Report from Santa Fe; Anne Hillerman

The National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from San Fe. Today we are celebrating the release of a new book by Ann Hillerman, a steam New Mexico beloved New Mexico author. Thank you for joining us. Oh, Lorraine, thank you so much for having me. I'm just delighted to be here. Well, we are celebrating, I think this came out on April 3rd. That's correct. It's already, by the time of the taping, where does it stand on the New York Times? Well, the last I heard, it was number eight in, that's hard back sales combined with e-book

sales. Yes, well, you have quite a fan base and they're very eager. I'm sure they put it down and ask you for the next one. So you don't, there's no rest for you in this equation. You started, let's talk a little bit about your own personal background, you started that as a journalist, tell us what kinds of things you were writing. That's right. I started out, well, I started out covering the legislature in this very building a million years ago for United Press International back when they were still a new service. And then from there, I went to work for the Santa Fe New Mexican, the paper, the state capital paper. And I started out on the copy desk and then I covered all kinds of things. I was a police reporter, I did a lot of arts writing and feature writing. I was the editor of the Entertainment Magazine that preceded their beautiful pasta tempo. And then for about the last year I was there, I was the first woman to be the editorial page editor.

And then I had a son, I took some time off and then I went to work for the Albuquerque Journal and the journal was able to arrange for me to work part time for them. So again, I did feature writing, I did some columns, I did entertainment reporting. And then I started the editorial page for Albuquerque Journal North. And I did that for, I guess a couple of years. And then I moved on to writing books. Yes, well, thank you. Thank you so much. One other book I want to mention, your husband is a famous photographer, Don Strill. And together, you two have made one of my favorite books, Tony Hillerman's Landscape. So you went and looked at all the well-described places in your father, Tony Hillerman's wonderful Leaporn and Chee books. And you went there and took excerpts from the books and then Don made these beautiful photographs. And it also comes, anyone wants to trace your footsteps. There's a map, a southwestern map and guide of Tony Hillerman's Landscape so that the real Hillerman freaks can go out and desaturate themselves in this.

Of course. I would call them fanatics. Fanatics. Well, some of them might be a little off, but I are one. You know, I just love it. Let's talk, of course, about your dad and what prompted you to continue this series. So his first one was, was it 73? Well, 1970. 1970, the blessing went. That's correct. Yeah. And he wrote that series for more than 30 years. There were 18 books in his Jim Chi, Joe Leaporn series. And that was partly what inspired me to do the Tony Hillerman Landscape book. You know, as you mentioned, dad had such a beautiful way of describing the country where his stories were set. And he said, often he would do talks and people would say, you know, I love that description, but I just can't imagine that this is a real place. And this was particularly true for people who lived in the vast green eastern part of the country.

Yeah. But Don and I thought it would be fun to show people, yeah, these really are real places. And to have a little background text that talked about, say, why the Hubble Trading Post was there, or what were the forces that created Canyon de Che. So as, right as we were finishing this book, my father died. So the book came out a year after his death. And Don and I went to a lot of little bookstores and libraries and talked about the book and showed the his beautiful slides of his beautiful photos. And then so often people would say, oh, did your dad have any, were there any more books almost ready to be published, anything that's coming out any more, Jim, she did jolly print stories. And Don and I would have to say no, you know, dad really took care of business before he died. So after I heard that question many, many times, it dawned on me that besides missing my dad, I was really missing those stories too. So in a way, the Tony Hillam in landscape book was kind of a bridge for me from writing nonfiction to jumping up head first or feet first, however the case may be, into the world

of writing novels. Well, there are two threads I want to go on from there because you do import a lot of metaphysical into the physical geography. But I want to sit with a physical geography because landscape in your books and in Tony's books is like a character. It's like Max Evans works and other people wear the Western landscape and the place where the story is set is a very important feature. It's not just a background. It really informs the action and the people. So you moved and cave of bones, you have a new locale. So let's talk a little bit about your main character, the beloved Bernie, and where she is, what her natural habitat would be as a Navajo police officer. And why you chose to do it in the male pie, the lava fields. Well, that's a really good question. Originally, that book was not going to be set in the male pie.

