As Amy prepares to launch Tiny Altars, she talks about hopes, fears, and intentions with her longtime friend and fellow author, Bradley Bodeker.
Bradley Bodeker is an author of poetry and horror fiction. He is also an illustrator, musician, actor, and ordained minister of the Church of the Latter Day Dude. Bradley is currently working on two novels and a horror anthology.
https://facebook.com/KingBeeRadley
https://amazon.com/author/bradleybodeker
Amy Hallberg 0:01
As of the day that this podcast goes live, I am less than a month away from releasing my second book, Tiny Alters: A Midlife Revival. And while I've done this before, I'm still really feeling all the feelings about it. And so the best way I know to move through that is to talk with friends who also are writers and can appreciate the journey I've been through. So today, we are talking with my dear old friend, Brad Bodeker, about Tiny Altars.
You're listening to Courageous Wordsmith. I'm Amy Hallberg, story coach, book writing mentor, and author, and these are conversations with real life creatives. Because if you want to be a real life creative, it helps to know what that looks like for you. Welcome to Courageous Wordsmith.
So I'm super excited today because I have my dear friend Bradley Bodeker on to talk about my new book. He's one of the people who has blurbed it. Brad and I go way back to fourth grade, and it is my huge honor to be on this writing path with him.
Bradley Bodeker 1:33
It was back when we used abacuses for math.
Amy Hallberg 1:37
Did we use abacuses, really?
Bradley Bodeker 1:39
No, I don't think so. They were still in the classroom but I think we had calculators by then.
Amy Hallberg 1:44
Okay, but we had them.
Bradley Bodeker 1:45
Yes, we did have them.
Amy Hallberg 1:47
You've read my book. You and I agree on politics and disagree on politics. I'm a little nervous about putting this book out there and you've been really reassuring to me because you're like, "It's not about the politics. If it's told well, it's not about the politics." But I do touch on some some challenging subjects, and you asked me, "Are you afraid about the blowback on this book?" And, and I sort of went, "...Yeah."
Bradley Bodeker 2:14
Well, I think you have an idea in your head of what you want this story to tell and how you want people to receive it. But when I read your book, I did look for that because it says a little bit in your introduction about kind of where you're going with it, but I didn't see it as that kind of story. I saw it as a personal journey of yours. Changing the way you're thinking changes the way that you were brought up, you know, to think. You were kind of cookie cuttered into, this is the way you're supposed to be, Amy, and this is the way you're supposed to grow up. And you know, and you're like, wait a minute, I am not comfortable wearing these clothes, you know?
Amy Hallberg 2:55
Yeah.
Bradley Bodeker 2:57
I think it's tougher as the author because you're in one frame of mind thinking that this is what my book is going to go across as. I think that will come into play but if people are reading it as the story of a young woman crossing over into her truth, that's the meat and potatoes I got out of it.
Amy Hallberg 3:19
Thank you, Brad. And that's such a 1970s Gen X story. I mean, we were told our generation doesn't actually exist according to some people. We just kind of get ignored, like, so our generation was like, "We are the upholders but at the same time, we were kind of left to fend for ourselves." So like, here's this set of rules, go wander around, make sure you get home by dinnertime, you might be making dinner. But you know, like, we're a very certain generation, right? A lot was being redefined at that time, but we are to uphold these rules that may or may not actually work for us.
Bradley Bodeker 3:56
Right. They were, I mean, they were Boomer rules, really. I mean, if we're gonna start labeling it, but yeah. I mean, we're the latchkey generation, we came home and there was nobody there because parents were off to work. And we're just kind of like, okay, here's a list of chores and here's a list of rules, and this what you're going to do and yeah, I mean, I fell into that whole, "You're going to be an artist when you graduate from high school." And that was kind of pushed down my throat and I was thinking to myself, "Well, that's not the only thing I like doing," you know?
Amy Hallberg 4:27
That's interesting, Brad, because most people in our generation we're not told you're going to be an artist.
Bradley Bodeker 4:31
And it just ruined art for me, it turned it into a job, not a passion.
Amy Hallberg 4:35
Okay, so let's talk about that. One of the things- I mean because you are now a writer, I don't know if you're still doing art, are you doing art or are you just doing writing pretty much?
