A slug fest!
I have lived in and around Santa Cruz for most of my life. I started school here in the fifties, I went to university here, I raised my kids here.
As I said to the nice lady from the Good Times:
“Santa Cruz is like a first draft: a shorthand sort of tale understood by, and comfortable to, a very limited audience. Explaining Santa Cruz to outsiders is like the rewrite process, when the writer considers how the story looks to the reader,” she says. “Living in an alternative universe, where banana slugs are school mascots and bakeries mull over gluten, lactose and animal products, is good practice for someone whose novels are based on the premise that Sherlock Holmes is not only real, but still alive.”
She wrote an article about some of the literary figures of Santa Cruz, here.
This weekend, UCSC turns 50, and it’s going to be a very grand party, with Farm & Garden tours, walks that focus on campus history, a Kid Zone, the rededication of Merrill College, a bonfire—and my panel: True Originals: The Santa Cruz Stairway—Today’s Writing and Publishing Strategies from Fiction to Memoir to Hand-Made Books.
Go, Slugs!
I love my hometown. I am looking for a house for my mum and dad.
Good way to put it. Santa Cruz is not really translateble even if you didn’t grow up there.
I wish UCSC had room for my 17 year old granddaughter in August. She has been turned down and her young heart is broken. I heard 55,000 applied so it is not personal. :>)
Just finished reading “Folly” and loved it. Thanks for all your wonderful books.
Your Fan,
Nancye