Chapter Member
Spotlight Profile
November 1998
Chapter MemberSpotlight Profile
November 1998
Louise Guardino,
Steering Committee Member
Caught in the cross-hairs above is the lady who usually fires off the questions at our profiled member of the month. Louise Guardino has conducted every interview since the first Spotlight Profile went up in August, 1997, surprising every interviewee at least once with the questions she came up with. Louise was a member of the original Genie Chapter of SinC and was directly responsible for most of the first set of bylaws ever written for an online chapter. Louise is also SinC-IC's Bookfinder, tracking down those out-of-print books that are often so hard to find.So the Steering Committee thought it was high time Louise had her own turn in the spotlight -- an idea that met with somewhat less than roaring enthusiasm from Louise herself. In fact, it took the entire Steering Committee to drag her kicking and screaming to this interview. "This time we do the asking," we told her. "You do the answering." Once Louise realized there was no getting out of it, she bravely faced up to the task and answered our questions. Sort of.
We asked Louise to provide a quotation. She selected the following passage from a story she wrote.
Baby wiped the top of the can off with a tissue before putting it to her mouth. She could have barfed. She pulled her coat tight. It was freezing outside. She sat down on the steps and looked at the junk near the back of the house. Old tires, a washtub, deflated soccer balls, and was that a dead mole over there? Gimme a break, who the hell ever saw a washtub except in a movie? What're these people anyway? It gives me the creeps. It was the middle of winter and here she was, sitting on some dump of a place out in the nowhere land of Jersey. Jeez.
IC Why this passage?
Louise It was short enough and on the lighter side. It's also from one of my favorite, though moldy, pieces, "Italian Ice". One of my closet babies. I've probably violated all sorts of grammatical rules, never mind alienating all the New Jersey natives, but this probably best represents the lighter, rather than dark, side of me.
ICWhat else have you written?
LouiseTwo other manuscripts moldering in the closet, two more partials, a novelette, many short stories also languishing undesired, and a few short stories that actually saw sunlight. The first manuscript is probably not salvageable. But what the heck, it kept me from bashing something at work and most of the times it was fun.
ICIs writing a pleasure or a chore for you?
LouiseBoth. When it flows then I enjoy it. Much of my "Italian" stuff seems to come more easily. But I get hung up in the small details. I have to know for sure that such and such will happen when X does Y. (Like, if one is locked in a freezer, how long before hypothermia sets in and what effect will it have?) I revise quite a bit, but after the third time, it gets tedious. And I always find things to change. My biggest problem is PLOT. Big problem. Sometimes I can know beginning and ending but forget the middle! Chore!
ICPick a piece of fiction you wrote when you were around 21 years old and contrast it to something you've written recently. Where do you see differences, changes, both in technical qualities as well as content and your philosophical approach to story?
LouiseThis is easy! I don't have a piece of fiction written when 21. All that trash has long since been discarded. (Does that release me from this question?) I did find some poems and one mini story, "Defeated", in one of our H.S. magazines and the subject was the last man on earth. Guess who the victors were? Heh!By 21 my writing had not changed much. It was not as tight as now. Today my characters are fleshier than in the past and the themes are different. I didn't write mystery or crime-based fiction. The content was either wacko or serious (war, hate, life). And one Redbook-like effort at 21. A flop. Followed by a half-a-lifetime hiatus.
Philosophical approach? I don't know that I have one. I'm a reactive writer, I think. The mood of a song, the pathos of a person's situation, or news of a particularly cruel act can send me to the keyboard. There, the focus becomes representing the mood, or the how, why, and the dealing with a situation, or wreaking fictional justice, legal or otherwise. Did I say I wrote lean? Not here.
ICYou're a transplanted New Yorker, right? What prompted the move to North Carolina?
Louise
An arrest warrant. Nah, actually I was on my way to the Air Force. Never quite got there but it did get me out of NYC. Most of the subsequent years were spent in Connecticut, then, New Jersey, (which isn't all I-95, refineries, and stink), and finally NC.
IC
On your way to the Air Force? You were going to join the Air Force?
Louise
Sure 'nuff. I liked their uniform best! I also liked planes...
IC
Tell us what you do for a living.
Louise
Nothing. Manna comes from the sky and up from the earth when the proper spirits are called upon. Other necessities appear when needed. Now ask if there is a Wicker Man in my back yard!
ICIs there a Wicker Man in your back yard?
Louise
Wicker Man and Wicker Woman. Equal Opportunity, you know.
ICWas name, rank, and serial number in there somewhere? What would you do if you got a real personal question?
Louise
Dodge. You think I'd answer a boxer-or-brief sort of question? Not on your life.
IC
Okay, then, how do you keep the squirrels out of the birdfeeder?
