How do you want to depart from this life? Do you have an evacuation plan? These are not easy questions to think about, in part, because most people become uncomfortable when they think about death. O’Connell has created a series of short stories that explore, evaluate, and cope with death in it’s many forms. Some characters think back to when a loved one has died, and the circumstances surrounding it. Another character is a nurse in a hospice, dealing with death of patients. A woman thinks about the death of her unborn child, and a man thinks about the death of his hope. Another man confronts his own death, in his last moments, and reflects upon the events of his life. The main character is a screenwriter, who is visiting the patients who are in the hospice dying, in the hopes of finding a story. Things become very personal, and very involved.

One of the things I found interesting is the way this book works, with many of the characters overlapping into other stories and interacting with each other. Reading this book feels something like watching a good ensemble cast preform a play. It was so real, I couldn’t look away, and I found myself caught up in the stories of each character.

Joe O’Connell was kind enough to do an interview for Book Sandwich.

Jen Thorpe:What kind of music did you listen to while you were writing this book? Or, did you work in silence instead? How did you manage to stay in the serious frame of mind required to write this book?

Joe O’Connell: Sometimes music works for me when writing. I’m partial to loud punk rock and mellow singer-songwriter tunes. But I wrote a lot of this novel while doing a residency. I was given a small room, and I’d go there and quietly type away on an old Mac. It was heaven. The best gift you can give a writer is a place to write and the time to go there.

JT: In Evacuation Plan, it seems that every character is deeply affected by death, in wide variety of ways. What made you decide to write a book with such serious subject matter? Was it difficult to continue writing about so much tragedy and sadness, or did you find it to be more of a cathartic experience?

JO:Back in 2001 I was chosen for a project that sent writers and visual artists into Christopher House, a residential hospice in Austin, Texas. It wasn’t some great altruistic thing for me; I was doing research for a mystery novel I was working on. For a few months I would visit the people there, and the experience stuck with me. Hospice, in my mind, is not a depressing place. It’s where the dying are both made comfortable and empowered to be in charge of their own demises. They get to say a proper goodbye to their loved ones. Who could ask for more?

It was reading Tim O’Brien’s book July, July that really showed me the novel-in-stories form that I could use to tell this story. That is having a larger story that digressed into the stories of individual characters. In the end I wanted to tell the story of this place and what pivotal moments lead these people–the dying, their families, the hospice workers–to this hazy line between life and death.

JT: Are any of the characters, or their specific stories, based on a real person or an actual, true- to- life event? It all seemed so real when I was reading it.

JO:I was certainly inspired by people I met in the hospice, but I strived to steer this book toward fiction. I was mostly brave about asking people about how it was to face death, but I chickened out one time. It was with an older guy, a builder from Houston, who reminded me too much of my own father. I quickly slipped out of the room before the questions got too deep. I realized when I wrote about this experience in fiction, I had to tell the story of someone like him, or at least an imaginary version of him.

But a better way of answering your question is to say I believe that writing a story is like making a quilt. We sew together little moments of actual experience–I was a valet parking attendant in my early 20s, for instance, and that shows up in two stories–and create something brand new.

JT: Two of the stories in your book refer to Christmas. Carla has set out to get a Christmas tree for herself, and Charlie Wright’s kids are bringing a tree into his room at the hospice for him. These two concepts, Christmas and death, seem like opposites to me. Can you explain why you combined them in not one, but two parts of your book? What were you trying to say to readers?

JO: You’ll actually find even more references to Christmas in the book. The Guy in the Hall looks at Christmas photos before going off on his odd personal meetings with his younger self, for instance. Have you ever heard of the term clan consciousness? It’s this notion of how we pass down the stories of our culture. In my mind, Christmas is a big part of that. Beyond its original religious meaning, Christmas means family to
most Americans. It’s when you go through the old rituals–dragging a tree into the house and decorating it, spending too much on presents, raising old arguments with your parents or siblings. I’ll bet it’s when the most photos are taken, too. So Christmas is when the family comes together, just like Charlie Wright’s family comes together around his deathbed. They put off the big Christmas celebration because he wasn’t there. I guess it’s a matter of now or never.

JT: I was very impressed with how well you were able to write from a female character’s point of view when I read the story about Carla, the woman who was recovering from an abortion. Many times, writers who attempt to write from the viewpoint of a character that is the opposite gender from themselves end up getting things not quite right. How were you able to make Carla and her story so vivid, and so believable?

