Some of you may remember this interview, which I posted in November, 2009, with New York Times bestselling author of Jesus Land, Julia Scheeres. Nearly two years later, Scheeres’ book about Jonestown, A Thousand Lives, has been released after rave reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.
To celebrate, I am giving away one signed hardcover copy of A Thousand Lives. All you have to do is comment below (and be a Google Friend Connect follower) before midnight of October 17. I will pick one name at random from those who comment and announce that winner in next week’s blog post, on October 18. And now, a little background about Jonestown from Julia Scheeres before our interview:
Jonestown was a utopian community formed by Americans in Guyana, South America, under the leadership of a Bay Area preacher named Jim Jones. On November 18, 1978, 913 of Jones followers died in a mass murder/suicide by drinking a cyanide-laced punch. Jonestown will explore what happened during Jonestown’s last year as Jones became more drug-addled and paranoid, his followers became more disgruntled, and the Socialist utopia they attempted to create deteriorated.
MW: How did you get interested in writing about Jonestown?
JS: I was working on a novel about a fundamentalist minister, a charismatic preacher, who takes over a small Indiana town, and then I remembered that Jim Jones was a charismatic preacher from Indiana, so I Googled him as part of my research and found out that the FBI had just released all these documents. Then my journalist side kicked in, and I knew I could sell the project because no one had written a book about the documents before. They included 50,000 pages of diaries, letters that were never sent home, crop reports, meeting notes and suicide notes that they picked up off the ground in Jonestown after the massacre. The FBI held onto them until they were sued to release them under FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act). The problem was they released them on three CDs but without an index. So a letter might start on page 235 and end on page 687. It took someone working at San Diego State University about ten years to put them in order. He had completed the index not long before that, so I got the index from him.
MW: Last year, you went to Guyana to visit Jonestown. What was it like?
JS: There’s nothing there now except for the rusted-out carcasses of a few vehicles. You look at the pictures of Jonestown, and they built this town in the middle of the jungle, with cottages and kitchens and wood shops. It was a town. Now it’s just a big field that the jungle has mostly reclaimed.
MW: How did it feel being in Jonestown?
JS: I almost passed out from the heat. I can’t imagine in Jonestown there were people working from six in the morning until six at night, doing agricultural work. After being in the sun for fifteen minutes, I swooned. I thought I would feel more since 913 people died on the place I was standing, but the grassy field that’s there today is so incongruous with the magazine pictures of the bodies piled up.
MW: What happened to Jonestown after the mass suicide?
JS: It burned down after people left. The locals are really poor, so they carried away the pieces of the corrugated metal roofs and anything else they could potentially use.
MW: What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned about Jonestown doing your research?
JS: The extent of the lies that Jones told the people to goad them toward committing mass murder/suicide is the most troubling. A third of the people were children, a third were seniors, and all of them were lied to to some degree about what was going on. They were told that they were surrounded by mercenaries who were going to torture and kill them. It was a lie. There were no mercenaries in the jungle.
MW: What is your process for paring down so much information?
JS: It took me a year to read through the FBI materials and organize them and decide what the story was going to be and which characters I was going to follow. I’m mostly interested in the people who got to Jonestown than in Jim Jones himself. I am basically following five people, some who live and some who die. Thanks to my training as a journalist, I know how to do research and track people down, to organize massive amounts of material, to write tightly and to tell a true story.
MW: How has writing Jonestown differed from your experience writing Jesus Land?
JS: It’s a lot easier in that I have no personal involvement in this story. It’s also been a thousand times more complicated because I had to do such a massive amount of research, reading through 50,000 pages of documents, tracking down the survivors and talking to them. Jesus Land was very personal, and this does have some personal elements. Jim Jones’ church was supposedly socialist, all about equality, eradicating the isms—racism and sexism, elitism and classicism. They were going to banish all of that and be truly equal. The race element was huge. If you’ve ever been to Glide in San Francisco, there are blacks and whites worshipping together, and you never see that (anywhere else). Having had black brothers, we were always longing for acceptance, a place to fit in. The Peoples Temple was a place where blacks and whites lived and worshipped together.
MW: Looking back on your career, is there anything you would do differently? Any advice you have for nonfiction writers who are just getting started?
