:.: Marmalade Skies :.:

"Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox..."

DIANE

Diane has been a beatles fan since they first exploded onto the American scene in 1964. Her novel Into My Life is one of the most beloved fan fiction pieces amongst beatlefans and here we finally get closer look at the woman behind it all!

So what's your full name?

I try to avoid using my last name on the Internet. I am not hiding anything -- I'm not famous, not even related to anyone famous, just reluctant to be that traceable to Internet nutcases!

favorite beatle? Well, John is the one who grabbed my teenage hormones back in 1964, but Paul was outgrowing the babyface and after he showed up in Help! in that black t-shirt, he claimed the lion's share of my dreams. By the time the Beatles broke up I had definitely shifted to Paul. John just went too far for me to follow. I didn't understand the bed-in and other events and took it for drug-addled behavior. I didn't care for the psychedelic shift in his music, and, probably most importantly of all, hated how he looked with stringy long hair!

favorite beatles song?

Impossible question! The best I can do is say that Rubber Soul and Revolver are the albums where I am least likely to skip past songs.

favorite beatles quote?

I suppose I should be ambitious and ponder over actual statements from JPG'n'R, but the "quote" I use most often is George's "Fiendish thingy!"

Ok, with those out of the way, lets get this started! Now, you say that you've been a beatle fan since you were a teenager. Why don't you go ahead and give us the lowdown on when and how it was that you became a fan?

I liked the song I heard on the school bus one day in 1964 - "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - scratchy transistor radio sound though it was. The owner of the radio asked me what I thought of the Beatles and I said "Who?" She informed me they were from England and had long hair. I was puzzled as to why that was so wonderful. Long hair sounded yucky! I saw them on Ed Sullivan a few weeks later, took one look at John Lennon and that was it!
If all that sounds like it wasn't the music that got to me - well, I have to be honest. The music alone wouldn't have done it. To this day I can't sort out what was/is the music and what was/is the Beatles themselves. Oh, I would have liked the songs regardless of who was singing them. The music _was_ special, but even at that, I bought "Meet the Beatles" because I wanted to hear more of the Beatles, not just more of their music.
I was already a big fan by the time "A Hard Days Night" came to town, but I think it was that movie that took me over the top. I saw them walking, talking, laughing, being REAL. I knew there was a script and it wasn't real, but it was obvious that for the most part they weren't being actors, they were being themselves. After seeing the movie I "knew" the Beatles. I knew John's humor and nearsighted, in-your-face way. I knew Paul's normalness in the face of insanity and his sense of responsibility and the way his face lit up when he was on stage. I knew George's quiet honesty and ability to cut through the crap. I knew Ringo's sweetness and unassuming nature. I knew they loved playing music for the fans and that being idols was not always fun.

Have you always been a writer? If so then who were your biggest influences?

No, "Into My Life" is my one and only venture into writing beyond staff education materials for work. When someone praises my writing style, I get this nagging feeling that I really ought to be applying whatever talent I have to an effort at writing a "real" book. But I just lie down until that nasty feeling goes away! I've always been an avid reader and my favorite authors are those who create believable, memorable characters like Harper Lee, Stephen King (his characters are real, that's what makes the unreal things that chase them so frightening!), Rumer Godden, Maeve Binchey, just to name a very few. I appreciate a good plot, but I don't particularly enjoy books that focus on the action. Although they make good movies, for me they seem shallow compared to books that let you inside the character's head, let you hear all his thoughts and reactions.

On to the actual novel: would you please do us a favor and tell us just how such a brilliant novel came to be born? When did you first get the idea you wanted to write this?

