Interview with Erica Ferencik | Sound Authors Radio
November 8, 2008
Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! Today is Friday, October 17th. I’ve got four great guests on the show. My first guest, her name is Erica Ferencik; I believe I’m saying that correctly.
Erica Ferencik: Perfectly.
Dr. Kent: Okay. The book she’s written is called Cracks in the Foundation. It’s a hysterical book about real estate and a town called Squams Cootknockitt. Now I have to have you tell me how that’s pronounced.
Erica Ferencik: Also you did that beautifully. I grew up in Schenectady, New York so I feel I’m at liberty to make fun of all those towns up there. You know, like Scatterkill and you know and others in my book like Vanderscleef and so on.
Dr. Kent: Tell me about this book Cracks in the Foundation. On the front cover there’s a hysterical real estate agent with a for sale sign halfway in the background.
Erica Ferencik: Well she’s sort of your quintessential old school veteran real estate agent in this sort of no where town of Squamscootnockitt, New York and she sort of half lives. She drinks too much white zinfandel, she’s 40 pounds overweight, and she’s sort of an over the top character, kind of like I don’t know, Ignavious J. Riley in Confederacy of Dunces you know? You remember him; he had a flatulence problem and lived with his mother and worked at Levis pants. Its kind of a dated book at this point but it was part of the inspiration for the book.
Dr. Kent: In that book, I remember he had a what was it? A hot dog cart for awhile and he ate all the hot dogs?
Erica Ferencik: He did.
Dr. Kent: Tell me about this 39 years of digging for pay dirt in Squamscootnockit by your main character Ginger.
Erica Ferencik: She’s a scrapper. She wont take no for an answer and she’s that kind of realtor. She’s of the bunch that still sends the lemon cake recipes and knocks on your door to try to get the listing and I guess there’s something about her that yeah, it’s ridiculous over the top, but there’s something really admirable and lovable about her, I mean I think. She’s just sort of the unsinkable molly brown of real estate. In high contrast to her newest office mate who comes from Manhattan and she’s just got the heels and she’s very slick; and her name is Candy Rickenhousen so she’s totally mucking up Gingers little world of basically a three person shop in upstate New York.
Dr. Kent: The whole story revolves around a starter out house.
Erica Ferencik: Yes, well its like as a realtor, so many ridiculous things happen to us and sort of the stuff you wouldn’t believe I mean anyways. But the outhouse was just like I always think, what’s the worst possible listing I could get? Anybody could get? The completely unsellable item. What’s the worst possible thing you could get and in the book it’s on a tiny piece of land and its historic and you cant tear it down so its like this enigma is sort of symbolic of her life. She can’t seem to make any sales and the funny thing about this book.
I’ve been a realtor for eight years, I wrote it in 2006 when the market was actually not bad. Well, I guess no one predicted things would fall, well I guess a few people predicted things would be as bad as they are. I didn’t mean for it to come true but that’s her situation and again as a novelist I wanted to give the protagonist a real problem. She’s going to lose her house, she’s going to foreclose unless she makes some dough, you know?
Dr. Kent: Tell me a little about this market right now. Are you still in real estate or have you signed off and decided to become an author exclusively?
Erica Ferencik: I’ve signed off and decided to become a rich and wealthy author. Door number two. I guess I’m still a full time realtor as much as I can be right now. The market, I’m in the Framingham, Sudbury Massachusetts market, those being actually two very different markets, ones a bit higher market than the other but its really tough right now. We have one town that 90% of the sales, the listings under 300,000 are foreclosures or short sales.
Then as realtors we have to learn how to conduct business in an entirely different way. We have to learn how do we transact a short sale; its much more complicated than life involving even more people than the usual set of people that we have, which is realtors, buyers, and sellers, mortgage people, attorneys; now the banks are involved and that’s just a whole different bag of wax. It slows things down and makes transactions really difficult for everyone. Plus the fact that people are losing their houses. Real estate is so much more than the house. It’s a symbol of status and family life and it’s very emotional and I mean it’s a huge thing for people.
