Featured Interview With Robin Gregory
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
ROBIN GREGORY is a devoted wife and mother, writer, and amateur mapmaker. Born in Pensacola, Florida, she grew up in California, accompanied by seven siblings, and surrounded by horses, real cowboys, and the occasional rattlesnake. She has always been drawn to helping others, a trait that began, to her mother’s horror, with bringing home swallow chicks stricken from their nests. She has worked as a journalist, lay minister, and infant massage instructor for mothers and babies at risk. Her favorite things: silence, foggy days, chai, and ladybugs. She lives with her husband and son in a Carmel cottage old enough to make you sneeze. “The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman” is her debut novel.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I came to writing sideways, really. I always thought I’d be an artist. First, I told stories through paintings. I had a hard time learning to read, so that came later, in high school, when I discovered Franz Kafka. Soon afterward, I began keeping journals. It wasn’t until college that I tried writing short stories, and then a novel and screenplay. Writing became a means for me to explore my unknown “self,” to discover realities, truths, ideas, that run under the surface of things.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I have read and re-read the works of Gabriel García Marquez, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, J.P. Donleavy, Salman Rushdie, and some of Virginia Woolf and Anaïs Nin. My favorite genre is Magical Realism, or Visionary literature, books that render coherent multiple levels of experience.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
THE IMPROBABLE WONDERS OF MOOJIE LITTLEMAN took 13 years to write. I guess it will probably by magnum opus. It began as a memoir. I spent years writing it from a personal point of view, and in the end, didn’t like the narrator at all. Ha! She sounded like a cross between Dostoevsky and Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Actually, I’ve had a pretty interesting life, beginning with being one of eight children in a pretty messed up family. This led to a lot of heartache, loneliness, and feelings of “not belonging.” I spent twenty years searching for spiritual answers, but the healing of these wounds really began when my husband and I adopted a baby with special needs. In spite of his difficulties, our son was the most kindhearted, courageous, and bright boy I have ever known. He has been teaching me so much. Especially, he is teaching me not to judge people by appearances, and to forgive others for hurting me. I wanted to put some of his life lessons together with mine to make a story that would inspire anybody who is dealing with difficulties and challenges.
I had gone through some devastating life events, and the lingering effects were anxiety, powerlessness, and low self-esteem. After turning to spiritual practice, I began to question my constant self-talk and subliminal thought patterns.
I wanted to put MOOJIE, the main character of my novel, a fourteen year-old, disabled boy, into the existential mess of human life, with all of the so-called goods and bads, to watch him grow, struggle, kick, and scream, until he found, through life experience, his own inner truth. Orphaned twice, bound to crutches, unable to grasp simple math and reading, he is pretty angry, and entrenched in feelings of isolation and unworthiness.
I started over with a rough idea of telling the story from his point of view, based on my experience with a son who doesn’t walk, talk, or think like most of us. In “his” hands, it started to be fun. For a while, I had no idea how it would go, only that the characters would either transcend limitations or remain locked into unconscious life choices. A funny thing happened, as the characters took on flesh and bone, they literally did as they pleased. They were unruly and rude and careless and didn’t do what I had planned! Not very decent of them, was it? This led to wonderful surprises and to having cutting some characters out altogether. All a necessary part of their disciplining.
A good book is a “home” for the reader, a home like the one that Moojie Littleman wants to find. It’s a rock he can rub against, a place to shed outworn ideas, values, and beliefs—a safe place to grow out of. Moojie’s story is about transcending limitations, but it’s also about finding his true self, finding peace while enduring difficult circumstances, surrendering to the inner pattern of peace and grace. There’s nothing wrong with “plane reads,” but I don’t read them and I didn’t want to write one. Anyway, if the plane were hijacked, I wouldn’t want a zombie romance to be the last thing I remember of this life. Ha!
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