Bradley Bodeker 4:47
For the majority of the part I do, I'm writing, but I've been doing lyrical mosaics where I draw a portrait of a dead rock star and then I fill in everything with the lyrics of a-
Amy Hallberg 5:00
That's right. Yeah. Okay, so you figured out- and I couldn't do that, Brad, because I don't have the training you do, right? So you have the foundational basis for the theory, the whatever, and then you figured out a way to do that in a way that is uniquely meaningful to you. So one of the things that you and I were talking about before we even started recording was, it's not wrong to know the rules. Like, like, there is a set of rules that is handed down, and it's kind of a restricted set of rules, here are the rules. It's useful to understand what those rules are and to know those rules, but not necessarily to keep the rules, but so that you decide which rules you actually want to keep, which rules you want to break, yeah?
Bradley Bodeker 5:45
Right. We had talked a bit about Kerouac, he kind of blew the rules away, and kind of like, opened my eyes when I became an adult, like, oh, well, these are the rules I was given when I was going to school for a creative writing class, and you know, in an English class, you know, "You can only do this," and then you read something like Kerouac, and none of those rules apply to On The Road or Dharma Bums. And you're like, well, how come this is selling like hotcakes, they're not following any rules. A couple factors. One, it's tough to get published by a big publisher. Nowadays, self publishing is kind of the way to go. And, and that's not always an easy road, because you are trying to present yourself as a skilled author, a skilled storyteller. I think the general public has a hard time accepting us as writers until they actually read it. And that's why I always push people that have read my books, it's huge for you to review the book on Amazon, or some other platform, because that's how my book gets sold is by your reviews.
Amy Hallberg 6:52
Right.
Bradley Bodeker 6:54
So yeah, I think it makes the job tougher for us. I mean, you're a go getter. I mean, you do the whole book openings and stuff like that. I love that book opening you had for German Awakening, you know, and you- I was like, wow, this is awesome. I should do something like this, and I am lazy is probably what it is.
Amy Hallberg 7:15
No, no, no. So listen, you have a book you're working on, and when you put that one out, there will be a launch party. Oh, it's gonna be thematic. So yeah. So my German Awakening, for people who don't know about that launch, like, it was in a room where the wall was painted red to match the book. This wasn't like- I didn't paint the wall, I just happened on this room. It looked like it could have been a warehouse in Berlin or Hamburg, right? Like, the room matched the book, the theme, right? And I set it up like a, like a museum display to match the fact that it was talking about German history and art, and sort of like as a teacher would, like, I set it up like a, like a historical display in a classroom, which, you know, as a teacher, I had all these posters on my wall. So that's what I did with that one. This one, the thematic image for the book is a house. It's a dollhouse. Like, it's a little Victorian, little doll house. And my friend has this beautiful house in St. Paul so we're doing it at her house, because her house matches the style of the dollhouse. So for Brad's book launch, and you hear it here first, because this is news to him, too, as I say it, but you're talking about your Maori tradition. So I don't know, there's gonna be like a roasted hog in the backyard or something, like, it's going to be outdoors, right? Because your story is, if you think about a Maori story, there are no walls around that. Am I wrong?
Bradley Bodeker 8:38
I like that. Yeah. I do like that, yeah. Because we're talking about Mom's book, correct?
Amy Hallberg 8:46
Right. Right. Right. The one you are writing now.
Bradley Bodeker 8:49
Yeah, it's, it's more of a story about women's endurance. And, you know, here's a guy writing about women's endurance, right? But this is from, you know, a son's point of view of what he's seen his mother go through, and how she's just like, conquered everything, just knocked everything out of the park. And, and that's kind of my theme, you know, like, your theme for your book is that, but I think it tells the story of, of how those Maori traditions kind of shaped her. And again, she's like, "Okay, I know the rules now, but I'm blowing them out of the water and I'm gonna marry an American, and I'm gonna have a white picket fence, and we're gonna have power and running water, and I'm not going to be a farmer," and blah, blah, blah. And "I'm going to wear high heels when I vacuum the living room" type of thing, you know? Yeah, so, and she did, she got the flashy cars and the high heels and the- yeah.
