Interview with Irene Woodbury
Today, Tyler R. Tichelaar of Reader Views is pleased to interview Irene Woodbury, who is here to talk about her new novel “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis.” Irene Woodbury’s first novel, “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis,” was inspired by her love of travel writing. Between 2000 and 2006, her stories appeared in many newspapers, including the “Washington Post,” “The London Daily Telegraph,” “Los Angeles Times,” “Miami Herald,” “Toronto Star,” and “Nevada” and “The Affluent Traveler” magazines.
Tyler: Irene, do you see a midlife crisis as a good or a bad event for a person? How exactly would you define a midlife crisis? Irene: A midlife crisis is a transitional point where you re-evaluate everything you’ve been doing and decide how you want to proceed. It’s the recognition that time is passing—and if you haven’t done the things you’ve always wanted to do, maybe you need to make some changes so that you can do them. One of the critical aspects of a midlife crisis is the way it affects relationships with friends and spouses. Maybe what has worked for many years no longer works because our needs have changed? That can be a very difficult, painful situation, but what are you supposed to do? Pretend it isn’t happening? That would also be very difficult and painful. A midlife crisis can be a good or bad thing, depending on the kinds of changes you make. If they make your life better, it’s a good thing. If you make the wrong choices because you’re scared, or desperate, or confused, or naïve, it’s a bad thing. It just depends on the person and the circumstances. By the way, I think you can have a “midlife crisis” at 30, or 50, or 80. As we live longer, healthier lives, the whole concept of “midlife” has changed. What age, exactly, is that? It’s also possible to have more than one midlife crisis, if you find yourself at major transitional points more than once. Tyler: What leads Wendy to Las Vegas where she can have her midlife crisis? Irene: Wendy grew up in Denver, but she lived in L.A. for twenty-five years. Her life there was hectic. Her job was glamorous, but also demanding and stressful. Las Vegas was a quick place to go for weekend getaways. Wendy and her friend, Paula, sometimes went to Vegas when Wendy lived in L.A. Roger usually tagged along, as did Paula’s husband, or boyfriend, at the time. It was just a natural, convenient place for them to go to get away from the pressures of their jobs and lives. After Wendy moves to Houston and experiences problems with Roger and the house, and loses her job, she calls Paula in L.A. Paula invites her for a girls’ weekend in Vegas, and Wendy jumps at the offer. It’s a chance to return to a world, and life, she’s familiar with when she’s feeling lost. Tyler: What made you decide to use Las Vegas as the primary setting for the midlife crisis as opposed to another well-known, or lesser known city? Irene: These L.A. characters went there all the time for weekends. It was natural for Wendy to accept Paula’s offer to go to Vegas for a long weekend. Her extending the stay is totally unplanned, but it makes sense. Her life as she knew it in L.A. is gone. Her new life in Houston doesn’t make her happy, so she ends up staying in Vegas because she doesn’t know where else to go. She’s sort of stranded in Vegas. Tyler: Wendy is joined by a whole cast of entertaining characters in the novel when she gets to Las Vegas. Will you tell us about a few of them? Irene: Paula, the girlfriend Wendy is meeting in Vegas, is a bold, brassy thirty-five year old caustic, man-crazy mess of a woman. She’s thin, blond, attractive, obsessed with designer clothes and jewelry, and very successful at her job, which is selling upscale couture fashion at Panache. Paula has had three disastrous marriages, and is still in love with Ron, hubby number three. She can’t stop thinking or talking about him, but she expends a lot of energy avoiding him. A major part of Wendy and Paula’s weekend in Vegas involves fighting over the men Paula meets. Paula wants to drag Wendy into her sordid world of casual flings, but Wendy, as a newlywed, doesn’t want any part of this. It causes constant friction, as the two clash over and over again about men. Paula is powerful and pathetic, vulgar and vulnerable. One minute you want to hug her, the next, you want to slap her. She’s brilliant at pushing Wendy’s buttons about Roger, sex, her marriage, and career. When Wendy and Paula run into Ron, who’s with a buxom blond at Caesar’s Palace, the two women run out of the casino. At 3 o’clock the next morning, a drunk, desperate Ron is pounding on Paula’s door, but she won’t open it, and calls Security. She’s devastated and drained by this incident, but that very night she meets Gary Slade, an attractive pilot, and flirts outrageously with