Chris Cander, A GRACIOUS NEIGHBOR: A Novel

[1:52]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, the creator and host of the award winning podcast that you're listening to right now, thank you so much, called Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. It is a daily podcast three hundred and sixty five days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all the things related to their career, their book, their life, and more in thirty minutes or less because who has time? I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature wherever books are sold starting July 1, and my children's book, Princess Charming. You can learn more about me at zibbyowens.com. But really, you're here to learn more about the authors, and that is what we're going to do. Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the ZCast Podcast Network. You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well. Chris Kander is the author of A Gracious Neighbor, a novel. Chris is the bestselling author of The Weight of a Piano, which was named an Indie Next great read in both hardcover and paperback, and which The New York Times called immense, intense, and imaginative. Whisper Hollow, also named an Indie Next great read, and 11 Stories named by Kirkus as one of the best books of 2013 and winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards for fiction. She also wrote the picture book The Word Burglar and the Audible originals Eddies and Grieving Conversations. Her new novel, A Gracious Neighbor, is one of the books that has been published in 12 languages. A former fitness competitor and model, she currently holds a fourth DAWN in Taekwondo and is a certified women's defense tactics instructor. She lives in Houston with her husband and two children. Welcome, Chris. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss A Gracious Neighbor.

[3:39]Chris Cander: Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. You had such an interesting inspiration

[3:44]Zibby Owens: for your novel, A Gracious Neighbor, which you outlined in your author's note, but I was hoping you could talk more about the short story that inspired your novel. Yeah. So my daughter

[3:54]Chris Cander: was then a senior in high school and she came downstairs. She was doing a homework assignment for her English class. She said, mom, you've got to read this story. It's so good. And she handed it to me. It was titled A Jury of Her Peers, and it was published by Susan Glaspell in 1917. And I sat there and read it from, you know, first page to the last. And she was right. I thought it was amazing. It was an early feminist work. It dealt with these women, the wives of a sheriff and a neighbor who were going to the home of an accused murderess to investigate. The men were gonna investigate the murder. The women were brought along to find articles of comfort to take to her in jail. And what happened in the story is that while the men were stomping around upstairs at the scene of the crime, the women slowly began to put the clues together. And because of their empathy for what she must have been going through, they realized that in fact she had killed her husband, but in their minds, the the murder was justified. And they squirreled away the evidence that the men, if they had been smart enough to look elsewhere, except for at the in the bed where where the strangulation happened, they would have found it and convicted her. And I just thought it was such an interesting idea of how these women, you know, started out in the beginning of the story judging her and assuming that she was guilty, but not understanding why. And then slowly coming to the realization that, you know, they were not that different. They were all going through the same kinds of things. And so 100 later, we're at the beginning of a pandemic, and I thought it would be really interesting to look at those same themes from the context of the neighborhood where I was quarantining, where I live and have lived for the last seventeen years. So it was a really cool way to, you know, examine the changes and maybe the things that haven't changed in that hundred years since the original story was published.

[6:02]Zibby Owens: So does that mean it's the same little league team and everything? Is your do you have a son on the Diamondbacks or whatever it's called? Diamond something or He was on the Diamondbacks when he was Yeah. Like, this is I bet this is plucked from life.

[6:18]Chris Cander: There were quite a few things that were plucked from real life, but I always am careful to emphasize that the characters were completely, you know, imagined and made up based on things that I had witnessed and filed away for a later use, but not meant to incriminate any one person or to represent any exact individual.

