KATIE ARNOLDI INTERVIEWS KATIE ARNOLDI

You were the 1992 Southern California Bodybuilding Champion, a competitive longboad surfer, you’ve gone undercover and behind the scenes in the polygamist compound of Colorado City long before the media got a hold of that story.  You flew in Black Hawk helicopters and rappelled into active marijuana grow-sites run by the Mexican Drug Cartels surrounded by United States Park police armed with automatic weapons. You’ve got a knife collection and a lot of camouflage outfits and you prefer to sleep outdoors on the ground… You sound more like a female Chuck Norris than a novelist.

No but see, the difference is he’s got the “Chuck Norris Karate Commando Action Figure: Karate Chop” and it comes with accessories.  I would love to be an action figure.  I would have little tiny copies of my books that I could carry in my action backpack and pass them out to people in need.

People in need?

A small village in an isolated jungle.  Rice paddies.  The constant threat of malaria, poisonous snakes.  I would pass out copies of Chemical Pink, The Wentworths and my new novel Point Dume.  Can you imagine the joy?  My books would change those people’s lives.

They don’t speak English.

Right, but I speak their language.  I sit on a rock in the shade of a tree.  The whole village gathers around, young and old alike.  I read to them in my full, throaty writer’s voice and they weep, tears of joy and profound understanding.  Then we all slaughter a water buffalo and cook it over an open fire, a magnificent feast that lasts for a full seven days.

Have you ever bought your own book on Amazon just to make the number go down?

That’s a stupid question.  Don’t ask me that.

You’ve done some pretty extreme research for all of your novels.  You injected steroids into the buttocks of bodybuilders for Chemical Pink.  Spent long afternoons in Beverly Hills shopping for cosmetics and high heels in order to build your character Norman who is the youngest son in The Wentworths.  And you smoked eight different kinds of marijuana for Point Dume.  All I can ask is why?  Why, Katie, why?

All my books have dealt with subcultures, people whose lives revolve around a different set of criteria from the mainstream.  The bodybuilders in Chemical Pink live in their own world.  They eat, drink and breathe the gym. The pursuit of physical perfection—a perfection that most of us find repellent—is all consuming.  I could never have written about that world had I not spent some time living inside it.  Authenticity of voice and experience is important to me.  I need to be able to inhabit my characters and to do that I have to be completely familiar with the world in which they live.  The Wentworths are an extremely wealthy family living on the Westside of Los Angeles—talk about a subculture.  I didn’t really have to do much research on them because I grew up around Wentworths but there is another character, Honey, who invades their lives and she comes from a polygamist family in Colorado City, Arizona.  I had to spend time in the place where she was born in order to understand the woman she became.  I went out there seven times, armed with a taser.  And in Point Dume I write about the pot farms.  Well, how can you write about a place and phenomena if you haven’t been there and lived it?  I was able to worm my way onto the Growsite Reclamation Team and work with law enforcement to eradicate these HUGE grows up in Sequoia National Forrest and the surrounding areas.  The mission was called “Operation Loccust” and it was awesome.

So pot is a character in your new novel?

No, smarty pants.  It’s not.  But I couldn’t write about marijuana and the pot culture without being fully acquainted with the drug itself, now could I?  For the record, I’m not a pot smoker.  I don’t like it.  But I am dedicated to my work and will do what it takes to inform my writing.  I had many dark cannabis moments in preparing for Point Dume.  The first time I sampled the weed, I spend several hours on my couch, curled in the fetal position, waiting for the effects to wear off.  Pot is MUCH stronger than it was in the olden days.  I lit my hair on fire one afternoon preparing an emergency quesadilla and spent countless hours watching the shadows on the wall.  I heard phantom noises and had paranoid thoughts.  It was tough but I needed the information to move forward on my book.  That’s the kind of writer I am.

What is your signature strength?

Definitely kindness and generosity.  I love animals.  I used to be able to handle eighteen forty-five pound plates on the leg press but I blew out my back and had to have surgery so those days are gone.

Talk about your writing history.

I was extremely dyslexic growing up–really bad.  Reading was a huge challenge for me; I was always in the slow group and no one recognized my problem as a learning disorder.  Back then, you were considered dumb if you couldn’t keep up.  But somewhere in my late teens I developed a kind of coping mechanism and reading changed from a torturous necessity to a passion.  I read everything and quietly started writing short stories.  I had no confidence; that dumb thing stuck with me for many, many years.  I wrote short stories all through my twenties and early thirties.  They were horrible, boring tales about young women trying to figure out their complicated lives.  I wrote a whiny novel and it sucked. Then I had a couple of kids and everything changed.  I finally got over myself.  Chemical Pink was my first piece of fiction that had nothing to do with ME.  I try to stay out of the way now and things are much better.

Any advice for young writers?

Keep your head down.  Write everyday.  And remember: Chuck Norris counted to infinity—twice.