PEN USA Award-winning author Victor Lodato chats with Zibby about HONEY, a masterful and utterly enchanting novel about Honey Fasinga, an unforgettable heroine who escapes her mob family at 17 and reinvents herself as a stylish personality in the LA art world… but returns home decades later to settle old scores and confront family ghosts. Victor reveals who inspired this character and how he was able to capture the voice of an 82-year-old woman so perfectly. He also touches on his transition from theater to novel writing and describes his fascinating creative process, which always starts with a character’s voice.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Victor. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss. Honey, congratulations. 

Victor: Thank you, Zibby. 

Zibby: This cover, oh my gosh, I mean the book, but the cover, the whole, you're like, right in the trad wife moment, you know, the resurgence of the furs, I mean, this could not come out at a better time.

Are you sort of pleased with the way life has gone? 

Victor: Yeah, it's lovely, in fact, I just wish the cover had actual fur on it, so it would be kind of da da. 

Zibby: Ooh, yeah. That would be very cool. 

Maybe you could make just one like that, you know, a special giveaway. Yeah, exactly. That would be very cool. Why don't you tell listeners what Honey is about?

Victor: Oh, boy. Well, Honey grew up in a mob family and she escaped at 17 and became this sort of stylish figure in the L. A. art world. And then in 82, she decides, for various reasons, to go back to New Jersey to settle some scores and put some old ghosts to bed. And then the interaction with her family, who's still in the mob, sort of fuels the drama of the book.

Zibby: How were you able to capture being an 82 year old woman so well? I mean, this is like astounding. Tell me about this. 

Victor: I mean, I don't know how to answer that. I mean, I have written a lot of female characters in my plays and in my novels, but I think I've had a lot of really strong older women in my life.

And so they were my primary role models growing up. I grew up in a household with. Both my grandmothers, which was amazing. My father's mother and my mother's mother, my parents weren't around much. And so they were my primary role models. And then I was sort of, you know, an Italian American family. There were, there were great aunts around me all the time, every Sunday.

And then I guess maybe because of that formative experience, I've had a lot of stronger, older women in my life. And over the last few years of the pandemic, a lot of the women who were in their eighties have, have died. And, and though honey isn't modeled on any of them, I feel like. When I was writing this book, it felt like a tribute to these really strong women in my life.

Zibby: I saw in your acknowledgments, you credited sort of bringing these ghosts onto the page. Yeah. Which was a lovely way to say that. Can I just give listeners a taste by reading your opening two paragraphs? How great a writer you are, because, no, seriously, it's like, I mean, I know you've won a million awards and all that, but for people who don't know, it's called 100 Dresses.

In the tub, Honey lifted a varnished toe, sunset peach, to turn on the tap. She'd been soaking for nearly half an hour, but didn't feel ready to get out. A bath soothed the mind, as well as the lines on the face. One emerged not only calmer, but a few years younger. As the heat bloomed again, she sank into the remaining scum of bubbles.

Her breasts floated at the surface, like so much curdled pudding, and in her ears she could hear her blood. The candlelight, an attempt to evoke a spa like atmosphere, now just seemed depressing. And there was something funereal about the creeping scent of roses. Honey glared at the ceiling. I mean, what an opening moment, right?

You're like in the tub with this older woman. Like you can just, it's awesome. I love that. Anyway, congrats. 

Victor: Yeah, I always feel like, you know, um, I want to, I mean, with any piece of writing, I always start, you know, inside the mind of the person because it's always voice that leads me. I mean, the, the book is very plot driven and story driven, but if I don't hear the voice, then I can't find my way.

Zibby: Amazing. And how did you come up with this whole plot and maybe explain a little more about what happens and where it comes from? 

Victor: It's a mystery to me in some ways because I really don't ever start any book with any sort of outline or any sort of ideas of even, I want to write about this subject. It really is primarily like I hear Honey's voice and then I kind of stalk that voice for years until I figure out the story.