[6:39]Zibby Owens: Well, I like how you go back to when they first meet so Minnie and Martha are friends from high school or they knew each other from high school. And the way you portray it when, like, this beautiful new girl comes to town with all this mystique around her. Right? Because I feel like so many people can relate when the new person comes in and you have all these assumptions or you wonder about what that person's life is or how glamorous it must be or whatever. And then to see that person sort of go through time. And we have this like whole funny, like, peaked in seventh grade thing for our year. Like, know, like what happens to the shining star, the person with all the intrigue, as they age, does it stay with them or does Yes. It

[7:22]Chris Cander: And it was I didn't have an exact moment like that in high school, but I felt very much throughout, you know, many qualities that Martha exhibited, I have personally experienced and feeling a little bit out of it, you know, out of the popular group in high school and looking in. And so it was easy to imagine her imagining the lives of somebody, you know, the new girl and then having her come back. You know, it was the whole book is obviously written from Martha's perspective for a reason because I wanted her to be a little unreliable. But I also felt like, you know, we are mostly only able to experience the world through our own experiences, our own points of view. And so I wanted the reader to have the experience of living in Martha's world and misjudging the people around her the way that she does. And so, you know, having her characterize Minnie rather than Minnie characterizing herself was an integral part of doing that, trying to achieve that one-sided misperception and how that evolved over time.

[8:27]Zibby Owens: I mean, I think the whole story even up to the present day when their neighbors, the families, everything is just speaks to how much people assume that they know things about other people from what they can see when that's so not true. There's so much more and you never know.

[8:44]Chris Cander: Yeah. Exactly. Even if someone's really, you know, transparent or forthcoming about their personal details in life, I mean, you just can't know what goes on behind closed doors.

[8:55]Zibby Owens: Yeah. And it also, of course, examines when is it okay? When is it okay to to take a life or when is it okay to like, when is it self defense? What are the boundaries of that? And when is it a when are you supposed to get help? And when are you not? All of those themes, I feel like percolate.

[9:15]Chris Cander: Oh, yeah. And I've had people read the book and say, you know, write to me or ask me, you know, what happened? What happened afterwards? And I don't know, because I was writing the novel with the idea that I would end it roughly where the short story ended. And so in that case, it's not developed either. What happens to Minnie? Is she convicted? Is she does she get away with it? And then that moral quandary that you bring up, is it right? Was she justified? Were the women justified in hiding the evidence? And I deliberately didn't answer that question because answer.

[9:53]Zibby Owens: What do you think? I don't know.

[9:56]Chris Cander: I mean, I had a lot of empathy for many, the many in the original story and the many that I created because she was clearly subject to a lot of abuse at home. And you know, but I don't know if that was, I don't know if it was justified. I don't know that I would have, I don't think I would have made that same choice. I don't go around, and in practice murdering people that wrong me, but clearly she did. And so, you know, I really appreciated the fact though, that Martha came to her defense at her own peril, Because even though it's not explored in the book, there exists the question of what happens if Martha is discovered having absconded with the evidence that would convict many. And

[10:41]Zibby Owens: I admire her bravery and her choice, but I don't know that I would emulate it or that I think it's right. I just interviewed last week Deanna Rayborn, who wrote Killers of a Certain Age. I don't know if you've read it, but it's about four 60 year old women who had, like, forty year careers in essentially, like, CIA type activities, killing people. And how when one person was recruited, they said, you know, you're and she said, Okay, you can make me a killer. And they said, Oh, you have that in you, you know, but it's just us to take it out. And so when I was talking to her about it, I was like, Well, how do you know you're born a killer? And she's like, well, everyone has something for which killing is completely justified. Like, you say like, I could say, oh my gosh. I would never kill someone. And she and she was like, wouldn't you kill for your kids? Yeah. And I was like, oh, well, yeah. You know? Exactly. For my kids. No problem for this. And then you take somebody like like Minnie, and it doesn't make someone a killer. But if you're if you're literally, like, fighting for your life or self defense or just when you're so trapped and your whole life depends on it, you end up having to do things that like maybe you don't feel you're capable of. Then what do how do other people put that together with their perception of you as a person? Maybe it's just