him. The two have a one-night stand that becomes an affair. Paula steals every scene she’s in. She has this raw, impulsive female energy that electrifies and appalls at the same time. Can you tell I love her? Gary, the hunky pilot Paula gets involved with, lives in the building that Wendy ultimately moves into in Vegas. Despite the fact that Paula is having a fling with him, Wendy can’t help having a major crush on him. Gary likes her too, but things never actually get romantic for them. They flirt, but nothing comes of it. I think, in a way, that he likes her too much to have a casual fling with her—and she likes him too much, maybe, to have a casual fling with him. In other words, if they got involved, they both sense it could get serious, and if it didn’t work out, they could both get hurt. So they dance around their feelings, and each other, all the way through the book. They actually become good friends, even though Gary hurts Wendy by flaunting his relationships with other women. He’s a smart guy who’s a great neighbor and popular with the ladies. He’s also handy with tools and can fly a plane, but I have mixed feelings about him. He’s the kind of guy you either run to, or away from, and often you can’t make up your mind. Paige, Paula’s younger sister, works as a Dolly Parton impersonator at Petticoat Palace and deals blackjack. She’s a sweet, motherly sort of character, even though she’s only 28. She gives Wendy a sense of security. She nurtures Wendy in a way, even though she’s 17 years younger. Serena is 28 also, Paige’s best friend, and a Cher impersonator at Petticoat Palace. Part of Wendy’s midlife crisis is that she hangs out with these younger women. In a way, she’s going back to her 20s and reliving them. She worked all through her 20s, so now she’s having the fun she should have had back then. Maxine is Wendy’s boss at Petticoat Palace. She’s folksy, fun, outspoken, smart, and a former Tropicana showgirl. She’s been in Las Vegas for 40 years and knows it well. She gives Wendy, and readers, a unique perspective on the city from the viewpoint of a former showgirl who was there during the Rat Pack era. Maxine is warm and open. She’s not sophisticated or well educated, but who cares? She’s strong, attractive, and has great common sense and instincts. She’s from Chicago, uses baseball analogies, and has this great Midwestern, no-nonsense attitude that I love. Tyler: Irene, how would you describe the book in terms of its genre? Is it fair to say it’s a comedy or at least very humorous because of the title and all these fun characters? Irene: It’s a comedy, but it’s also fiction about things that are not funny. Like the loss of friendships, relationships, and jobs. Like the inability to communicate with someone you love who loves you. Like being alone in the world—without parents or anyone you can really talk to. Like shallow friendships based on silly things. Like parents who died before you got to know them. Like the realization that all your life you’ve been “optional” to most people. Like being obsessed with your ex-husband, but not being able to face him. Like having everything, but being totally lost, and not knowing what to do about it—because you don’t even know you’re lost. So many of the characters in this book have money, success, good looks, talent, but they’re basically lost and alone. Gary, Kent, Wendy, Paula, even Roger. They’re highly productive characters who are dysfunctional in some profound way. You get distracted by the attractive, successful exterior and the Las Vegas setting. The book is listed as humor. It’s also literary fiction. But the cover and title suggest Humor, so that’s the category it’s in. Tyler: Do you have a favorite scene or one you think is especially fun that you could briefly describe for us? Irene: One of my favorite scenes in the book is the dinner party at Paige and Serena’s apartment where Gary is introduced. Paula knows he’s a pilot. He flies Posse, a rock band, around the country when they’re not performing at Luxor. She asks him about rock star plane crashes, and he goes into some detail about the tragic crashes of Rick Nelson, Otis Redding, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. It’s such a crazy juxtaposition: this dinner party in Vegas with six people, two of them on a bizarre girls’ weekend, talking about horrific rock-star plane crashes while they munch appetizers. The conversation soon moves on to the 9-foot golden horseshoe at Binion’s with $1 million in $10,000 bills displayed inside, deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos, and the chunk of Berlin Wall in a men’s urinal downtown at Main Street Station. I’ve never been to a dinner party like that! Tyler: As a man, I feel a bit sorry for Wendy’s husband, Roger, since he wants his wife to come home. Do you think he’s a sympathetic character in