Spotlight: Gary Pedler, From Journals to Gaydonia

PLU believes that the potential for art and creation exists in all of us. One of the ways we reify this belief is through our Spotlight series, where we feature artists who overcome the difficulty and convert that potential into actual. Gary Pedler is a fiction and travel writer based in San Francisco and Paris. His work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, and other publications. His travel memoir Couchsurfing: The Musical and his novel Gaydonia are published by Adelaide Books, and his MG novel Amy McDougall, Master Matchmaker is published by Regal House.

In this interview, Gracie Bialecki asks Gary about his original inspiration to become a writer and about some of the nuances one encounters while creating.

BIALECKI: How long have you been writing? Can you tell us a little about how your work has evolved?

PEDLER: For me, writing started mainly with keeping a journal. When I was thirteen, I had a Peanuts wall calendar with big squares for each day where I would write typical calendar things: when school started, when I had a piano lesson. Then some budding writer instinct made me start to write things in the squares that were more like nascent journal entries: “Visited the Curtises for Thanksgiving,” “Grammy gave me two Bookhouse books.” By fifteen, I was writing real journals, sprawling ones. I’ve typed the one for age fifteen, and it’s over 130,000 words.

When people asked what I wanted to be, I uttered those dangerous words, “I want to be a writer.” If I’d known I wouldn’t actually publish my first book until I was sixty, I might have had second thoughts about making this rash statement.

BIALECKI: Your most recent novel, Gaydonia, is set in the fictional country of Zablvacia. What was the advantage of having Gaydonia take place here rather than a country your readers might know?

PEDLER: Zablvacia is part of a tradition of small imaginary countries on the outer fringes of Europe: Ruritania in The Prisoner of Zenda, Bandrika in the Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes, or Pottsylvania in the Bullwinkle cartoons. The advantage of creating a fictional country was that no one could say I’d gotten something wrong. And that I could be silly, for example by having the country’s only manufacturing plant be a cookie factory. The disadvantage was that I had to do a lot of inventing, like finding a name for the country’s currency and writing its national anthem.

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BIALECKI: Did your extensive traveling find its way into any of Zablvacia?

PEDLER: Gaydonia originated with a trip to Croatia. I was visiting places where the people in the tourist agencies had clearly put their heads together and tried to package them for visitors. “Let’s see, we make a lot of sandals here, let’s call this the Sandal-making Capital of the Balkans.” I asked myself what would happen if some poor little European country decided to turn itself into a Mecca for gay tourists.

The publisher of my first book is originally from Serbia. That turned out to be lucky for me, because this book about one of Serbia’s “neighbors” tickled his fancy and he took it on.

BIALECKI: Interesting, I never would’ve thought Zablvacia was inspired so directly by a real-life event. Did you draw from any other specific experiences while writing this story?

PEDLER: If you write a novel called Gaydonia, obviously you’ll be dealing with the gay world. However, the main character isn’t a gay person, but a straight guy, Davor Matosic, one of Zablvacia’s ministers of finance. I’m happy with the way that turned out. It’s a novel with gay content, but with a straight protagonist. While I hope gay readers like the story, I don’t think of it as being narrowly targeted to them.

Another influence in the story was that by the time I wrote it, both my parents had passed away, and I didn’t have a very extensive family left. I comforted myself by creating a fictional family to spend time with, the Matosics.

In retrospect, I can see that I divided myself among the family members. Davor was the part of me that struggled to have an impact on the world. His wife, who was a psychologist, was the psychologist in me, the slightly detached observer. His daughter: the shy young me. His grandmother: the wry, aging me. His son: the gay me and the optimist me.

BIALECKI: Unlike Gaydonia, your forthcoming novel, Amy McDougall, Master Matchmaker, is realistic and written for younger audiences. What led you to this switch?

PEDLER: For a long time, I saw myself as a writer of realistic adult fiction. Later, a bit to my surprise, I branched out. As it happened, each of my first three published books was in a different genre, and none of them was realistic adult fiction. My first book was a travel memoir, Couchsurfing: the Musical. My second, Gaydonia, was a comic fantasy. My third was a Middle Grade novel. I feel like a bird flying around and trying to decide exactly where it would be best to roost.

BIALECKI: What advantages do you see in writing for a younger audience? Is there anything specific you did in Amy McDougall, Master Matchmaker to connect with its readers?

PEDLER: Writing for teenagers took me back to my own early days of reading, when it was just sheer pleasure – before the days of assigned reading in English classes or analyzing books in lit classes. I wanted to write the sort of fun, funny, engaging book I might have enjoyed as a kid. Though in addition I wanted to add an element that was missing from everything I’d read when I was young, namely, gay characters.

BIALECKI: Are there certain elements of your writing which appear consistently in all your work?

PEDLER: Humor, probably. The background of my YA novel is the struggle to prevent climate change, yet even there, it’s natural for me to work in a fair amount of humor.

BIALECKI: What have you learned through your writing journey? Any lessons to share with the Paris Lit Up community?

PEDLER: For a number of years, I tried to go it alone as a writer, which made me waste a lot of time. Finally, I grasped that, in fact, most good books are co-authored, even if there’s only one person listed on the cover. You absolutely must get help from friends, experts, critique partners, editors. They can make your job easier and give you insights you simply couldn’t have yourself, no matter how hard you try. The PLU community has been an invaluable part of my writing resources.