Kyle Kellams: David Lane Williams’ first novel, “Carousel Grift,” is now available. While it’s his first novel, it’s his third book. His first two were nonfiction, based on his 30-year career as a paramedic and police officer. He worked patrols in high-need areas, prehospital advanced life support, and as a Special Investigations Unit detective. He’ll discuss his novel Nov. 15 at 10:30 a.m. at the Fayetteville Public Library. Late last month, he came to the Carver Center for Public Radio.
“Carousel” is set in his home state of Texas and is centered on the protagonist, Callie. She’s running a family-owned carnival, has a best friend who is secretly in love with her, may or may not talk to a ghost, and she has a daughter who is famous and not quite on the up and up. Williams says yes, this is a novel, but it is very much based on experiences he’s had.
David Lane Williams: It is based on experience. So here’s the thing. When I started working on this thing, I was working here and we’d moved from Austin. I started my public safety career there. I was a police officer here in Fayetteville, and I was assigned to the Special Investigations Unit, which primarily has a function of investigating and mitigating violent crimes, predatory crimes, and most violent crimes and predatory crimes are against women and children.
So one of the dynamics that I was experiencing and I experienced it my whole career, 30 years of running into this sort of challenge, was a lot of women won’t leave when they’re in a domestic violence vortex. They’re scared or the finances don’t work or they’re worried about the children. A thousand reasons why somebody doesn’t leave. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn. It was super frustrating for me at first. And I wanted to help. And so, when I would see somebody six months down the road that we had participated in helping them get to a better place, and they were thriving and they looked happy. That was a touchdown moment for me, and I very much wanted to write about that.
And I knew I was starting a new novel. I’d done a lot of nonfiction, but I really wanted to work on a novel and a great American novel. Right. And so this was going to be part of it. So the first pass of this thing, I got to tell you, was pretty maudlin because it’s a rough subject. Right. And I realized fairly early on that that’s not me. That’s not how I handled my grief and my pain and fears. And I think a lot of people use humor. And so it transitioned pretty early on to be a dark-ish comedy. But it’s a comedy about how do we forgive, how do we be resilient, and how do we move on when we can do that safely?
So that was part of it. The other thing that was going on in Fayetteville at the time, which I found fascinating, was that we had a carnival that would come and winter here, and they leased property out on Tail Springs and they put their roller coasters and their tilt-a-whirl and carousels and all that out there in the field and somewhere in a building. And those carnies would hit town, man. And we knew it. The police knew that they were here, and most of them were funny, and they’d get super drunk down on Dickson or whatever and just kind of deal with that. And some of them were a little sinister, but I just loved that dynamic of talking to these people, and they were just bizarro world and flying under the radar across the South. And that became part of the story, too. So those two things were big influences on how this came about, why it came about. And it’s all in there in some form or fashion.
Kellams: You mentioned that, you know, carnies fly under the radar. I think there are going to be a lot of people listening to our conversation go, wait, what? There was a carnival that used to winter here because it was not a public knowledge sort of thing.
Williams: It really wasn’t. And I will mention it to people who lived here today. And, ‘Really? here? Fayetteville?’ Yes. Yeah. And there was just a hoot.
Kellams: How did—what was your relationship with Callie, the protagonist here?
Williams: So, Callie, first of all, is my dog’s name. So that’s where the name came from. Okay. Yeah, let’s just throw that out there. But Callie is a woman who, as a teenager, was homeless. She makes a desperate decision to go with this man who turns out to be a hellfire, brimstone minister. He does this weird adoption thing and almost immediately sets up to be emotionally abusive, very judgmental, pretty cruel.
And so he dies. And in his will, he leaves his property, which is substantial, to her, but she has to adhere to certain rules that he puts in place again, just to control her, just to demean her a little bit. Now, Callie is a clever and courageous woman. She’s a really nice person.
Kellams: Resourceful.