It was going to be set in another beautiful landscape called the Bistideinazine wilderness. And that's partly owned and managed by the Navajo nation. So it seemed to me that would be perfect. But unfortunately, it was just too, I don't know, too beautiful. It was something, it just didn't quite lend itself to having death in mayhem. So I thought, and maybe I might go back to it, maybe as a subplot or something. But I thought I need a landscape that's a little darker and more sinister. And of course, as you're heading west on I-40 from Albuquerque, you drive right through the edge of the male piece. And I had been there and hiked around. So I thought this might work. And the other thing that made me think it could be a good choice is that it borders on the Rema Navajo reservation. So I thought there is a Navajo link. So I did some research and I was getting pretty excited about this. But then it dawned on me that Bernadette Manolito, who has become my main crime solver, is actually stationed in Shiprock, which is several hours away from the Rema reservation and

from the male piece. So I thought, what can I do to give Bernie a reason to be solving a crime here? And luckily, since this was my fourth book, I've gotten to know Bernie pretty well. And I knew that it's really hard for her to say no when somebody asks her a favor. And particularly if it's reciprocity where this person's already done a favor for her. So I came up with a way to get into the story where a patrol person, who stationed at Rema, had filled in for Bernie when she was on her honeymoon. So now she calls Bernie, she needs some time off and Bernie says, and not officially from her job, but from a favor that she's offered to do somebody. So Bernie says, oh sure, I'll do it before she really understands what the favor was. So that's, anyway, that's how Bernie gets out to the male piece. And then from there, the story unfolds sort of rock by rock. Yes. And I have to mention this caveat.

We're talking about a murder mystery, and we have to be very careful only to give background details and not to have any spoilers. But one of the things, and back to the metaphysical in the physical. So as she's tromping around the dried lava and this precarious landscape, she tells, or she reveals some of the create Navajo creation myths about how the hero twins kill the monster, and then his blood flowed forth and when it coagulated it became the lava fields. Well, now that's an ominous and mysterious element to the very backdrop of your story. Oh, I love that story. And you know the Akama and Laguna people and the Zunes all also have stories that have to do with how the lava was formed, and all of them have to do with kind of like the Navajo story, with bad things happening, and then some hero, some supernatural figure sort of stepping in to try to make things right again.

So yeah, I mean, it was just, it was really the perfect, I thought, the perfect landscape for building a mystery. Yeah. I want to go back over some of your other books for one reason, because I love the covers. And so the first one that you decided to do, because as you said, you wanted to know how she and Leaporn were doing, but you shifted the focus very much. We're so grateful to this female character who is intricate, bright, just a wonderful character, and she is married to Jim Chi, one of the original Chi Leaporn figures. But you are very much, this is the first one that you wrote, Spider Woman's Daughter. And to me, you are very much a Spider Woman yourself, because you weave all these intricate thrives of myth and modern life and the very fact that Bernadette's family are weavers. There's just layers and layers of nuance behind there. Also it takes Canyon to Shay, the place where Spider Woman, Jimny Rock, where Spider Woman wove the world.

So you're able in Spider Woman's Daughter to bring all those myths in this one too, completely seamlessly. Of course, we would want to know this. This is the first one. Many comments on Spider Woman? Well, the title of that book, I had finished that book and I couldn't really decide what to call it. And there's a scene in that book where Joe Leaporn, who was my dad, the first character, my dad developed back in 1970. He has this old computer and something has happened and so they need to unhook his computer. And like my dad's own computer, there are a million wires that used to be connected to something and now they're not, but they're still on the floor. And the officer that Bernie is with is a rather roton gentleman. So he can't quite get down on the floor to do this. So Bernie's down on the floor trying to figure all of this out. And he says to her, oh look at you, you're doing that so well. You're just like Spider Woman's Daughter. And I thought when I wrote that line, it just kind of came to me. But afterwards, I thought that's a good title for this book because just like you were