Amy Hallberg 9:51
I love that image. I mean, what I've come down to, what I've realized sort of on the back end as we edit it is what do you, what do you keep? Right? There's things about ourselves that we cannot get rid of, right? So I will always have been a confirmed Lutheran. Like, this surprises nobody that meets me, right? Like I will always be a confirmed Lutheran, I will always be a Minnesotan Swede. And I say that because- so you and I have a former classmate and exchange student, Maggie, right? She's Swedish. She's an actual Swede and like, I had her look at some of the Swedish because there's a little bit of some Swedish passed down from my great greats. You know, my great great grandparents, like, in the book, and I had Maggie sort of look at it for me and she's like, "This is very old Swedish. No Swede would actually- it's a good saying but no Swede would actually-" Right? So like, I'm not, I'm not Swedish like a Swede, Swede. I'm multigenerational down Minnesota Swede, right? Like, there's what you keep, right? There's what you get rid of. Look, these things don't work for me, and I won't do them. And there's this rebellion we go through. But then when you come back around to it, it's like, but what are the things that I neither want to keep, nor do I want to get rid of, but I want to repurpose them, for me. So like, in the case of your mom, like, and to be clear, you read this, like, you know, the image that I set up is the dollhouse and you and I know that I smashed the shit out of that dollhouse. But when it comes back to it, there's still representation of the- if you look at like, the background of my room here, there's still dollhouse elements. Look at it. Right? Like, it's very dollhouse in here.
Bradley Bodeker 11:34
If they make your book into a movie, I totally want to see that scene. Yeah, I'd be like, you go, Amy, go.
Amy Hallberg 11:48
Okay and you will understand this, it wasn't performative in that moment, but it also kind of was. It kind of was performance art because when you are writing about yourself, there's those two levels at which you're experiencing it, right? I already knew I was writing the book. I already knew there was probably something to do with the dollhouse, I didn't know what. When I smashed it, I took it out and I'm like, "I think I'm gonna smash this dollhouse," and I'm smashing it, and even as I'm doing it, I'm like, "What are you doing Amy?" Like, you know, like, there's a part of you that's watching going, well, this is gonna make a great- but what, like what? You know, like, you're living on two levels because you're living into your story, and so, there's the levels at which you do this, you know? I talk about this early on in the book, too, like where I'm pouring, pouring tea down the sink and I'm like, "Well, that looks like blood. That's not good." But let's follow this to the- and I think you must have done that too, right? Like, where you're writing things, or you're living things and you're like, "Huh, I know, I'm gonna write about this," and yet, you're also feeling it very fully.
Bradley Bodeker 12:54
Yeah, I mean, it's like, I carry around a little notebook and when things like that happen, I'm like, "Oh, I need to get this down." You know, because I don't retain it very well and then I'll sit down to write and I'll be like, "Oh, there's something I was gonna write about, but it's gone." You know? So now I usually- daily, I'll go through the notebook and I'll be like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, I need to get this in there somehow." Or I'll just write a stray sentence that I know is gonna go in the book and then it just gets put in a file somewhere and then I can dig it out later.
Amy Hallberg 13:26
You know, it's interesting, as I was proofreading- so Kiki was the editor but then I proof read my own book, because I'm the most stubborn editor I know. And there was like, there was a sentence, and I love this sentence so much, I came down to it and I'm like, "That doesn't go here." Like, this is a final, final, final revision, and I'm like, "That doesn't go here, that goes in this chapter over here." Right? So sometimes you get a sentence and you're like, "I know this sentence is in there." Or like, there was another sentence where it was like, the sentence was, "Tell me the outcome." And I'm like, I loved it, loved it, loved it, but no, it's, tell me how this ends. So like, you'll know that it goes there but there might be tweaking because you don't know exactly where it goes, it's just this loose random sentence that you've captured, and then you're gonna kind of retrofit it into the thing once you know where it really wants to live, right?
Bradley Bodeker 14:18
Yeah. When you write, okay, you stop writing and then you walk away from it for a while, do you come back and just reread it from the beginning and then go to where you're at? And then edit it along that process? Or do you finish the whole thing to where you say, "Okay, I'm exhausted. This is where I'm going to end it." And then reread it and then re-tweak it.
