Bestselling Minnesota author Lorna Landvik drew dozens of enthusiastic readers to the Clearwater and Becker libraries this week to share her experiences as a writer and promote her novel, Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes).

Landvik, a witty and humorous storyteller,  opened with some background about how she became a writer.

“I learned to read in the first grade with the Dick and Jane books,” she said.

After seeing how the author made the characters come to life, she “set her sights on writing.”

She spoke about a very influential teacher she had in the sixth grade - Mr. Spaeth, who she referred to as a Renaissance Man.

“Every day we had a sing-along. He read to us every day,” she said.

At that time in Minneapolis there was a weekly program called, “Let’s Write,” where, the program DJ would read students’ work. The program was carried over the school’s speaker system. Mr. Spaeth would submit Landvik’s poetry to the program. Her’s was read over the speaker twice.

“I remembered being so thrilled,” she said.

In her autograph book at the end of the school year, Mr. Spaeth wrote, “best of luck for a fine literary career.”

“I never forgot that,” said Landvik, “and in my second book I acknowledged him for that huge boost of confidence.”

She continued to write throughout junior high and high school, but also enjoyed acting and wanted an acting career.

She and her friend moved to San Francisco hoping to start a standup comedy act. They performed for small crowds in places like church basements, but after two years, she decided to move to L.A. where she did standup and improvisational comedy.

“At the time, I was writing short fiction because I felt I didn’t have the depth of experience or maturity to write a novel,” she said.

She talked about writing monologues while trying to pursue an acting career. She worked for record companies, movie studios, writing synopses for classic movies and even typing labels for videos at the Playboy Mansion.

She spoke about other ways she made money, like as a contestant on the $25,000 Pyramid. On one show her partner was  Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver), where she won a trip to Tahiti.

Landvik also spoke about taking part in the Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament from L.A to Washington D.C.

When she got back to L.A. after the march, she decided to move back to the Twin Cities. On the way, two characters and a title of a story came into her head. 

When she arrived in Minnesota, she was hired by a comedy company. She worked at night there and would work on her own novel later at night.

That’s when she wrote her first book, Patty Jane’s House of Curl. The book was inspired by the two characters she thought of on the way back from L.A. She wrote it all by hand then typed in on an old typewriter.

She remembers it was 2:30 a.m. and she was crying.

“I was so happy because I realized I was crying over the death of a character whose death I already knew about,” she said. “It was the typeface that made it so real as a reader to me. I thought, if I’m crying, maybe it’ll mean something to another reader.

“And that’s always how I write - am I involved in this? Do I want to know what happens next?”

Landvik’s next step was trying to get her book published, so she did research about how to write query letters and wrote down a list of agents. 

“It was fun but disheartening, going to the mailbox to get stacks of rejection letters,” she said.

Finally, in 1991, the day after the Halloween snowstorm, she received a phone call from an agent who asked to see the manuscript. 

That woman became her agent, and after multiple submissions to publishers, her agent called and said a small publisher wanted to publish Patty Jane’s House of Curl.

During that process, Landvik says characters and a title for a second book came into her head. That became her second book, Your Oasis on Flame Lake.

“That’s how each book begins. When I’m nearing the end of a book I’m writing,” she said, “the characters of the next book come into my head.”

Her latest book, Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes), is about a female columnist. It takes place in a fictional Minnesota town called Granite Falls. It is Landvik’s 12th novel.

In closing, Landvik had some advice for members of the audience.

“I got 30 rejection letters, so if any of you are writers,” she said, “I can not stress enough the importance of not giving up.”