JO:That’s a big compliment. Thanks! I think Carla is so real because I know what it is like to go through that moment of being cut adrift. It’s when you are first completely on your own and have to fend for yourself in a sometimes cruel world. It’s not an easy time, and the abortion really adds to that for Carla. I worked with the great short story writer Andre Dubus when I was in graduate school, and he was also known for writing about female characters well. I think it’s a matter of getting at what it is to be a human being. That should be at the heart of any piece of fiction.

With Carla and her brother Bob I was very interested in the notion that children have stories about which their parents know nothing, but those are the stories that make them particularly human. Perhaps it’s OK for the parents not to know, and part of the child growing up is to be able to keep those secrets close to the heart.

JT: The chapter that is about “The Son” was sort of creepy! Something about the little girl calling him “Bo-Bo” combined with his thoughts about the hotel room. At the end, I wasn’t sure what really happened? Did he kidnap this kid? To what end? Care to elaborate?

JO: It is a creepy story! And that’s a piece that Dubus actually worked closely with me on. (Carla’s story was written much more recently.) In the end I think he doesn’t kidnap the girl, but he certainly considers it. Bob is emotionally a kid himself, and a lot of this flows from his anger at his own parents for their perceived abandonment of him. This story came from an interesting place. I read an ad in the University of Texas student newspaper, The Daily Texan, seeking someone to drive a child back and forth between parents who lived in different cities. I instantly wondered if they hated each other so much that they just didn’t want to see each other face to face!

JT:Will you share with my readers some of your thoughts about the afterlife? Do you follow the belief system of a particular religion? Do you believe there is something waiting for people after they die, or that it just ends in nothingness? Did you question any of your beliefs about life after death while you were writing Evacuation Plan?

JO:This is a question that came up recently when I spoke to a book club made up entirely of hospice workers–counselors, doctors, nurses. I’ve had perhaps an odd religious upbringing. My family was very Catholic when I was a young kid-we’d pray around the bed together. But that largely disappeared after my parents divorced. And my mother later moved to India where I spent a little time as well, which had an influence. Plus I have major problems with how large segments of organized religion have been co-opted by politicians whose actions demonstrate they don’t believe in much of anything but their own selves. Which is a roundabout way of saying I do believe there is something bigger out there. And spending time in a hospice, and writing this book, just made me more certain of that.

JT: Your main character is writing a screenplay, and the chapters that are from his point of view start with the header “The Screenwriter”. Should my readers expect to see Evacuation Plan in a movie sometime soon?

JO:I have had a little interest from independent filmmakers, and I’m a film industry columnist for both The Austin Chronicle and Dallas Morning News, so I know more film people than most writers, so it’s a strong possibility. I’m a screenwriter, too, and I was preparing to teach a screenwriting class while chosen for a residency at which a lot of the book was written, so it was on my mind. But I framed the story through the eyes of a screenwriter because they are the real storytellers of our modern times. People watch a lot more movies than they do read books! I liked the notion of having my story told by a character who is himself in search of a story. I think in the end he discovers the story was really his own.

JT: What’s next for Joe O’Connell? Will there be another book that includes some of all of the characters we met in Evacuation Plan? Or, are you thinking about doing something completely different in your next book?

JO:I have a completed mystery novel I’m trying to place, and I’m working to complete a second one, which is the one I put aside in order to write Evacuation Plan. It’s somewhat similar in subject matter, but the hospice/halfway house where it’s set is a lot lower on the totem pole. It’s full of the outcasts of society who can’t get a break, and they’re one by one dying before their time.

JT: Where can my readers go on the internet to keep up with your book signings, and future projects?

JO:My official writerly Web site is joemoconnell.com, which has a feed to my blog, joemoconnell.blogspot.com. Reviewers, editors, agents and such can also check out joeoconnellnewsroom.com for info on upcoming events, recent reviews and newspaper articles about Evacuation Plan. I also encourage book clubs to contact me. I’d like to use my novel as a means of starting discussions about hospice. I will talk by phone or in person if possible to any book club that will have me!

JT: Thank you so much for doing this interview for Book Sandwich!

JO: Thank you, Jen. Some great questions!