Author Questionnaire
A Q & A with Author Randy Richardson about his debut novel, Lost in the Ivy
Q: What is Lost in the Ivy about?
A: At one level, it’s a basic whodunit murder mystery. But at another level, it goes much deeper than that. It’s really about optimism and maintaining hope, even when there seems to be little hope to cling to.
Q: From where did the story idea spring?
A: The short answer is with the death of a neighbor.
Q: What’s the long answer?
A: In the mid-1990s, when Lost is set, I was living in a studio apartment that is basically the studio apartment that the protagonist Charley Hubbs has stumbled into at the onset of the story. Like the apartment in the book, my studio bordered Wrigleyville and Boys Town, two very different neighborhoods living, somewhat uncomfortably, next to each other. Both neighborhoods attract predominantly male populations but for very different reasons. Wrigleyville’s main attraction is its namesake, Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Many of those who move into Wrigleyville are, like me, die-hards – as Cubs fans are commonly known. They are predominantly white, single and strictly heterosexual. Those who call Boys Town home also tend to be single but that’s where the similarity ends. Boys Town is Chicago’s main gay district. While I was living on the border of these two divergent neighborhoods, there had been a spate of hate crimes – or gay bashing incidents – against gay men in Boys Town. Against that backdrop, a neighbor of mine died in his apartment. Initially, there had been rumors that he had been killed. Then the story was that he had committed suicide. Eventually the story became that he had died of a drug overdose. I knew very little of this neighbor other than that he was gay and threw some pretty wild parties – at least they were wild in my imagination, as I had only overheard them through the thin apartment walls. After moving out of that apartment, my neighbor’s death kept gnawing at me. My overactive imagination got me wondering about other scenarios. What if Jimmy had really been murdered? And what if signs began to point to his quiet, unassuming, new neighbor as a suspect in his murder? With those thoughts in mind, the seed was planted for what would become Lost in the Ivy.
Q: Explain why the book is broken into two parts, a Season of Futility and a Season of Hope.
A: Because the storyline is set against the backdrop of Wrigley Field and the protagonist is a die-hard Cubs fan, I decided to have the story arc follow the heart of a Cubs fan. The Season of Futility is the fall, when baseball season comes to an end. For Cubs fans this has since 1908 – the last year the Cubs won the World Series – meant heartbreak. Not surprisingly, nothing seems to go right for the protagonist Charley Hubbs during this Season of Futility. In baseball, a new season begins each spring. There is always the hope of next year. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the outlook for Charley seems a lot brighter in the Season of Hope – although there always seem to be some dark clouds on his horizon.
Q: Do fact and fiction sometimes get blurred in Lost in the Ivy?
A: Yes and no. The settings are all real but the story is purely fiction. There are obvious similarities between the protagonist of Lost in the Ivy, Charley Hubbs, and me. Like Charley, I was a newspaper reporter. And, as I noted earlier, the Wrigleyville apartment that Charley moves into is modeled after the studio I rented in the mid-1990s. Charley's thoughts sometimes are my thoughts, but that shouldn't come as a surprise since I am, after all, the author. But what happens to Charley is purely fictional. If this were a story about the real me, it would be dreadfully boring.
Q: But the places are all real?
A: Yes, but the neighborhoods have changed considerably since I moved away almost 10 years ago. Of course the neighborhood’s main landmark, Wrigley Field, at Clark and Addison streets, is still there and hasn’t changed much since it was built in 1914. The hand-operated scoreboard that went up in 1937 is still there, as is the ivy that was planted on the brick outfield wall that same year. Legendary baseball owner and promoter extrordinaire Bill Veeck gets the credit for both the scoreboard and the ivy.
When I moved into Wrigleyville almost ten years ago, in the waning days of the summer of 1995, it was not the Midwest version of Mardi Gras that it has become today when the Cubs are playing ball. I recall walking up to the ticket booth at Wrigley Field for the last homestand, buying a ticket and walking right into the stadium. Today that would never happen without the assistance of those kind folks who sell tickets on the streets at three or four times the face-value to suckers like me.
As the popularity of the Cubs and Wrigley Field has grown, so has the neighborhood. Half-million dollar condos have replaced the $500-a-month studio apartments where I once lived. Hip restaurant and bar chains now litter the landscape. Much of the charm of the Wrigleyville I knew – and describe in this book – has sadly vanished.
The Ginger Man tavern I wrote about is still there, but it is not the same place that I knew. Although it remains a cozy escape from the predictable sports bars in Wrigleyville, you’d be hard-pressed to find live classical music there anymore, as I have described in the book.
The Manhole, Boys Town’s infamous gay-leather disco, closed down a couple of years ago.
Q: From where does the title of the book derive?
A: A quirk of Wrigley Field is that about once or twice a year, a baseball gets stuck or lost in the ivy. In such a case, the outfielder is supposed to throw up his arms as a signal to the umpire that the baseball can't be recovered. If the umpire accepts the outfielder's position, it becomes an automatic ground-rule double. The protagonist in Lost in the Ivy, Charley Hubbs, is lost and trying to find himself – something that becomes all the more complicated when he finds himself charged with murder. So the title serves as a double-entendre – relating to both the place and the person.
Q: Any final comments?
A: Almost seven years it took Charley Hubbs to roll out from the ivy. Being lost with him was an adventure like none I’ve ever taken. I hope that readers find that it was worth the wait.