I’ve met an impressive array of people over the years. From self-destructive punks, to big time drug dealers, to wild sex workers, to fire-breathing leftists, to people who went beyond grabbing life just by the throat. Having gone through everything I’ve been through in the club, drugs, and alt-underground scenes, it takes a remarkable person to make an indelible impression on me.

I often referred to Marian Anderson as my big sister even though she was a few years younger than me. She was a tall, beautiful, wild, and explosive person. And she has had a significant impact on my writing.

Despite what many of my friends think, none of the array of characters I’ve conjured up for my novels is based on any one person. My character Skye Wright, the one character I’ve written more material about than anyone else I’ve created, is an amalgamation of people I’ve known over the years. Her persona is inspired by many of the fiery musicians, crazy punks, and wild artists I’ve known in the scene. Preston is also another prominent character in my works, though he is not me, despite the suspicions of many of my friends. Even though neither Skye or Preston are based on any one person or myself, there is something of me in both of them.

I cannot claim that anyone in any of my stories is Marian. But a few distinct characters, some with major roles and other with minor roles, most definitely have Marian Anderson energy.

To say Marian was striking is an understatement.
Not just because of her her looks, but her vibrant
personality, her charm, and her intelligence.

I got to know Marian Anderson through friends of mine. I was quite struck by her when I first met her. Tall, beautiful, with a wild plume of colorful hair. There was no way you could not notice her in any crowd. It didn’t take long for us to become friends. We clicked with each other right away. She was an intelligent, dynamic, and an upbeat person. I knew she was a musician, a singer for the band The Insaints. I was just a bit surprised when I went to see her band play for the first time. Before the first song even started, she took off all of her clothes. Like I said, Marian was a striking presence when she just demurely and casually walked into a room. When she was naked on stage and shouting into a microphone, her presence was amplified tenfold.

I discovered her other profession as a dominatrix by chance. I was driving down the street and saw her waiting at a bus stop. I pulled over and gave her a ride to the house where she worked, a house I would become more familiar later on as other friends of mine started working there.

I mentioned before that I referred to her as my big sister, despite her being a few years younger. That’s because she seemed to have so much more sense than me. She seemed to have her act together so much more than I. She even shared her concerns for me when it was getting all too obvious that I was caught up in drugs and alcohol.

Marian was also a remarkable person in that she was probably the least pretentious person I’ve ever met. With all the reasons she could have had for looking down her nose at other people, for being the outspoken, smart, and beautiful scene royalty that she was, she never talked down to me or anyone else I knew. She was always supportive and the kind of friend who built her friends up. She has said and done things for me that prop me up even to this day when I think back on those moments.

A still from the documentary Losers Club,
a follow up for the documentary SadoBabies.
You can find a clip featuring Marian here:

https://archive.org/details/kalow_losers_club

Marian-like characters always show up in my work. The imposing punk dominatrix Tam from my working class adventure The Falling Circle, who runs the house where Preston finds a room. The tall and tatted Zata who befriends and guides my character Yuri through the twelve step jungle in my book Crash Shadow. The loud and boisterous brawler Casey, who appears in What the Hell Ever Happened to Yuri Rozhenko? is also inspired by Marian. And then there’s the outrageous leader of a punk band comprised of exotic dancers, the infamous Triple T in my first ever book Gutter Folklore.

In my upcoming novel A Long Slow Aftermath I write about Preston yet again, about his life after leaving a drug rehab. He meets and becomes involved with a character I created for this story, a woman whom I’ve become obsessed with and is eventually going to get her own book. Miranda is six feet tall, has long, long black hair, and is a punk musician who is also recovering from a life of drug and alcohol abuse.

To say Miranda was completely inspired by Marian would be inaccurate. My main inspiration for Miranda is a long lost flame from my wild clubbing days. But to say that the shadow of Marian did not have anything to do with the formation her character would also be inaccurate. Miranda has strong Marian energy, more so than some of my other imposing characters. When I created Miranda I came up with a couple of backs stories for her. Those back stories started to grow and then started to mushroom, and before I knew it this supporting character in Preston’s story began to explode with a wild, complex, and harrowing life, the kind of life that cannot be contained as a role in someone else’s story.

To give you and idea of Marian energy
An Insaints show at thee famous Gilman Street.

In one of my earlier books, The Falling Circle, the main character Preston is surprised by his new de facto landlord Tam when he first comes over. Not just by her striking presence, but also because of her drive and toughness. Tam’s role in the story is to keep the chaos of the punk house known as Throb Long to a manageable level. She does this by being hard-nosed and intimidating, but she can also be fair, such as when Preston came home to find a gutter punk sleeping in his room.

     “Come on Tam, I found her in my room, sleeping on my sleeping bag!”
     “Well, she’s just a little girl. There’s no reason to start screaming at her.”
     “Tam, she nearly knocked some of my teeth out. I asked her what she was doing in my room and she started mouthin’ off. It’s not like I was the only one who got outta hand.”
     “Still, it sounds to me like you kind of overreacted.”
     “Well, how would you feel if you came home from a long day and you found some strange person you’d never seen before sleeping in your bed?”
     Tam had to pause for that one. “Well…”
     “And when you asked them what they were doin’ there they started talkin’ shit. I mean, I know my place ain’t as nice as yours, but I am paying rent to live here.”
     “Okay. I’d be really pissed if someone broke into my room, I guess.”

In my novel Crash Shadow my recovery character Yuri befriends a tall and imposing woman named Zata. But Zata is not just a demure Amazon who fronts and intimidates. She also does her best to be Yuri’s friend, and imparts her own unique wisdom to Yuri as she talks to him about the twelve step soldiers who keep assailing him in the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous.

