Kim Powers
Kim Powers is the author of the upcoming novel Rules for Being Dead (pub date August 4, 2020), the thriller Dig Two Graves, the novel Capote in Kansas, and the critically acclaimed memoir The History of Swimming, a Barnes & Noble "Discover” Selection and Lambda Literary Award finalist for Best Memoir. Powers is currently Senior Writer for ABC's 20/20; during his more than two decades at ABC News and Good Morning America, he’s won two Emmys, a Peabody and is part of the news group that has received a record four Edward R. Murrow Awards. He received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and lives in New York City and Asbury Park, NJ.
Twitter: @kimpowersabc
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
That question is so apt right now because it’s exactly what my new novel, RULES FOR BEING DEAD, is about. (The cover is even a photo of an old deserted drive-in, the kind where I spent so much of my childhood.) The book is based on something I did as a kid, when I kept a scrapbook of cut-out newspaper ads for all the movies I saw at the local theater, The Ritz. This was in a small Texas town called McKinney in the mid-late 60s.
I pretty much saw a movie every weekend, regardless of what was playing. From the Beach Blanket movies to Disney films like The Ugly Dachshund to early James Bond and musicals like My Fair Lady and West Side Story. Lurid, scary B-movies like The Psychopath and Dr. Sardonicus. “Grown-up” movies I shouldn’t have been allowed to see at age 8, like Alfie and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Paul Newman, and Michael Caine. They were my best friends up on screen. (Yes, I’m old.)
In my book, a little boy’s mother dies unexpectedly and somewhat mysteriously, and he hides his grief by sitting in the dark of the local movie theater. But bit by bit, influenced by what he sees up on screen, he starts imagining that his mother was murdered, and he follows the “detective lessons” he sees on screen to try to find her killer. Needless to say, he’s very impressionable, just like me. (I was equally obsessed and traumatized by the idea of killers breaking into my house, no doubt from seeing In Cold Blood!)
When I first started writing the book, I had a friend in McKinney go to the local library and dig through microfilm of the local newspaper to make Xeroxes of all those old movie ads. I watched trailers of them on You Tube to get into the mood and mindset of that little boy Clarke – who in essence was me. I had originally planned to include those original ads in the book, as if you were reading Clarke’s scrapbook, but that would have become too expensive to license and clear the ads. God knows where the original one disappeared to over the years – would give anything if I still had it with its crumbling pages! Evoking that world of ‘60s innocence (and of a kid seeing adult stuff way before his time) was one of the goals of the book.
What’s your favorite non-reading activity?
Baking, hands down (and covered with flour.) It came to me later in life, after watching a season or two of the fantastic The Great British Bake-Off series. I’d always had a sweet tooth, so it was a perfect outlet for me. I began with summer fruit pies (and no short cuts – it had to be a handmade crust!) and moved into cookies and cakes. I’d grown up on box mixes that my mother made, with an occasional, “special occasion” German chocolate or strawberry cake from an old country aunt. So baking wasn’t necessarily in my DNA. But I find it very meditative and know enough know to put my own spin on recipes. Sometimes I’ll start craving something sweet and whip up something just so I can eat the raw dough! I know it’s not healthy so DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME. I think I must be immune at this point. Sometimes I’ll listen to a podcast while I’m baking (20/20’s great mystery crime podcasts, or things about ballet, two favorites.)
The crowning achievement of all this is that I have won the ABC News Christmas Cookie Bake-Off a record three times now! (For my “day job,” I’m Senior Writer for ABC’s 20/20; I was also a writer at Good Morning America for a decade or so. The Bake-Off is a charity for Meals on Wheels.) The first two years I won a Kitchen Aid Mix-master – so I have two of them now! Even got to select my own color. Last time, they mixed it up and gave me some blenders and mixers and other kitchen gadgets. AND they told me I’m prohibited from entering again!! I’ve baked my way to the top! Now, in pandemic lockdown, I’m baking non-stop, and will probably weigh a ton when it’s all over. But at least I will be happy.
Oddest thing a reader has ever asked you?
The reader/lawyer vetting my first book, a memoir called THE HISTORY OF SWIMMING, asked me the strangest question of all, and it was part of his job! The book is in part composed of letters between me and my twin brother, during a very troubled period of his life, in which he had disappeared after a suicide attempt and I was trying to find him. (A lot of drama in the Powers family!)
I included one of the letters between my brother Tim and his first college boyfriend, a guy named West. The lawyer reviewing the book for the publishing house Carrol & Graf asked me, “Is West still having sex with men?” Not if he was gay – but that odd phrase, “still having sex with men.” I told him I hadn’t been in touch with West in years and didn’t really feel like calling him up to ask, so the lawyer told me I needed to change West’s name in the book. I did – and later West told me he was mad at me for not using his real name!
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing?
For years now, I’ve been fascinated by the world of what are called “found” or “vernacular” photos – those old and odd family photos we all have stowed away in a box in the closet. They’ve become their own genre now, growing among collectors. I love the way they allow me into someone else’s world, imagining the circumstances of them being taken. I’ve been collecting them for a while, going to cheap antique shops and flea markets and digging through piles of curled up photos. I also spend a huge amount of time going down rabbit holes to find them on various blogs and feeds, Pinterest, tumblr, etc.
I started posting some of them as standalones on Facebook with funny captions – my wheelhouse is sort of 40s/50s unintentional camp - and then a year or so ago they started morphing into the story of me as a kid and my gay Uncle Bruce – a sort of “Uncle Mame” character. He was entirely fictional, but I guess I created such a believable world with him that people thought he was real. I’d say, “Well, he’s real to ME!” I’d love to do a photo book with them, but the legalities around found photos are very confusing and complex. (The wildly successful Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is made up of found photos, for example.)
In these past two months of the pandemic, I unintentionally (at first) started another Facebook “quarantine” series - sort of silly mid-century modern couples, both male and female – about my husband Jess and I, stuck at our home in Asbury Park, NJ. They’ve enumerated each day we’re here, like “On the 12th day, Jess Goldstein and I…” then a caption related to the photo. So they definitely involve writing, but the jumping off point is really the photo, so they definitely work a sort of eye and curatorial muscle. They hit all my moods, from silly to moving to despairing, but they’ve developed quite a following from my friends! As of this writing, I’m up to day 59! I think if I missed a day, friends would actually worry that I was sick. Hopefully, when this is all over, I’ll be able to look back at them as a quirky diary of life during this crazy lockdown.
Vacation - City or Country?
Right now, city. I’m sort of living in lockdown in a country paradise, on a wooded property on a lake in Asbury Park, NJ. (It’s been our weekend home for years now; my week is usually spent working in NYC.) But my fantasy vacation right now is London. I love going there, and over the last few years have developed the habit of going once or twice a year to see plays and do touristy things like a day trip to a little village or Oxford or Cambridge. I guess I’m an Anglophile at heart, after watching all those BBC period dramas and Agatha Christies on PBS. We’d gone the last time about four months ago, and had already started planning a new trip built around certain plays that were supposed to be up and running. In the very first days of the pandemic, before the severity really hit home, I even thought, “Now is FINALLY our chance to upgrade to first class! I bet there are deals through the roof!” HA. The other day, just to rub salt in the wound, I looked at the website of the hotel we stay at, to see that they were now closed. A ticket across the pond is the first thing I’ll book when we’re on the other side of this.