Amy Hallberg 14:39
So you know, I have this habit of trying to like get it all perfect. And then I'll finish it like, okay, I have to finish this piece. I'm going to send it off to- I have somebody I've agreed to send it to, and I'll finish it. And I'll know... like, I'll feel, like, like, when I have landed something, there's a dance that happens where I'm like, I'm moving, my little body starts moving whatever way it wants to, you know, it starts doing a little dance and there's a song or whatever. And so I'll be like, "Okay, I am done." Because I'm exhausted, I'm done, it's technically finished. And I will wake up the next morning with things that need to go in, like, I'll wake up in the middle of the night, I have apps on my phone that I can just type, you know, real quickly, like, go under the covers so that I'm not waking up guy next to me, you know, like, like, the light, light isn't waking them up, you know? And I'm like, under the covers, under this thick blanket, like, typing things in so that I don't lose them in the middle of the night. I used to do like, I used to just have a notebook and just write in the darkness, but like, then like, it could be all just very congealed or whatever, right? So I write them into my little app. Or sometimes I will wake up in the middle of- wake up in the morning, I'm editing in my phone, because I've apps that work on my computer and my phone, like the same app, I wake up and start editing in bed. And that's some of my best like, that's, that's where the polish actually comes in a lot of the time, you know? It's not the first round, and it helps me to understand that like the first round, and the second round, and the third round, like, that doesn't mean that it's done. You know, when we were taught in school, you and I went to the same school, same English Department. Well, the way I write is not- I don't want to write an A paper, I actually want to break it open. I want to like- I'm not trying to write too- I want it to fit certain forms. You know, I have an idea of how I want the story to go but also I want to let it do what it wants to do, you know?
Bradley Bodeker 16:42
Oh, yeah. It's almost like you're creating a baby, and then you're like, okay, here, here's my baby, you know, and take it how you will, but this is- it's going to tell its own story.
Amy Hallberg 16:56
And, you know, like, so the book is done as of right now, right? But it's still got to go out there, although I have had readers read it now. You know, so I have had some sense of both positive and negative how people could receive it, but the truth is that the book is going to do what the book wants to do and I don't have any control of that. I hold the copyright, you know? Nobody can make a movie without me. But people are going to do what they want to and they're going to read it from their perspective and they may or may not like it. Or they might project things onto it that I didn't put that in there, but they see it there because that's what wants to happen.
Bradley Bodeker 17:33
Right? You know, that one review that you shared with me, I think that's where that person was coming from. They had their own preconceived crap in their head and-
Amy Hallberg 17:43
Right. So perspective here, so I know a lot of writers and so I just invited writers and people that I trust to review it. But then I thought, oh, you know, I should get this standardized review, professional review, because it is recognized, whatever. And the guy- and it's an anonymous reviewer, but I swear to God, it was a guy, okay? The guy, I don't think he read my book.
Bradley Bodeker 18:07
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 18:07
I think he started on page one, did not like what I was throwing down, because on page one, I say, this is a white woman's story dealing with race. Like, you can't miss it. It's the first page. So I think he read the first page and went "Uh, no," and just didn't read the rest.
Bradley Bodeker 18:25
Yeah. Well, he didn't talk about your, your whole journey through the book at all, in that review. So that's why I was just like, yeah, Amy, this guy's... and I agree with you, I'm pretty sure it was a guy.
Amy Hallberg 18:39
And to be clear, men are my readers, too. It's just some men won't like my book. They won't. And I got so angry because I was like, my whole point is that I taught German for 17 years. Americans love, love, love, love to point to Germany, and the horrors of the Holocaust, of World War Two, right? They like to point to Germany and go, "Oh, the Germans," and they still love to throw down those Hogan's Heroes accents, you know, which is just offensive. German is a beautiful language, unless you do it in an angry Nazi speak, but like, Germans don't speak like Hogan's Heroes, and I think that we- my German exchange sister Eva, I don't know if you ever met her but she said, "You know a lot about our history. I think you should look at your own." And our own history is that we have some problematic foundations in this country that we all live in and we all love. I mean, I'm not leaving anytime soon, I don't know where I would go. I know you have maybe some plans to go back to New Zealand, but still, like, this is your home, right? This is your country. There are problems here and we can love our country and go, we have some race issues going on that maybe are not comfortable. I don't want to talk about it. You know, as a white woman I have proximal privilege, I kind of like having proximal privilege, it's comfortable. I don't necessarily want to be arguing against my better good. At the same time, is there a way in which I can argue that it can be good for me, and it can be good for other people too and it's not a zero sum game, and we all get to have a part of this puzzle. That's where I'm at.