saying Bernie, with her background in law enforcement and her kind of instinctual knowledge of people, is able to weave together all of the parts of the crime to figure out who did it. And you as a meta creator behind weave the characters, we've spiritual issues, contemporary issues, history and suspense all together. And then you came out with your second rock with wings, which is set in monument valley. So talk to us a little about the second book, Rock with wings. Well, so in the first book, Bernadette Manolito really is the main crime solver with Jim Chi helping her. So I thought, okay, in Rock with wings, I'll just have them work together to solve a crime. So I had worked on Rock with wings three or four months and it just was not, not moving along. And I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. And so I just kept working on it kind of going in circles.

And every morning, my dog and I would go for walk. So one morning, we were walking along and my dog is a very good listener. So I was complaining to her. And it dawned on me that poor Bernie Manolito had been a sidekick for most of my dad's 18 books and that she was done being a sidekick. And I had sort of demoted her back to the role of not quite sidekick, but more crime-solving partner. And no, she wanted to have her own mystery. So then I thought of, well, what can be another mystery? I came up with something and from then the story just really moved along. And you know, a lot of writers say the characters take the story and I never exactly believed that. But after that experience, I'm starting to. Good. Then the song of the lion, again, beautiful history, beautiful mythologies, beautiful metaphysic, talked to us a little about the third Bernie book. Well, the song of the lion is set, the story unfolds partly in Shiprock and partly at the Grand Canyon.

And it's one of those sort of ripped from the headline stories. It concerns a possible land development on Navajo Nation land and the controversy about that. And so, and again, Bernie and she are sort of working on different ends of the same story, but in the end, it all comes together. All right. And we're speaking today with famous and fabulous New Mexico writer Anne Ellerman, celebrating the launch of her newest book, Cave of Bones. So now that we've been through the first three, talk to me about this, the fourth. All right. Well, Cave of Bones, like I said, the setting of it in the mall pies was really where the story started. And I think the same might have been true with my dad. When I come up, I come up with a setting and then I sort of think what would be a story that would lend itself to being told in this landscape. So Cave of Bones opens with a young, with a program for teenagers who are, say, on the edge of disaster.

They're not bad kids, but they certainly could be bad kids. And one of the girls in the program gets lost in structure. I'm not giving away too much because this is all like in the first five pages. And then an instructor goes to look for her and he gets lost. And that's when Bernadette Manmelito gets involved in the book. So I was writing this story of the girl who's lost and I came up with a subplot for Jim Chi. He comes to Santa Fe to get some training and he's dealing with Bernadette's Henri Little Sister, Darleen. And I had finished what I thought was a pretty good draft of that book. And I let it sit. And then when I went back to it, I thought, well, this is pretty good, but it's not complicated enough. I know mystery readers really love puzzles inside puzzles and I do, too, having read a lot of mysteries. So I thought, what can I do to turn up the heat a little bit on this story? And I realized part of the problem was that Jim Chi was just kind of on vacation in this book.

And he needed a little more drama in his life. So I came up with a story that would have him acting more like a detective. So and I sort of then retrofitted that into back into the main novel, but nobody seemed to notice. So I think I was really glad that was my fourth book instead of my first book. But I like it. I like it a lot. It has a lot. I think a lot more complexity in how the crimes unfold and how the relationships are connected to what's going on in the main plot. And also the characters, particularly the bad guys, are so much more complicated. It's not, it's not straightforward, they're intricate family histories and relationship histories that cause them to behave the way they do, but it's unpredictable. And so you really participate as Bernie finds out more and more about them. You're, this is a book about loss, isn't it? And what's left behind? It is a book about loss.

