the Outside, as you like to call us down here in the lower 48 –

Cathy: Yep.

Sarah: – and I know, Carrie, you’ve talked about this too, that people from the Outside have some crazy-ass conceptions of what it’s like to live in Alaska and that they’re, you get some ridiculous questions.

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: So I wanted to ask you both, even with your flash-frozen twenty-year-old memories, flash-frozen like a fresh salmon, Carrie –

Cathy: [Laughs] Like fresh-ish, yeah.

Sarah: Fresh-ish, fresh, freshique salmon. What are some of the things that are unique and interesting about living in Alaska that people don’t know about, and what are the questions that you’re so tired of answering?

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: Oh, my God. Is it, well, when I, when I was there, Northern Exposure was, had just wrapped up, I think, or was just about to wrap up, that TV show.

Cathy: Right. Loved –

Carrie: So everybody in Bethel was sick of being asked if it was like Northern Exposure –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: – and, and in Northern Exposure, they’re constantly driving to Juneau, and, and we’re just like, you can’t drive – like, like, I swear to God –

Cathy: You can’t drive to Juneau! [Laughs]

Carrie: On the tombstone of everybody in Bethel, “YOU CAN’T DRIVE TO JUNEAU.” We said it so many times.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Cathy: You can’t get there from here like that. [Laughs] No.

Carrie: That’s not how it works. Although, in hindsight, I realized there were some things that were kind of Northern Exposure-ish, like we have a, we had a radio station – they still have it – KYUK, and –

Cathy:  Mm-hmm?

Carrie: – anybody could DJ on KYUK. I used to DJ, my friends all used to DJ, we used to DJ together and have dance parties in the studio, and it was, like, super, super fun. So we didn’t have, like, one charismatic DJ like they have in Northern Exposure, but it kind of had that same feel, and you could just not DJ and just chat into the mic for, like, an hour if you felt like it, and –

Cathy: Nice! That’d be fun!

Carrie: But you had to read the weather, you know.

Cathy: [Laughs] Periodically stop for the weather.

Carrie: – and, and the news and then the messages, ‘cause this, ‘cause when I was there, and it exists still, I’m sure, in a happy little snow globe somewhere, there wasn’t, like, Internet had, like, just started, so –

Cathy: Oh, yeah, and everything was through messages through the radio. You called to the radio to give messages to folks.

Carrie: Right! Dear Mary from Joe, please come home. The babies need diapers.

Cathy: Yep! [Laughs] Things like that.

Carrie: Dear Pop, we are going to fish camp. Back one week if fishing good. You know, like, like, you’d, so you’d, like, relay all these things and –

Cathy: Yeah. Tun-, tundra drums, they called it, where, when I was at home.

Carrie: Tundra drums, yes!

Cathy: Tundra drums, yeah.

Carrie: Yeah. But, but, no, you could not drive to Juneau.

Cathy: No, you can’t drive, you can’t drive to Bethel either, actually!

Carrie: It’s like that still. Well, you can in winter from some directions –

Cathy: Yeah, no.

Carrie: – but that’s it.

Cathy: Right, right.

Carrie: Not from anywhere else.

Cathy: And technically you can’t drive to Cordova now. We, we take the marine highway.

Carrie: Marine highway.

Cathy: So, the marine highway, the ferry system is on the marine highway, so technically you can get you car over here? But, yeah, people think we live on an island because I tell them we can only fly or boat in, but we’re not an island. We’re just not connected to the interior anymore. Used to be. Not anymore.

Carrie: Yeah! I –

Sarah: What did you do, Cathy?

Cathy: What did I do? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, did you break it?

Cathy: I broke it, I broke it.

Sarah: This is the source of your next dystopian series. You broke the highway.

Cathy: In, in the nineteenth – you know, you want to hear something? I was actually writing a dystopian story, a post-apocalyptic story set in Alaska when this, this series, this historical series came up, so, yeah, I was actually researching for that, and I was looking into the railroad and the history of the area and all that kind of stuff, so –

Sarah: Whoa!

Cathy: – yeah. Yeah! Weird, huh?

Sarah: Yeah.

Cathy: [Laughs] Anyway. But back to the, the tour-, yeah, we get, we get, how do you get from there to here, and oh, when I was talking to my publisher recently, they needed to FedEx stuff to me, and, like, no, don’t FedEx stuff to me; we don’t get FedEx. She’s like, what are you talking about? Everybody gets FedEx. No, not –

Sarah: Not here.

Cathy: [Laughs] Not, you know, you know – but they say! I know what they say. No, they don’t get FedEx to – it goes to Anchorage, and it sits until the bin at the post office is full enough for Cordova, and they send it over that way.

Carrie: Ohhh.

Sarah: So it could be –

Cathy: By boat.

Sarah: – a week, it could be six months, it could be a year.

Cathy: Six weeks, yeah. Usually it’s about, somewhere between, sometimes you get it, like, in three days, which is amazing, so if the bin is full, and, but it can take six weeks to get a FedExed package from – I’m like, yeah, you’re paying expedited service, and I’m not getting it; trust me. But, yeah, so that’s, transportation is mostly, and access to things and price of things is what I think most people Outside are stunned by, and yeah, we’re paying, I’m paying almost six dollars a gallon for milk. I’m paying four to five dollars a loaf of bread. Nice bread, good bread, you know, decent bread.

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: That kind of thing, that it throws them off when we go, yeah, oh! Yeah, fuel. Oh, good, your fuel’s under two dollars? Mine just dropped under four! Nice! [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow.

Cathy: So, yeah. So that’s the, the illusion. It’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong. I mean, I love living out here, it’s gorgeous, but there’s definitely some things that you have to consider, and it, it kind of stuns people when you go, oh, yeah.

Sarah: It’s fascinating to me, because I only visited for, like, four days. Like I said in our email –

Cathy: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – I was completely blown away by it, but I’m always blown away when I go to a place that is so different looking, everything that I’m looking at is so different from what I’m used to, having grown up in the Northeast, and I –

Cathy: Sure.

Sarah: – have to remind myself, this is the same country. This is the same –

Cathy: Yeah!

Sarah: – country. This is, this is also America. Holy shit. This is –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Sarah: I did the same thing Tucson. I was like, okay, I can’t breathe through my nose because I have no moisture left in my body now, but I’m still amazed. This is incredible. But there’s also a lack of pretense and bullshit when the land is actively trying to kill you.

Cathy: That, yeah. Yeah. You get very practical very quickly for sure.

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: And you take care of people, even if you would like to run them over when the weather is better.

