Whether re-working "Star Wars," writing a piece for the Washington Post Magazine or penning two novels, Liam Callanan always enjoys reading and writing. He also has a great sense of humor.
"My brother and I wrote epic re-workings of 'Star Wars' which we would then stage in the station wagon on long car trips," he says. "Luckily, we had a little sister, too, otherwise one of us would have had to play Princess Leia."
His newest novel, "All Saints," follows Emily, a 50-year-old woman dealing with three husbands along with three divorces and a string of jobs to a California Catholic beachside school.
"Someone told me that the book is like 'The O.C.' meets 'The Scarlet Letter.' It's not, but it is a strange mix of modern and old-fashioned storytelling," he says. "Over the course of a single extraordinary year, she gets involved in the lives of her students in ways she would never have imagined and learns some lessons about love, sex, faith and what it means to believe in someone or something she'll never forget. I suppose if I wrote it right, readers won't forget either."
He says that the novel still has a hold on him, even after the more than two-year writing process.
"It's hard to leave a fictional world behind after you've created it," Callanan says. "Part of me is still there on the beach in the book, I suppose -- which, yes, might be a reaction to Milwaukee winter."
"All Saints" is quite the turn around from his last novel, "The Cloud Atlas," which was about the Japanese balloon bombs during World War II written from a priest's perspective. For his new book, he swapped sexes with the narrators and jumped from the past to the present.
"A lot of people do ask me about how I managed to write a book where the narrator is a 50-year-old woman, seeing as how I'm a 30-something male," Callanan says. "I'm not necessarily sure myself. It's true, I'm not a woman, but I have lived and loved some wonderful women, and I like to think I've learned a lot from them. I'm sure they'd say I've plenty still to learn."
But he says that the entire situation is actually pretty funny.
"My first novel was narrated by a 70-something, celibate priest, a WWII veteran living in rural Alaska," he says. "None of that applies to me, either, but I didn't get as many questions about how I could put myself in such a man's head."
But what Callanan says that helps him get a grip on his characters is location. Callanan moved to Milwaukee to teach in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's English department two years ago, and says that he needs distance from the actual locations in his books.
"I wrote 'The Cloud Atlas,' which is set in Alaska, without ever having visited. I wrote 'All Saints,' which is set in California, on the beach, while sitting in Alexandria, Virginia, and later, here in Milwaukee," he says. "I think the distance makes for a better perspective -- it's easier to write about the ocean when you're sitting on the beach, say, then when you're bobbing out there in the waves."
Much of his writing came out of the restaurant and coffee shop chain Panera, both in Alexandria and Whitefish Bay.
"I liked it because they had constant coffee refills, caffeine really does help, although I had so much of it that it probably made my narrator sound even more frantic than she is -- but I also just liked the setting."
He says that being in the coffee shops also helped him buckle down and work because it forces him to stay in his seat.
"I'm nervous someone will take my laptop, so I hardly ever get out of my seat and that, it turns out, is the secret -- or at least my secret -- to writing: staying in the chair, at the keyboard," he says. "I've done this in Milwaukee, too, at Roast on Locust and Maryland ... when I needed to recapture the original vibe. The problem with Milwaukee is that the people are friendlier and I'm not so worried they'll take my laptop and run out of the restaurant. I get up more."
Being an English teacher, one might wonder if he would assign his novels to his students as reading material, but Callanan says no -- he never has and never will.
"One, people should only buy my book because they want to, and two, that would be like standing in front of class naked," he says. "You put everything you've got into a book, all of you, all your fears and joys, and so for students to be staring from the page up and you, back and forth, that would be unnerving."
But he does have students that read his books outside of the classroom arena, which he finds nice.
"It's always interesting to hear what they have to say. UWM students are great readers and analyzers, I find. They wind up knowing more about me than I do."
As he promotes his latest novel, Callanan is figuring out how to manage life on less sleep - something he will have to do after his daughter is born in May.
"I'm trying to finish another novel, just the very rough draft of one, before she comes," he says. "Here's hoping. Otherwise, I'll have to learn how to type one-handed."
Originally from Des Plaines, Ill., Heather moved to Milwaukee to earn a B.A. in journalism from Marquette University. With a tongue-twisting last name like Leszczewicz, it's best to go into a career where people don't need to say your name often.
However, she's still sticking to some of her Illinoisan ways (she won't reform when it comes to things like pop, water fountain or ATM), though she's grown to enjoy her time in the Brew City.
Although her journalism career is still budding, Heather has had the chance for some once-in-a-lifetime interviews with celebrities like actor Vince Vaughn and actress Charlize Theron, director Cameron Crowe and singers Ben Kweller and Isaac Hanson of '90s brother boy band Hanson.
Heather's a self-proclaimed workaholic but loves her entertainment. She's a real television and movie fanatic, book nerd, music junkie, coffee addict and pop culture aficionado.