Only later do I say, okay, there's some parallels from my own family, from my own life. But I kind of like to leave that stuff buried and hidden because I don't want to think about it too much where I feel like then I know what my agenda is. I'd rather be kind of play dumb and just follow the character.

I think maybe there was something about, I mean, I'm certainly not 82, but you know, I'm getting older and during the pandemic I was very far away from everyone I felt, and especially I didn't get to go back to New Jersey where I'm from, where Honey is from, so I think I was filled with this kind of new nostalgia during the pandemic, and I think that fueled the writing process.

And probably why I wanted to tell a story of someone who'd been away from home for a long time with a lot of unresolved issues coming home to a very new world. And so, that fueled it. And then of course, like, with any book, I feel like I'm always, in many of my books, I'm either writing about a family or a created family.

Someone asked me recently, why do you always write about families? And I'm thinking, Are there novels about anything else? Because it's always a family of people. So because I had felt estranged from my own family and there was lots of complications with that, which I won't get into, you know, this is again, a book about dealing with existing family and honey, then over the course of this book, even at 82, forging a very vital and thriving family.

Uh, family back in New Jersey, not with her own. 

Zibby: And Honey was a character in your last work. 

Victor: She was, yeah. I've never done that before. Uh, again, it is a matter of I finished the book, it was finished. being published and honey wouldn't stop talking. There's no, I can't put you in any more scenes. The book is done.

So, um, but yeah, I generated, kept generating so much material that I just thought, okay, keep talking and I'll listen. And. We'll find a story. And this was my shortest process in about six years because my other books have been longer. So this felt lightning fast to me. 

Zibby: Oh yeah. Speed, speed demon over there, you know, the book feels very cinematic to me.

Is this, has it been optioned already? 

Victor: There's producers interested in it. And one of them would like me to try my hand at a screenplay, which I'd like to do. You know, at first it terrified me, but then I realized the book is done and I'm really proud of it. And, uh, the screenplay. Will be something completely different and that's fine to me.

It seems impossible to make a film out of it. It seems like I could make a five part series. It goes back and forth from Honey's present to her past. Um, but I can imagine, you know, I can see how, you know, I can reduce it to its plot and make a movie. 

I still think it should be a miniseries. 

Zibby: Okay. Well, you won't have an argument from me.

Okay. Go for the miniseries. All I said was cinematic. Any form is fine. Can you take me back to how you got started as a writer and playwright and all the things? Like, how did you forge your career and when did you know this is what you wanted to do? 

Victor: As a kid, I wrote a lot of poetry. And then I was always interested in acting.

So when I I went to a MFA program for theater for acting, and then I acted for a while, but I found myself being cast in roles that I didn't find very interesting. So I thought, well, maybe I should write roles for myself. So I came, I came to writing purely through vanity for creating roles for myself in the theater.

And so for many years, I did solo performances, solo plays, and. Then I burnt out doing that and then started writing multi character plays and not appearing in those plays and then I was at a writing residency I don't remember how many years ago, but like around 2002 Maybe and I had finished the play I was there to write and I started something new because I'd never written a novel I assumed it was a monologue, but then this monologue went on for 10, 20, 30 40 pages.

I thought, maybe this is a novel. So I really stumbled on writing a novel, and once I thought maybe this is a novel, I just kept telling myself it was a very long monologue not to trip myself up because I thought, I don't know how to write a novel. That seemed like a form completely alien to me and more sophisticated than I was capable of, but then I wrote it and people wanted it and it did well.

And so, uh, and then after that was over, I realized I've been treated much better by the publishing industry than I ever had in the theater. So I thought I'm not writing another play, another novel. I do miss the theater and I probably will write another play, but you know, this is just my third novel and it still feels very alive.

I still feel like, you know, Uh, the form is so capacious and there's so many things I want to play with. So I still feel writing novels feel like even this many years into it, I still feel like I have my innocence. As a writer. And I love that feeling. 