Williams: She is absolutely resourceful. And she figures out, okay, here’s what I’m going to do about this. And she figures out this clever way to do that. And it is clever and it does work. And she keeps the property and raises this little girl, this baby, and fulfills her responsibilities that way.
But she starts feeling trapped in that. And she knows she’s made compromises and she’s very angry at herself for that. And I think we all experience that. We have this self anger, can’t let it go. And so this thematically is all about forgiveness. She has to forgive this old man. She’s been arguing with him. He’s been dead for 30 years. She still argues with him. There’s a magical realism component to this thing, but she’s also pretty angry at herself for going with him in the first place, for making these compromises. It’s all for her daughter, but she can’t let it go. And so enter this woman called Luz.
Luz means light in Spanish, and Luz’s whole function is sort of angelic. Her persona is to help Callie realize that she can only move forward, fall in love, make amends with her now estranged daughter, if she can let all that old stuff go. And most importantly, let it go for herself.
Kellams: We don’t want to give too much away here, but you mentioned the daughter. Sophie’s had her own path. And it’s—would you say—well known? I mean, she’s a—yeah.
Williams: So Sophie leaves in a huff and says, I’m never going to return. She comes back, of course, otherwise we wouldn’t have a book. Right, right. But she leaves and she is also clever. She takes after her mother that way, and she figures out that she does these tent revival meetings. She’s very good at it, and she’s compelling and charismatic, and people listen to her. And then that sort of drifts into multi-level marketing and scams. And she’s kind of a scam artist. Right? And she becomes famous and quite wealthy as a result of this.
And so now she has returned to this little fictional town called Elixir Springs and wants to take her mother’s property because she has an idea.
Kellams: She wants to expand that empire.
Williams: Yeah. And it is an empire. And she wants—it’s kind of all in her own honor. And this local politician who’s sort of a frenemy to Callie is working with her, and they’re going to do this big thing. The biggest thing that ever happens in Texas. And Callie, of course, is going to fight them. And so that’s all part of—we’re all struggling to forgive each other and forgive ourselves and move on with our lives and be happy.
Kellams: You mentioned that your first draft was maudlin and it’s now moved to something that, while there are serious subjects, there are laugh-out-loud moments for the reader. What did it take to move from maudlin to realizing you didn’t want to write something that was completely maudlin?
Williams: It was some serious introspection and some beta readers saying, I don’t think this is it. And one of them very specifically said, you know, that’s not your personality. That’s not who you are. And they’re right. You know, I lived a pretty stressful career, and one of the ways I survived that was through a sense of humor. And all the other things we do, we sort of take care of ourselves, and we exercise, and we have friends that we can talk to and address our issues. But one of the ways that worked for me was having this sort of dark sense of humor. And so it is ingrained in me. My father, my mother gave me that sense of humor. It’s valuable. This is how we get through life.
And that is part of me. And so it was a very easy transition to start looking at this from a perspective of what if we’re just laughing at how ridiculous this old man is and how sometimes we have to do things in life that we’re not really thrilled with doing. And I’m going to laugh at it. So that was not a hard transition. It just came about naturally. And then it started working.
Kellams: When you think of carnivals and tent revivals, if you grew up in the rural Ozarks at a certain time, not that long ago, those were events that happened regularly—semi-regularly, anyway—over the course of a year.
Williams: Sure.
Kellams: You’d have the homemade signs go up, that tent revival starts tonight. Or you knew when the fair was coming to town. But I think it also makes us think of a time that was just a little bit ago, and there was a nostalgic feel to this book. Did you have a nostalgic feel writing it?
Williams: You bet. Yeah, and it got even more so the more I thought about carousels, because we have this real figure, it’s a real ride in the book. And we all have these memories. Like, I was in a giveaway yesterday online and I had so much fun. I engaged with everybody and we were talking about carousels. That was the topic. And so we all approached a carousel in a different way. A 2-year-old, it’s their first thrill ride. They’re bouncing up and down on a horse, they’re riding a horse, and they’re going up and down.