LouiseNo fancy birdfeeder. I let them share and give the squirrels corn to distract. My problem has been keeping them from (1) gnawing at my siding and the answer is bags of mothballs tacked to the siding (lovely appearance!), and (2) nesting in my covered gutters and the answer there is replace the thin gauge wire on the ends with heavy steel gauge.
IC What first got you involved with Sisters in Crime?
LouiseIndirectly Margaret Maron, who was enticed to be a Genie SinC guest by Barbara Paul. Margaret was not and probably still isn't online (she feared it could be addictive) and so she asked if I could help her out. We had the interview, Margaret enjoyed every minute of it, and I ended up a SinC member.
ICYou are a gifted interviewer. How did you get your start?
LouisePick me up from the floor, will you?. Thanks for saying so but it is indeed all an effort for me. It is not something I'd choose to do. Which is why I procrastinate until the last minute. How I got started is easy: Barbara called. Out of the blue. She had the idea of the Spotlight and it's like being the last one at work at night when another bug is found: I was around.
ICLouise, if you could interview anyone in the world, whom would you choose? Why?
LouiseEeech. If I were Barbara Walters no doubt I'd have a great answer. I presume we are talking living person here. This is tough. I'm thinking Arafat, Jimmy Carter or Jesse Jackson. I'll go with Arafat (despite the language problem) because whatever the responses, we'd be left with much to think about.
ICSince you post the profiles and do the graphics for that page and the AskaPro page, I assume you know a good deal about graphics. How did you get started?
LouiseI'm a neophyte. I got started, once again, when the Spotlight started up. I got a scanner and tried it out. Sandy's graphic (the Celtic letter) was all her doing. I'm terrible at any kind of "fixing", requiring filling in or drawing. I can't do squat. A straight line is beyond me. I had drawing lessons in Catholic school. The nun concentrated on basics. I wanted to create a picture; I lost interest.
ICSince you work so much with computers, describe your "dream machine".
LouiseActually, what I have now suits me fine. (SuperMicro P5mms98 board w/pentium 200 MMX; STB Vision 95 video ...). If I were a gamer then I'd go for a fast bus (100mhz) stable board like an AOpen AX59Pro with 1MB L2 cache and an AMD K6-2 300mhz processor; an Ultra DMA hard drive 10gig with minimum of 9ms access, and a video card with the 3Dfx Voodoo chipset (for 3D graphics). The ideal would be a fast, low heat, low wattage, laptop with the works. Oh, and cheap, too!
ICWell, we did ask, didn't we? What do you enjoy reading -- when you have the time away from your SinC duties, that is?
Louise Hah! Mysteries (more hard than cozy), thrillers, science fiction, some horror, some mainstream (Frazier's Cold Mountain) and nonfiction such as Burrough and Helyar's Barbarians at the Gate which was fascinating from the git-go.
ICWhat's the first thing you do in the morning when you get up, assuming you get up in the morning?
LouiseWhat a question! Well, now it's take my synthroid pill so I don't fall asleep in the supermarket line. If you notice my responses getting slower...
ICDo you have any hobbies -- things you like to do? Are you the outdoors kind of woman?
LouiseBefore age it was softball; before dogs it was hiking trails; and before all that it was photography. I was never a jogger, I was a sprinter, much like my dogs: short high bursts of energy before collapse. Now? I walk and spend a lot of time on my PC: fooling with this and that.
ICIf you were going to get a free trip to anywhere, where would that be? Who would you take with you? Why?
LouiseI'm a stay-at-home now, but if you're offering: maybe another trip to Sicily, this time with camera and notepad busy recording background material, otherwise known as fodder. Maybe I'd take the same person who was with me the last time.
ICWhat is your favorite food? And do you consider chocolate one of the major food groups?
LouiseI love chocolate! But I eat it sparingly. Chocolate to me is like a biscuit to a dog. Favorite food? I like too many to select something as a "last meal". It depends upon my mood. I do like escarole cooked in olive oil and garlic. And salt. Yum.
ICWhat do you want to be when you grow up?
Louise
I guess I'm too laid back now. I have no burning desire to become anything. When I was a teen I wanted to become someone. (Usually the fantasy took the form of a scientist of some type.) Life changed the wish to just find something I could look forward to doing each day. I never could answer the "where do you want to be in five years" questions either. (My "how about right where I am now" didn't fly for career planning purposes.)
ICHere's your chance to send a message to the world. What's it going to be?
Louise
The time is now.We thank Louise for so graciously submitting to the above grilling; she now returns to her proper place on the other side of the interview desk. Visit Louise Guardino's home page at http://home.earthlink.net/~louiseg .
And Louise loves to get mail.
Read an earlier Spotlight Profile.
