Story structure
Blue Moon is essentially a 5600 word paean to Clay. That worshipful genre freed me up to do a lot of things I normally would not do in a story. Joanna gets to be the Clay worshipper and think such things as "And suddenly she felt a chill run through her, the chill of being in the majestic presence of a king among voices." In any other context, that would be over the top, but in this paean to Clay, it and other similar lines actually work. What fun! I wrote the first few scenes of the story first and then the last scene and then the middle scenes. The scenes I wrote first had a much lighter tone, but the story grew more serious as it progressed. When I finally did finish an entire draft, I had to go back and rewrite the lighter segments, correcting their tone. The ending especially was originally much too lighthearted (made Clay seem like somewhat of a cad) and had to be recast to fit with the other parts.

The much longer I Know the River, weighing in at almost 11,000 words, is the longest short story I have ever written. Again I wrote the first few scenes first, then the ending, and then spent a long time filling in the many, many middle scenes. I struggled with who the story should start with, Clay or Joanna. Blue Moon began with Clay. I tried to begin I Know the River with Clay, switching his visit to the river with Joanna's mandolin apartment scene, but it just didn't work. Joanna had to speak first in this story, and I'm still not sure why. Several scenes were chopped from the final story, for the sake of brevity and also because some scenes caused a premature build up to a level of intensity that was placed too early in the story. The final scene with Clay stepping from stone to stone in the river and sloshing (the perfect word, combining joy and carefree action) through the water is a triumphant one. My favorite paragraph in this story is when Clay walks across the log that spans the river and pauses halfway across. I love how he replaces the aural stimuli which so disturb him (the gurgling and rushing sounds of the river) with competing visual stimuli (the yellow leaf in the river, the brilliant green of the moss on the river stones) to help himself cope. This "replacement strategy" occurs several times in both stories. You can imagine that by age 20 he has worked out ways to cope with his fear of water and I wanted to illustrate that.

Editing
Both stories went through extensive edits, especially I Know the River, which was harder to write than Blue Moon but ended up better written, I believe. For inspiration in the editing process, I recommend the "Bits and Pieces" chapter in William Zinsser's On Writing Well. This chapter also had great advice on crafting transitions, and I Know the River's unwieldy length and many scenes were greatly helped by Zinsser's words. My favorite transition in I Know the River is "After they made love, they slept again."

Point of view
I am particularly proud of the shifting 3rd person omniscient point of view used throughout the two stories. Although this isn't particularly novel, it is new to me, since I tend to prefer a straight first person or third person (limited not omniscient), or even second person when writing short stories. So these stories were a great exercise for me as a writer. I enjoyed getting inside the head of a 20 year old male and had great fun with Clay's thoughts about Joanna. He was always getting caught up in his wandering, lustful thoughts and then practically running over Joanna or totally missing her conversation. I hope the fun came through. Joanna's thoughts, on the other hand, were somewhat more reserved. Her desire is expressed rather chastely in those frequent thoughts about the red hair on Clay's arms, or his trembling eyelashes, etc.

What is a blue moon?
Although in Blue Moon I never actually say the moon is blue, I do write several times that the moon's light that night is blue. I've certainly seen this. You go out at night and everything appears in shades of grey, white, and blue. I don't know why--this is just how the moonlight is some nights and this is what I meant to convey. It is Clay who calls it a blue moon by singing Blue Moon of Kentucky and Blue Moon. There are actually several definitions of a blue moon. One definition is simply a rare event ("once in a blue moon"). That is certainly an apt description of that special night for Clay and Joanna in Blue Moon and seemed the perfect title for the story. You can learn about the definitions and history of blue moons in this excellent and fun article:

Folklore of the Blue Moon. Philip Hiscock. http://www.griffithobs.org/IPSBlueMoon.html

The use of light in the stories
Describing how the light looks on different days and in different situations and how it illuminates objects and people is, for me, a signature story element. The light helps me convey mood and emotion. In these stories, moonlight has an important role. There are a number of songs written about blue moons, and a common structure for them is that the song progresses from a blue moon to a golden one, signifying the singer's (always seems to be a male) success at finding love, at getting the girl. This is the structure I follow in a big arc through the two stories. In Blue Moon, the moonlight is blue, Clay and Joanna are somewhat melancholy and lonely. In I Know the River, the light, of both moon and sun, changes to golden. The story is filled with golden, yellow, and amber tones, signifying the love and fruition of the Clay-Joanna relationship. From the golden light of the morning sun as it shines through the yellow fabric of the tent, to the prismatic behavior of the amber water bottle, I Know the River is filled with shades of gold. In the denouement of Blue Moon, the light takes on another guise--harsh and glaring. Joanna sees Clay in the harsh light of day and wonders if she imagined the whole night before.

The YMCA camp and why the mountains?
No, as far as I know, Clay never worked as a counselor at an overnight Y camp in the Southern Appalachians. I believe he worked as a day camp counselor at a Y in Raleigh (Finley YMCA). I set the camp in the mountains because I love the mountains and I love to write about nature. I like to use the details of nature to illuminate emotion and character. I based the camp somewhat on the YMCA camp my daughter has attended each summer for several years. It is not located in the mountains, but the general camp organization is similar to the one in the stories, with kids from many different YMCAs being bused from their home Ys to the camp, located some distance away. Here the camp receives campers not only from nearby Asheville (Joanna's home Y) but presumably from Raleigh, as this is where Clay would be based in the summers (even though in this story he is already going to college during the school year in Charlotte).