And for the parent, it’s like, oh, I’m watching my child on their face. And the grandparent feels that too. For others it may be a scary thing. Or it may be—for Callie in this book, it’s a place where she’s stuck. She’s on this circle. She’s going around and around figuratively and literally, and she can’t figure out a way to get off. And so when you have something like a carousel with all those different experiences and coming together, viewing the same thing, but we feel about it just a little bit differently, and all the memories that come from that, the metaphors come to you. You don’t have to go seeking them really. And so it just ended up really working. And it was a great conversation yesterday we had about carousels.
Kellams: You’re going to have some events, some in-person events as well, right?
Williams: Yeah. Yeah. The next one is right across the street at the library. We’re having one on the fifteenth.
Kellams: Of November?
Williams: Of November. Yeah. Thanks for saying that. We do have months here. Yes. So Nov. 15 at 10:30, and there’s going to be a little music that’s sort of themed to the novel. And then I’ll be introduced. I’ll talk for maybe 10 minutes, mostly what we’re talking about here, how did this idea come about and where did it come from. And then I’m going to introduce the woman who, in a real quirky turn of events, is a local actress who is now doing the audiobook narration, a lady named Jules Taylor.
Kellams: Oh, I know her. Yeah, we love Jules.
Williams: Yeah. Yeah, we all love Jules. And so we listened to about 30 audition tapes from actresses to narrate this book. The audiobook, which will come out in December, as I understand it. And just not right. Wouldn’t fit. And one day my wife and I were talking. I was like, oh, you know who might have the voice for that? She grew up in Texas. She can do this. So I contacted her. I had lunch with her, and she jumped at it. She’s thrilled to do it.
And she—Kyle, she’s doing an amazing job. She sends me two chapters a week, sometimes three. And I couldn’t have planned it better. I mean, her voice is it. And there’s one scene she recently did. There are six different characters, six different character voices, male and female, including a Hispanic accent, and spot on. Like, I couldn’t have asked for better. I didn’t imagine better. It’s just bravo. So that’s fun.
So anyway, she’s going to read. I’m going to talk. She’s going to read. Then we’ll do Q&A and then I’ll sign some books if anybody wants to buy one.
Kellams: For years you were a detective. You’ve got to figure things out. I’m oversimplifying, but there are clues and there’s logic, and you have to look at things. Is that at all like creating a fictional world, and you want it all to work together?
Williams: Well, nobody’s ever asked it like that before. So my answer is yes. I think that we both—writers and cops, detectives, investigators of any kind—are looking at all the facts and putting things together and developing a story. With a detective, with a police officer, you better have the right story. You’re looking at the facts in a way that affects someone’s freedom, their life. If they have had a crime perpetrated on them. We need to get the facts right. You only get one shot at it, and you need to do it right.
Of course, I have a little more latitude if I’m writing fiction. And so I’m going to take the facts as I know them, my experiences, my observation, pull out my bag of empathy over the shoulder and start applying that to the story. So yes, it’s different because here I’m being more of a creative.
Kellams: Sure.
Williams: But, yeah, I think we’re looking at life. We’re looking at what would reasonable people do and then what would be unreasonable in that and apply that as well.
And I was an English major. My first degree was in literature. And people say, well, what’s a cop doing getting an English degree? And I was like, well, I wrote really good police reports. And if I can throw a metaphor in there for the judge, that made me terribly happy. So I’ve always taken some pride in being able to do that. And it worked out for me here. I ended up doing a pretty good share of the search warrant affidavits and writing those up, and so those skills applied. But even—I wanted to be a novelist since I was 13 years old.
Kellams: Really?