Cathy: Yes. I, and I notice that especially here where, where we are cut off. We have a very good emergency services for our local, for our area, and it is, it’s a matter of the community pulling together when things go wrong. When, if somebody is sick there will be a spaghetti feed to make up, you know, to bring up some money for them for medical expenses. Not too long ago, a few years ago, one of our neighbors lost their house in a fire. Everybody comes out to help with that, not to, not to put out the fire, but to get their, you know, get their household back together and get them stuff and replace things, and, because you’re not going to get a timely aid from anybody else – [laughs] – so you better be able to, even if you don’t like your neighbor, boy, you know you can rely on them when, when push comes to shove, which is a nice thing. It, it’s, gives you some sort of comfort that you’re not totally alone out here, you know, getting, getting screwed by the land as it were.

Carrie: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, there’s a, there’s a lot less pretense when you have to work with people who you otherwise can’t stand to keep each other from being killed by everything else.

Cathy: [Laughs] Everything else, yeah. Yeah, and it, it’s, it’s difficult sometimes. I mean, you get into some, and people appear, well, anywhere, some heated discussions on very strong opinions about things, but in the end it’s like, we are a community, and we will do for each other, so it’s good! I like, that’s one of the, definitely one of the positives of being out here. It’s a good place to see what people are made of, actually, and not be okay to live off the land, but are you going to help your neighbor? Are you going to be there for each other? And, yeah, mostly the answer is yes.

Sarah: Was that similar to your experience too, Carrie?

Carrie: Well, my experience was kind of odd because I was always working in some kind of social services, so it’s like, on the one hand, I would see the very best in people, and on the other hand, I would see the very worst in people.

Cathy: Right.

Carrie: But, and also, Bethel, when I was there, was, had a lot of racial issues where you had a, a white population, you had a Yup’ik population, and then you had a Korean population, and those three populations had sort of a, a, almost, like, lived almost separately in the same town, and yet at the same time, we were, like, all, like, completely intertwined. It’s kind of hard to describe. So I was dealing a lot with, like, really tough social issues. I worked in the jail, and I worked in a women’s shelter, and I worked in a, a group home very briefly – I was terrible at it – with adults who had mental disabilities, and a lot of them were caused by things like meningitis.

Cathy: Oh, wow.

Carrie: Right, like things that had just not been treated. So on the one hand, I saw, like, some stuff where people had been either individually or systemically cruel to each other –

Cathy or Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: – but at the same time, I also, like, the best parts of that community. Like, for instance, the women’s shelter where I worked, we had, it wasn’t a secret location. So when I came to Sacramento and I was like, oh, maybe I should get involved with the women’s shelter, well, we have a, a huge domestic violence activists group here that runs the women’s shelter and all different kinds of services. It’s called WEAVE, and they’re wonderful, but they don’t have, like, a big building where they take people in and everyone knows where that is. Who would do –

Cathy: Right, right.

Carrie: That would be crazy! You hide people. But you can’t hide anybody in a town of five thousand people –

Cathy: Exactly.

Carrie: – so everybody knew where the women’s shelter was, and in, in some of the villages, they had smaller shelters and they didn’t lock their doors, because nobody locked their doors. You did not lock your door.

Cathy: Yep, nope.

Carrie: We did lock our doors, but we also hosted big community events where we would open the doors and you’d have, like, big potlucks and everything.

Cathy: Right.

Carrie: You know. So I think where I saw more of that was the sense that even in a community that was beset by a lot of pretty intense problems, there was still an underlying feeling that you don’t lock your door, and if you wake up and a drunk guy is sleeping on your couch, you don’t freak out. You just know he, like, wandered in and fell asleep on your couch.

Cathy: Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie: ‘Cause sometimes that would happen. That never happened to me, but it was not an uncommon occurrence for people to just, you know, and then you’re, like, glad that they didn’t freeze to death, and you pour some coffee down them and you send them off.

Cathy: Right! Throw a blanket on ‘em for now and then, yeah, exactly.

Carrie: Right. You know, there’s a certain underlying trust, even in a really tough place where, you know, trust can be really challenged.

Cathy: Yeah, yes.

Carrie: And it was a huge shock to me when I came from that setting and I went straight to social welfare school in Berkeley, which of course is a huge city, and they’re doing safety rules, and they’re like, well, don’t share personal information and don’t tell anybody where you live, and I’m like, dude, none of this makes sense in a rural setting, like, at all.

Cathy: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: In a rural setting, you have to go work in the jail and then go home knowing that you’re going to see your clients next week when they’re out on bail at the grocery store.

Cathy: Yep!

Carrie: Because we’re all, we just all live together, and you just have to let go of a certain amount of protectiveness that we have in the city.

Cathy: Right.

Carrie: And I don’t know how true that it is in other rural communities, but I suspect it’s pretty true. I suspect that the, like, a degree of separation just isn’t possible.

Cathy: Yeah, it, it, it’s not, you know. Like you’re saying, you know, you see the person in the jail or at the clinic or at whatever, and then the next day they’re, you know, you’re talking to them because they’re staffing the school – [laughs] – or something like that. So, yeah, you do. You kind of just –

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: – all right, that’s, that’s, little compartmentalized, that’s that situation. This is this situation, in a way, and, yeah. You’re, everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows where everybody lives, and – [laughs] – or knows somebody. It’s very, not even six degrees of separation, that’s for sure.

Sarah: So even, even with geographical isolation, there is a, an overwhelming amount of intimacy that you can’t –

Cathy: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: – get away from.

Carrie: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cathy: Oh, no. And then you have to – we’re kind of new in town, so it’s, all right, who’s related to whom?

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: Who’s dating whom? Who’s lived with or been married to whom, and how many times have they swapped back and forth, ‘cause you don’t want to insult anybody or make them upset. [Laughs]

Sarah: What name do I not mention to you?

Cathy: Exactly. Who are you –

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: – with, and what’s going to make you un-, unhappy? But there’s always one or two go-to folks who’ve been here long enough. I, I also help the UPS driver sometimes?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Cathy: Yeah, I do, and so I get to know a lot of people, at least where they live, and there’s a couple of folks that I can go to who have been here long enough I’m like, I’m looking for so-and-so. Well, they lived with so-and-so for – but I think they broke up, so don’t go there, so –

[Laughter]

Cathy: It’s –

Carrie: Well, when I, when I lived in Bethel, I had multiple cases that were like that. When my, when my father died, my aunt tried to call me, and my phone wasn’t, my answering machine wasn’t working, so she couldn’t get through, she couldn’t leave a message, and, and my family was kind of in a panic – how were they going to get a hold of me? And finally, my uncle said, look, call the police department number –

Cathy: Yep.

Carrie: – because there’re only five thousand people there, so somebody will know her, and sure enough, they called, and I know Officer Terry was like, oh, yeah, I know her. I’ll go over to her house and see if she’s there, and if she’s not there, I know where else to look for her, and, and we’ll find her. And then my other favorite rumor story is that my husband and I used to walk a block to work together, and then we’d get to this corner and he’d go left and I’d go right, so I leave the house, and one day I got ready before he did, and he likes to run, and I like to walk very, very slowly, so I said, well, I, I’m going to go ahead and get started; you catch up. So I walk out of my house, and I walked, like, a little bit, and I tripped, which happened all the time –

Cathy or Sarah: Ouch!