And it's also a book about assumptions. And how thinking we know something can get us in a lot of trouble. And that particularly is true in the, the, the Jim Chi story where he makes early on, he makes some assumptions about some people he's dealing with, which turn out to be wrong. But give him a lot more difficulties than they would if he had just kind of been open to what, what reality was. And I know in my own life, that's a lot of times when I've gotten myself in trouble. It's for, because I've assumed things instead of just asking what was really going on. And I think no matter how good a detective is, that certainly gets in the way. I mean, it's, it's sort of the filter that all of us use to see the world. And I love the way you display that because it's through this character that he made assumptions about. He's allowed to reveal his true nature. And, and we all see, oh, you know, gosh, we assumed, you know, because he looked like that and it talked like that that he was this kind of person. And indeed, it turned out he was not, he wasn't a bad guy.

And actually the same is true in the Bernie story where someone who, and I don't want to give away too much, but someone who you would think would not be, would not have any mystery to him, turns out to have a lot of mystery. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, oh, I have to say one more thing about that. Oh, please. Well, that's what you're here for. Sorry. One of the wonderful things about being an author is that you get to control the weather. Yes. New Mexico has had such a dry, warm winter that it was really fun when I was writing cave of bones to give our state a real blizzard and have the traffic have to stop on the interstate. And I'm sure people in those real blizzards, I know I've been in them. You don't enjoy it. But when you're writing and it's 50 degrees when it should be 35, it's just, it's really fun to create a snow story. Also you do very beautiful descriptive passages of the sparkling snow and all this. Once we haven't had any in so long, it makes us very nostalgic. Um, when, when we spoke some time ago, have you, is there any progress we made about television

or a series? Are you? Well, yes. Collaborating with some important people. Well, I, I'm not collaborating yet. Uh-huh. It's, but, uh, Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin have, and there are lawyers and on to Raj, I have an option now to not only on my books, but also on dad's books on the characters and the stories. I'm the literary trustee for dad's books. So I signed that option, oh, I guess about February. And it was for, I think it was four, six months with a six month extension. And for people who aren't real familiar with it, an option is kind of like, kind of like saying to somebody, maybe I'll ask you to the prom. It's not like, it's not like getting married, but it's like a first step in what I'm hoping will be a, uh, long term, happy relationship of bringing these characters back to the screen.

And there've been a couple of, uh, television productions of your dad's, I think PBS in them. That's right. That were really well done. And you would really have one or two stipulations, which is that Navajo actors play Navajo characters. Yes, yes, yes. And that's really, really important to me. And secondly, that they do whatever they can to actually film the stories where they , where they do place, not come up with some kind of a set in, uh, Topeka or something. But come out here to New Mexico and take advantage of our beautiful landscapes. So, uh, you're very, very busy. I, you know, here we want you to write more and when I look at all the things you're involved in, let's just speak about a few of them, uh, this month you'll be doing a, a speech of the Willard lecture at the UNM Library in the Frank Waters Room in beloved New Mexico writer. And you're going to talk about your dad's legacy. So I know we don't want you to, but tell us a little about what you've been working on in that presentation you're going to do.

You know, I was so grateful to get that invitation because it really gave me time to kind of look back on my dad and, um, sort of make it make, um, have some, some kind of logical steps to considering what his contributions were to New Mexico and to the world of literature. So I'm going to talk, um, I'm going to give a little bit of, of dad's background and then I, and then, uh, his, his contribution to the world of journalism, both as a journalist for about 20 years, uh, a very, um, skilled and aggressive reporter. And then also a journalism teacher he taught at the University of New Mexico was head of that department, really helped many beginning journalists get their, get their feet on the ground and also help them with endorsements and recommendations. So I'm going to talk about that. Then I'm going to talk about his, uh, the other way that ways that his life at the University of New Mexico was instrumental in him becoming an author. And then I'll talk about, uh, him as a dad, as a writer and how his books were really