Zibby: Oh, that's wonderful. Wow. What a ride. I mean, that we have to like trick ourselves to do all the stuff, right?

Like I'm always in like, no one will read this, but you, like, how could I like not get into my head about what I'm working on? Because if you think about it being published, it's like, forget it. Right. 

Victor: Yeah. And if you think about, I mean, not everyone takes it. I mean, I'm, I'm envious of writers who write a book and you know, I, when people say, when I hear writers say, this book took so long, I worked for two or three years on it. I just scream, but it also is, you know, if you, you have to have amnesia every time about also how difficult it is. Maybe it's difficult for everyone. It is for me. It just, it just is so much work.

It's a kind of insanity to spend that many years writing a novel and not knowing the outcome professionally and also just creatively. You just have to go a little crazy and just beand you also just have to, again, be innocent. Just believe. 

Zibby: So do you think Honey would have enjoyed watching The Sopranos or not?

Victor: Oh, I think it well, I don't want to give away stuff that goes on the book, but probably, like me, she would have appreciated it, and I did love that show very much, because everything was so familiar. I mean, I grew up in that part of New Jersey, every reference, every way of speaking, every way of talking about food was, like, so familiar my family. Honey would have been upset as I was at times by the violence, you know, she would have at that point when we were all first watching it, you know, she would have turned away or if she was watching it on, she would have fast forwarded as I did through some of the blunter, violent, uh, so she would appreciate the world and I felt like she would see herself in there and she would both enjoy it and Nostalgically, and also at the same time, be judging. 

Zibby: Interesting. 

Victor: Yeah. 

Zibby: Why were your parents not around? You can't talk about it? 

Victor: Oh, no, no. I can, they were just, you know, I grew up in a working class family and they were just working all the time.

So, you know, we're very lucky to have my, my father's mother was widowed. She lived upstairs with my brother and me and my parents. And then my mother's parents, Italian were downstairs in their own apartment. So it was mainly because my parents were working all the time. But so when I came home at, from school, both my grandmothers were always sitting downstairs in my Italian grandmother's apartment, having their coffee and.

Crusty bread and I'd go straight downstairs and maybe watch their stories as they called them. So, you know, and my brother was more social and out. I was more like a grandmother's boy. I was always around my two grandmothers. 

Zibby: So that's the first time I've heard that expression, a grandmother's boy. 

Victor: Yeah.

Zibby: Forget mama's boy. This is even better. Did you ever have, I mean, this is probably inappropriate to ask. Did you ever have a New Jersey accent at all or not? 

Victor: Yeah. In fact, at an event the other night, I was asked like, saying someone said you have a terrible New Jersey accent. I was like, oh, I have a good New Jersey accent, but I just, you know, when I go home, I can do it because I mean, I always tell people, like when I grew up, my given name is Vittorio, but everyone called me Victor and I didn't have an R at the end of my name, like the whole time I was growing up until I learned to write.

I knew there was an R cause I was always called Victor. So I can't, I do have a New Jersey and when I go home, sometimes when I'm around the group of them, it comes out or I feel like it has to come out or they're going to look at me like honey's family. Look at her. Like, why are you talking like that?

Like England or something. Yeah. And I didn't, I didn't intentionally lose it. You know, I didn't try. I think honey tried, was really like aware of wanting to change her life and strategically you know, work to like, and she talks about that in the book. 

Zibby: And what is, what is your relationship with the art world and all of that?

Like how did you like, tell me about that. 

Victor: I for many years, uh, I lived with a painter. In fact, he, he's still my dearest friend and my, my closest ally and he still lives with me part of the year. And so, so I've just been around paintings and I've always loved visual art. I mean, I, even as a playwright, I loved being in museums more than theaters.

And, and I was always the painter. My friend, Chris Rush is colorblind. And so, um, so often he'd mess up greens and reds. So I was always like the seeing eye dog. So he'd bring a painting home as he's working on saying it's fantastic, but like the skin's a little green and he'd say, where exactly point here.