Carrie: – ‘cause we had frozen mud streets –

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: – everywhere, yes. And I tripped, and I fell down, boom, and I got up, and I start walking again, and Glen runs up to me, and he says, are you okay? You fell! And I said, oh, did you see me? And he said, no, someone told me.

[Laughter]

Carrie: And I’m like, it just happened! He’s like –

[Laughter]

Carrie: You know that Miranda Lambert song, everybody’s kind of famous in a small town [“Famous in a Small Town”]?

Cathy and Sarah: Yeah.

Cathy: Oh, yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, like, that was very Bethel. We were all famous for something.

Cathy: Yeah. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, and the same thing here. You know, there’re only twenty-five hundred people here during the winter, not even, I don’t think. And so ev- –

Sarah: So you really do know everybody.

Cathy: You know everybody, and it’s –

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: I got a little nervous, and when I first, when we first got here, my kids were seven and ten, and I’d see kids younger than that walking through town – there’re only two blocks in town. I mean, you know, there’s not a lot – but kids younger than that walking – or about that age – themselves, no parent around. I’m like, what?! I grew up in New York.

[Laughter]

Cathy: You don’t leave your – you don’t let your kids wander the street! But then I realized, oh! Everybody’s looking out for each other really, especially the kids.

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: They’re keeping an eyeball on your kids, and before, if your kid does something or you do something or –

Sarah: Oh, right, you’re, yeah.

Cathy: – somebody’ll know about it before you hit your front door! So – [laughs] – yeah.

Sarah: And five people will have told you.

Cathy: Yep, yep. Like, yeah. Oh, you weren’t at the library like you said you were going to be at the library; where did you go? Uhhhh. [Laughs] Yeah.

Sarah: Now I have this, I have a bit of a strange question for you both. Have you guys ever read a book that really captured what your life was like in small town Alaska? I read one, and so when I’m listening to your stories I’m like, this reminds me of this book. It’s called If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name?

Cathy: Oh, by –

Sarah: Heather Lende.

Cathy: Heather Lende, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, she lives in –

Cathy: I haven’t read it, but, yeah, she lived down in Haines.

Sarah: Yeah.

Cathy: Or –

Sarah: And she –

Carrie: Oh?

Sarah: – she was the obituary writer, which means that she literally knew everyone’s business.

Cathy: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: But just listening to your stories, I mean, have you ever read a book that was like, yeah, that pretty much got it right, or do you read books and, and think, have you ever been here? Ever in your life?

Cathy: You know, it’s mostly the latter.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Cathy: I, I read books about Alaska; unless they’re by Alaskans, I read books about Alaska with a huge grain of salt –

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: – because I’m like, yeah, no. [Laughs]

Carrie: Well –

Sarah: So, what, they, they walked from Fairbanks to Anchorage in, like, two hours?

Carrie: [Laughs]

Cathy: Yeah, something like that, or yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Cathy: I’m jaded that way, and I try to avoid them, actually. I would read Heather’s book if I remember to, to get it. There are, yeah, there’re some of them that, yeah, okay, I can trust that person ‘cause they, I know they’ve been there and done that. Heather, for, again, had a column in the, in the paper that I’d read semi-regularly, so all right, this, this woman knows what she’s talking about. But there are people, oh, let’s set the story in Alaska! And, like, mm-mm!

[Laughter]

Sarah: It’s just –

Cathy: No?!

Sarah: – it’s just not going to work?

Cathy: No.

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: No. Please don’t do that. [Laughs] So.

Sarah: I think it’s funny. I think, I, I receive irate email from readers who are from different parts of the country, and they’re like, I just, I just have to complain, ‘cause I know you’ll understand. This is, like, ninety percent of my inbox. I have to complain; I know you’ll understand.

Cathy: Yes.

Sarah: Oh, yeah. So, no matter where you are geographically, if you don’t get the inherent details right, there’s going to be a reader who’s like, what are you smoking? Like, no way –

Cathy: Exactly.

Sarah: – is that happening!

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: There’s no way there’s going to be a blizzard in October in New York. Come on!

[Laughter]

Sarah: That’s still, that’s still tights and good boots season. You don’t wear the good boots in the snow; it’s going to be full of salt and chemicals, and you’ll ruin your boots!

Cathy: Good boot season.

Carrie: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Do you have good boot season, Cathy? Or do you just have –

Cathy: I, July. July is good boot season.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Well then you use the boot for killing the mosquitoes as big as your house?

Cathy: You know, if they don’t carry you off first? Yeah. Yeah. That’s about it.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: I miss my boots. I had these crazy, funny boots, and they, they were like astronaut boots. They were all –

Cathy: Oh, yeah, those were great.

Carrie: Yeah, sorry, I’m having a moment about how much I miss my boots.

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: When I, when I left, there was a – I went there as a VISTA volunteer, and a lot of people came to Bethel as VISTA volunteers, a lot of the non-Native people, came to Bethel as VISTA volunteers and stayed, and so there was a really nice legacy where if you came there as a volunteer, there were people who would take care of you because they were part of a long chain of people who came as volunteers. So all of my cold-weather gear I got from people who had lived there already, and then when I left, I left all my stuff, you know, with the new batch of volunteers, and I really miss it, ‘cause sometimes we go to the snow and I’m like, oh, I really miss my parka. [Sighs] It was good stuff. Ahh.

Cathy: [Laughs] Aw, the memories. I would be lost without my Xtratufs, ‘cause they’re good in the rain, they’re good in the winter, you know, if I’ve got thick enough socks, so, yeah, I understand completely. So, yeah.

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: But those are definitely not my good boots.

[Laughter]

Cathy: Those only get worn to school when I can get from the car to the school and back again without going through a lot of wet, so.

Carrie: I suspect that when Sarah says good boots and I say good boots, we might not be talking about –

Cathy: Totally different things, yeah.

Carrie: – the same thing. Yeah, mine were bright orange and, yeah.

[Laughter]

Carrie: Came up to, like, halfway up my thighs and, yeah.

Cathy: Yeah, there you go!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: Yeah!

Cathy: [Laughs] It’s the only, it’s very wet around here, so.

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: Good boots mean your feet are dry and warm; that’s all that – [laughs].

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: No, no skidding on the, you know, no skid on the bottom; some kind of grippy kind of thing on the bottom is good too, yes. Those are good boots.

Sarah: I also want to ask about your books, because that’s the other thing we wanted to talk to, talk about –

Cathy: Oh, okay!