[11:57]Chris Cander: this underlying thing. Not to say we're all out there being murderers, this is coming out wrong, but that when put in a certain situation, we all have to do that. And I think what you said is very true about and what the other author that book sounds amazing. I'm gonna read it. Most women would say that they would kill for their kids. I mean, it's funny how we will go, we'll flip a switch from No, I could never do that to Oh, you're gonna talk, you're gonna hurt my kids? Just watch. And I also am a self defense instructor and a martial artist. And so, you know, it's kind of interesting that you were talking about, you know, self defense and what links would you go to, because I've actually spent a great deal of time, probably more than the average writer, thinking about the lengths that I would go to and under what circumstances. Part of the reason that I became a martial artist is because I was attacked when I was 19. And so, you know, I had to fight my way out of that situation. And it changed me forever. And I didn't kill my attacker. But, you know, I've often wondered, if I had not been able to get away, and I'd had to keep fighting, how far would I have gone? And it's true that in that moment when it's life or death, there's a switch that goes and it gets flipped. And so you had me to take this dark turn in this talk about gracious neighbor, but

[13:23]Zibby Owens: No, it's all linked, right? This is like, wait, that's terrible that that happened. Can you tell me what happened? Where were you? What happened? I was studying abroad in Spain. And actually, it's interesting because this was the, I had been carrying this around forever

[13:38]Chris Cander: and not having written about it, but having talked about it a lot because I use the attack itself as a scaffolding model for how an attack will occur when I teach these classes. But I've decided last year that I was ready to examine it a little bit more closely. And so it's become the basis of my new novel, the one that I'm working on now, The Young of Other Animals. And it's not entirely about the attack, but the attack is the kind of precipitating incident in the story between a mother and a daughter. But I was in Spain when I was 19, and I was at a restaurant with a group of friends. And I was willingly lured away by someone who over heard me talking about wanting to make a phone call. And I say willingly lured away because he was eavesdropping on my conversation and knew my the weakness in my armor, which was that I had broken up with this guy and he was back in The States, and I desperately wanted to make a phone call. And so he offered to take me to a public phone. And I went, even though there was part of me that knew that that was not safe. And then it just escalated from there. That I'm here to tell the tales is a good thing, but it was an ugly escape. Oh my gosh. Did he take you somewhere private? Like did he take to a room somewhere? He did? No, not a room. We actually got in his car. No. Yeah, I know, terrible. That's why I use it in my self defense classes because it's the classic,

[15:07]Zibby Owens: don't ever do this. No, I know. But you know, when you trust somebody, it's so easy, these split second decisions and then your life goes off in another way. Like, sure. Like, because some people are really nice and will offer to help. Right. And even having gone through that, I still assume that most people are nice and not planning to murder me. I don't go through life with that expectation.

[15:29]Chris Cander: It was just a really, you know, unfortunate series of incidents in that particular case. Did he have a weapon? He did. Yeah. My god. He held it to my throat. Yeah. And what did he want? Was it a sexual attack? He was going to do that, but he was going to murder me first.

[15:49]Zibby Owens: Oh, Chris.

[15:51]Chris Cander: I know, awful. I can't believe that happened to you. Yeah, I know. Isn't it weird? So how did you get out of that? I fought. I mean, I had to fight. I had never, you know, I had taken like one semester of martial arts in college, but I wasn't trained to fight in self defense. And but there was just that, what we were talking about earlier, that instinct that kicked in, it was either going to be him or me. Well, I didn't kill him again, but he told me that my mother would never find my body. That was enough to trigger, you know, an automatic fight response in me, because I didn't want my mother to never find my body. And as a mother now, you know how horrible that would have been.

[16:40]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. I know. And so by your own strength, you got out of the car. Yes. Did you just run?

[16:47]Chris Cander: I did. You not like talking about this? I'm sorry. No, no, it's I talk about it all the time. No, it's totally fine. And like I said, I'm using it in

[16:55]Zibby Owens: a novel right now. I know, but still So you just ran, you were in the middle of Spain. Had he driven you someplace random? Oh, he drove me so far out of Madrid, I had no idea where I was.