the novel, or is he primarily at fault for Wendy’s crisis? Irene: It’s a little of both. Roger was Wendy’s great love—someone who made her feel safe and secure. They were in love for seven to eight years. Both of them were ambitious. Now, this trait they had in common is driving them apart because Roger is so involved with his job, and Wendy has lost hers. He needs to be more sensitive to what she’s going through. But I don’t think she even understands the depth of what she’s going through, so she can’t communicate it to him—and he can’t really help her, or respond, in the way she needs him to. It’s a classic relationship dilemma. Roger’s project in Houston is a make or break issue for him. He’s a fifty-year-old architect. I think he sees Magnolia Crescent as his chance to seize the day and make it big. It’s the biggest challenge of his career. He needs this to work. (He may be having a bit of a midlife crisis of his own.) As a result, he forges a bond with his bosses. Their wives don’t like Wendy because she’s rebellious, independent, not family-oriented, and career driven. They denigrate her accomplishments and try to make her conform to their way of life. Roger doesn’t stand up for Wendy. He looks the other way because it makes his professional life easier. And he criticizes Wendy for standing up for herself and not getting along with them. All of this hurts her when she’s already vulnerable and destabilized from the move to Houston and the loss of her job and the friends and lifestyle that went with it. So, Roger is unaware of what’s going on with his wife. She isn’t even aware of it. They both are victimized by circumstances, and the way they react to those circumstances. Roger does what he thinks is right, but he no longer understands Wendy. And Wendy no longer understands Roger. In other words, what worked for seven to eight years is no longer working because the circumstances and setting have changed. Whether they like it or not, these characters are forced to change. As the characters change, so do their needs. Then it’s a question of whether or not they can meet each other’s needs. So, I do like Roger a lot. He’s intelligent, ambitious, loyal, amusing. The whole package, really. Ideal husband material. But these characters have different needs than they did, so they should make some changes. Neither one of them seems willing to do that, despite the fact that they love each other. So they hang on and wait it out, while pouring all their energies into their careers. Bottom line: I deliberately created the character of Roger to be attractive, successful, and, at times, charming, because I didn’t want there to be any easy answers for Wendy or the readers. And there aren’t. Tyler: Irene, I appreciate that you didn’t want easy answers. Although the book is humorous then, would you say one of your primary goals was to make it realistic rather than simply fun? Was there anything specific you did to make it feel realistic? Irene: The book is humorous and realistic. And we all know there’s nothing funnier than reality, right? All the little details make it realistic. The two Do Not Disturb signs dangling menacingly on Paula’s door; the maids shaking their heads in disgust and trudging down the hall with their cart; the copy of “USA Today” Wendy nudges aside with her foot; the hubcap-size plate of truffles; the fact that Roger is having a computer problem and has to call the Geek Squad; the wisps of blond hair peeking from the pink towel wrapped around Paula’s head; the purple Spandex workout suit she’s wearing the morning after Ron has been pounding on her door at 3 am. All those little details make it realistic. The different sides to the characters make them realistic also, make you know them as if they are real. Characters that seem real make a novel seem real. And that’s what it’s all about: getting into their hearts and minds, so that you love them or hate them, or a little of both. Tyler: To build on the last question, do you think the book being realistic is important to make it resonate long-term with readers rather than just make it a fun form of escapism? Irene: If something is realistic, it’s more relatable. You can think and feel like the characters because the circumstances, setting, and situation are something you can connect with. That makes a book resonate. It confirms that your experiences and perceptions are similar to other peoples’, and that’s comforting and reassuring. I think all art forms are a way of transforming your experiences and emotions into something outside of yourself that people can relate to. Tyler: You are obviously very familiar with Las Vegas and I mentioned when I introduced you that you made several trips there while writing the novel. Did you spend much time doing research, double-checking facts, or agonizing over details for the novel, or did you