Sarah: – aside from Alaska. But I also realize that I forgot to give you some space, Carrie, to ask questions, and I apologize for that. Do you have any questions you want to ask?

Carrie: This is not a question, but every time I read something by Cathy or I read a tweet by her or whatever, all I can think about is pilot bread and jam. What is up with that?

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: I, I –

Sarah: That’s an intense food –

Cathy: I might, I might need to change my avatar for you. [Laughs]

Carrie: My gosh! It’s just, it’s, yeah. I miss Bethel food, which is weird, because Bethel food was disgusting! Both –

[Laughter]

Cathy: That’s, that’s what inclement –

Carrie: People from Bethel will send you so much hate mail. There are things that I’ve read that remind me of my experience in Alaska that are written by people from Alaska. And there’s also stuff that reminds me a little bit of my experience that just has to do with small town life. Like, you know, that Miranda Lambert song isn’t about Alaska, but that kind of social dynamic. But one of the confusions about Alaska, I think, is that there’s not really one single Alaska. So Cordova, Bethel, and Anchorage are three different locations in Alaska that might as well be on different planets. And practically –

Cathy: Pretty much.

Carrie: – and then if you live in Bethel you’re working with all these different outlying villages, and each village is unrecognizable to people from mainstream America as part of America. Okay, these people have, like, you’ll have a big satellite dish, but you pee in a bucket, and you put it out –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: – to freeze, and then it gets picked up.

Cathy: This is true.

Carrie: Right? Okay –

Sarah: Wait, your, wait, hold –

Cathy: The honey bucket guy, yep.

Sarah: So, wait, the, the, your frozen pee gets picked up?

Carrie: Yeah, yeah, it’s a honey bucket. You pee in the bucket, and either it gets picked up or you have a system where you can take it somewhere.

Cathy: Because you don’t have, you don’t have sewer.

Carrie: You don’t have sewer in the villages.

Sarah: And you don’t have a septic tank or anything like that.

Carrie: In fact, we didn’t have sewer in a lot of Bethel when I was there.

Cathy: Right.

Sarah: That’s someone’s job is to come pick up the pee bucket?

Cathy: Uh-huh!

Carrie: Yeah, you put it on –

Sarah: Where did they put it?

Carrie: – the porch.

Sarah: We had cloth diapers when my younger sister was born, and we’re six years apart, so I was old enough to remember the hot, stanky bag o’ diapers –

Cathy: Oh, god!

Sarah: – waiting on the porch.

Carrie: Oh, my God.

Sarah: I am, I am aghast at the idea of a pee bucket, although frozen things don’t smell.

Carrie: Well, it’s –

Sarah: Where do you put the frozen pee? Is the –

Carrie: On your porch.

Sarah: And then where does the person who picks it up put it? Is this what pilot bread is?

Cathy: Puts it in, in a big tanker.

Sarah: This is pilot, this is what pilot bread is, isn’t it?

Carrie: They take it to the outskirts of town, and they dump it.

Cathy: Like Soylent Green.

[Laughter]

Carrie: ‘Cause all around Bethel, there’s nothing. Okay, there’s, there’s just, there’s just, you, it’s just, it’s so hard to describe. If you, if you –

Cathy: It’s a lot of nothing.

Carrie: Just that!

Sarah: Nothing and pee.

Carrie: And if you stand in your house – remember when poor Sarah Palin, who I’m not a fan of, you know, there was that whole joke about she could see Russia from her house?

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: Well, in Bethel, you, you kind of almost can, because you’re –

Cathy: [Laughs] ‘Cause the horizon’s so flat.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: You’re just an extension of Siberia. You’re really close to Siberia, and you’re the same tundra ecosystem as Siberia.

Cathy: Yep.

Carrie: ‘Kay, so Bethel is totally different in the landscape and geography and culture and how it looks –

Cathy: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: – than Anchorage –

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: – and if you live in Bethel, you have to be able to also work with these villages where there might be a hundred people in a village, and they’re coming in and out of Bethel to get services because they don’t have any services in their village, and in their village, their life is totally different, and I would go to the villages, and the kids would, would, would all come up and they would pat me and touch me and go, “Little woman!” They loved it that I was short because a lot of the Native, a lot of the Yup’ik people are pretty short, and they go, “Little woman, little woman!” I mean it’s, it’s a totally different world than Anchorage, so if I see something, if I read something about Cordova, it doesn’t feel like my experience in Bethel, not because it’s written wrong but because people don’t understand how big Alaska is and how diverse it is in terms of experience, and, and, and I know in my, for a fact, that when I des-, talk about Bethel, people aren’t picturing Bethel. They’re picturing –

Cathy: No.

Carrie: – mountains; they’re picturing glaciers. They’re not picturing nothing but tundra.

Cathy: Right.

Carrie: You know, you’re in the middle of an enormous forest, except all the trees are about four inches tall.

Cathy: [Laughs] Yes! That’s, that’s, yeah! There you go; that’s the tundra.

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: Exactly. Nothing grows taller than your knee. [Laughs]

Sarah: Unless you make a stack of pee, frozen pee nuggets.

Cathy: Frozen pee things! You can do that.

Carrie: Right.

Cathy: Oh, and it only lasts till spring, so that’s all right. Till breakup.

Carrie: So, Cathy, do you guys have, do you guys have tundra tea? Does that grow where you are? Do you guys make tundra tea?

Cathy: Ah, I don’t know. I haven’t – probably. We do have, ‘cause we do have river flats, and we do have, you know, you know, flood plain kind of thing by our, we’re, we’re – the Copper River comes down not too far from us, huge river, so there are river flats and, and tundra-like areas, but it’s, I’m not sure about the tundra tea thing.

Carrie: I, you would know. It was, it’s like –

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: – we all used to, like, make tea out of it, and it’s, like, very good for colds and stuff and, yeah. But yeah, so, I mean, that was a really long answer, but it’s really –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: – hard to – like, my whole, like, courtship story with my husband involves all these different things that are all completely not Alaskan; they’re Bethel. You would only find them in Bethel. He lived in Trailer Park, and Trailer Park was hooked up to water, so he could have a washing machine.

Cathy: Wow! Fancy!

Carrie: Trailer life. I used to go over every Sunday, and he would let me do a load of laundry at his trailer, and we’d watch The X-Files because my TV, a volunteer passed down to me, as they do, and I fixed it with a paper clip so that I could watch The X-Files, but I had to sit there and hold the paperclip in place, you know. I mean, like, like, yeah! It’s, it’s –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: – it’s just, it’s, I don’t know what it’s like now, but twenty years ago it was, it was, like, a whole –

Cathy: I, I think they have satellite now. You’re probably, you’d probably be okay. [Laughs]

Carrie: They have a pool now. They have an indoor pool.

Cathy: Yeah, we –

Carrie: The Aquatics Center. I’m, I’m agog.