So, so for many years, and I still, I still do that. I'm like a little too much green in the face though. 

Zibby: Wow. Behind the scenes of your favorite works of art, who knew? 

Victor: But I'm glad I had fun writing about art and you know, and those two artists in particular, the Honey, is very fond of. 

Zibby: Oh, that's great. It sounds like maybe the theater just was not for you.

You've completely, like, said things about it, like,... 

Victor: I don't know. I mean, 

I just, I just saw a play last year in New York from a friend of mine. Are you, you're in New York. 

Zibby: Not right now, but in general, yes. And I love the theater. 

Victor: Yes. Um, but, uh, it has a limited Broadway run right now, a plug for Stereophonic, which you may have heard of.

Heard of. Yeah, I haven't seen it. It's fantastic. So when I, I hadn't wanted to do a play and I thought I was done with theater. I saw that. I thought, oh, this is, can be an amazing forum. But I don't know. I mean, I think I'm, sometimes, I think I'd like to act again. I like to write plays again, but I'm still, I, I, I love, I also love spending a lot of time alone.

So novel writing is good for that. Theater, less good. 

Zibby: And what about reading? 

Victor: Reading? Oh, what am I reading? 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Victor: You know, I just read, for the first time, Charles Portis. I've been reading him, who wrote True Grit. 

Zibby: Mm hmm. Yep. 

Victor: And, uh, and I remember my first editor, Courtney Hodel, from FSG. When she was editing Matilda Savage, my first book, which is in the voice of a a 12-year-old girl, she said, you have to read True Grid.

You. And I didn't read it for like 10 years 'cause I thought it's a Western that I have no interest in that. But have you ever read True Grid? 

Zibby: I have not. 

Victor: It's, it's so amazing. So I recommended it highly. And now I've been reading some other Charles Portis, so, um, okay. So Charles Portis is on my mind right now.

Zibby: Awesome. I'll add it to the list. . Okay. Do you have advice for aspiring authors? 

Victor: Oh boy, I think probably just you have to fight for the time, you know, and, and often that can seem, if you especially have commitments around you, I mean, you don't want to neglect your family and friends, but as best you can, you have to just claim some time because you need to, you need to create.

I guess a kind of like irregularity and if not that like some sort of studio discipline And uh, it just takes time so you just like whether it's a matter of like you have to get up an hour earlier, uh, you just Uh, time is essential. So you have to just, and you have to say no to some people you love at times and be a little selfish and claim that time or you, or, or you'll never get it done.

That sounds like, does that sound like really bad, selfish? 

Zibby: No, it sounds like really good advice. And I'm like nodding, thinking to myself, yes, I need to do that. Yes, I need to say, so no, it's very good advice. It is very good. 

Victor: And the other one would be also, you know, to, to be patient with yourself. Like, I think I take of so long to write it because I know that I'm going to make a big mess of things and I think there's some writers that they make a mess and it terrifies them and they think oh I'm terrible but you you have to make a mess you know you just have to throw it down and make a mess and then slowly work with that mess so don't be afraid to make a like a really bad chocolate mess.

Zibby: Amazing. And what do you think your grandmothers would say to you if they could be on the zoom right now with you? What would they be saying? 

Victor: You know, I get emotional thinking about them because they, um, you know, they were very supportive of me in ways that other family weren't. And, you know, I had a lot of, just as the book shows, there are a lot of, there are a lot of bullies in this book and people from bullies.

And I also had some bullies growing up and my, the strong women in my life protected me. So I think they'd be cheering. 

Zibby: So amazing. Nothing like a grandmother. 

Victor: Yeah, I agree. 

Zibby: My gosh. Well, Victor, or Victor, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on. Congratulations on this work and just, I mean, what a talent.

So amazing. Thank you. 

Victor: Thank you. 

Zibby: Okay. Bye bye.