simply visit for inspiration? Irene: This book took five years, full-time, to write. I spent a lot of time in Las Vegas, going to clubs, restaurants, shopping malls, stores, shows, casinos, walking around the Strip, you name it. I also spent a lot of time in the Clark County Library reading books and magazines that gave me a sense of the Las Vegas of the past. It’s a very complex city with a long, winding history that is fascinating and unique. I learned as much as I could, but I’m sure there are experts out there who know more. The more time I spent reading about Las Vegas, the more interesting it became. That’s the truth. There was no end to it. I fact-checked everything in the book to the best of my abilities. That means over and over again to find any inconsistencies or contradictions. I knew there would be people out there who were familiar with what I was writing about, so I was very careful. As a travel writer for five years, I learned the cardinal rule: Never underestimate the intelligence of the readers. Tyler: Irene, I have to ask—do you have a favorite place in Las Vegas and what makes it special to you? Irene: The garden at the Flamingo. I love going there on a Saturday afternoon in May or June and watching multiple weddings in progress. I love seeing these happy people, all dressed up, who are in love and believe in what they’re doing, going through this romantic ceremony in front of the people they love. It reaffirms that people are optimistic and positive. I want to believe it’s going to be happily ever after for all of them. In the book, Peggy, the waitress at Come And Get It, spends her Saturday afternoons like this. The only difference is I don’t take a box of Kleenex. Not that that makes me any better than Peggy, but I don’t. Tyler: Irene, I have to ask you the inevitable question you’ll receive from readers, and since I mentioned above that you’ve lived in Houston and were married there, are you the Wendy of the novel, or is very much of the book autobiographical? Irene: Tyler, that’s a fair question. I moved from L.A. to Houston to be with my boyfriend-at-the-time. We got married in a dreary suburb and lived in a house that had chameleons. There were also killer termites, hornet nests, leaks in the roof, and a broken oven. And I was lousy at dinner parties. Seriously! To tell you the truth, I missed my job in L.A., my apartment, and my friends. My husband was a workaholic. I was sad and a little lonely. I went through a bit of an identity crisis. But then I started going to school, made friends, and basically fell in love with Houston and the life we had there. I studied women’s literature at the University of Houston. I took the same classes over and over and just sat there listening. It was a wonderful place, terrific professors, great classes. Without that background, I couldn’t have written the novel. I graduated in 1993. I was going to go to graduate school in women’s literature, but we moved to Denver in 1994. Wendy has a lot of me in her, but in many ways we’re different. She’s a fictional character. Too bad, because I’d love to call her up right now and have lunch or tea with her. Maybe we could help each other out? Tyler: What made you decide to write this novel? Irene: All my life, people told me I should be a writer. I ignored them. But I always wrote. I have boxes of things I wrote over the years. I was never that interested in getting them published. I just wanted to express myself. As a travel writer, I spent time in many cities, including Las Vegas. Every time I went there, I’d walk down the Strip thinking: wouldn’t it be great to write a novel set here? A funny novel about someone who comes for a weekend and doesn’t go home? What would she do? How would the people back home react to it? So, it was kind of a fantasy of mine: to come for a visit and not go back. Also, as a writer, it was a major challenge. I wanted to see if I could come up with an idea, create the characters, and go all the way with it. It took five years, but I was able to do it. Every day was a challenge, and satisfying at the same time. Tyler: Irene, I read on your website that you refer to writing this novel as your own midlife crisis. Will you explain for us what you mean by that? Irene: I always felt I would write a novel. I think I reached a point where I realized that if I was going to do it, I should go ahead, and stop putting it off because time was passing and I wasn’t getting any younger. And if I went ahead, I wanted to do something I believed in—even if it was outrageous, or unrealistic, or not appropriate to others. That’s the midlife crisis part: the realization that time is passing, and how do you want to look back on your life? Do you want to fulfill your potential and go out on a limb and take a chance on something that people might not expect from you, or do you want