Interview with Laura McHale Holland
On Shinbone Lane
Conducted by Louise Cannon
Laura McHale, welcome to Bookmarks and Stages. Thank you for allowing me to interview you about your fascinating book, Shinbone Lane. Thanks to Henry Roi PR for the opportunity and putting us in touch to do this author interview.
What Laura has to say, is truly interesting and she even imparts a poem as part of one of her answers. We talk about inspiration, world building, secrets, healing, including her own healing space, transformation of lives, the 1970’s, her characters, one of whom is a dancer and one whom is Maddy who both have quite a story to tell and more…
Laura McHale Holland is an independent author whose works of fiction and non-fiction have been recognized by the Next Generation Indie, Readers Favorite, INDIES and Indie Excellence book awards. She lives north of San Francisco and enjoys her grandchildren, film noir and a strong pot of black tea.
Firstly, here is a little about the book, before the interview…
For reasons they can’t quite explain, the lost always find themselves on Shinbone Lane…
San Francisco, 1974. Sixteen-year-old runaway Maddy is escaping the blame for a crime she didn’t commit. Miles from home, she is taken under the wing of the elderly Clara and her neighbor Ted, and soon finds a place among the kaleidoscope of personalities on the oddly named Shinbone Lane.
Ted’s three-story Italianate Victorian house overflows with travelers, free spirits, and artists. His backyard is a haven for all who are willing to see its magic. But burdened dancer Eloise Watkins condemns the transient “riffraff” in her neighborhood. Their frivolity flies in the face of her grief over friendship lost and a daughter who’s missing. And nobody — nobody— understands.
But like all who tread on it, Shinbone Lane has secrets of its own. And like all secrets, they lie uneasily in the dark, until the truth emerges to lay the past to rest.
- Who or what inspired you to write?
When I was seventeen and in my last year of high school, one of my uncles rescued me from a chaotic home situation and sent me to a Catholic girls’ boarding school in a tiny country town. It was 99 miles from an abusive stepparent and far from my wild friends in the Chicago area. The environment at school was controlled but also very loving. I didn’t know how unsafe I’d felt until I was cared for by a team of nuns who had dedicated their lives to helping teenage girls at risk. It was a respite. I had quiet time. A bombardment of conflicting thoughts and feelings inside of me eased, and I had the urge to express myself. I wrote poems that I sent in letters to friends back home. I knew five or six chords on the guitar and wrote a few songs, too.
I remember one of the poems I wrote at boarding school. I was thinking about my father, who had passed away when I was eleven, and a boyfriend who’d recently left the country to follow a guru around the world:
to ponder again
what’s been
what was now
not knowing how
or even why
love’s vital beating
ever fleeting
left to stay
left me this way
to ponder again
what’s been
After graduation, I didn’t keep writing. I was enrolled in college but didn’t show up, afraid I’d make a mess of it. I went through a dark period, which I began to come out of in my early twenties. At that point, with conflicting thoughts and emotions wreaking havoc within, I began keeping a journal, thinking it might help me sort out what I really thought about things. Then I attended Columbia College, a creative arts school in Chicago. Every student was required to take writing workshops, and I was bitten by the writing bug, particularly by a workshop led the novelist Larry Heinemann, who said, “Laura, you are a writer. All you have to do is do it.” It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Ha!
2. Shinbone Lane is an intriguing name. How did you come up with this street name?
I’d begun brainstorming about a name for the lane, but wasn’t happy with any ideas I’d had. I happened to tell my husband, Jim, I was trying to come up with a name, and he threw out, as more of a joke than a serious proposal, Shinbone Lane. The idea jolted me. It seemed more suited for a Western genre story. But as I thought about it, I realized it offered possibilities for creating a story about the name within the larger story of the novel. The story I wove into the novel was inspired by folklore, and this meshed with my love of magical realism, where a story is rooted in the everyday world, but inexplicable, extraordinary things happen as a matter of course.
- What’s your process when world building a lane that really comes to life with many personalities and a bit of magic?
