Scott Alumbaugh
is a person of enviable – even mind-blowing – accomplishment.
After practicing law for twenty years, he did this: taught legal writing (his essays have appeared in Los Angeles Lawyer and Bay Crossings,) worked as a sailing instructor, radio producer and host, theater manager, stage crew for a traveling Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company, and ESL instructor in Japan. He started his own web, print, and graphic design business, Sea Dog Designs, in 2000. He’s also an avid cyclist and oh yes, a writer, winner of the 2014 Black Hill Press Summer Writing Project and runner-up for the 2017 Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize for his story “Fire Illness,” which appeared in Hunger Mountain Review. Whew, I said, wondering which of these careers had the most influence on his writing…
Q.
You’ve been an attorney, a sailing instructor, a web design guru, radio producer and host, and theatre crew, among many other things, and of course you’re an avid cyclist. Which of these careers, or vocations, has influenced your writing the most?
A.
I’d have to say the attorney thing, for good and bad. Because for better and worse, legal training and practice shape your way of thinking, of problem solving, how you organize your research, how you process information, how you go about collecting facts, etc. etc. One of my favorite law review articles compares legal education to Zen Buddhism: the idea behind both being to beat the existing thought process out of you to make way for a completely new way of thinking.
Legal thinking is very linear, very organized. Very structured. It’s a process that, once it’s drilled into you, really permeates most other aspects of your cognitive life. I haven’t practiced in over twenty years, but I still approach most endeavors the same way. The process becomes that integral.
In terms of writing, it helps me organize the pieces I’m working on, to lay the foundations, the structure, without which I am totally lost. At the same time, however, it tends to tether me to the ground, so to speak. It’s very hard for me to do anything too outlandish because I’m always drawn back to the concrete, the verifiable.
That’s one of the things I really enjoy about the story you’ve selected, San Andreas’ Fault. It’s one of the few times I’ve been able to escape gravity in a story, or at least time/space. It was a lot of fun to write.
Q.
It was a lot of fun to read, too, which is why we chose it. So, when did the writing bug bite you? What was your first piece?
A.
I first thought of writing a novel in my early-30s, when I was practicing at a downtown LA firm. It was just after the 1992 civil unrest, what most people call the Rodney King riots. Our firm took on a huge pro bono case on behalf of Korean merchants who lost their businesses, and as it turned out, had no insurance coverage because their insurers were frauds, fly-by-night operations chartered out of the Caribbean. Researching the characters behind these insurance companies was like reading an Elmore Leonard novel. They did everything from claiming sovereignty over a sand bar in the Rio Grande and arguing it made them immune from income tax, to renting assets whenever they underwent audits. Every time some new fact came to light I’d say out loud to anyone near, “Someone should turn this into a novel.”
So I figured I’d try. I took a couple of courses through UCLA Extension and went at it pretty solid for a few years. In retrospect, I realize I had no idea what I was doing. I flailed the entire time. When I finally gave up, about five years later, it was one of the happiest days of my life. I felt like this huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders.
But I started it up again six or seven years ago, and yes, I finished it. It’s called California Incline. Interestingly, the novella that won the Black Hill Press Summer Writing project is what I like to call a “bonus track,” an offshoot of the larger novel. “Will Kill For Food” is the story of one of the ancillary characters in that novel, a half-Korean storeowner named Dean, who’s forced to hole up in his store during the riots.
Q.
The story we’re featuring at Stories on Stage Sacramento is so different from this, and so different from the other stories of yours that I’ve read. Tell me what inspired it – because it takes such a decidedly weird turn, veering into an alternate universe –
A.
I know, right? You called it “funny and weird,” which is exactly right.
This was the first story I wrote when I took up writing again. I had a notion in mind, which is a play on the phrase “San Andreas Fault,” and built the story around that. The result was structurally sound, linearly-precise, grammatically correct, nicely punctuated . . . and honestly, quite boring. It was the first story I wrote that I considered a story: that is, it had a beginning, middle, and end. I was really proud of that. Still, it was not much fun to read.
I set it aside, wrote some other things, and came back it last year. I decided it needed something different, and that I needed to write something different, something not so down to earth. So I took as a model, in a general sense, the classic mid-century short story we all had to read in high school. You know, the kind of story that seems to make sense . . . until it doesn’t. The kind of short story that makes most people swear off short stories for life. More specifically, I modeled it after Cheever’s “The Swimmer.” In that story, time seems to progress linearly from morning to afternoon, but by the end, the season has also changed, and it seems years have passed. You don’t know how Cheever got from A to Z, but he does it so wonderfully.
I’m not claiming to be on Cheever’s level, obviously, but that was the effect I wanted. Only instead of time, I wanted to play with space, and the notion of a fault line as a dividing line between this and that, whatever those happen to be. I had a deeper purpose than just playing—To me, as soon as I hear a writer say, “I thought it’d be interesting to . . .,” I know the story won’t be good because the writing is coming from their head and not their heart. So this is a story from the heart.
Q.
And I hope we’ll hear more about that at the reading!
A.
Yes, you will. I’m looking forward to it.
