We had a great time hosting Key West local Hays Blinckmann on Friday, Feb. 21 promoting her second novel WHERE I CAN BREATHE. WHERE I CAN BREATHE is a drama/comedy infused with bold characters, laugh out loud humor that will keep you engrossed in its compelling storylines.
Having to rush suddenly to a Connecticut hospital, Arthur, Abby, and Ansel Williams must come to grips with the impending death of their beloved mother, Agnes. She is dying from cirrhosis and for years has been drinking herself to death. None of the siblings are prepared for the journey of placing their mother in hospice care and spending her final weeks looking back at her lifetime of pain and destruction. Asher Williams, their father, business mogul, and Agnes’s ex-husband, also must come to terms with his family’s path and his role in shaping all of their lives. The story is rich with a family’s defining moments that changed them, pushed them apart, and brought them back together.
We had the pleasure of asking Hays a few questions to give you a taste of her books and future plans.
Q: You balance novel writing with journalism, please tell us a bit about your writing process? Do you find the different types of projects compatible or can it be difficult to keep on track?
A: At the moment I am taking a break from journalism, if I didn’t I would have never written WHERE I CAN BREATHE. The story was forming in my head for months after my mother’s death in August 2018 so I had to stop everything to get it on paper.
Writing news is an addictive form of employment with its rush and immediacy and I loved it. There was always one more story, one more deadline and I admit, I had hard time withdrawing from it. But thanks to journalism, I have become a very efficient writer and when I began WHERE I CAN BREATHE it just flowed out of me. It required very little subject editing, mostly just regular editing and I had a team from the paper to help me. Start to finish was less than six months on top of being a mom, wife and regular life stuff, so that was the real accomplishment. I am very disciplined and work extremely hard, but it’s the kind of work I love. Infinitely better than unloading the dishwasher or figuring out how in the hell kids do math nowadays.
Q: Mothers and alcoholism recur in both your novels, can you say a little about what makes this such an interesting subject for you?
A: My mother was an alcoholic since I can remember and I have never tried to hide it. Anyone remotely close to me knew or was involved in the drama of it. But I wasn’t ready to put that into words until after my children were born and I became a mother myself. At that point, my mother’s struggles and choices became fascinating to me and less a reflection. Fictionalizing her turmoil riddled life was a wholly new form of therapy. My first novel, IN THE SALT definitely has some of that residual anger but WHERE I CAN BREATHE has a lot of compassion for the circumstance. Both are very healing books when it comes to family relationships and how we cope with dysfunctional behavior, that was my endgame.
Q: How long have you been in Key West? How did you come to be here? What’s your favorite thing about our little island?
A: I started coming in the early 90s, when my parents bought a second home and made my permanent move after 9/11/2001. Now it’s been almost 20 years and absolutely no regrets. I moved around a lot throughout my life so some places were too big and some too small but Key West was just right for me. My favorite thing is how my life has gone through so many phases here: Young party girl, then newlywed, then a family and soccer mom, then journalist and writer. Key West is incredibly supportive if you let it. I even thanked the whole city in the back of the book, I don’t think many people thank their city, but I genuinely believe Key West has given me everything I could imagine (except a sit down with HBO for movie options but that’s still on the table).
Q: What are you reading and recommending?
A: I am reading and fascinated by Ada Calhoun’s WHY WE CAN’T SLEEP. It’s non fiction about how women my age, Gen Xer’s, got the short end of the stick when it came to money, careers and family because of when we were born. There are so many points she makes that are dead on it’s frightening. And she’s right, I remember every advertising slogan between 1975 and 1985 that ever aired on TV. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar…
Q: What’s next? Is novel #3 already in the works?
A: Yes, I’ve got novel #3 in the works. It’s another “dramady”. I like humor and family dynamics but this time no alcoholism – there are many other dysfunctional maladies to choose from, I can’t be so one sided. Also, I am playing around with #4, a book of autobiographical shorts. Whatever one finishes first will be next.