What Are You Working On?
Writers on their works in progress

Noel Alumit

novelist, playwright

Noel Alumit (blog) is the author of the novel Letters to Montgomery Clift, which received a Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association, among other awards. He is also the author of several plays and solo shows, including Mr. and Mrs. La Questa Go Dancing, The Rice Room: Scenes from a Bar, and Master of the (miss) Universe. He has a BFA in Drama from USC and studied playwriting at the David Henry Hwang Writers Institute at East West Players, and is the recipient of an Emerging Voices Fellowship from PEN Center USA West. His work has been published in the anthologies Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing (New Rivers Press) and Take Out, Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America, as well as in USA Today, The Advocate, Frontiers Magazine, Filipinas, IN Los Angeles, and Noodle. Born in Baguio City, The Philippines and raised in Los Angeles, he was listed as one of Out magazine's "Out 100 for 2002" and named one of Genre Magazine's "Men We Love." He works in AIDS prevention and writes a quarterly column for Arts and Understanding, America's AIDS Magazine.

My editor was in town recently, so I got jazzed about the publication of my second novel Talking to the Moon. When I found a publisher last year, I stopped thinking about it. There's a relief that comes when a project I'd been working on for years finally finds a home. I began doing research for future novels, rewriting some short stories. Every once and awhile, I'd kick old drafts buried in my closet; however, for the most part, I'd let it out of my mind.

When my editor visited, I became excited all over again. I still have to do rewrites, but during my editor's visit, we talked about fun stuff like what the cover would possibly look like. I'm slowly but surely looking at old drafts again, seeing if there is anything I really want to change.

 
What was the genesis of Talking to the Moon?

There was a hate crime in Los Angeles in 1999. A Filipino postman was killed. That was what got my juices flowing. I began researching hate crimes and what it could do to a family. You know, going through the head aches of developing a novel (where is this going? Is the structure working?) I believed that I was coming up with a good story of how a family nurses a critically wounded man back to life. Things changed when my father died. It became, in some ways, an homage to him.

 
What's different for you about this project from previous ones?

The amount of rewriting I had to do. Originally, the novel had this non-linear structure with raunchy sex scenes. But when my father passed, I decided to honor him with this project. He became the only reader I cared about. So I completely retooled the book. The way it was written, my father would have stopped reading at page 10. I changed the structure, softened the sex scenes. I think he would have enjoyed this version of "Talking to the Moon" more.

The most challenging aspect of the novel was the research. I wanted to explore cultural/spiritual practices of a very specific province in the Philippines. I spent a fortune buying books from all over the world that documented shamanistic practices of the Ibaloi people in Benguet province prior to World War II. I worked hard to get the details right.

 
What was the most rewarding part of working on this project?

That I felt I had a purpose. When I wrote my first novel, Letters to Montgomery Clift -- a story about a boy searching for his parents who had "disappeared" during the Marcos regime in The Philippines -- I really felt like I was giving voice to unheard families affected by this dictator.

In writing this second novel, I certainly felt passionate about exploring race and sexuality from an Asian American point of view, but on another level, I just wanted to get this book out. I felt like I had to have another book out soon after my first. It's bullshit thinking, I know, but, at the time, I felt like I had to get something out there.

Then when my dad died, I stopped. In addition, other things were happening in my life at the time that caused some upheaval. I had to really examine why I was writing, why I wanted to tell this story. All of that was in 2004. From this vantage point, whether my novel does well or not, I'm proud that kept writing, even though my world turned upside down.

 
What's next for you?

I have some novels and short stories in the computer that I'm churning about. I don't have a contract for any future books. I might have to xerox these stories myself and sell them on a corner.

Links

A 2003 interview by Prince Gomovilas

A 2004 interview about his show Master of the (miss) Universe

See more What Are You Working On? interviews.

published 10 May 06 on Too Beautiful. email copyright 2006 Mark Pritchard, Bernal Heights, San Francisco