![]() Through it, I learned that stories could have a kind of power I had never imagined. I was quiet and different, too much in love with books and classical piano music to belong anywhere. Junior high is the part of school that most of us remember as “thank God it’s over.” Somehow, even the popular kids weren’t having fun (though they didn’t let the rest of us in on that secret until years later). Bach’s Invention in A Major, and it was the angry heartbeat of Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor. It came to my piano lessons with me and slipped into the music I played. It followed me along the shadowy floor-polish-smelling corridors of the junior high building–new territory for the new sixth grader–and infused itself into math problems and Spanish sentences. When the summer ended, the story came back to school with me. I didn’t settle on that for another twenty years or more, but that story took hold of me as no other ever had. I can’t say that summer was when I decided to be a writer. I checked it out, took it back to my grandparents’ house, and for the next four days I parked myself in my grandparents’ living room, with the tick of the grandfather clock on the wall to keep me company, and ate, breathed and slept words. The summer before sixth grade, I found Watership Down in that library. If you had been a kid in Berwick, you would know, too, that the brick-walled library in town must be bigger on the inside than the outside, because any book you want is hidden somewhere in its maze of wooden shelves. You’d know that if you want to watch a sunset, you should go up to the lake in the northwestern corner of town, and while you’re there you should toss crumbs for the little sunfish. You would also know practical things, like the fact that Dalo’s Bakery on Freas Avenue makes the crustiest torpedo rolls and the softest, sweetest raisin-filled cookies. It’s so crisp and clear that it should glitter. You would know that they don’t make the same kind of air anywhere else. For instance, you would know that the sunlight up in the mountains is daffodil-yellow and as sweet as water. ![]() If you had been a kid there, though, you would know a few other things. If you go there, and drive into town across the concrete span that used to be a railroad bridge, you’ll probably think this is Anyplace, America.įrom the outside, you would be right. My grandparents lived in Berwick, Pennsylvania, a small town that sits on the bank of the Susquehanna River and looks across at an even smaller town called Nescopeck. Everything else, though, boils down to the story and the place where I read it: my grandparents’ house in the Pocono Mountains. Bits and pieces of the rest of that summer hang around in my memory: a day of camp here, a sleepover with my best friend there. The summer before I started sixth grade, I first read Watership Down. Visit her online, and check out her Storytelling and Sound blog on the links between writing and music, at. She lives in Maryland with her husband and feline contingent, and when not writing or music-making, can often be found hiking and exploring the outdoors. Kris’s short fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Glassworks, Reed, Bluestem, and Luna Station Quarterly, among other journals. ![]() To Love a Stranger was inspired by Kris’s work as a professional musician and is set in the backstage world of the classical symphony. Her first novel, To Love A Stranger, was a finalist for the 2016 Schaffner Press Music in Literature Award and was published in May from Blue Moon Publishers (Toronto). Today’s guest is Kris Faatz (rhymes with skates), a pianist, writer, and teacher. My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. ![]()
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