The Southern Appalachians
No, I've never been there, but I looked up every bit of flora and fauna I mention in the story to make sure it actually exists in these mountains. I even looked up flower bloom times. From robins to white-tailed deer to huckleberries, rhododendrons, red spruce, oak-pine forest, and red Bee Balm (which blooms late in the summer), all the plants and animals are accurate. And are there rivers, are there streams, are there waterfalls in these North Carolina mountains? Are there ever!

The songs in the stories
In Blue Moon, Clay sings Peace in the Valley, Blue Moon of Kentucky, Your Cheatin' Heart, Blue Moon, and Somewhere Out There. The first four songs were all covered by Elvis Presley. Peace in the Valley, in particular is considered a classic Elvis song. Since I am an Elvis fan, I often imagine Clay singing some of his songs because both singers are known for their amazingly beautiful voices. Clay starts with Peace in the Valley because these slow gospel songs are great for warming up the voice. Then his character just sang what he wanted and those are the songs that came out of his mouth. I felt like I had little role in the song choices. I like how gospel, country, pop, and bluegrass are all represented because it accurately reflects Clay's ability to sing many genres. Of course, Somewhere Out There was a song Clay sang during the American Idol competition.

In I Know the River, Clay sings only one song, I Know How the River Feels, from one of his demo CDs, recorded close in time to when this story takes place. This song, of course, is perfect for the conclusion of the story. And Clay does sing it so beautifully, it is easy to see how it might make Joanna cry. Also mentioned in this story is the bluegrass/Irish song that Joanna plays on mandolin, Red-haired Boy. This is an actual song. It seemed fitting that she would think of Clay when she learned this song. On the cutting room floor of this story is another song that Clay and Joanna sang together round the fire one night. But that scene, as well as a few others, was cut from the story.

The mandolin
I love that Joanna plays mandolin. That Joanna is a musician gives her and Clay something very important in common and I hope provides a deeper rationale for their attraction. The mandolin wasn't part of the original story plan, but Joanna's character just decided to play an instrument. Mandolin ended up being my choice because it was an important plot element that the instrument be small so it could fit in the backpack (rejected were the fiddle, the guitar, and the ukulele). I learned a lot about mandolin for this story, from how it sounds to how the instrument looks, and how it is held when played (the strap hooks over the front of the shoulder rather than behind, as with a guitar; there is no real strumming--all is picking; and more). To learn these things, I borrowed a "how to play mandolin" video from the library, read Internet articles, how to books, and mandolin music, listened to CDs (Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza was a favorite), and even visited a music store so I could hold and touch a few mandolins. I also like how bluegrass is the music Joanna plays; North Carolina and the Appalachians are the perfect spot for bluegrass.

Clay's fear of water
Clay's fear of water is one of two themes central to the stories (the second is the Clay-Joanna romance). The fear of water theme gives the stories, especially I Know the River, depth and resonance. There was a very unfinished feeling to Blue Moon; neither theme was ever fully dealt with. I only wrote I Know the River after several Clay fans who read Blue Moon requested a sequel. When they wrote to ask me "what happens next?", I realized that I had thought about that and my answer was that after Blue Moon, Clay and Joanna never see each other again. That often happens in real life. I think the fans helped me to see what a cop out that was and that the unresolved themes demanded a sequel. My favorite fan comment about Blue Moon was "I now have greater insight into Clay's psyche." Wow, I must have done something right in my characterization, because I really have no insight into Clay Aiken's psyche, but I guess I did a good job with the character of Clay in the story. As I understand it, Clay in reality is not as scared of water as I make him out to be in Blue Moon. I've heard he will go in the water, just doesn't like to be in over his head, or something like that. I like to think that my stories of him at age 20, and how he makes real progress on surmounting this fear, helps bring him to the place he is now at age 24. In that sense, the story meshes with reality, I hope.

A third story?
Because the twin themes of romance and Clay's fear of water come to a sort of resolution in I Know the River, there seemed to be no reason to write another story. But I couldn't stay away from the Clay and Joanna characters, so I did begin a third story. The new story is longer than the first two and very complex. It is a challenge for me as a writer, filled with many flashbacks and scenes presented from several character points of view. The story takes place in present day time (summer of 2003) and looks at where Clay and Joanna are at this point in time. In order to make the story mesh with reality, Clay and Joanna had to not be together anymore, so the story starts from there. As the story progresses--drawing in such characters as K.C. and Carrie from the first two stories as well as American Idol contestants Kim Locke, Ruben, Carmen, and others--we discover what happened to drive these two soulmates apart. New character Meg, a reporter, uncovers the Clay story of a lifetime. But can what she finds bring Clay and Joanna back together? That is the central premise. The story takes place mainly in Charlotte but includes scenes set in Raleigh, Seattle, on the Idol tour bus, Anaheim, London, and more.

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Blue Moon was written in April 2003; copyright Elena Felsig
I Know the River was written in May 2003; copyright Elena Felsig

this page was last updated 7/26/03