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: I may have to go back just to see the pool and go, wow!

Cathy: You should! Come on back!

Carrie: I should! Wouldn’t that be awesome? That would be way awesome. I’d love to take my daughter there. She’s never, she’s never been. But anyway, I’m sorry, like, that was, like, way too long, but –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: Interesting, though.

Carrie: But I have feelings about –

Cathy: It is, but you’re right, it is, and when you look at a map of Alaska, it’s ver-, obviously a very sparse population, but it is, the most accurate map of how different things are is when they show the Native, different Native groups –

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: – and that’s where a lot of the differences of Anchorage, because it’s a, a city, really. I mean, you know, it’s, in, in my view it’s a city as much of a city, even though it’s surrounded by beautiful mountains and water, but it, it’s the Native group map that really tells the story of who’s doing what where and the differences between Barrow and Nome –

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: – and Fairbanks and Southeast. You know, even Southeast is broken up to a certain degree, so, yeah, that’s the thing, and, and that is one of the things that folks – it took me a long time to, to wrap my head around, too. But, yeah, Alaska’s not just Alaska, and folks are very particular about the representation of their culture where you are. You know, I was setting stories here, but I’ve, I set a different story that I was working on basically out in Nome. Well, I had to figure out a different set of, you know, cultural rules and what their stories were, you know, before I could really go far with that, so, yeah. It’s, it’s interesting.

Sarah: So when you were writing your historical mystery series – and by the way, those covers are gorgeous –

Cathy: Oh, I know, right?

Sarah: Oh, my God, they’re gorgeous. I was designing – so we have an ad space where I’ve been doing, you know, recommended books that we’ve read and reviewed.

Cathy: Yeah, I saw. Thank you!

Sarah: Oh, dude, I had the best time with yours! I was like, I’ll just zoom in and look at this part over here.

Cathy: [Laughs]

Sarah: So, like, twenty-five minutes in Photoshop exploring your cover like it was a map. It, they’re gorgeous! Congratulations!

Cathy: Well, thank you. The, the gal who designed them, Kristine Mills over at Kensington – I actually got to meet her last year. That was lovely, and I’ve been exchanging emails and things with the actual artist, James Griffin, and I sent him signed books – in fact, I have one ready to go out for the third book – and he sent me signed prints of the covers.

Sarah: Oh, that’s nice!

Cathy: So I’ve got, so I need to find nice frames for – but, yeah, everybody, I, I’ve been blessed by the Cover Gods, really. [Laughs] So for all, I just found out, you know, all of the books that I’ve, I have out, thankfully, but, yeah, definitely. I’m stunned every time I see them. Like, oh, my God, I’m so lucky! Thank you, Cover Gods!

Carrie: Yes.

Sarah: So I have, I do want to ask you about that series. You, what was your point of entry for writing a historical mystery series?

Cathy: [Laughs]

Sarah: It was the hats, wasn’t it? It was all the hats.

Cathy: It was a lot of hats. I love the hats. I don’t wear hats. I actually have a cloche hat, but I only wear it when I, when, don’t, you know, when, for special occasions. The entry point for that series – okay, it’s, it’s a little bit of a story; I’ll make it quick. So I was, as I said before, I was researching, actually, for a post-apocalyptic story set here, right? Or ‘bout fifty miles from here. But I wanted his-, some historical information because I wanted to see how people lived actually a hundred years ago or so, because I figure there were loss of services, loss of, you know, electricity wasn’t really a thing, and so I’m going, kind of going backwards to go forward into the future, if that makes sense?

Sarah: Totally! Absolutely makes sense.

Cathy: Okay. So I was researching things and getting some historical perspective on Cordova, and I was just, just totally digging reading about the area. And one day, my husband’s on the planning and zoning committee here in town, and he said that they were looking at plots of land that the city owned that they could lease or sell. And one plot, right by the high school, a beautiful, you know, not huge plot of land, but a nice little plot of land, right there in the middle of the neighborhood behind the high school was marked Not For Sale. And somebody told him at the, and they’re like, well, why not? It’s, you know, be perfect size for a nice little house at that – oh, it’s a cemetery! And some folks who’ve been here for twenty years went, really? It’s a cemetery?

[Laughter]

Cathy: So, like, yeah. So we decided one day to go see it, because I’m weird that way, and I love walking through cemeteries, and we have, now, three in town, actually. And so, went over there and checked it out, and sure enough, there were some old headstones from the 1920s, 1930s, that kind of thing, and the neighbor was out stacking firewood. He’s like, what are you doing? Why are you walking through the cemetery? And we explained to him. And he was telling a story about the people who are built, buried there. One was a, a group of, we have a very large Filipino population and have for a long time, almost since the inception of, of town. There was a group of Filipino folks that are buried there in a certain way, and he told the story about a prostitute and her child who were murdered, at least the, the woman was – I don’t know if the baby, she was pregnant or had the baby; I’m, I’m not quite sure on that – in the 1930s, and one of them was buried in that cemetery, and the other was buried in one of the other ones, and just this little light bulb went off in my head and went, huh! Dead prostitute! I can work with that!

[Laughter]

Cathy: So.

Sarah: This, these are things that writers can say that are, that other writers are like, yeah, totally! Absolutely! And then you say that at, like, a potluck –

Cathy: I know!

Sarah: – people are like, we need to find another table.

[Laughter]

Cathy: Exactly. Well, nice meeting you! Buh-bye! Yeah, exactly.

Carrie: Bye!

Cathy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, or, but it’s spirit stuff –

Sarah: I need some more potatoes.

Cathy: [Laughs] Yeah. Oh! Oh, I think I see somebody I need to talk to. Bye-bye. Yeah, but that, that’s, so that was where it started, and so it was a, a – and I moved it up a little bit in time for, you know, so it’s 1919 versus 1930s when this actual event happened. And it just kind of took off. Like, well, who would be investigating a, a death in, in that time period? I’m like, oh, well, let’s bring some-, you know, the whole fish-out-of-water thing really is one of my favorite, my favorite tropes or characters to deal with, so.

Sarah: Yeah, me too.

Cathy: Yeah! So I,  I was like, all right, so bring – you’re on, at a frontier town, essentially. Let’s bring in somebody who’s never been to a place like this. So. And it just kind of grew from there, and the, even the second book is based on a, a real life event that happened. There was a, a guy who was, in the, in the book it’s a guy found after a fire, and they thought, oh, he died in the fire. No, he was murdered first, and then they set the fire to cover it up. And that really happened here, so – [laughs] – it’s kind of brutal in Cordova back in the day.

Sarah: Wow. So has the local community been super into your books? Like –

Cathy: Oh, they have been amazing. Amazing –

Sarah: That is so lovely!