[17:06]Chris Cander: It was late, you know, it was night, I didn't recognize the streets, he was going really fast. He took me to a warehouse district is all I know, all I remember. And and then I did, I fought him off. And I think he was on Coke in retrospect, because he was not as sharp as someone who had planned an attack should have been. And I was able to fight him off and get out of the car and start running. And I ran until I encountered another car, is how I got back, and flagged them flagged them down. It was a little old man and a little old woman. And they I ran up to the car, and she cranked the window down just this much. And, you know, in a panicked pigeon Spanish English, I said, see that guy that's running up the hill? He's trying to kill me. And so they let me get in the back of the car, and and they drove me all the way back to Madrid. Oh my and he was still chasing after you on on, like He was coming up on Oh the my gosh. I know.

[18:14]Zibby Owens: I can't believe you survived this whole thing and that you can just, like, calmly sit here years later and discuss it. I mean, didn't that change the way wait. So you got back to Madrid, and then did you go to the police? Like, happened? I did. I went to the police, and I

[18:28]Chris Cander: I promptly put it out of my mind. You know, that was in 1989. We didn't talk about things as openly then as we do now. And I remember going with my friend to the police station, and we had there was an adult there that I can't remember her name, but she was in a sort of academic supervisory capacity, went with us to the police station. But I didn't think to keep a copy of the police report. I thought about recently, I thought I need to go back to Madrid and go to the police and get a copy of it just to see what I said at the time because I completely put it out of my mind. In fact, when I told my mother, my mom always asks me what I'm writing and I told her about The Young of Other Animals and I said it was, you know, based on my attack in Spain. She said, what attack? And I realized I've never told her. No, you didn't tell her? No, I didn't tell her. I just kind of went on with my life and put it in its own little box and proceeded to become, you know, a trained martial artist. Wow. I know.

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[22:49]Zibby Owens: So you didn't really tell anybody? Did you tell friends?

[22:52]Chris Cander: No. It was it's strange because I talk about it so casually now, and I it didn't even occur to me that I hadn't told her. I just assumed that I had at some point. Wow.

[23:03]Zibby Owens: So were you sobbing? Were you not sobbing?

[23:08]Chris Cander: Not until I got back to the restaurant and my friend Kelly was sitting outside waiting for me. And the minute and this old man pulled the car up onto the sidewalk so that I didn't even have to put my foot on the street, you know? And I opened the back door and kind of spilled out into Kelly's arms and I started sobbing at that point. But then there's this whole blank that happens, this whole, like, memory just evaporated

[23:33]Zibby Owens: beyond that. Isn't it crazy what the brain can do to protect trauma and the effects of trauma and all of that? It's like amazing. You like barricade it and then you can go on with your life. Exactly. The brain Band Aid or something. Right? Like, stitching it back together.

[23:51]Chris Cander: I know. I wanna do a hypnosis session to see if I can bring back some more of the details.

[23:57]Zibby Owens: I feel like if you wouldn't that make it hard for you to sleep? Like, I feel like after I went through something like that, and I have no idea because I haven't, but that I would be so terrified about everything and every person that it would like ruin my life.

[24:13]Chris Cander: I don't know. I think that but there's enough time that's passed that I probably wouldn't feel that way. Plus, you know, I know I could take care of myself now. So it ends up being just totally empowering.

[24:24]Zibby Owens: Like, worst happened and you got out, so then maybe you don't fear. Right.

[24:29]Chris Cander: Interesting. And I don't. I don't I don't have a fear. Like, if I'm out at night or alone, I don't have a fear. I'm smart about it, but I don't have an underlying fear that someone's gonna attack me. And how are you using this for your next novel? Tell me about that. So it's interesting. We're going have to save this interview for that book. Okay. Sorry. No, no, no. No. Truly, it starts out with that attack with the main character. Well, one of the two, it's binary. It's the mother and the daughter, Paula and Mairi. And Paula has just fled from the scene of this attack. And, you know, I started it with just the idea that, okay, maybe I'm ready to fictionalize this and look at it in terms of, you know, that divorce between my personal experience and writing it as though it had happened to somebody else. But she's exactly my age, it was the same year, there were enough similarities that writing it was tense. I still did it. You know, that was the first part of the book that I wrote, even though the attack itself doesn't appear in its full description until midway through the book. But I wanted to address that right away by writing that perch that part and putting it aside. And and then the story evolved to become something different about a mother and a daughter. But it's it was really interesting writing it. And and although it was tense, it wasn't like I didn't have a panic feeling or anything like that. It was just kinda like I was talking about it the the way that I do in a self defense class only a little bit more dramatically.