JS: It’s really difficult to balance all aspects of motherhood and career. I feel like I’m doing a good job at both, but my goal is to stay really focused and when I’m at work. And I’m a big fan of setting writing goals. Even if I don’t meet them, as long as I give it my best shot to meet those goals, I feel better about myself. Otherwise the project seems really overwhelming. It’s easy to be mediocre, and to make your living as a writer, you have to go to the extra mile. One thing I do when I’m writing is use those ear protectors to filter out any outside sensation so I can really hear my writing as I’m writing it, and it works. It looks crazy, but it really works. So I’m not interrupted by horns honking on the street and people talking in the other offices. I just have this uninterrupted thought process.
MW: What is your work day like?
JS: Sometimes I’m researching, and sometimes I’m writing, but when I’m at the Grotto, I get there at 10 and leave at 5. I never leave the building. I always bring my lunch and spend 30-45 minutes eating with everyone else and then return to my office. It’s not an ideal situation, but I’m working on a book deadline.
MW: Jesus Land was published by Counterpoint, an independent publishing house. Jonestown will be published by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. How has your experience varied working with two very different types of publishing houses?
JS: At Counterpoint, I got paid a lot less for the book, but I knew everyone from the sales team to the promotions department to the other editors. It was kind of like a small family, which was great and really warm. I know from my initial dealings with Free Press that they’re too big to coddle me like that. My editor has too much on his plate, too many authors. Both types of houses have their pluses and minuses. I’m just happy to get published at all!
MW: Do you feel a strong connection to your editor?
JS: Yes, he’s always there when I really need to talk to him, although
mostly I dealt with his associate — which surprised me. However, she
turned out to be a fine editor herself, and consulted with him on
changes before giving me feedback. They wrote the editorial letter
together. I guess that’s what happens when the editorial director buys
your book. In addition to editing manuscripts, they are busy reading
proposals, dealing with marketing and managing the imprint. So the
editing gets farmed out. I’m very happy with their joint edits, however.
MW: Do you have advice for a writer looking for an agent?
JS: My best advice is to see who is representing writers you love or who is writing in similar genres. Chances are the agent likes a particular genre or subgenre and will be interested in looking at your stuff if it fits that genre. I think the best thing is to do something to get your work recognized, to get excerpts of your book published or to win an award. New York publishers are all so timid to take any chances, but if you win an award or get your stuff published in a journal or a magazine, then slowly the attention starts to snowball, from what I’ve heard.
MW: When you were working on Jesus Land, you attended the Squaw Valley writers’ conference and then joined a writing group. Were they helpful? What is your feeling about writing groups and conferences?
JS: The writing group was the best thing I got out of Squaw. Squaw was okay, but the writing group was the best benefit. Having writing goals and getting feedback was really valuable. If you can find a couple of people in a writing group whose critiques are helpful, then it’s good. A lot of times there are people who don’t get what you’re doing or hate what you’re doing, but you need to find two or three people whose opinions you trust and disregard the others.
MW: You are a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. What are the benefits of working alongside other writers?
JS: Commiseration. Writing is such a lonely activity, that it’s such a great thing to have someone to eat lunch with and to have someone to talk to during the day besides your spouse. Plus there are no reminders of home. It’s all about work, which is mentally helpful.
MW: How have the downturn in the economy and the publishing industry in particular, and the growing popularity of e-readers, affected your life as a writer?
JS: I needed an additional six months to finish my Jonestown book and was told by my publisher that it was probably just as well because books aren’t selling right now.
MW: With bookstores closing and e-readers selling like hotcakes for the holiday season, what do you see in the future of publishing?
JS: Writers will always need agents and editors to shape and promote their work, so I don’t see those factors disappearing. As far as e-readers, I’m somewhat of a Luddite. I have no interest in getting one. I’m tactile, I like to read in bed and can’t imagine curling up with a stiff piece of plastic. And I’m an incurable underliner—I take a pencil to most books I read to underline inspiring phrases or passages. Also, what about folks who can’t afford such gadgets?
This sounds like a fascinating must-read. Just yesterday, I was talking to a young man who didn't know where the expression "drink the Kool-Aid" came from. The horror of Jonestown needs to stay in our cultural consciousness, because it represents a kind of evil that is a constant threat to human civilization. Whether it's Hitler or some cry-baby on Fox News, people who use lies to instill fear and irrational behavior are the most dangerous enemies of all.
I'm glad to see a book like this can still find a publisher. Just today, Jane Friedman predicted the death of the nonfiction book, but I don't see any way that blogs and websites can substitute for this kind of in-depth study. This is going on my list.
Thanks for doing this interview, Meghan. Very nice to meet Julia.
Anne – That really surprises me that Jane predicted the death of the nonfiction book since those are the books that get the highest advances. I'll have to read her post. I haven't read A Thousand Lives yet, but I have a copy and have bought two more, and judging from what I know of Julia and from all the rave reviews, it's going to be a FANTASTIC book.
