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MEET JACK LOPEZ
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Jack Lopez

When I was very young I was sickly. So sick that I didn't much attend kindergarten. I lived in Lynwood, CA, and we lived right across the street from my elementary school. I used to sit in the front room looking out the big picture window at the kids playing during recess. I wanted to be out there so badly, to be running and playing and just romping. But I couldn't; I was always sick. So I developed at any early age the powers of observation and the ability to read--I could go anywhere, do anything, in my mind. Later, after my tonsils were removed and after I outgrew most of the respiratory problems, I probably overcompensated by being active in sports: baseball, football, basketball, and then surfing when I was a teen.

When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?

 It wasn't so much that I set out to be a writer as the fact that I was a writer. I wasn't a journal writer or anything, but I used to write stories all the time. I remember handing in stories in place of essays; I did this in high school and college. By living in the mind so much out of necessity when young, writing down the narratives was just a natural offshoot. And this: there were some real storytellers in my family, and during family gatherings they would always talk about when so and so did such and such. I had a good background in listening to stories.

What was your first job when you graduated from college?

I've done so many jobs in my life that one doesn't really resonate after college graduation. I worked on a farm while going to college and I worked in a brewery and I worked at a ski resort and I painted houses (in the Northwest). When I was in high school I worked in a restaurant, at a Tastee Freeze, in a machine shop (one summer), at a gas station, and cleaning boats. In between undergraduate and graduate school I worked in construction, learning to build houses.

How soon after that was your first book published?

 I wrote sometimes full-time in between my undergraduate years and my time in graduate school. I was a bit old to be in grad school, early thirties, but I had spent a number of years writing short stories with the intention of getting some published. That was why I went to grad school in writing (UC Irvine MFA program): to learn how to get published. For a short time some publishers showed interest in my graduate thesis, but nothing came of it. I acquired an agent with my second novel, but, again, it wasn't sold. My third book sold, a collection of essays about growing up in Los Angeles. It's titled CHOLOS & SURFERS. It was almost ten years from the time I finished grad school until I had my first book in print.

Where do you get your ideas?

I get my ideas to write stories from images. From things I hear people say. From memory. And, of course, from researching a subject. My first book, CHOLOS & SURFERS, came from two sources. I was solicited by a children's book publisher to write a five hundred word story that could become a picture book. I told him about riding the bus across Los Angeles when I was a child; he liked that idea and asked that I work on it. But in the writing of that story, I discovered another memory that won out, and I wrote the essay "Of Cholos & Surfers," a story about a street confrontation I had when a teen. "Of Cholos & Surfers" has been published in a number of anthologies, and is still in print in a college composition text book. On one hand my endeavor was quite successful. But on the other hand, the story the publisher wanted was never written (I used an anecdote with that material in another essay) and that part of it was unsuccessful.

What gave you the idea for IN THE BREAK?

The idea for IN THE BREAK came from some events that happened in and around my neighborhood when I was a teen. Two brothers who lived a few blocks over from me met up with some runaway girls, and they went to the mountains, broke in a cabin, and stayed there a few days. It was a big scandal when they were caught. When I was in high school a kid's mother shot his father while he slept. The father was abusive, evidently, and had beaten the family for years. The kid's mother used the battered wife syndrome as her defense, and was acquitted. Also, one of my friends who surfed a lot with me had a father who was abusive. I found out when we were in our twenties that his stepfather and my friend fought when he was sixteen. Sixteen was the important detail because that was the age my friend beat up his stepfather and was no longer hit by him. I knew things weren't right in his family but nobody talked about it. And probably the last thing to influence the writing of the book was the fact that when I was fifteen, my friends and I found this bay way down in Baja California where the waves were really large and the water was full of dolphins.

What are you working on now? When do you expect to start submitting it to publishers?

At present I'm working on a young adult novel. I have male and female protagonists. Robby is from inland, but because of circumstances he is forced to move to the beach to stay with an aunt he hasn't previously met. Keli lives at the beach, is a very good surfer, but is lately disillusioned with contest surfing. Her father pushes her too hard; he wants her to get on the World Tour, wants her to be a professional surfer. And her father and mother have just separated. Robby's father left when he was a baby, and Robby was placed in his grandmother's custody because one of his mother's boyfriend's beat him. Robby's a very good martial artist; he hates bullies. It takes most of the book for Robby and Keli to hook up.

Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

I write best in the morning and I prefer to do so. But as I've become older, I'm able to write at any time. For years I would awaken at five in the morning, write for a few hours, and give the world what was left of my energy. When I'm really in the midst of creating a story, I still arise early and write, because sometimes I'm too excited to sleep.

Is there anything about yourself that you’d like to share - hobbies, where you were born, special talents other than writing .

When I was pretty young I read SIDDHARTHA by Hermann Hesse. The book had a great influence on me. In it, Siddhartha says, I can think, I can wait, and I can fast. To have those abilities seemed to me at a young age very cool. They still do. And I tried to develop them. But we're all unique and individual, and the three things that I think I have fully developed and that fit in my life are: to write, to build, and to train. These are the things that I can do. I can write a book; I can build a house; I can train in karate, or surf. I don't know that these are hobbies. They're just a way to live.