[26:07]Zibby Owens: So how trained are we talking with martial arts? Are you like a black belt? Can you do anything? Like, how what I don't even know the questions to ask in this realm, but like how advanced are you here? So I'm a fourth degree black belt in Taekwondo.

[26:21]Chris Cander: Oh my gosh. Jiu Jitsu and Krav Maga and Karate. Wow. But I'm not really fighting right now, I'm on crutches because I blew out my ACL doing a tornado kick of all things. No. Yeah. So I'm on, I had surgery a week ago today, as a matter of fact. Aw,

[26:43]Zibby Owens: well, that's a pretty bad ass way to blow out your knee, I have to say. That's better than falling off the stairs. Right. It's like, if you're going to do it, that's way cooler than like skiing or, you know? Wow. Well, I'm sorry you have to go through that, but that is really amazing to be literally a warrior. You're like a modern day, like, Shira or one of these Seriously, you don't hear that very often. That's amazing. I love it. I'll take that title. Okay. Here, you can have it. Thank you. Little guy is into martial arts. And so he did taekwondo last year and now he's doing jujitsu. And so I've like started following all of this with avid interest. Oh, good.

[27:28]Chris Cander: Does he love jujitsu?

[27:30]Zibby Owens: He's liking it. He just started because it's the beginning of the year, but so far so good. Good.

[27:35]Chris Cander: Hopefully, I mean, one thing that I love about martial arts is that it's not just an athletic pursuit, it's really about all the other aspects, the honor that goes into it, the courtesy, the strategy, the intelligence that you develop when you are using these skills for good and not for evil. It's very cool. I hope he continues. So where do you teach all your classes? So I used to teach them at my dojang, but our physical dojang closed during the pandemic, we've been practicing outside. So I do private classes for people wherever.

[28:08]Zibby Owens: Can you do it remotely or not? Not really. It's very hands on. Yeah. I was gonna say you should teach we just started offering Zippy classes like Oh, that'd be awesome. Like a self defense class. Maybe there's I

[28:19]Chris Cander: could give a lecture, but I can't do self defense. You could do a workshop. Could you do a workshop? Yeah. Something?

[28:25]Zibby Owens: I feel like everyone

[28:27]Chris Cander: would need that. Like I love teaching women because I feel like, and I've had some stories, I've had people come back because I've been teaching it since like 2011, 2013 maybe. And I've had stories, women come back and say, you know, what you taught me, the permission you gave me to fight may have saved my life. I had this experience. And so I love that people just the first time that they think about self defense isn't during the emergency. If they can do it ahead of time before anything bad ever happens, they might not ever have to know it, because it can teach them so much about avoiding the circumstance, you know, circumstances, not just getting out of it once they've already happened.

[29:11]Zibby Owens: I think you should do a little workshop and I think everybody should take it. It's so important. Is. Once, just like an hour or something or however long you need. Yeah. I don't know. That would be so useful. Oh my gosh. Okay, back to a gracious neighbor for a minute. So do you feel that examining all these issues has in part sort of let you lay some of this to rest, some of these questions of what people are willing to do? Or what do you like, now that it's written, how do you feel about it? Like, messaging of it or just how is it having it out in the world and all of that? I love that it's out in the world. I loved

[29:49]Chris Cander: the experience of writing it. It went really quickly compared to my previous novels. And one of the things that I took away was what we mentioned earlier about not judging people and not assuming that we know what's happening behind closed doors, because I always thought I was pretty enlightened and pretty generous in my assumptions about people. But when I was writing it, I realized that no, I pretty easily fall into the trap of making a snap judgment. And it gave me an opportunity to examine that quality in myself and to try to make adjustments. And so I've been consciously, ever since I've, you know, since I was in the throes of writing the book, I've consciously decided not to assume that I know something about people. And it's an old cliche, but it's true that we all everybody's going through something. And so to default to that instead of anything else is how I'm making an effort to be more generous in that way. And is that why you've

[30:57]Zibby Owens: taken to interviewing other people? Finding out more? What

[31:02]Chris Cander: do you mean? Cause I interviewed you for that real story. I mean, I've done that kind of freelance writing for years. So I've always loved interviewing other people. I love, you know, finding out their interesting stories and histories. But no, I think that it hasn't reflected in that way because that hasn't really changed so much, but just in my own personal, you know, interactions, day to day interactions with people and trying to be more open hearted about everyone in my relationship with them. That's wonderful.