That's a long and winding road! I guess it really did start in the 60's. None of my school friends seemed to be as infatuated with the Beatles as I was so the only person I could share my mania with was my younger sister. Her favorite was George. We shared a bedroom and fell asleep every night listening to our ever=growing stack of Beatles albums. Our access to Beatle things was quite limited. Tiger Beat and other teen magazines were about the only thing besides the music available to us -- no videos of course, and if there were any books, they weren't available in my hometown. Although their movies were shown in our hometown, we were allowed to see them only once. We knew without asking that we wouldn't be allowed to go to Minneapolis to a concert. To fill the long gaps between new albums, I began to share my fantasies about the Beatles with my sister. I made up an ongoing series of stories about meeting them and going to England with them. There was no particular plot or ending to that series, just "weekly episodes." In spite of the fact that a large component of my attraction to them was their sex appeal, the stories themselves were as innocent as I was. Lots of "accidental" reasons to get physically close to one or another of them but the only romance was one episode (never shared with my sister!) that involved a romantic moonlight kiss from Paul. Even that story never went further than that -- I really didn't know what came next after kissing!
Those stories were just hazy memories for about 25 years until three events brought them back into my life . . .
The first event was a rediscovery of the Beatles in the late-80's. Although I was still a big Beatles fan when I started college in '67, I was soon involved with new interests. I was outgrowing the Beatles and they were outgrowing me! They just weren't the same Beatles I had fallen in love with in '64 and I was growing up and setting out on a new, adult life. I had met a guy and I was in love for real instead of dreaming of being in love. When I got married it seemed time to leave childhood interests behind and I left our collection of Beatle albums with my sister.
Over the next decade, I paid little attention to the breakup of the Beatles and their developing solo careers. The 70's were devoted to marriage and motherhood, buying Kermit's "It's Not Easy Being Green" instead of "Ram." John's murder was a shock but the media focus was on the John of Bagism and Bed-ins and losing that John was not as painful to me as losing Beatle John would have been. By the time he died, the John I had loved was, for me, already just a sweet memory.
The 80's added a return to college and then a nursing career to my life and I was busier than ever. By the end of the decade the kids were grown, and I finally had time for my own interests. I found out that the Beatles albums were now available on CD and, in a nostalgic moment, decided to buy some. I was amazed to find just how much the music still thrilled me. I put on headphones and heard things that had been unavailable to me on the cheap record player of my youth. My heart did that old familiar back flip with every special moment in a song and I was immediately lost in another bout of Beatlemania!! I rented HDN and Help! and watched them with the same giddy joy as I had 20 years earlier. I started searching the library and bookstores for Beatle books and learned so much that I had never known about them in the 60's. I cried as I read about John. I was so happy to finally understand that Bagism and Bed-ins really did have a serious message and were not just drug driven nonsense, so comforted to find that after some really bad years, he had finally seemed to find joy and meaning in fatherhood. It was nice to learn that George had carved out a life for himself where he could pursue his own interests and that Ringo had survived his problems and gone on being the sweet, open, unassuming guy he'd always seemed to be. Rediscovering Paul was discovering that he was as gorgeous as ever and had the added appeal of having proven himself a good husband and father, a hard working, dedicated and extremely talented musician, and good businessman. (I always knew he was good husband material!)
And then I discovered bootlegs and the Internet. If I hadn't had enough material to turn Beatlemania into a full-time hobby, I certainly did then!
And that brings me to the second factor behind the writing of "Into My Life". This is the part that I hesitate to tell as it sounds so ... melodramatic. But it is such an important part of how the story came to be that I have to tell it. In 1985 I began to have trouble walking and was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Those first years were really tough. Knowing that ALS patients have an average life expectancy of less than five years was overwhelming. By the late 80's it was apparent that my progression was unusually slow and predictions of a short life expectancy proven wrong. Now I had to deal with living with ALS, not just dying with it. A big improvement for the most part, but still the future was grim. Each new loss of strength and function meant yet another adjustment, another worry, another reminder that my case although slower than the norm, it was still relentlessly progressing to total paralysis. When I lay awake at night unable to sleep, I found escape in listening to the Beatles music. With the resurgence of my Beatlemania, I found myself remembering those stories and using new versions of them as an escape from worry and fear. When the '90s were too hard to live in, I could just close my eyes and fall asleep creating a sweet '60s fantasy. "Moonlight and roses" didn't have to mean sleepless nights and get well bouquets.
The third event was the one that turned my mental meanderings into writing. On a vacation visit back home, I was sharing my first Beatles bootlegs with my sisters, all of whom had become Beatles fans as they became teenagers. The sister with whom I had shared my Beatles stories in the 60's during surprised me by remembering those stories -- perhaps better than I did! Later that year I was planning a sister's get together weekend and I was thinking about what we could do for entertainment. I recalled her fond memories of those stories and thought it would be fun to commemorate them by writing an "adult version" parodying the popular smutty romance novel. I set about working on my project but soon found myself abandoning the idea of doing it as a short story or as a funny parody. It was going to be adult rated but it was not going to rely on the ridiculous sexual euphemisms of the "Pirate and Princess" type of novel. It was going to be told just as a girl would have experienced it and expressed it in the '60s. And it was no longer being written to share with my sisters. It was just for me.

All in all, about how long did it take for you to write the entire novel?

The first draft of the first half was "done" in a few months. I put it aside for a while, then, missing the fun of writing, I re-read it. After having taken time off from it, it was easier to read it more objectively and see the areas that needed work. Plot tightening, sentence structure, etc. As I did those things, I also decided that it just wasn't finished. At that time the story ended the night of the Christmas party, but it seemed to me that meeting and falling in love with a Beatle was the easy part. Taking him home to meet the parents, adjusting to life in the public eye, and hanging on to him was the real challenge. How would Tess handle it? Over the next year I added the second half, and began to share the whole story with 3 email friends. Their input was invaluable in helping me, especially in seeing where I had to do more to explain the characters' motivations. As they read and we discussed each chapter, I made revisions and the "final" version (I still keep dinking around with it -- it isn't a book, it's a hobby!) was ready for the Internet. Although it was probably three years in the process, I was only actively working on it in my spare time for about a year and a half during that time.

The novel is beautifully written and *well* researched. Are you a beatles connoseiur or did you just do a lot of homework on the boys? (I'd just like to tell you that your depiction of John is absolutely right on target!!)