Bradley Bodeker 20:25
Yeah, it's hard to have those discussions because when you want to talk about systemic racism, it makes people uncomfortable, because now we have to look at the bad stuff. You know, like, I like to bring up white Jesus. You know, why are all the pictures of Jesus white, you know, in every church? And he was Middle Eastern, he's, he's brown, maybe browner than I am, and I could be- well I don't think you know, he didn't have the Asian eyes like I do. That's the Filipino side of me. But people get really uncomfortable with that, like, "Well, it doesn't matter on how he's depicted," I'm like, going, but you don't see the reason why it was. I mean, people don't even like to look at it being a Middle Eastern religion. Just like Muslims, you know? Yeah. Christianity came from the Middle East, it did not come from Germany, any European place. It came from the Middle East, and they-
Amy Hallberg 21:26
Right, they're Abrahamic religions.
Bradley Bodeker 21:28
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 21:29
Which is a very specific part of the world.
Bradley Bodeker 21:32
Right. And it's like, "Well, what does it matter what color they are, or what color they're depicted?" I'm like, going, okay, for a group of people that are losing their minds because Disney is portraying Ariel, the mermaid, as a black woman, it's gonna be a big deal to us then, you know?
Amy Hallberg 21:51
Well, and the idea that if Jesus was brown, that the ideas that Jesus espoused would be problematic then? Like, they're only acceptable if they come from a white guy? Let's get really radical, what if Jesus was a woman? Or what if there was another woman who had good things to say? So in this book, I talk about going to visit this Indian holy woman, and all she does is give hugs. I really- her name is Amma, and I really wanted to get into that but I'm- Sanskrit isn't really doing it for me, right? Like, but I want to at least appreciate that Sanskrit is another path to God, right? That there are paths to God that aren't all defined by white men in America, or white women who have proximal power to white men. White women, we have a lot of power, and we wield it. And like, is there misogyny? Yep. Is there also women who wield that misogyny as a weapon? Yep. You know, like, solely looking at that part dynamic going, how, how do I play into it while at the same time, I'm not changing my skin. So, and I'm not, and I'm not moving out of Minnesota that I, that I know of, right? So like, within that, how do we live with that uncomfortable truth, you know?
Bradley Bodeker 23:08
Yeah, we get comfortable with it.
Amy Hallberg 23:10
Comfort with discomfort.
Bradley Bodeker 23:12
Yeah, I mean, the only way that you can get comfortable with it is just letting it out. Airing it out, letting it see the sun, and go, okay, here is what it is. Are we blaming you in particular for all of that back there? No.
Amy Hallberg 23:27
Nope.
Bradley Bodeker 23:27
But it's a discussion we want to have because it's sat in the dark for so long. Exorcising demons so to speak, you know?
Amy Hallberg 23:36
Well, and I think that that is what the writing journey is about, you know? Like, so, and I actually, I would love to invite you on for a second conversation where we talk more about your book, because we hinted at this and I think there's so much more to unpack there. But the truth is that we have these writing journeys and the book comes out when it wants to come out. This book, so much of it was written before some of the stuff happened and then some of the things happened and I was like, "Oh, that goes in the book too." That's why I couldn't finish the book any sooner than I did, because there were things that wanted to be in that book. And in the writing of these really uncomfortable things, they've been through revision, revision, revision, where it's like, "Okay, I've done my work around it and now the work can stand for itself, and now it's for other people to grapple with." And they don't have to change my mind, but it's, "Okay, here's my story, what are you going to make of it?" You know?
Bradley Bodeker 24:33
Right. Will it change you? It will definitely change your thought processes. You know?