Dr. Kent: So let’s talk about this woman and her life in your book. How much is she like you? Of course you’ve talked about the long, crazy, New England names and the starter out house but she also has a daughter, a Wiccan daughter and she named her Harvest. So talk about these tongue in cheek things about how do you relate to this character?
Erica Ferencik: Well, I guess I was trying to take myself who does have sort of an unsinkable personality in many ways and sort of take it over the top to make it funnier. Again going back to things that happen to us as realtors I was looking at a house and there was two little dogs in the house. They escaped out the back and luckily they were fenced in but it took me like 45 minutes to round them up. I was thinking what would happen if I lost them or something?
In the book, and I will answer your question by the way, Ginger Canadu loses two twin daschunds and they are able to recapture one of them only one of them and she replaces that dachshunds with one from the pound and of course she gets caught and its totally ridiculous. But I was just thinking what would someone do whose completely unethical and sort of foolish yet had a good heart. And let me explain that part. She has this relation, she loves her daughter more than anybody, and her daughters name is Harvest.
She came up with that name, she was actually smoking pot when she was pregnant, and she was eating a PB&J and she saw Harvest on the bread and she came up with that name. but anyways, so I mean, Ginger is more of the sort of drinks a bit too much and throws a bone every now and then whereas Harvest is completely the opposite; very conservative, drinks mint tea and is wiccan and is also bisexual which is another thing that came up. But this thing that bothered Ginger the most was that Harvest was Wiccan because it’s something she can’t understand. It’s very scary, what is she doing with these rituals and all that.
Dr. Kent: Let me ask you since you’ve brought up an interesting thing about pot smoking and the bisexual daughter and all this. How about the political season right now. What’s your take on this crazy back and forth in the media?
Erica Ferencik: Oh you mean the upcoming election?
Dr. Kent: Yes.
Erica Ferencik: I just wish it were over, I’m so sick of it. Two guys put in a box are going to fight each other if enough time goes by. It’s absurd that it’s taking so long, it just feels that way because it started so long ago, at least that’s how it feels to me anyways.
Dr. Kent: What would your character Ginger think about it? She is wearing a pantsuit on the front cover.
Erica Ferencik: She probably lets see, maybe she would I think she would want Obama. I think she would go for Obama. Hillary Clinton and then you know the switcheroo to Obama. I think she’s pretty cool, she definitely has her issues but she’s not a republican.
Dr. Kent: Is Harvest old enough to vote?
Erica Ferencik: She’s 18, is that old enough?
Dr. Kent: Yes. 21 to drink and 18 to vote. Well this has been a wonderful conversation about Cracks in the Foundation by Erica Ferencik, is that correct?
Erica Ferencik: That’s exactly right.
Dr. Kent: Your website as far as I can tell is wakingdreampress.com. Is there another one or is that it?
Erica Ferencik: Wakingdreampress.com is the publishing company that I started but you can also go to cracksinthefoundation.com and read about it. There’s Q&A, my press events, all kinds of info.
Dr. Kent: It’s a hysterical book, when’s the next one coming?
Erica Ferencik: I wish I knew that. I have sequels running through my head; I just got to get it on paper. I’m 24/7 promoting this but definitely something will come out soon.
Dr. Kent: Can you tell us was she able to sell the outhouse or are you not allowed to tell us?
Erica Ferencik: She was able to sell the outhouse to an outhouse collector in the end.
Dr. Kent: Well good luck to you in the real estate market and the book is called Cracks in the Foundation by Erica Ferencik. Her website is wakingdreampress.com or cracksinthefoundation.com. Thanks so much for chatting with me.
Erica Ferencik: Thank you so much Dr. Kent.
Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is Nuala Gardner. She is the author of a book called A Friend Like Henry. We’ll talk a little about autism and other things coming up. Don’t miss it!
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