FAQs

Your writing is so good, even -- may I be so bold? Brilliant. Why don’t you publish more?

I don’t make my living as a freelance writer, so I only write when I have something to say. Besides fiction, my preferred modes are memoir, opinion pieces, and literary criticism. Some of the published pieces appear here in their original versions. I only seek publication in venues that respect the integrity of my message.

You seem to complain a lot. Are you a conservative?

No, but anyone who’s lived in as many senseless killing neighborhoods as I have is not going to be a starry-eyed liberal. I’ve also worked in a lot of punitive jobs in the most extreme capitalist sectors, so I know the profit motive doesn’t solve everything, either. I’m also a reluctant member of a couple of marginalized groups – I’m not a parent, for one thing. So I experience the world a little differently than the mainstream.

For more about my work life, read my essay, The Pink Dress, which won an honorable mention New Millennium Award for best essay.

I am a contrarian. I always take the other side, even against myself. As an example, when asked to write an environmental piece about the ocean, I penned an ode to the polluted beaches of my childhood, near Bridgeport, Connecticut. See www.healtheseas.com, a web site dedicated to sustaining the environment. Despite my nostalgia for the dirty shores of Bridgeport and Brighton Beach, like every thinking person, I want clean air and water. I stopped all my paper subscriptions and get my news entirely online, to offset my husband’s over-consumption of toilet paper.

Are you married to the renowned artist, Richard Gombar?

No, we’ve never even dated. But we are first cousins. You can view his paintings here.

Are you the mother of Kurt Gombar (a.k.a., Kurt St. Damien) lead singer of the up and coming progressive metal band Infinity Minus One, whose CD, Infernal Machine, has just been released to wide acclaim?

No, this is a catty rumor started by some neighbors in the town where I grew up.

Kurt is my younger brother by thirteen years. He does owe his stage name, Damien, to my older sister and me. My parents had run out of ideas, and generously let us choose the middle name that would qualify for baptism – the self-sacrificing monk who aided the lepers. (His first name, Kurt, had long been chosen. Us three girls who came before were all supposed to be Kurt.) Damien was the name of an attractive character on a 70s soap opera. This was just before the book about the devil child came out.

You can read more about Infinity Minus One at www.infinityminusone.com and www.myspace.com/imoboston.

Why don’t you have children?

I do have a child. A 49-year old baby, the renowned comic and memoirist, Peter Leviten, author of the upcoming scathing tell-all memoir, “My Family Business.” He is as well an Internet advertising copywriter. We have been married for 173 years, living in New York for twenty of them before moving to Hicktown – I mean Saunderstown, RI five years ago. We are a stone’s throw from the beach, the people are nice, the ground is flat. It’s pretty here, but we miss New York. You can’t find Hanukah candles. The smoked salmon is cheap for lack of demand but they don’t know how to wrap it properly.

So, no kids, just the five of us -- Peter, me and my three alternate personalities – Delphine, the little French tart, Coco, the well-meaning but confused female gorilla, and Felicia, who we can’t talk about, because this is a family web site.

My second novel, in-progress, Expiration Dates is all about the haves and have nots of the kid situation. See a brief excerpt in the Writings Section.

Is your writing based on your family and friends?

Absolutely. See my short story collection, “Terrible Things About My Mother.” (Just kidding, Mom. She actually asked if this was the title of my book.)

No, Peter is not the laid-back, kind, hapless, perpetually unemployed Elliott Eidlemann ( Get it? Idle man? Clever, huh?) in the novel, Black Box. He’s a “Don’t *%$# with me!” type. And my father was a very hetero dentist, not a child-molesting ex-Catholic priest, like the step-father in Black Box. (I do have two uncles who are/were priests. Oddly enough, neither was/is an alcoholic or child molester, though one is in need of a Bird-watchers Anonymous meeting.) My little brother was an altar boy for eight years, and no one ever came near him. He is still working on healing the hurt.)

I am not the heroine, Susannah Radwill (though I did steal her surname from my next door neighbors, growing up.) Nor am I 5’7 ½ and 123 pounds with blue eyes and great legs and men falling all over me. This is fiction, folks, allow me a little wish fulfillment. I did not have an affair with any of my bosses, male or female. The only one who was seriously interested looked and acted exactly like the 350-pound effeminate talk-show host Jiminy Glick character created by Martin Short. Sadly, the anti-hero love interest Gavin is a complete figment of the imagination, but the kind that would not leave me alone.

As for writing about real people in my memoir pieces – I’ve been written about wrongly and it’s not a nice feeling. In my husband’s memoir, he described me as “an angel.” This is completely untrue, as anyone who knows me well can attents.

So if I mention anyone identifiable I let them sign off on it. Peter doesn’t seem to mind anything I write about him, operating under the assumption that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. My mother actually enjoys public humiliation, and operates under the assumption that everything is her fault anyway, so we’re on the same page.