breakthrough books before, uh, I would say books that he read in the 60s, 50s, 60s was kind of the Raymond Chandler model where the detectives are urban, white men, usually with troubled pasts. They have a lot of, exactly. Please keep drinking. So you're at smoke in. Exactly. A lot of, a lot of sexual innuendo violence, maybe not as graphic as we see in, in some, in some contemporary books, but certainly more graphic compared to what my dad was writing. And, and how his books were really taking the mystery genre to a whole different place. And then finally, I'm going to talk about his legacy in terms of the way he handled his fame, his, uh, generosity of spirit. And his, I guess his humility in terms of being one of the best known writers in New Mexico and still being so generous in terms of helping beginning writers and also in, in the fact that he donated all of his papers to the University of New Mexico, along with financial contributions

to help the university, um, care for them and make them available to the public. And then I'm going to talk a tiny bit about me and how, how, you know, how the legacy of these stories inspired me to continue, continue writing them. Um, didn't somebody, after the first two say the stories were good, but get rid of the Native Americans? Exactly. And that was the jewel in the Lotus that was, what made them so magical. One thing I'm looking for very much, my favorite biographer, James McGrath Morris, is working on a biography of Tony Hillerman. So I know that you're working with him and we're all looking for it to that. He will do a wonderful job. He'll do your dad proud like you have. He sure will. He sure. I'm delighted that he's doing that. Yes. Other things you're doing, you used to run the Tony Hillerman writers conference before you started writing fiction. That's right. And now you have a writer's dinner, a New Mexico writer's dinner where people can come mingle with writers and the proceeds after paying for the dinner go to scholarships for

young writers. I think that is so wonderful. I was really, really honored when they asked me to be the speaker this year. Part of the fun of that dinner is the networking. Just writers from all over the state and even out of state. Just having a chance to be together and chat about their lives and maybe a little bit about what they've learned is learned from the industry of publishing and sharing tips with other writers. And the way the dinner is set up, they're also our scholarships for people who are just starting out who would like to come and rub shoulders with some of us who work with some of their idols. Yeah. Yeah. You're also, there's a New Mexico press women conference. And when I look at your dad's journalistic career and then your journalistic career to be doing, it's about the narrative of what's the title of something like the power of narrative I feel.

And so I think telling stories boldly is part of it. Good. Yeah. Good, good, good. And then even at the botanical gardens, you have a food for thought. I mean, how do you find time to write? How do you balance all this? It seems to me that energy, the more energy you put out, the more you get back. I think it's kind of like love, really. It's like, you know, you can just, you can, you can be a hermit or you can go out and play. And I find that the more it, look, let me go back. Being a writer is such sort of a, it's kind of a schizophrenic life where you have to be quietly by yourself in your own brain, you and your computer and your imaginary friends. But the other part of it is then getting all these wonderful limitations to come and talk about your work. And in the, in the best of situations, do it so it's also a benefit, say for the Santa Febitanic Garden or the scholarship for writers or something that benefits our wonderful library systems. You have always been dedicated to libraries. I'm so grateful to that.

Even I think you did a book signing recently and the beneficiary was a library, so, and they really appreciate that. And the other thing are these, all of our wonderful little local bookstores in New Mexico. I mean, I have nothing against buying online, but I think when it comes to books, it's just so nice to be able to go into a bookstore and see all kinds of books you didn't even know were out there, and bookstores by arranging events like they have for me really feed us writers. They give us a chance to talk to fans and to come up, I mean, sometimes fans have ideas we wouldn't have even thought of ourselves. For instance, in Cave of Bones, there's a map in the front. And the reason that map is there is that a fan sent me a note and she said, it would be great. If when I'm reading your books, I could see a map and see where where Jay and Bernie are now. I thought, oh, great idea. I sent that email on to the New York publisher, really not quite thinking they would do something with it, but sure enough, Cave of Bones has a map. And also, our guest today is Anne Hellerman, and we're celebrating her new book, Cave of

Bones. In a way, this series of books is a legacy, is a kind of map for the journey as you continue in this adventure of recreating this world. So I thank you very much, and we're looking forward to the next one. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. And I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd like to thank your audience for being with us today on Report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Past archival programs of Report from Santa Fe are available at the website reportfromsatafay.com. If you have questions or comments, please email info at reportfromsatafay.com. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tos, New Mexico.