Williams: Mhm. Yeah. My dad finished his dissertation, his Ph.D., and he did it on this orange Texas Instrument electric typewriter, and he was so sick of looking at that thing after the dissertation was over. He said, I don’t want that anymore. It was this big dramatic moment. I don’t want that. You can have it. And I said, okay. So I wrote this sort of comic book thing, very derivative of Justice League, and for a 13-year-old, it was really awful anyway. No, it was awful. But I had the bug, and I’ve known all my life I wanted to do this. And here we are getting to do it.
Kellams: How do you know when you’re getting it right? I mean, there are characters that are different genders, different ages. You want to set this in Texas. You grew up in Texas. You want to get that right. You want to get the world of the carny, the carousel right. How do you know when you’re getting it right? I’m just curious.
Williams: Well, I’ll tell you, I didn’t get it right for a long time. And that’s what beta readers are for. And one of the things that happened—I have an English teacher friend here in Fayetteville, Colby Johnson. Brilliant teacher. And I gave it to her about three or four drafts in and just asked for her feedback. And she came in a few days later. She said, this is really great. Love it. Did you know you wrote women’s fiction?
And I said, what’s women’s fiction? I honestly didn’t know. And I was a literature major and I didn’t know that term. So I googled it and I found this organization called the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. And I got in touch with them, and I ended up getting in touch with the lead lady. She was the guiding scribe, like the gal. And I said, here’s who I am. I’m a guy, and my friend said I wrote this, and here’s the basic premise. And she was so gracious. And she wrote back and she said, yeah, that’s what you’ve done. You should join our group.
And I said, I want to refresh your memory. I’m a guy. And she said, no, no, no, we don’t care. You’ve written something that is all about the character’s arc and this major life change, and that falls into this genre. And we want to be on this path with you. So I joined and they immediately hooked me up with a critique group of three women all over the country. I’m lifelong friends with these women. I am and will always be. And I’m friends with that woman I talked to originally, a lady named Barbara Claypole White. Brilliant writer. You should read her.
And so that changed the trajectory. And one of the simple things was, to answer your question, I had gotten mascara and eyeliner completely wrong. Who knew? Not me. Okay, so that’s an easy fix. But more importantly, there was this conversation that Callie is having with her teenage daughter before the daughter goes on a first date. Well, that’s a conversation I had with my teenage son more times than I care to remember, and I had it kind of right, as a guy talking to male sons. It was the same idea, but it was wrong. It wasn’t quite right for a mother-daughter conversation. And that feedback from those women was invaluable.
So I didn’t have it right at first. And you’ve got to be open to being wrong and let your baby fly out there and let people read it and come back and say, well, that was pretty awful. But here’s another idea. And be thick-skinned enough to where that kind of thing can happen and then produce something that you’re proud of.
Kellams: I love that answer. And it just shows that writing is collaborative. It’s not this—you might be in your study or your office or in the coffee shop at some point, but it’s not going to be just you.
Williams: Oh yeah. And I’m glad you said that, because an early draft of this was actually a screenplay. And I went for years to Arkansas Playwright Workshop until we moved, until we moved out of state, which has met all over Fayetteville and northwest Arkansas for years. And they’re brilliant, and they read your stuff. You read their stuff. We have actors act it out and you can hear it. And that was just immeasurably valuable to me.
And then eventually I took that screenplay, and I kind of used it as an outline to write the novel. And so all of it is collaborative in my mind. We talk about—we have this image of the writer hunched over a laptop or keyboard or whatever. And that certainly is part of my life. The discipline has to be there to get that done. But then you have to be courageous enough, I think, to let other people share it with you and give you feedback.
Kellams: Well, congratulations.
Williams: Thanks, man. I’m having a good time.
Kellams: All right. Thanks for coming in.
Williams: Absolutely.
Kellams: David Lane Williams’ first novel is “Carousel Grift.” It’s available now. He’ll speak at the Fayetteville Public Library Nov. 15 morning at 10:30 a.m. He now lives in Logan County. Our conversation was recorded in late October.
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