Amy Hallberg 24:41
I haven't even said the name of my book. My book's name is Tiny Alters: A Midlife Revival, and I'm talking about it in all these cloaked terms, but it's coming out. So, Tiny Alters, so what you're saying is Tiny Alters- there I said it like three times or something, is going to change people's thought process.
Bradley Bodeker 24:56
Yeah, I think one of the uncomfortable things that I'm very well aware of because most of my adult life I dealt with in the Lutheran church, and you know me, I recognize some things that don't sit well with me and I'm like- and I'll voice it. And it's probably why I'm not a practicing Lutheran anymore, and I'm not bashing on the Lutheran religion it's just that- I know when I was looking for a Lutheran church, somebody said, "Yeah, we're having a meeting tonight at the church to see if we're going to allow women to have a voice in the church," and I'm just like, what century is this man?
Amy Hallberg 25:37
Clearly we're going to continue this conversation.
Bradley Bodeker 25:40
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 25:40
But I think that's what our role is as writers is, how do we take the stories we've been given and break them open and say, "Okay, but what about this? What about this? Now what are we going to do with it?" And sometimes it's just going to be uncomfortable, and sometimes that's just got to be how it is.
Bradley Bodeker 25:57
Yeah. Yeah, and it's, and it's not like, when you talk about stuff about racism it's not like, I don't want to have this discussion and point my finger at you because you're white, you're probably not even related to Captain Cook who came along and tried to colonize the Polynesian Islands. It's not that conversation that I want to have, but I do want to have a conversation and say, "Hey, you know, we've been looked at as second class citizens for so long and we're finally coming up and up, and we're getting push-back for that." You know, and when they say, "Oh, you guys are just being whiny, blah, blah, blah." You know, "I've never had anything to do with the racism that happened to you." And it's like, well, that's not what we're saying, but what we are saying is that we need to change it because there's still a hint of it and the current system that is going on right now all has its roots from back then when we were second class citizens.
Amy Hallberg 26:58
So it's the difference between me saying, "Well, that's all nice Brad, but I wasn't there. I'm not related to Captain Cook and I've been to Hawaii once."
Bradley Bodeker 27:06
Right.
Amy Hallberg 27:07
Versus saying, "Wow, that's a thing that I didn't know about," and not only that, you know, going back to the whole Germany thing, "Oh, look at over Germany." Okay. Is there, even though I have never been to New Zealand, I'm hoping to get an invite when you're there.
Bradley Bodeker 27:24
Most definitely. Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 27:27
I want to go there so badly. I have never been there but what can I see in my own little world right around me where it's complicated and where I can start to see both the complexities and the simplicities around it, you know?
Bradley Bodeker 27:43
Well, I mean, your book, Tiny Alters, is you saying, "I'm not directly responsible for the wrongs that were done back then but here's, here's my connection to it. I've been put in this mold that continues that thinking, you know, of the systemic racism, of the misogyny, you know, like, 'Oh, this is my place as a woman in the world and it's not very big but I'm just going to be comfortable with it.' And it's like, no, I'm gonna remodel that dollhouse to the way I want it, you know?" And yeah, I mean, that's, to me that's, that's what really the message came through for, for me, for Tiny Altars was, was that you were, you were not saying that you're directly involved, but you, you recognize what you could do about it. You know?
Amy Hallberg 28:45
Right. So I'm going to cut us off here because we have talked long enough. And I'm going to invite you to come back because I want to talk about that. I want to turn the tables and talk about you and your story. So everybody hang tight because that's what's coming up next. Thanks, Brad.
Bradley Bodeker 29:02
You bet. Thank you.
Amy Hallberg 29:04
Thanks for listening to Courageous Wordsmith. Today's episode featured Bradley Bodeker. You can read more about him and check out his links in the show notes. Backstage at Courageous Wordsmith, my editor is the talented Will Quie, and my producer is the wonderful Zoe Wood. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can help it thrive and grow. Please tell your friends and sign up for my email so that you'll hear about future episodes. And if you're feeling the call to write, join us in our free community for real life writers. You'll find these links right on this page. You can learn more about me, and my books, and my work with book writers at amyhallberg.com. I am Amy Hallberg and until we meet again, travel safely.