Memory played a big part in this, because the fictional lane is located just up San Francisco’s 29th Street hill from where Jim and I raised our family. So when I envision the environment, I picture it very much as it was in real life. The lane itself has more of a golden glow about it, and things happen there that don’t ordinarily happen. It’s the world slightly tilted, but it’s still our world. It doesn’t involve people casting spells and using magic potions. It’s not epic fantasy where you create entirely imagined worlds. It’s more like forces are at work in the natural world that we don’t fully understand. As for the people, they aren’t based on specific individuals I knew, but they were inspired by the many people who passed through my life in the 1970s. The characters came to me and took shape as I was writing. I didn’t think them up ahead of time.
- What attracted you to the fully loaded themes of secrets, healing, transforming lives?
The themes stem from my life experiences but they have universal resonance. Who doesn’t have a secret or two? Who hasn’t been harmed or hurt in life? Who hasn’t wished for healing at some point? And as for transformation, we are all transformed as we move through life. Sometimes it’s dramatic, and we notice. Sometimes it’s a gradual transformation that sneaks up on us. Sometimes we seek transformation and get what we want; sometimes we seek transformation and get something else entirely. Sometimes we don’t want transformation, but we get it anyway. In writing fiction, I love for characters to be grappling with big things, some things that others don’t know about and wouldn’t guess, some that are obvious, some things that can never be healed, and others that can. And I love to create communities where, as in real life, terrible things can happen, but where an underlying love helps everyone pull through, maybe different than they were but ready for a new day.
- What’s your healing place or space and why?
My healing place has always been the outdoors, walking in particular—from the Midwest prairies to the crowded streets of Chicago’s north side, to San Francisco’s magnificent hills and valleys, to Sonoma County’s many trails and byways. Walking has always calmed me while at the same time woken me up, and made my troubles seem a little bit lighter, at least for a time. It’s odd, but I didn’t realize until answering this question how important walking has been for me. I walk our dog every morning, but I’ve been so pressed for time in recent years that I walk for only about half an hour. I’m going to have to work in some longer walks regularly, walks without my dog, too, who’s a little on the goofy side and easily spooked, so he’s not a relaxing companion.
- There’s a bit of magic on Shinbone Lane and reasons why, at least consciously, the characters don’t all quite know why they are there. How do you believe that magic in the real world plays out for people and how did you go about weaving it into your book?
Some characters have lived on the lane their whole lives; others are newcomers. They’re all there because they want to be, because life on the lane appeals to them. They’d have difficulty explaining why, which is not all that unusual. I’ve never given much thought to why I wear certain clothes, for example, or why I’m drawn to some foods and not others. And like the folks who populate Shinbone Lane, I can’t easily explain some of my choices; they happen so quickly on a gut level.
Similarly, weaving magic into the real world as I write is an intuitive process. Some of the magic expresses a longing I have for the real world to have more magic manifest in our days, for things not to always follow the natural laws we’ve come to understand, for inexplicable things to be more common and not relegated to streaming TV series. Also, there is a lot about the universe that we don’t know. I keep that in mind when writing fiction, and it helps me push boundaries between the real and the imagined.
- One of your characters is 16 year old, Maddy, who is escaping the blame for a crime she didn’t commit. She gets taken in by Clara, a significantly older woman and her neighbour, Ted. What significance do they play in her life and how important do you think it is that young and old come together in society?
Clara and Ted are hugely important to Maddy. They have given her a foundation of love she never had. They are like many people in the world who are rock solid good, through and through, and are unsung. It wouldn’t occur to them to look for recognition for doing the right thing. Their goodness helps to attract magic, though they don’t do anything consciously to bring it about. And a world without elders would be bleak indeed, especially for children, who would never know people who have lived through times that for younger generations are known only through books and documentaries. Plus, those of us who were lucky enough to have at least one loving grandparent know the love they give is profound and unique.
- Travelers, free spirits and artists feature in Shinbone Lane, who are willing to see the magic. How did you find writing about such, practically bohemian characters in-contrast to the grittiness of Mattie escaping a crime?