[31:34]Zibby Owens: And just going backwards in time for two seconds, how did you begin your novelist career? How did you get that started?

[31:43]Chris Cander: I, you know, I'd always wanted to be like you, you know, always wanted to be a novelist. And I started out writing nonfiction for magazines for years. And I always had this in my mind that I wanted to tell a longer story. And I didn't have one in mind in particular, but I knew that it was something that I wanted to try. But I didn't feel confident that I could do it because I had not been trained. I didn't study creative writing. I wasn't even a real student of literature, not officially anyway. And so I didn't feel like I was qualified. And what it was that finally triggered it was a dream of all things. I woke up from a really vivid dream in which I had been taken by some sort of chaperone or guide or something to a house, and it was for a reading. And it was like the ghost of Christmas future almost, because we went into this place and nobody could see me, but I could see everybody else. And there was, you know, a table and a beautiful candelabra and stacks and stacks of books. And the guide beckoned me over and said, I want you to look closely at these. And they were all stacks of books with my name on them. And I had this, have you ever had a lucid dream where you become aware of the fact that you're dreaming? And in the dream, I turned to this guy and said, Can you get me something to write with? Because I know I'm going to wake up, but I at least want to copy down the titles and see, you know, like what I've got, you know, ahead of me. And he said, you don't need to write anything down. Everything that you need is already inside of you. And I woke up and I got the chills all of it. I know, right? And so I woke up and I started writing my first novel that very next day. Oh my gosh. Yes.

[33:34]Zibby Owens: Wow. What a story. Okay. What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

[33:42]Chris Cander: Well, get yourself a ghost of Christmas future. Have the best dream of your life. Yes. Have the best dream of your life and then just boldly go forward. You know, I think that so just drawing upon what I just said, you know, I was holding myself back because of lack of confidence, but I became confident as a novelist by writing novels. And so I think that people don't have to wait until they're credentialed to actually begin the practice and the art of writing, because it takes both. It takes, you know, tenacity. It takes a lot of time, a lot of revision, a lot of you know, just the way that a pianist would never dream of going on stage without many years and many, many hours of practice alone, I think that writing takes the same kind of discipline. And it, you know, I would say don't expect the first manuscript to be magical enough to get, you know, risen to the top like cream. But just expect that it's going to take a lot of time and work, and eventually the people that continue to practice it will get better at it and will get other people interested in their work. So start now.

[34:58]Zibby Owens: I love that you said the way to gain confidence as a novelist is to get practice writing novels. Yes. It seems so obvious, but it's such amazing advice. Right? Because that's the way to do it. You just have to keep doing it over and over, and then you'll feel better and you'll be better. Right. I mean, we didn't know how to become mothers until we had a baby, right?

[35:20]Chris Cander: Still working very much on the job. I'm holding that craft every day. Me too.

[35:25]Zibby Owens: Thank you. Chris, thank you so much. I have so much respect for you. I really I'm so impressed in so many ways, not just the book, but like your approach to life and determination and discipline, all of that. It's and getting through that horrific thing. And I mean, hats off to you. Thank you. And I feel the same way about you. I have so much admiration for

[35:47]Chris Cander: everything that you've gone through and what you continue to develop and achieve. It's awesome being able to be on your side and watch it happen. Oh, thank you.

[35:57]Zibby Owens: All right. Thanks so much. Thank you. Have a great day, Chris. You too. Bye. Bye.

[36:14]Zibby Owens: and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.