Cathy: – amazing, amazing. I mean, I, you know, folks just walking by like, when’s your next book coming out? In fact, I just had somebody ask me that this morning. And oh, when’s it coming? When are you going to do a talk? ‘Cause I’ll do, for each of the books so far and for, coming up for this third one, are you going to do another talk and signing? ‘Cause I just chat about the books and I sign books for them and things like that, and, but mostly it’s talking about the area and talking about what prompt, again, what prompted it, and just writing in general. Yeah, the community is incredible, incredible, incredible. I could not, I was nervous about writing and actually saying, here, this is actually set in Cordova. Like, what are people going to think? But –

Sarah: Right, ‘cause you just got here five, six years ago?

Cathy: It’ll be ten years, but I’m a newbie.[Laughs]

Sarah: Wow. You’re still a newbie at ten years. It’s kind of like the South.

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: Like, ‘cause I went to college in South Carolina –

Cathy: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: – and I learned that you could have been born in Charleston and then at the age of seven minutes moved somewhere else –

Cathy: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and then moved back when you were, like, ninety-eight and died a week later, but you are a Southerner. And that’s what your obituary was: she was born in Charleston, lived for many years someplace else, and returned to –

Carrie: But –

Sarah: So, yeah, you’re a Southern.

Carrie: But the flip side of that is that Bethel is a very, very transient town. You have a lot of people who come in, white people come in for a job and they work for a while, and then they leave, and then you have Native people who come in from the villages for services and leave, or they come in for a job and then they leave, and of course you have a core group that stays in Bethel and just always lives in Bethel, but there’re a lot of people who come in and out, you know. So because I was there for five years, she’s, like-

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: You know, if you, if you make it past the one-year mark, right –

Cathy: Yeah, nah. That –

Carrie: – then, then you’ve-

Cathy: – that is a big thing.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: Yeah. But, but, yeah, like, five years, people are like, five years! And I’m like, well, you know. I mean, it was a great place to live, actually. I really, I really love Bethel, it’s a really positive place, but, but it’s just designed to be a place where people come and go, come and go.

Cathy: Well – [laughs] – and, and I did say, you know, I’m still, we’re still kind of a newbie, but we’re, we’re definitely integrated more in the socie-, in society, you know, with the kids going to school of course, so, like, my kids mostly grew up here. So, yeah, I think we, we are part of the community more than, than I sometimes think I, you know – I don’t know everybody’s stories, which is kind of, once you know everybody’s stories, then you’re in.

Carrie: Yeah.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Cathy: But, but one of the first things they asked us or asked me when we moved here – now, my husband was here a few months before the kids and I moved over because we were finishing up school in Homer and he started his job a few months earlier – but one of the first things that we were asked when we got here: how long you staying?

Sarah: Whoa!

Carrie: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Cathy: Yeah, and part of it is, yeah, are you just here, or – we also have a Coast Guard station, so families are here from two to three years, and then they rotate back out again.

Carrie and Sarah: Yeah.

Cathy: And it was really weird to be asked, though, how long you staying? I’m like, as long as my spouse works, I guess?

[Laughter]

Carrie: And in Bethel –

Cathy: If he has a job, I’m here.

Carrie: – they don’t even say, how long are you staying? They say, when are you leaving?

Cathy: Oh! [Laughs]

Carrie: Because it’s just implied that at some point you’re going to leave.

Cathy: You’re not going to be here long.

Carrie: And you say, no, no, I love it. I mean, and then, but another thing that Bethel is kind of nice is that, like, all the entertainment, all the stuff in Bethel is made by people who live in Bethel, or it was twenty years ago, right? Like, like, you know the joke, well, we make our own fun, right? So –

Cathy: Exactly!

Carrie: – there’s a chess club, and there’s a community theater, and there’s, there’s, you know, we put on concerts, an amazing number of incredibly talented people in Bethel, oh, my gosh. And so if you invest in the community, people really value that.

Cathy or Sarah: Right.

Carrie: There are people who go in, they work for a year, they get their paycheck, they build their resume, they’re out, and that’s all they’re there for, and they’re kind of looked down on, but if you show up and you con-, really contribute to the quality of life there –

Cathy: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: – that’s, people really appreciate that.

Cathy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we have the same thing. We, in fact, are, we have a community theater group that’s been going on for years and years. You talk about making your own, own fun: the second week in February is Iceworm week, so we celebrate the –

Sarah: I’m sorry, ice worm.

Carrie: Yeah, wait, wait, where’d you put the Iceworm?

Cathy: Iceworm, Iceworm.

Sarah: Please tell me –

Cathy: There are actual –

Sarah: – that you’re carving a worm out of ice.

Carrie: [Laughs]

Sarah: Please tell me that that’s what you’re talking about.

Cathy: Nooo.

Sarah: Oh, God.

Carrie: Ice worms!

Cathy: They’re actually real worms; they live in glaciers. And act-, my, my nephew came up and visited many years ago; he was just a, you know, like, thirteen, fourteen, something like that. He came up and one of the, he was part of the science club. Not science club; there’s a science camp that went out for the week, and they went to, they were glacier hiking, and they found ice worms in the glaciers, and they live in, just under the ice in glacier. And the thing is, they dug ‘em out and put ‘em in his hand, and they get too hot when you hold them because they’re used to living in the ice, and they, poor little boogers die when, when they get overheated. And he, my nephew actually ate one, and he says it tastes like dirt, which makes sense because, you know, they’re worms. But yeah, there are actually really, really are ice worms. They’re very small and taste like dirt and, but we celebrate the ice worm every February here in Cordova. There’re all kinds of activities, and half the people are in the parade and half the people are watching the parade – [laughs] – and there’s a, a talent show –

Sarah: Why.

Cathy: – variety show.

Carrie: Love that.

Cathy: Because you make your own fun when it’s February in Alaska! [Laughs]

Sarah: Okay, that’s all you have to say. I completely get it.

Cathy: Like, what should we do? Let’s do the – yeah, you can look it up online: Cordova Iceworm Festival. There, we, there’s the baby ice worm, and there’s, at the end of the parade is the big ice worm, which is a bunch of kids under – looks like, you know, the, the Chinese dragon thing where everybody’s underneath it?

Sarah: Right.

Cathy: During, like, Chinese New Year? Okay, well, ours is a big, long, blue ice worm, essentially.

Carrie: That is the best thing I’ve ever heard!

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: I, I –

Sarah: Yeah, I’m with you; that’s amazing.

Carrie: I just feel so happy to live in a world where people go, well, it’s Feb- – like, like, I, February in Bethel was rough! Like, do people get really –

Cathy: It’s rough! You’ve got to do something!

Carrie: – get crazy. In February, you’re like, okay, you know what? It is spring! It is – if you’re from Outside, you’re like, it is time for spring! Enough, enough already! But it’s not.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Cathy: No. Not even close. I’ve had snow, we had Snowpocalypse a few years ago? I don’t know – it was on the news! During the course of the winter we got thirty feet of snow, which is unusual for here.

