Who is Joel Finnigan?

 When we started writing Becoming Finnigan way back in the late 20^th Century Joel Finnigan was simply the central character in the story of one man’s quest to live the life he was meant to live. We had no great political, philosophical or artistic statement to make. We just hoped to spin a good yarn.

 

Sam Goldwyn once told the producers of his movies “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” That’s a bit of advice we’ve clung to over the years. 

But as Becoming Finnigan wound its way through the writing, rewriting and editing process and finally became a real live book, the identity of Joel Finnigan – and Susanna Winslow and Althea Burnside – began emerging from hiding places we didn’t know existed.

At first glance, Joel is a guy working his way through the various stages of his life – his boyhood fears of the Great Depression, the hell of World War II and the social revolutions that followed the war – and trying his damndest to make them mean something. He was a participant and chronicler of what Henry Luce labeled The American Century.

He lived through all of this in hopes of regaining his first and only real love.  

Gradually it began to dawn on us that Joel stood for something else that we did not quite grasp, even as we were opening the box of author’s copies from High Tide Publications and were finally able to hold Becoming Finnigan in our hands.

 Joel was always drawn to the moral strong side of the great issues and events of our time: not “moral” in the sense of following a certain code and keeping his clothes on but the morality of trying to illuminate his times and in so doing, elevate them.

Joel Finnigan symbolizes, to us anyway, the courageous faith and optimism that enabled America to help western civilization hold fast against the forces of darkness and then turn his country against its own dark forces that were holding it back. It’s significant that Joel’s story ends on September 10, 2001, just before real and imagined fears threatened to draw another shroud of darkness over the country to which he had given so much.

It’s a shame, really that Joel Finnigan left the stage on 9/10. It would have been great fun watching him do to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck what he did to Hootie Harlan.

 

 

Who is Althea?

Althea Burnside, like many women we’ve known, is looking for love and success and failing miserably.  She thinks she understands herself but this comment from Althea says a lot about where she is at the beginning of the book.  To set the stage, Althea and her boyfriend Mark are about to move in together.  This is something she has wanted and has worked to make happen. As the big day approaches, she says:  “I was going to Philly yesterday and the toll taker on the Ben Franklin Bridge really pissed me off.  Here I was thinking about the big move and he says ‘Come on; smile.  It can’t be that bad.’  I felt like shutting the window on his hand.  I hate people like that.  For all he knew I could have just found out that I have cancer and I only have three months to live. Did I really look that miserable?  How could it be when things are finally going right for me.” She is forced to face this kind of self-deception when she meets Joel Finnigan, whom we’ll talk about next time.

How Finnigan Became: Part 2

Tony was working on a story for one of the sailing magazines and Karen was suffering from a bout of writer’s block. She thought creating a character and giving that character a name might result in the character revealing the story. Deciding on the right name was something akin to picking out a name for the baby you’re expecting. From nowhere, Althea Burnside popped into her head. And Althea did indeed begin to tell her story. Joel Finnigan was a significant part of it. But Joel didn’t speak to her the same way Althea did. Also, Karen likes to write haiku; so her prose tends to be spare as well. Tony, on the other hand, has the gift of the Irish storyteller, and a great fascination for history as well. Tony read what had become a novella and felt Joel speaking to him. “You really need more than two pages on World War II,” Karen remembers him saying. And so the collaboration began and Becoming Finnigan became.

Next time, we'll talk about Althea.

Becoming Finnigan is available as an e-book on kindle and nook and in paperback from www.amazon.com

 

How Finnigan Became

Where do you get your ideas?

It's a pretty sure bet that anyone who has ever tried playing the old subject and verb game has been asked that question more than once.

The answer is almost always the same:  damned if I know.

In our case, both individually and collaboratively, we don't get the ideas; the ideas get us.  From then on, it's a case of bolting the various pieces together and getting the engine to run.  The ideas come from what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the Universal Soul:  the stories are swirling around out there in the universe and the writers are merely the channels they select to make their grand entrance.

Becoming Finnigan is a perfect example of that.  The boy/girl game is one of the staples of literature simply because it's one of the staples of life.  The great events of what Henry Luce called the American Century - the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the upheavals of politics in America are the beams and joists that we used to knock together the stage on which this eternal drama was played.

Next time, we'll talk more about how the story of Joel Finnigan and Althea Burnside emerged.

Becoming Finnigan is available in e-book and paperback from www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com

 

Becoming Finnigan

After many years of writing together and separately for newspapers and magazines, our first novel Becoming Finnigan is being published by High Tide Publications this month.   It’s about life and love in the American Century, the choices we make, the impact we have on each other’s lives and the ability of love to survive in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Through the process of writing and publishing, we’ve learned that there is a lot more to being a writer than writing.  And we’d like to share that with you.

 Karen and Tony Muldoon