All posts filed under: The Boy in the Hemlock Tree

WHY DID I WRITE THE BOY IN THE HEMLOCK TREE?

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I spent twelve years as the most often booked, highest-paid makeup artist worldwide. A pretty bold statement, yes? You may ask why I am not famous outside the fashion industry. Easy. Those who became famous, Kevin Aucoin, Garren, Way Bandy, Orbe, Frédéric Fekkai, and others you may have read about, worked for high fashion magazines for covers and inside editorial features for fame but little money. The American magazines thought me too clean, not artistic looking—too preppy! I once worked for The Fashion of The Times, the fashion periodical of The New York Times, with famous editor Carrie Donovan. The service (story in lay terms) was to shoot the five most famous women in fashion alongside their daughters. Polly Mellen, then editor at American Vogue, sat before me, extolling my talent as I painted her face. “You don’t know me, and you don’t know if I am telling the truth, but you are one of the best makeup artists I have met. (All in a fake, throaty, mid-Atlantic patrician accent.) “Come see me at Vogue—I will …

NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART

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Writing a novel is not for the faint of heart. I have been at it for three and a half years, have written nineteen drafts, and thought I was finished four times so far. At long last, I searched for and found a remarkable literary coach who works with successful novelists. I took a chance and submitted my work to him in November, and to my delight, he liked my work and took me on. With his guidance and excellent pair of eyes, my book has ‘grown up.’ Mark Malatesta has helped me evolve to the next level and a subliminal suggestion has led me to add a surprising, creative  murder. When your emails look like this as you enter the home stretch, one has to feel pretty good. “I love (I mean I LOVE) the changes you have made.” And “Part two was so easy with a payoff at the end.”

MORE FROM THE BOY IN THE HEMLOCK TREE

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From 1980 through 1994, I was a renowned fashion makeup and hair artist who took a captivating journey through the 80’s and 90’s countercultural epochs of high fashion, where I got an intimate glimpse into the glamorous but tumultuous world of the industry. While others spiraled into expensive rehabs, I took notes. After two decades of journaling, I have sharpened my pencil to take you to the darker and brighter sides of the radical wave of the hedonistic Sex, Drug, and Rock and Roll era of the 1980s and early 90s. Studio 54, Area, Danceteria, and Paris’ Le Bain Douche were the epicenters of this glamorous chaos, where agents exploited underage models and fees for paradigmatic photographers, models and makeup artists fees skyrocketed. Linda Evangelista’s infamous declaration, “We don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day,” epitomized the excess of the time. My novel tells story of one person from these iconic times, Mackey McGillacutty, who experiences a profound and painful loss during his teenage years, a mystery that takes twenty-five years …

EXCERPT: “THE BOY IN THE HEMLOCK TREE”

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Mackey McGill remains the funniest person I have ever known since we were kids in 1962. Even then, he was still McGillacutty, a carefree, freckle-nosed, redheaded teenager charming girls and their mothers from the top of the three-meter board with his colossal cannonball splashes and half-gainers—long before he became the most famous fashion photographer in the world.   Even then, Mackey used his camera as I used my pencil, capturing moments in time that otherwise would have been lost. He spared no one from his lens, like when he caught Narcissus covered in flour, making her famous chocolate chip cookies in her kitchen. Or when Mrs. Mac concentrated on a heated bridge match, and he immortalized me with my face contorted in pain due to an ill-fated belly flop from the high dive. But it was a fateful event, a chain reaction akin to a domino run, that forced all of us to confront the inevitability of growing up. It all began when Mackey hatched that hair-brained scheme to photograph Dink Westergaard from inside the …