Sarah: Good God.

Cathy: It was a lot of snow. National Guard came in, helped shovel rooves, rooves collapsed. It was a ton of fricking snow. The last of the snow did not melt, and my gardening bench was in a back little corner that rarely saw sunshine – did not melt out of my yard till June. That was a lot of snow. [Laughs] It was.

Carrie: I, I could, went for a period where I could picture living in Bethel forever, but I have to say, every single February – the other, the rest of the year, people would say, when are you leaving? And I would say, I don’t have any plans to leave. I like it here; I’m good. But every February, people would say, when are you leaving? And I’d say, now. I’d say I’m going to go get, I would say I’m going to get a job in Juneau, and they would say, oh, any – sorry, Juneau listeners; I’m sorry – they would say, pfft! Anybody could live in Juneau.

Cathy: Yep! [Laughs]

Carrie: Only, only special people can live in Bethel. Anybody can live in Juneau! So then I would stick it out, and then in March I’d be like, okay, I guess I can, I got, I’m okay. I can –

Cathy: S’okay. [Laughs]

Carrie: February, it’s rough.

Cathy: Yeah, it’s hard. And, and that’s the first thing, you know, I’ve, we’ve known a lot of people who didn’t make it through the winter, and it’s because it gets cold, it gets dark. Even on a night, I mean, we’re, we’ve been lucky this year. Sometimes the weather, it’s just gray. All. The time.

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: It’s rough on folks! When I lived in Fairbanks, ooh, that was brutal! There was some –

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: There was, when you have less than four hours of daylight –

Carrie: Yeah.

Cathy: – and you’re missing most of it – I was at, in college at the time, and you know, you’re leaving in the morn-, in the morning for an eight o’clock class; it’s pitch black. You’re running between classes where it’s forty below, and you’re running as fast as you can, and you’re getting a glimpse of sunlight, and then by the time you’re done with classes at four o’clock, it’s pitch black again. It’s rough on people! And even with the growing daylight in February, it can be pretty wet and pretty dismal here, and it takes a lot to stick things out. So, yeah, you’ve just got to make your own fun! [Laughs]

Carrie: Bethel, everything is still frozen hard –

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: – so you start to get some light back, and you, you’ve spent all winter thinking, okay, well, when the light comes back I’ll be okay, right. Well, the light comes back, but the river’s still frozen solid. Everything’s still frozen solid. Not, you know, still, like, cold, cold, cold, and you think, okay, like, does this end?

Cathy: [Laughs] Yeah.

Carrie: No, not so much, but it does eventually, of course. But yeah, I definitely –

Cathy: It does, eventually.

Carrie: Definitely, that was my hardest month, was February.

Cathy: Yeah. It’s a tough one.

Sarah: So, it, winter in Alaska is basically a lot like writing a book.

Cathy: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: You think, oh, my God –

Cathy: This’ll never end!

Sarah: – there’s no daylight. It’s never, I’m never going to get there. I, there is no – what, what light? There’s no light here or at the end of the tunnel. What did I do? Why did I think I could do –

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: – yeah.

Carrie: Well, on the other hand, there’s a lot to do, because everybody frantically makes their own fun so that we don’t all just go lie outside and die, and then in the summer there’s, there’s none of that, and the people, you know, because everybody goes outside. They go to – well, I don’t know what they do in Cordova, but in Bethel they go to fish camp and, you know, they go –

Cathy: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: – mostly to fish camp. You go fish camp –

Sarah: That makes me think of a bunch of fish, like, living in tents and –

Cathy: Going – [laughs]

Sarah: – making bracelets and doing archery, so this has just completely made my day; thank you, Carrie.

[Laughter]

Carrie: Well, if you replace fish with people catching fish, yeah. Like, you, you take your boat out to – like, every family has their own camp where they go during the summer, and you fish, and you get a year’s worth of fish, and you, ‘cause you –

Cathy: You catch it and –

Carrie: – fry them and, and smoke them and, and preserve them for the winter and eat a bunch of fresh fish, and the kids run wild, and you go berry picking, you know, when the berries are in season and, you know, everything’s great! The mosquitoes are really awful. I don’t, I don’t know what the mosquitoes are like in Cordova, but gee, oh, my God! The, the Bethel mosquitoes are just awful.

Cathy: Yeah, they can be bad here at times, yeah.

Carrie: Awful.

Cathy: Yeah, yeah.

Carrie: On the other hand, I’m terrified of spiders, and Bethel has absolutely no spiders because it’s too cold.

Cathy: Oh, see, there you go!

Carrie: That was rad.

Cathy: There you go. [Laughs]

Carrie: Yeah, that was excellent. I was like, safe at last!

Sarah: So, Cathy, I have –

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: – two questions. One: what are you working on right now? And two: do you have any books you want to tell everyone about?

Cathy: What am I working on right now? I am actually working on an old manuscript –

Sarah: Ooh!

Cathy: – revamping it, and old one. Do you remember, maybe, I don’t know, back in the day, American Title? When Dorchester did American Title Contest? Do you, did you –

Sarah: Oh!

Cathy: – ever hear about that?

Sarah: I did indeed, yes!

Cathy: Many, many years ago, this particular manuscript was one of the top ten in American Title III, the third year they did it.

Sarah: Whoa!

Cathy: Yeah! Yeah, so I didn’t make the, the final, final cut on them, of course, but I figure, eh, top ten, that’s pretty darn good. And I, I put it away because nobody was doing the story – this is a story about, it’s set in Oregon. It’s, the protagonist is a wildlife biologist –

Carrie: Woohoo!

Cathy: – go figure. Very far from my, my real world. And she’s actually trying to solve the murder of her journalist friend who’s a ghost helping her, so I’m revamping that and working on that and getting it up to date, ‘cause I realize the technology was really like, oh, a flip phone!

[Laughter]

Cathy: That’s, wow! How forward-thinking of me. So I was like, okay, yeah, that one’s – [laughs] – but I also had to tweak certain things in the, in the actual mystery of who killed her. So, yeah, so I’m working on that right now, and it’s kicking my butt for various reasons, but it’s fun, ‘cause I enjoy the characters quite a bit. So that’s that. I would, I would really love to be able to do a few more Charlotte stories. I’m waiting for word on those as well, so this is what I’m doing in the meantime.

And a book I’d recommend, or what I’m – oh, goodness. I just finished reading Don’t Speak by J. L. Brown. That was pretty good. It was a political – not political; it was set in D.C., but it was a thriller, serial killer type thing. That was fun. I’m reading an old science fiction called Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon, ‘cause I always go back to sci – I like to read stuff that’s not in the genre that I’m writing at the moment.

Sarah: Oh, that’s very common. A lot of the time, when I talk to –

Cathy: Yeah.