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Okay. I want to read this book–I remember hearing about Jonestown growing up, and I'm glad someone is going back and revisiting it.
I know so little about it myself, other than what Julia said in the interview and – of course – the story of the Kool-Aid, which wasn't actually Kool-Aid, by the way.
Wow, I can't imagine writing about something like that — what it would be like to immerse yourself in that kind of tragic material day after day (even if you don't have "personal connection"). Kudos to her.
And I had no idea that's where "drink the Kool-Aid" came from, ick.
Oh, Kristan, that shows your age! Haha. I guess you have to be 30+ to know where that expression came from. Julia wrote this book after 50,000 pages were released by the FBI, so it's incredibly well researched. It's next on my list of books to read!
I read the reviews of this in the Sunday Book sections and am dying to read it – so curious how Julia, as one of the reviewers said, was able to draw individual portraits of so many different people in the book. Appreciate you sharing advice and your experiences too – best of luck with the book!
Nancy – Julia would have to answer this, but I know she did interview survivors in person in addition to all her research. Everyone should buy the book, even if you win a signed copy! 🙂
Julia Scheere’s book looks like a harrowing take on a very strange time in San Francisco: where cults and murders (Moscone, Milk) were commonplace. I can’t wait to read it.
Julia Scheere's book looks like a harrowing take on a very strange time in San Francisco: where cults and murders (Moscone, Milk) were commonplace. I can't wait to read it.
Me neither, Donald! I'm going to begin it right after I finish the book I'm reading now.
I was 38 when this happened, and two years away from divorcing my first husband when the Jonestown disaster occurred. I was caught in my own turmoil then, as I was during the entire decade: the ugliest decade, as some historians have called it. And the Sixties was the precursor: Berlin Wall Crisis–I just got married, and was separated from my husband. Then, John Kennedy's assassination; my oldest daughter was 8 months old. More assassinations: another Kennedy, Martin Luther King. The Vietnam War that spanned both decades. Watergate, and another personal trauma, etc. etc. Back then I filtered history through what was personally happening to me at the time; but now through such incredible writers as Julia Scheeres I can read about such atrocities as Jonestown that I only vaguely remember discussing, horrified, with my first husband.
Thank you, Meghan, for commenting today on my recent post, and telling me about this interview. I am EAGER to read this book. I'm just thinking: I'll tell my oldest daughter who drew my name for Christmas to BUY it for me. I like to honor the hard work of such excellent writers!
This was a great interview, as all of your interviews are!
Ann, – Wow, how crazy it must have been to live through the 60s, with Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement and all those assassinations. I can't even imagine if Obama were assassinated. It's unthinkable. Thanks for your comment and thanks for posting excerpts from your latest book on your blog. I'm amazed that you can write about another person's life in such detail, as if it were your own.
I am very much looking forward to reading this incredible book. I too have used the phrase "drinking the kool-aid" and am thrilled about learning more than just the basics about the story. The research sounds like such an undertaking — I am so impressed by her commitment to the project. As a freelance writer who is looking to break out from a small paper into larger markets, I applaud anyone who refuses to give up … which I consider all too often. Bravo. And thanks for sharing her thoughts on the project.
Molly, I started the book this morning, and it's RIVETING. Truly. I can't put it down.
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[…] New York Times Bestselling Author Julia Scheeres Talks About A Thousand Lives, with Meghan Ward on “writerland” – The book focuses on the utopian community Guyana led Jim […]
Great Interview, Meghan. Loved reading it and finding out more about Julia's new book.
Ani – Will you make it to Julia's reading at Books Inc. Oct. 26? I'll see you there if you do.
Great interview. I feel like I learned so much!
Thanks for stopping by, Jon! You made it just in time 🙂
[…] off, we have a winner for a signed copy of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival in Jonestown by New York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres. That winner […]
[…] off, we have a winner for a signed copy of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival in Jonestown by New York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres. That winner […]
David Conn, the original investigator of Jim Jones cult still lives.
TruthSleuth.net Unfortunately, good hacks do to.
Michael – interesting! I finally finished A Thousand Lives, and it's fantastic. The end, of course, is devastating. I couldn't put it down.
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I see the reviews of this in the Sunday Book pieces and am dying you just read it – therefore curious how Julia, among the reviewers said, surely could draw individual portraits of a wide variety of people in your book. Appreciate you sharing advice plus your experiences too – all the best with the book!
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