     “I still don’t get it,” he confessed.
     “All they care about is getting you into the program. It’s not about sobriety. It’s about the steps, the traditions, doing a ninety in ninety and having a sponsor. They don’t care if you stay clean or not.”
     “But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
     Zata was looking right at Yuri. “Do you know what you have to do to stay clean?”
     “Follow the program?”
     “Well, the program may or may not keep you clean. You have to find that out for yourself, but ultimately you need to do what you have to do to keep yourself clean and sober. That might be the program and it might not. They want you to have a sponsor, and follow the steps, and do a ninety in ninety, but the thing is, you can be relapsing over and over again, still taking drugs, and they’ll still accept you, as long as you stay in the program.”

In A Long Slow Aftermath, (Coming out in February of this year,) Preston is trying to get his life together after having left a government drug rehabilitation program. For the story I have him run into a tall and imposing Miranda, as he first encounters her when he decides to visit a local little library at three in the morning.

     He was half a block away when he saw a tall woman was standing in front of the library. Preston had to narrow his eyes at the sight of someone browsing a little library at three in the morning.
     He slowed down as he approached. Getting closer, the woman suddenly turned her head and quickly stood up straight. Her eyes widened and she stumbled a bit, grabbing the edge of the library to steady herself, her very long ponytail wavering behind her.
     Preston’s eyes grew wide for a moment. The woman was quite tall, at least six feet tall.
     He held up the books in his hand, just as the woman reached around to the side of the little library and grabbed a long black cane.
     She propped herself up on her cane as he approached. She was wearing a Derby jacket, a tight black skirt, and Doc Marten boots. Preston could tell she was wearing a band shirt, but could not see which band it was.

After and awkward initial meeting, they quickly start vibing with each other, and get to talking.

     “I’ve never read Janet Frame.”
     “You really should. If you like good writing.”
     She took a paperback out of the library and studied the cover. “I would be reading it if you had remembered to bring the book.”
     “You want me to go get it?”
     “No, that’s okay,” she sighed.
     “I just live a few blocks away.”
     Miranda put the paperback back inside the library. “Why don’t you give it to me tomorrow?”
     “Yeah, sure. I guess I could do that.”
     “Okay,” she said as she straightened up. “Meet me here.”
     He pointed at the little library. “You want to meet here?”
     “Yeah. Same time.”
     “At three in the morning?”
     Miranda tilted her head and arched an eyebrow. “You said you were an insomniac.”

Miranda is a recovering drug addict like Preston, a musician of note in the punk scene, and also someone who is trying to guide herself through a new life of sobriety. A big part of her character is the roadmap of her body, as she is completely covered with old tattoos, new tattoos, and many scars: scars from fights, self-inflicted scars, and the straight line edges from her days of being a cutter. Almost all of her tattoos tell a story, stories about her life, tattoos that simply remind her of earlier times, and memorial tattoos, not just for those whom she lost, but also for parts of herself that she has lost during her tumultuous life.

In creating Miranda I not only infused her with a good dose of Marian energy, I also included aspects of other past and current friends, many people I know who have rode the rapids of the fast lane lifestyle, the kind of people who have gone through wild ups and downs that most people have never experienced.

In thinking about Miranda’s character I was inspired by other alt figures, such as heavy metal belly dancer Diana Bastet, who very much resembles my vision of Miranda. (Even though she’s not covered with tattoos.) The musician Nikki Nightbreed of Thee Merry Widows Fame came to mind when I decided to make Miranda a musician, specifically a bass player who plays both electric and acoustic bass.

Diana Bastest on the left, and bass player Nikki Nightbreed in
action on the right, two women who helped inspire the Miranda character
and who definitely have their own unique energy.

I don’t get obsessed with all of my characters, though I can become fond of them. My character Lee, the raging punk formerly known as Scather, is someone I do like quite a bit. The thin and sinewy former disaster area who is now a fitness nut and dedicated twelve stepper appeared in my novel Stella Maris and she plays a much more significant role in my upcoming novel The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright. She is also soon going to star in her very own short story as well.

I don’t write simple characters. They become so complex that they take on a life of their own, even bit characters, and oftentimes I am left wondering why they do some of the things they do. Because when it comes to characters like Skye, I can tell you some things about her, but other aspects of her character I cannot. She often does things that leave me puzzled. She’s a force on her own, and I feel as if I’m just telling you what she does, rather than “making” her say and do things for her stories.

Marian passed on in the early aughts from a heroin overdose. It is very ironic, because she went out of her way to express her concerns to me when I was awash in meth amphetamine and alcohol. She did get to see me clean up my act however, as I had gotten myself off of drugs and alcohol several years before she passed on. Her passing was quite a shock, and even though I was not one of her closest friends, she meant so much more to me than she probably ever realized.

Marian’s remembrance wall at her
Northern California service.

(She had two such memorials, one in Northern
California and one in Southern California.)

Marian has and continues to be a major influence on my characters and stories, just as much as she has influenced my life overall. My writing would not be the same without her. If she had not been part of my world I would still have plenty of life experiences to draw on for my stories. Sometimes I think I have too much life experience, given everything I’ve gone through in my wild times. But even now, more than twenty years after her passing, the force of Marian is still one of my driving motivations. To say that she remains an influence is an understatement. To say that she still lives on in me and so many other people whose lives she touched is also an understatement. Triple T, Tam, Zata, Miranda, even Skye and Lee… They all shine and are driven by that same punk goddess energy. And my characters and my writing are so much more vivid because of it.

And I can only wish that she was still with us. The world was a better and more vibrant place with her in it, even though her wild energy still lives on.

Check out Last Fast Ride, the documentary about Marian Anderson.

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Fast-Ride-Death-Goddess/dp/B006A9XTRQ