Sarah: – when I talk to authors, they’ll, they’ll say, oh, well, I, I don’t have any recommendations in my genre, and I’m like, that’s totally normal.

Cathy: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah. I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing! There’re a couple of other sci-fi, some, some lesbian sci-fi, yes, yes. I’m still, you know, doing those periodically when I remember to jot down plot bunnies. What else am I reading? I don’t, I’m a slow readers these days. It’s terrible! I really am a terribly slow reader at this point. I used to be able to knock off a book a week at the minimum, and now it’s like, oh, it’s taking me forever to get through the story; why?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Cathy: ‘Cause I’m old, and I get half an hour to read at night, and I fall asleep!

Carrie: I will say it is with great delight that I peeked on Amazon while we were talking and realized that this guy who’s amazingly talented who I knew in Bethel, his name is Michael Faubion, and he did an album called Paris on the Kuskokwim, which is hilarious, which is about Bethel, and all these people who live in Bethel are on the album, and you can get it from Amazon, so if you’re curious about life in Bethel –

Cathy: Oh, yeah!

Carrie:  – you definitely want to get this CD, which has classics like “Bethel Cab Driver” and “Paris on the Kuskokwim” and “Brown Slough Boogie,” you know, and “Alphabet Soup.”

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: You definitely want these. And “Water Day.” [Sings] I get some water today! [Speaks] So, yeah.

Cathy: I’ll have to check that out, for sure.

Carrie: Oh, you’ll love it, Cathy. You’ll get, like, right up, I think it’s right up – you’ll, you’ll love it. And I think, I, maybe listeners’ll be like, what, what? What? Because, like, with every song you require, like, a forty-five minute explanation of why this guy’s singing about getting water delivered to his house, but –

Cathy: Yeah! It’s a thing! It’s totally a thing! Did he –

Carrie: Yes, and he –

Cathy: – is there a honey bucket song? There should, there should be a honey bucket song on there.

Carrie: There, there, I believe there might be a reference to honey buckets – and, and just to be clear, not every house used honey buckets, so, like, I was on a, a system where we had a tank, so you had a flush toilet, but the water went to a tank; it didn’t go to a citywide system. And then the sewer truck comes –

Cathy: Right.

Carrie: – and empties out your tank, and then you have another tank –

Cathy: Yes, that’s –

Carrie: – for God’s sake, don’t mix ‘em up!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: And the other tank is your water tank, and the water truck delivers your water.

Cathy: [Laughs] Oh, God, yeah, no. You don’t want to mix those guys.

Carrie: Yeah, don’t, don’t mix those up!

Cathy: No, no, no. But, but –

Carrie: But, but then over at Trailer Park, and I suspect that now that twenty years has passed, Bethel’s probably much more hooked up, because they were making huge strides just when I, in the time I lived there –

Cathy: Yeah.

Carrie: – but when I lived there, Trailer Park was on piped water like you would have in, in a city, you know. That’s why I could go do laundry at my boyfriend-now-my-husband’s trailer in Trailer Park, because he had all the water he wanted.

Cathy: That totally sealed the deal for you two, didn’t it?

Carrie: Heck, yeah, baby!

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: You turn on the faucet and water just came out!

Cathy: I love you! No, not just for your water. I swear, I care.

Carrie: Oh, marry me! It was awesome!

[Laughter]

Carrie: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s amazing.

Carrie: It was amazing!

Cathy: See, Sarah, this is, this is not, you know, this is how we, we pick mates here in Alaska. [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s a hardcore meet-cute there.

Carrie: Like, this, this was like my version of Pemberley, right? You know, like, like, like, Elizabeth Bennet goes to see Pemberley. She’s like, hey, that dude could be marriage material, you know, and I’m like, hey, this guy has a working washing machine –

Cathy: [Laughs]

Carrie: – and water whenever he wants. [Laughs] Just to be clear, he has many charms.

Cathy: That put it over the edge, I can tell. That’s –

Carrie: Oh, yeah. That was – well, if nothing else, it gave us a reason to spend every Sunday evening together.

[music]

Sarah: And that is all for this week’s interview. I want to thank Cathy and Carrie for hanging out with me, and again, I apologize on behalf of my terrible voice. I will have links to all the books we mentioned and some of the things that we talked about, including the Cordova Iceworm Festival, because I know you want to know more, at the podcast page at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast. There are also links to the books that we talked about and most recent episodes at iTunes.com/DBSA.

This episode is being brought to you by Kensington Books, who want you to know about The Unyielding by Shelly Laurenston. USA Today and New York Times bestselling author Shelly Laurenston capitalizes on her trademark humor and kickass attitude in The Unyielding, which is the third installment of the Call of Crows series. You might have heard me talk about this series, ‘cause I love it! It features a band of tough-as-nails female warriors who are resurrected from the dead and the alpha males who aren’t afraid to give them a taste of their own medicine. As usatoday.com puts it, “Laurenston has a gift with words and humor,” so answer the Call. The sisterhood of Crows is waiting for you in The Unyielding by Shelly Laurenston, on sale now wherever books are sold and on kensingtonbooks.com. And you can read my review of this book at smartbitchestrashybooks.com. But you knew that.

This week’s transcript is being brought to you by The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life by Sharon Pywell. Chevy Stevens, who’s the New York Times bestselling author of Never Let You Go, had the following to say about this book: “The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life[by Sharon Pywell] is a fascinating blend of genres that flows together seamlessly, creating the most original story I’ve read in a long time. Partly narrated from the afterlife, this riveting suspense story manages to be darkly comic at times…while dealing with complex family dynamics that can fester for years. The second narrative, an intriguing pirate romance, is deliciously entertaining, but the real love story in this book, is the one between these sisters, and their bond that can’t be broken in any life.” This book is a story within a story within a story. There’s a pirate romance, a powerful bond between two sisters, and a world that is determined to hold them back. The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life by Sharon Pywell is one of the most original, entertaining, exciting, and chilling novels you will read this year, and it is on sale wherever books are sold.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is Caravan Palace. This track is called “Ended with the Night.” They have a two-album set that includes their album Caravan Palace and their other album Panic, and you can find this two-album set on Amazon or iTunes, wherever you buy their music. I will, of course, have links to this song and to the album. You can also find them on Facebook and on their website at caravanpalace.com.

I will have links to all of the books and some of the things that we talked about, as I mentioned. And if you would like a sneak peek as to what’s up next, I have interviews this month with Faith Salie, Jennifer Lohmann, Debbie Macomber, and, well, a bunch of other people that you’ll be really excited to hear from. Plus, I might have some big news next week, so make sure you tune in to next week’s episode, ‘kay? Promise? Promise, promise? Pinkie swear? Okay, good.

On behalf of Cathy and Carrie and myself and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.

[haunting music]