We’re pleased to welcome Matthew Hanjoong to Stories on Stage Sacramento. Matthew is a graduate of California State University Sacramento and with a major in Theatre, and recently completed an apprenticeship with Capitol Stage, where he was featured in the Apprentice Showcase and Playwrights’ Revolution, a showcase of new work. He’s appeared in productions at Sac State, American River College, and Fair Oaks Playhouse. 
Ethan Ireland is a multidisciplinary veteran of the film, television and theater trade, with sixteen years as a working professional in both performance and technical roles. The son of noted ‘lit noir’ author Patrick Ireland, Ethan is a writer & director of several short films, and has worked as a voice actor and a performer for both stage and screen since 1995. Most recently he appeared in EMH’s productions of After Hours and An Almost Perfect Person. He has performed at Now Hear This: A Story and Music Performance Series produced by Atim Udoffia.
Making her Stories on Stage Sacramento debut with a reading from Sharma Shields’ The Cassandra, Carissa is a familiar face to Sacramento theatergoers, who have enjoyed her performances in Antigone (Big Idea Theatre); Brilliant Traces (Ovation Stage); An Octoroon and Anna Karenina (Capital Stage) and Steel Magnolias (Sacramento Theatre Company.) She’s also appeared in The Little Prince and Henry IV at The Theater at Monmouth in Maine, and in Dutchman and Dying City at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she earned her BFA in Acting. Carissa holds an MFA
We’re thrilled to welcome Ian Hopps back to Stories on Stage Sacramento. A familiar face to Sacramento and Davis audiences, since his 2016 move to Sacramento from the Bay Area he’s appeared in leading roles with Capital Stage (Luna Gale, Stupid F***ing Bird,) the Sacramento Theatre Company (Midsummer Night’s Dream, as Puck: Macbeth, The Tempest) and Big Idea Theatre (The Rover, An Ideal Husband, The 39 Steps.) He’s the associate producer and marketing director of the Davis Shakespeare Ensemble and has appeared in numerous productions there. He studied Theatre Arts at San Francisco State University, and in addition to acting, he writes for indie comics and podcasts, and produces his own music.
Valerie Fioravanti, the founder of Stories on Stage Sacramento, is the author of the linked collection of Brooklyn stories Garbage Night at the Opera from BkMk Press, which won the Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. Her fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including North American Review, Cimarron Review, and Hunger Mountain. She has received eight Pushcart Prize nominations for her work and a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy.
A frequent reader at Stories on Stage Sacramento, Kelley Ogden is an actress, writer, director and producer, who was most recently seen onstage in the Capital Stage production of Sweat. In addition to working with Sacramento Shakespeare Festival, Main Street Theatre Works and Theater Galatea, Ogden co-founded KOLT Run Creations, a local fringe theater company. She earned a BFA in performance from The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago. She will read “The Cell Phones” 
Shelley Blanton-Stroud
This is Ian Hopps’ first appearance at Stories on Stage Sacramento but he’s a familiar face to Sacramento and Davis audiences: since his 2016 move to Sacramento from the Bay Area he’s appeared in leading roles with Capital Stage (Luna Gale, Stupid F***ing Bird,) the Sacramento Theatre Company (Macbeth, The Tempest) and Big Idea Theatre (The Rover, An Ideal Husband, The 39 Steps.) He’s the former associate producer and marketing director of the Davis Shakespeare Ensemble and has appeared in numerous productions there. He studied Theatre Arts at San Francisco State University, and in addition to acting, he writes for indie comics and podcasts, and produces his own music.
Jessica Laskey is very happy to be back at Stories on Stage! As an Equity actress, she has performed for Sacramento Theatre Co., Capital Stage, and California Stage and she’s the co-founding Artistic Director of Theater Galatea. Laskey is a freelance writer for Inside Publications, Sacramento Magazine, Sactown Magazine, Comstock’sand The Sacramento Bee and is the founding co-publisher of Indomita Press. She is also on the board of sister series Stories on Stage Davis.
Ruby Sketchley has performed locally at Sacramento Theatre Company, Capital Stage, Big Idea Theatre, KOLT, MSTW, and as an 1850’s tour guide in Old Sacramento. She’s a former company member of Big Idea Theatre and a former board member of the Capital Film Arts Alliance.
Lori is an alumni of the USC BFA program in Los Angeles. She has performed in Broadway touring companies of 42nd St. and Meet Me in St. Louis. Lori staged & choreographed New York premiers of Captains and Courage, The Unwritten Song and The Bus To Buenos Aires, and has staged and choreographed work for California Stage, Big Idea Theater and Capital Stage.. She has been a company member and resident choreographer with Sierra Repertory Theatre, performing in Lend Me A Tenor, Guys and Dolls, Comedy of Errors, A Streetcar Named Desire and most recently The Glass Menagerie and Vanya, Sonia, Masha & Spike. She appeared in Capital Stage’s productions of Superior Donuts and Good People, and in the Sacramento Theatre Company’s production of Mothers and Sons. Lori received an Elly award for best actress in Love Isadora with California Stage. She also teaches Movement for the Actor Workshops.
