Q & A with Summer Festival Speaker Carl Vonderau and San Diego Writers Festival
SDWF: Tell us about Murderabilia, and how it synthesizes the seemingly contradictory parts of your life from private bank, to serial murders, to a Christian Science upbringing.
CV: I always bring parts of my own experience into my writing. These contradictory events in my life gain cohesion when they become part of a story. I think of new connections and interpretations, and discover things about myself.
In Murderabilia, a banker for the wealthy has his life torn apart when he’s accused of being a serial killer like his father. The only way to prove his innocence is to reconcile with the past he’s hidden for thirty-one years.
So how does that relate to my life? First of all, my father was never a serial killer. Not even close. Photography also figures prominently in the book, and he wasn’t a photographer either. He was a small business owner who devoted much of his life to helping the YMCA. So the book’s premise of a serial killer father and his children is based on research and the darkness of my own imagination.
But there are other experiences in my life I put in the book. Christian Science, for instance. I was raised a Christian Scientist. My parents, my sister, and the people I went to church with tried to heal their illnesses, as well as the problems in their lives, through their faith in God. For me, that religion fell by the wayside when I went to college. In the book, my protagonist’s mother follows her own fanatical form of the religion. Some of the mantras she and her children repeat are those I heard as a child.
I spent my whole business career in different sectors of banking. In San Diego, it was private banking, which works with high-net-worth families. The book is set in this world, and I relied on my own experience to make things up.
Finally, two chapters in Murderabilia take place in Bogotá and Algeria. For much of my life, I’ve traveled and done business in Colombia. Some of my friends worked with street orphans. Bogotá and street orphans appear as minor parts of the book. While living in Montreal, I read and heard about the terrible civil war that raged in Algeria. I also got to travel to Algiers on behalf of a Canadian bank. One of the Algerian massacres is fictionalized in the novel.
SDWF: What’s the last great book you read?
CV: A couple of them, really. This last year I listened to Beartown, by Fredrik Backman. He breaks many of the rules about point of view and time sequence. But it works so well. His characters are wonderfully sympathetic and yet surprising. I know a book is reaching me when I get tears in my eyes.
Another book I’ve both listened to and read is Winter’s Bone, by Daniel Woodrell. Set in the Ozarks, it follows a sixteen-year-old girl who must save her family’s home because her father pledged it to the bail bondsman and then disappeared. The characters are both cruel and gentle as they negotiate the terrible codes they’ve had to live by for generations. It’s a thriller with a ticking clock, and also great literature.
SDWF: What writing resources have been most helpful to you?
CV: I only became a competent writer by getting good feedback and re-writing a lot. Murderabilia went through more than twenty drafts. My writer’s group helped with a number of those revisions. I also had a great editor, Jacquelyn Mitchard, who is much more famous than I’ll ever be. She counseled me on structure, plot, backstory, and character. Then there were the writer’s conferences, which helped me get better and inspired me to keep going. The San Diego Writer’s Festival is terrific. Other great conferences in San Diego are the La Jolla Writer’s Conference and the Southern CA Writer’s conference. Finally, I’ve met a number of fellow writers and gotten educated on crime investigation through San Diego Partners in Crime. This is the local chapter of the national Sisters in Crime organization.
SDWF: How has storytelling changed your life?
CV: I’ve been writing for more than thirty years. Actually more. I used to make up ghost stories in elementary school. As an adult, being a writer has expanded my curiosity and opened me to other points of view. Even the worst people aren’t jerks; they’re characters in their own books. Tragic circumstances may underlie despicable events. Places are never just places; they are possible settings. I would be much more narrow-minded if I didn’t try to see and analyze the world as a writer.
SDWF: First line of Murderabilia
CV: “I manage secrets.”
SDWF: Where do readers go to find more about you?
Facebook: AuthorCarlVonderau
Instagram: carlvonderau
Twitter: Carl Vonderau@CarlVonderau
LinkedIn: Carl Vonderau
SDWF: Thank you, Carl!
