In this episode of Why Authors Write, award-winning author Christopher Castellani talks about what happens when he gives up on controlling the story line and simply listens to his characters. We hear about the mysterious voices that inspired Last Seen, and how Chris mixed fact and fiction to get to the heart of the relationship between Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo in Leading Men.
Last Seen, a darkly original, genre-defying work emerged from the real-life mystery of the so-called "Smiley Face Killers," whose alleged victims, young men found dead in icy rivers. "I really got caught up in the stories of these young, college-age men," Castellani recalls. "I went down the rabbit hole... reading all sorts of things about this supposed group." He learned that the conspiracy theories were bogus – and realized he wasn’t interested in writing true crime stories. To find another path, he gave voice to the dead.
Last Seen is no conventional thriller. Told from a purgatorial beyond — four young men narrating their own stories after death, communicating with each other and reaching back toward the people they loved — the novel evolved slowly, through false starts and years of frustration, until Castellani heard a voice: "I am one of those boys they keep finding in the river." "It sounds a little woo-woo," he says, laughing, "but I kind of followed that voice."
In contrast, his prior novel Leading Men was inspired by the relationship between Tennessee Williams and his working-class Italian American partner Frank Merlo — a man Castellani describes as central to Williams's greatest creative period. "While they were together for 15 years or so, that was the period in which Williams wrote the majority of his great plays. And then after Frank died, he never had another big hit." Castellani opens up about the audacious choice to write the text of a fictional "lost" Tennessee Williams play within the novel. He created a pivotal character in Anya, whose outsider perspective finally unlocked the Williams-Merlo dynamic for him.
Castellani reflects on his instinctive, non-outlining creative process, shares why he is still excited about the film option of Leading Men even after waiting for years for production, and ends with a tantalizing preview of his novel-in-progress, a comic Italian American coming-of-age story.
A deeply candid conversation about craft, obsession, grief, love, and the peculiar courage it takes to follow character voices you didn't expect to hear.
Chapters
- 00:00 How listening to his characters shapes the plots of Last Seen and Leading Men
- 05:35 Finding love, humanity, and humor in dark story lines
- 11:16 How a new book idea rescued Chris from doubts about Last Seen
- 19:38 Mixing fact and fictional characters in Leading Men
- 25:36 Advice for celebrating a film option offer by giving up ownership