Despite her unfortunate home, where the crime occurred due to a family member’s mental illness, Maddy is very much a part of her generation, which is breaking free of rigid cultural norms and expectations. Also, in the 1970s, large numbers of young people were on the move, largely because it was before real estate prices soared to heights almost beyond comprehension. It was easy for someone to take off with a little bit of money in their pocket and travel, sometimes staying on the move, sometimes settling down in a new place, where people could explore and maybe bring out different sides of themselves. Having lived through that time, it was a natural process for me to write about it.
- There’s Eloise who is a burdened dancer who wants rid of anyone who she feels is “riff-raff”, has lost her daughter and has decided there’s much no one understands. Did you feel the powerful emotions of your character here and how did you convey them onto the page and out to the audience so they can also experience her life?
People on the lane thought they knew Eloise. She’d lived there all her life, after all. But it turns out they barely knew her at all. Writing her was a lot of fun, as well as surprising. I didn’t know when I first envisioned her what turns her life would take, and I had compassion for her in the end. I felt what I imagined she was going through, as well as other characters’ reactions to her actions. When writing fiction, you have to put yourself through an emotional wringer at certain points in the narrative. If you don’t do that, readers are unlikely to be moved by the stories you tell. I’ve found that as long as I show up emotionally while writing, I don’t need to worry about conveying emotions on the page. The emotions flow with the words.
- Shinbone Lane is set in 70’s San Francisco, a bit like the time when you went for a visit and stayed. What compelled you to stay, how did it influence your writing and what changes have you seen in the city?
Initially I stayed in San Francisco because I had the feeling after a few weeks that I wanted more, that I hadn’t experienced what I wanted to experience in the city. I decided to remain for a few months. I bought a Fast Pass for $11, which was good for a month. With that I could take a bus, streetcar, or cable car anywhere and ride as far and as long as I wanted within the city. And the rides, even just to run errands or visit a friend across town, were extraordinary with incredible vistas, largely because of the hills, the ocean on one side and the bay on the other. Even some of the backyards you’d pass on the J-Church were stunning, and riding the 10-Monterey bus was breathtaking.
I quickly found temporary office work in San Francisco and a room in a Victorian flat with two amicable roommates for only $79 per month. I enjoyed exploring the city’s distinct neighborhoods and microclimates, all the artist collectives, dance and theater troupes, cultural organizations, street fairs, free events in Golden Gate Park, and so many people my age who were trying new things. I decided I wanted to take piano lessons. To do that, I needed a piano, so I bought an old Kohler upright on time, $17 per month for three years, and said, well, I guess I’m staying for three years. I wound up staying for almost thirty years, and now live only an hour away.
San Francisco influences my writing the same way any place I’ve come to know well and love does. The streets, the parks, the restaurants, the main events of the time are part of me. The experiences I had, the highs and lows, are wedded to where they took place. A huge difference in the city between the 1970s and now is that it is so much more expensive to live there. There are bound to be exceptions to this, but generally, artists and people not earning Silicon Valley type incomes can’t afford to live there anymore unless their homes have been in the family a long time. People of limited means have to leave. And that changes the culture of a place.
- What do you hope readers get from your book?
Knowing a place where they’d like to linger for a while. Characters they’d like to meet in real life. A story written in a way that delights and absorbs them. A sense that tough things can happen, but the support you need is usually nearby, and healing can and does happen. And a reminder that what we present to each other day to day is only a part of what we are. It’s not like we’re purposely hiding things from others or from ourselves, but many things are hidden. In the end there’s a longing to give and receive love, even in the worst of us, and that is powerful.
- How did you celebrate publication day?
I didn’t do much on publication day itself, other than watch for reviews from people who’d read advance copies. That was pretty exciting, especially since my daughter had helped find early readers, and we were phoning and texting each other as reviews appeared. The following weekend I participated in a joint book launch party with members of Redwood Writers, the Sonoma County branch of the California Writers Club. The writing itself is a solitary activity, and it’s great fun to share milestones with other writers. The sense of camaraderie is uplifting.
- How can people follow you and your work?
Thank you, Louise, for asking me such thought-provoking questions and spotlighting Shinbone Lane. Here’s my Linktree listing with links to my website, Facebook, Instagram, Substack and Bluesky pages: https://linktr.ee/lauramchh
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