ONE FAQ: ARE YOU MARTHA?
I’ve been asked this a lot: is The Cloud Factory an autobiography?
The answer is NO.
Martha and I have only two things in common: a very big mouth, and the fact that we both lived in what is best described today as a fairly “dysfunctional” household. I’m not eager to give out many of the details, but I had immediate family members who were indeed alcoholics which qualifies me to include substance abuse as one of the themes of the story. My mother was not even remotely as crazy as Momma, and my dad (as far as I know) was never in prison. I was certainly never a straight-A student, and my only musical talent consists of singing along with the losers on American Idol (God, I love that show!). I did take violin lessons for six weeks in seventh grade until the instructor invited me never to come back.
Although Martha considers herself on the "wimpy" side, she really isn't. She's rarely afraid to speak her mind, something that I, back in high school, could seldom do (my own blessedly big mouth came with age and experience). Although a few of my characters are composites of people I’ve met, the majority sprang from my imagination alone. Two exceptions: Wayne, by far the worst of Momma’s string of significant others, and Martha's "boyfriend", Danny. The names were changed, of course, to protect the guilty parties, and I highly doubt if they’d even recognize themselves after all these years.
Every public school has a Chardonnay; my junior high school had several of them--people whose sole purpose in life is to make other people's lives miserable. I dealt with Chardonnays on a daily basis, bullied mercilessly, and yes, I lived to tell the tale. Ignoring them doesn’t help, as Martha finds out--but, unlike myself, she learns to fight back.
Yes, there are several scenes in the novel that were taken directly from my own experience (no, I will NOT tell you which ones!) but The Cloud Factory is a work of fiction. Nothing more, nothing less.
The answer is NO.
Martha and I have only two things in common: a very big mouth, and the fact that we both lived in what is best described today as a fairly “dysfunctional” household. I’m not eager to give out many of the details, but I had immediate family members who were indeed alcoholics which qualifies me to include substance abuse as one of the themes of the story. My mother was not even remotely as crazy as Momma, and my dad (as far as I know) was never in prison. I was certainly never a straight-A student, and my only musical talent consists of singing along with the losers on American Idol (God, I love that show!). I did take violin lessons for six weeks in seventh grade until the instructor invited me never to come back.
Although Martha considers herself on the "wimpy" side, she really isn't. She's rarely afraid to speak her mind, something that I, back in high school, could seldom do (my own blessedly big mouth came with age and experience). Although a few of my characters are composites of people I’ve met, the majority sprang from my imagination alone. Two exceptions: Wayne, by far the worst of Momma’s string of significant others, and Martha's "boyfriend", Danny. The names were changed, of course, to protect the guilty parties, and I highly doubt if they’d even recognize themselves after all these years.
Every public school has a Chardonnay; my junior high school had several of them--people whose sole purpose in life is to make other people's lives miserable. I dealt with Chardonnays on a daily basis, bullied mercilessly, and yes, I lived to tell the tale. Ignoring them doesn’t help, as Martha finds out--but, unlike myself, she learns to fight back.
Yes, there are several scenes in the novel that were taken directly from my own experience (no, I will NOT tell you which ones!) but The Cloud Factory is a work of fiction. Nothing more, nothing less.