to go quietly and do what’s expected? Hello, Wendy! Tyler: So, no regrets? Would you say then your mid-life crisis was a success? Irene: I don’t know yet. These things don’t have a definable beginning or end, so you don’t know until years later how it went. Tyler: What kind of comments have you received so far from readers? Do you find that women resonate with the novel’s characters or message? Irene: Some women relate to Wendy. They see how she loses her identity, and this catapults her into a midlife crisis. They see how dissatisfied she is with her new marriage to the man she has loved for years—and they admire her for going to Vegas and having a good time and finding a career she loves—and maybe some new friends along the way. They find it liberating to see a woman who has her own money and makes choices based on what she wants, not what others expect of her. And she does it all with such anxiety, confusion, and ambivalence, so it’s not easy. At the end of the day, she achieves freedom and independence. So, some women do relate to her. Others focus on the shopping and excess in the novel. To be perfectly honest, the book is set between 2005 and 2007. That’s pre-recession Las Vegas, when there really was a sense that our economy was flourishing—and the good times would never end. That’s another wonderful thing about this novel: it’s a snapshot of Las Vegas at the top of the bubble. The city portrayed in the book is no longer there, and who knows when it will come back? There are people who feel that Wendy is an awful character to walk away from her relationship with Roger. There are people who think that a midlife crisis is something that happens to men, and not to women. That’s just not true. Our mothers and grandmothers had them. They may not have been aware of it, but they had them. Theirs were quieter and more subtle, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Wendy’s midlife crisis is louder and more colorful because she has more options and resources. Most of us fall somewhere in between. Tyler: Do you have plans to write any more novels, and if so, will you tell us about them? Irene: I would love to write a sequel to this book, because I can’t believe that the end of it is really the end. I’m thinking about it. If I didn’t do that, I would do something completely different. A whole new world with other characters. It’s a lot of work, and a big commitment, so I would have to think about it. I miss the writing—immersing yourself in another world every day for hours. Tyler: Irene, I understand the book is available as an e-book. Do you have plans for a paper version as well? What made you decide on an e-book version, and do you think that has helped or hurt your book sales? Irene: During the five years I spent writing “Slot,” I assumed it would be a print book. But as a novice novelist, I made the mistake of writing a book that was too long. At 175,000 words, agents and publishers were hesitant. A few told me that anything over 125,000 words was too long. As an unknown writer, I didn’t have a following. It takes money to print books, so books with more pages cost more money. To put my book into print was too much of a gamble. When “Slot” was accepted by an e-book publisher, I realized that I should cut 35,000 words to get it down to a more manageable 140,000. That way, if it did well, it could go into print later. I would love that, but to this day I miss those 35,000 words. I think having a book that is available solely in e-book formats hurts sales because it excludes the group of people who read print books only. The upside, though, is that my book costs $7.98. How much do you pay to see a movie these days? Tyler: Thank you again for the opportunity to interview you today, Irene. Before we go, will you tell us a little about your website and what additional information our readers can find there about “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis”? By the way I love the giant slot machine with the links on it. Irene: My website is www.IreneWoodbury.com. I wanted to create a website that would reflect the mood of the novel, which is sort of quirky and other-worldly, but very basic and down to earth. A little glamour and a little crassness. I love the ladies at the top of the slot machine. They seem to be commenting on me, or looking askance at my name. I think that also sets the mood of the novel. Claire and Doris represent Society in the book. They judge and look down on Wendy because she’s not playing the roles that are expected of her. A lot of people relate to that, others are threatened by it. Tyler: Thank you again, Irene. It’s been my pleasure, and I hope that slot machine eventually cashes in for you. Irene: You’re welcome, Tyler. I enjoyed visiting with you and answering your interesting questions.
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