Actually, my research was directed more toward finding out things like when pantyhose and birth control pills became available than confirming Beatles trivia! I did do some checking of the dates of Beatles events as I wrote, but obviously there are a couple of major changes in the time-line, most notably the shortening of the number of years Paul and Jane were together. For the most part, writing it was more a matter of incorporating things I had read over the years: Personality traits, events, people around them, things that had made some impression at the time I read them. The problem is that I can't seem to recall where I read any particular information! For example, I can't remember where I read Paul's account of losing his virginity. Worse, I can't remember if the bit about doilies turning him on was part of his story or an embellishment of mine!!!

Out of all the boys, whose was the hardest to portray in the novel, if any?

So much has been written about John and Paul, so they were the easiest to work on. However, with the story so focused on them I had to go so much deeper into them than I did George and Ringo. It was difficult to make John both intimidating and yet fascinating, capable of hurting feelings as well as giving incredible love. Everyone praises my depiction of him so I either got it right or, more likely, we all read the same books about him! Regardless, his complicated and contradictory nature made him a perfect character to keep Tess questioning her feelings. I think that Paul's character needs to be less sweet and considerate, especially in the second half of the story, to be realistic and believable. But since we see him through Tess's eyes, he would have to do something really unforgivable for her to think of him as anything less than wonderful!

What was the hardest scene in the novel for you to write (if any) and why?

Ha ha! Do you even have to ask? The famous Chapter 9, of course! I had struggled a bit with the kiss in the garden scene, a bit more with the janitor's closet and a lot with the office scene, but it was in writing Chapter 9 that I finally had to decide just how explicit the sex stuff was going to be. I wanted realism, and for girls of Tess's era falling in love and learning about sex were generally simultaneous. (Sex education was "on the job training" back then. There was little or no sex ed in school, TV couples slept in twin beds, and movies relied heavily on the audience's imagination after a fade out just when things were getting interesting.) It seemed logical to document Tess�s physical involvement as thoroughly as I did her emotional involvement because they were so intertwined for her. However, I no longer wanted to write it as a romance novel parody. That meant that using the cliched ("the center of her womanhood") and bizarre ("throbbing man-root") phrases they are famous for was out. But what words would I use instead? The obvious solution was to use the words Tess would have used. Even that was difficult though. I�m no prude, I was really self-conscious about putting that on paper at first!
Another difficult part to write was the ending. I didn�t know where or how to put an end to the story! It was getting so long that I began to feel like I was going to have to drive a stake through its heart to kill it! The last chapter was written as an attempt at some kind of closure but my email is full of "But what happened at the reception/on the honeymoon/once they got back to London???" letters. I just can�t bring myself to work on a sequel though, so readers are free to imagine their own!

I know that this is going to be a hard question to answer: the boys mean so much to all of us each in a profoundly personal way. Could you tell us *why* the beatles mean so much to you personally?

Actually I think it has more to do with baby ducks than the Beatles being kindred spirits, inspirations, or guiding lights in my life! Their influence on me was that of the 60's in general � and the Beatles have never claimed to have instigated the changes of the sixties. (Except for their music, they were simply high visibility followers of the real trend setters in drug use, fashion, attitude, etc., part of "the movement" not creators of it.) The personal feeling I have for them is, I believe, a matter of imprinting. Like a baby duck that forever considers the first creature it encounters as its mother, I think teenagers have a moment when something stirs them, excites them, and is forever after imprinted in their hearts. I can�t explain it anymore accurately than that - they are in my heart.

Would you care to share with us your feelings on George's passing?

Only to say that of all of them, I suspect that George was best "prepared for that eventuality" because of his religious and philosophical interests.

Fan fiction is an exploding genre. Do you personally do any reading of other beatles fan fiction?

I go on binges of fanfic reading at times!

If you do, do you happen to have a favorite fan fiction (Besides yours?)

There are many stories out there that I enjoyed, but I really can�t say that I have a particular favorite. I know I am going to forget to mention some of those I particularly enjoyed, and I have forgotten the titles and lost the links to others, but I like Tony Chandler�s "Their Music", and James Ryan�s and Lisha Goldberg�s short stories (at Rooftop Sessions). Other short stories I like are "Another Yesterday" by Gail McGear Sweeny, "I Need You" by Jane Williams, "Here Today" by Linda van Buchem. For longer stories I enjoyed "A Dark and Snowy Night" and "Mistress and Maid." "The Beatles: Live at 12 Cold Creek Street" is a favorite too because it is such a classic example of the genre. Even though it was written in the 90's, it is exactly the dream of every girl in the 60's -- somehow the Beatles end up in your own living room!

It is universally acknowledged amongst the beatles fan fiction community that your novel is one of the very best out there. Do you have any advice for us aspiring writers?

Even though you can visualize the story as it unfolds, remember that you are writing a story, not a play or movie. Your reader won�t see facial expressions or other body language, won�t know the tone of voice, won�t feel the mood created by the surroundings unless you tell them. Take the time to give descriptive info. Go beyond dialogue and action: Take advantage of the writer�s opportunity to explore what is going on in the thoughts of your character. That is something a book or short story can do much better than a movie!

Visit Diane at her website Into My Life