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Email Story to a Friend July 16, 2006 Kitty Lion poses with her third novel A Long & Winding Road The story behind the story of Ashland author's 'Catch A Falling Knife' is filled with as much intrigue as the novel itself By BILL VARBLE Mail Tribune On the front cover of Kitty Lion's new novel is a blurb from veteran editor Alan Rinzler calling it "dazzling ... pyrotechnic ... a real original." Sure, Rinzler worked on it, but he also edited Toni Morrison and Hunter S. Thompson. This is a guy who doesn't have to say anything about anybody's book. The blurb on the back is from Tom Robbins (yes, that Tom Robbins). It says: "I would follow Kitty Lion to the shores of Lake Tanganyika ... " Lion's book, "Catch A Falling Knife," is a thriller about the adventures of Nadine Silverman, a tough, sexy, globe-trotting adventurer who likes her cash fast and her men true, or is it the other way around? Lion, 45, of Ashland, wrote and rewrote "Catch a Falling Knife" over a six-year period while teaching imaginative writing at Rogue Community College in Medford. She got help from writers and editors; had the book twice held by publishers that wound up not publishing it; had it with an agent; and finally placed it with Xlibris, the Internet-based print-on-demand publisher, and that may not be the end. This is one long, strange trip of a book. Advertisement Nadine hears that her old comrade and lover Antonio, with whom she ran guns to the rebels in Chechnya, is still alive, and dangerous people are on his trail. Maybe some Russians, maybe the CIA. What ensues is a hyperkinetic international adventure that reads like a story behind today's headlines (or those of five years ago) if it were written by Dan Brown and Erica Jong with a little help from Graham Greene by way of Jack Kerouac. "Knife" is a thriller, but it's one with literary ambitions. As Nadine searches for moral truth in a murky world of hidden designs, Lion's prose moves in punchy, sometimes breathless rhythms that take off in hyperbole and loop back on themselves. Here's a sample: Light is a slippery thing, I thought. Take the sun for example. It's not what we would call solid and stable. Then I thought of Antonio. Here was a modern American hero, a capitalist with compassion, a Ph.D. with a loyal mind, more humanitarian than human, brilliant, a symbol of the glory and myth of his country, stupid, free, a product of polyester blend, the opium trade, the nuclear age; a fine soldier despite his perplexing history, open and honest, beloved. The whole world seemed to be after him. Lion says her characters usually begin with something Lion says her characters usually begin with something of her in them but take on a life of their own and grow into unique people. She admits to some nervous moments in public readings with Nadine's randy sex life. "She's her own person," she says. Jonah Bornstein, a poet who teaches writing at Southern Oregon University, calls the book "intense, passionate, surprising, articulate and somewhat flamboyant." He says, "I think it mirrors not Kitty's life, but something about her personality." p Lion came to fiction through the theater. Originally from the New York suburb of Harrison, she earned a master's degree in French at the Sorbonne. She and author Tom Robbins met in 1985 on a rafting trip in Africa and later lived together in Washington, where she wrote plays. "Tom and I didn't last," she says. In 1987 she married John Lion, who had created San Francisco's Magic Theatre in a Berkeley, Calif., bar in 1967. The Magic became a hip icon at Fort Mason, and Lion produced work by Sam Shepard (who was sort of the Magic's house playwright), David Mamet, Michael McClure and others in the 1970s and '80s. Ed Harris and Peter Coyote acted there. Lion was known in the theater community for being focused on writing. One day he handed Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the beat poet and founder of City Lights book store, a draft of Kitty's first novel, a Holocaust story. After a time, a thoughtful letter came. "He crossed out all the adverbs in the first 10 pages," Lion says. "He told me to keep writing." In 1999 John Lion was hired as chairman of the theater arts and dance department at California State University at Los Angeles. The family had no sooner moved to Los Angeles than he died of pneumonia, leaving Kitty and four children under 2. "I was in a hotel with two kids," she says. "I couldn't stay. And I couldn't afford to live in San Francisco." Wanting to stay on the left coast, she talked to Robbins. "Tom said, 'If you move to the Northwest, to just one place, make it Ashland,' " she says. In the fall of 2000 she began teaching fiction, poetry and essay writing part time at RCC. She met Alan Rinzler, a founder of Rolling Stone magazine, through an agent at the Squaw Writers Conference in Idaho in 2001. "He didn't know I knew Tom," she says. "I was looking to get it tighter. I thought it was good. People still said I needed to change things. He worked with me for two years. "Later he found I'd been married to John. He'd also edited Tom. It was important to me that it wasn't through Tom that I got his help. Working with him was a graduate education I didn't get." Rinzler said the book needed a backstory. "He said to choose a country," she says. "He mentioned Chechnya." He would take out text. She would put maybe one-quarter of it back in. "You're learning to use my editing," he said. p Lion says she's written three novels, nine plays, some of which were produced in festivals, a screenplay that was optioned but not made, and some short stories over the last 25 years. "Catch a falling knife" is a stock market saying. A falling knife is a stock that's plummeting. Try to catch it and you'll probably get hurt. The book was 800 pages at one point. "It's full of ideas," Bornstein says. "It reminds me of a John Fowles novel." Vern Underwood, chairman of RCC's humanities department, found the beginning confusing — not that there's anything wrong with that. "It's her hook," he says. "You're in the present, and you don't know how the character got there. The end gets back to the present. It has a cinematic quality." A literary agent she wanted badly read the book, turned it down and sent a long letter that said that in places, the writing was "about the writing." Another agent agreed to represent the book but retired before anything happened. She talked with Robbins. "But mostly he focuses on light," she says, "and I go for more a dance in the dark, as if hey, things aren't great, but we might as well have fun." One publisher went out of business while considering the book. Lion finally went to Xlibris. "The alternative is, you send it out to some big place and wait," she says. "I knew I could market the book. Xlibris stores books digitally and prints them to order, splitting royalties. POD books typically sell in tiny numbers and do not make money. They don't get reviewed. "I just lost patience, I think," she says. "I got some bad advice," she says. "In the long run I'm kind of frustrated. It is hard." "I thought she quit too soon," Bornstein says. "I thought she could have gotten it published. I think she just wanted to get it out there and move on to another project." There may be a silver lining. "The good thing is, it changed so much," she says. "I did so much editing, it developed to another height." She's again trying to interest New York agents in the book. Xlibris does not own any of the rights, so it could happen. "I'm hoping," she says. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] . Kitty Lion plans a signing at noon Saturday, July 22, at Barnes and Noble in Medford. She plans a signing/tasting event with cheese from the Rogue Creamery at 6 p.m., July 30, at Pascal winery in Talent. "Catch a Falling Knife" ($22.99) is also available at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland. Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker Custom Build Computers Discount Hotel Reservations --> online casinos news Send Flowers California Casinos GMAT Prep Windermere Van Vleet Sports Equipment Entertainment Guide --> Online Casino Fundraisers Sudoku Online Casinos Canada Ashley Furniture HomeStore Advertisement s Advertisement