Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Many people schedule their family vacations for the summer, but I’ve always found family vacations to be expensive and laborious undertakings that require more coordination and efforts than what they yield. I’m more a random road trip kind of person, or travel bare bones with a friend.

My favorite traveling companion is M. We have visited several continents and several locations that would make the Department of State blush. My travels have changed my perspective, and even my writing, because I’m not a sightseeing, bus trip kind of traveler.

M. used to work for AirFrance. In his day, if you worked five years you received free airfare for life. So he worked for five years and a day. And M. had a talent for resolving involuntary reroutes, because he had an interest in airplanes and flight paths and knew every route flown by AirFrance.

When we flew together, he would sometimes pick routes based on which planes would fly them. And when he learned about my fascination with the Paris metro, he made sure we rode every subway line, including the driverless one.

Airplane Books for Airplane People

Most of us don’t think about what happens behind the scenes when we travel, unless something doesn’t work. Some people have their own fascinations with airplanes or trains or travel routes. The main character in Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy fetishized airplanes, and hoped to die in “marriage” to one, and a specific one at that. To the main character, the ultimate union with a plane would end in a plane crash.

I read Sky Daddy and some older titles involving planes and flight attendants in preparation for the release of Dawn O’Harra’s Any Landing You Walk Away from… We will be releasing this debut novel August 28.

The Flight Attendant

At Tatnuck Booksellers in Massachusetts, I picked up a signed copy of Chris Bohjalian’s The Flight Attendant, recently released as a HBO Max television comedy-drama. I read the book and watched several episodes (featuring The Big Bang Theory’s Kelly Cuoco as the flight attendant) and found some of the changes interesting, swapping Istanbul from the book for Bangkok on the television program, for instance.

The story is a murder mystery/thriller as we see our flight attendant protagonist wake up next to a dead body in a hotel. In the series, the dead person is a character. He takes up space in the main character’s head and shows us everything the other points of view covered in the novel.

Any Landing You Walk Away From

In the Parisian Phoenix universe, O’Harra has crafted her airplane novel as a fictionalized amalgamation of her career, which started in the early 1980s during deregulation of the industry. The book follows May, our protagonist, through her experiences getting a job as a flight attendant, training, and then the adventures she and her peers had on-the-job. Nothing quite as exciting as murder, though.

The book reveals some of the shadier practices of the charter industry and what happens when the aging planes malfunction. It also provides a look at where the crews would go and the dangers they faced when flying to places like Libya.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAWN O’HARRA

1. Tell us about yourself.

I live in the Pocono Mountains,Pa., where my family has been for generations. I have always loved the outdoors and still enjoy hiking, running, skiing, and watching wildlife. Other special interests include travel (of course!), history, and many areas of science. These interests steered my education and career path. I earned a degree in history/political science and a degree and masters in wildlife biology. I left flying to teach science. I come from a long line of teachers, even my great-grandmother taught in a one-room schoolhouse.

2. Why did you become a flight attendant?

My first grade teacher— young, beautiful, and adored by the whole class— told us that she was leaving teaching to become a flight attendant. Her first name was May, just like my protagonist. I thought about my teacher often throughout childhood. I developed an interest in airplanes, and my parents would take myself and my siblings to civilian and military airports to watch planes. In my college years, I started hanging around the local airport, taking lessons when I could afford it. It seemed a natural progression to be working a job in the air and taking lessons at the same time.

3. What do people get wrong about the job?

The public associates the job with a glamorous existence. I did, too! What people don’t realize is the amount of hard work involved. It is a mentally and physically demanding job with long hours.

4. How much of the novel is true?

Most characters are combinations of people I know or met. There are several events in the book that are completely true, others are events that I combined or embellished.

5. How much do you resemble May?

May and I have some things in common: our love of travel, flying, and the outdoors. A key difference is that her career would always be flying, whereas I wanted to explore additional interests and decided.

6. What were your favorite parts of being a flight attendant?

I loved the camaraderie and the unique experiences we shared. How wonderful is it to explore a foreign country with a group of your friends? I loved discovering just how diverse and surprising the traveling public can be, exploring new places, and, of course, the flying itself.

7. May’s ultimate goal is to get her license. Did you share this goal?

Like May, I had many starts and stops getting my pilot’s license, mostly for money reasons. After ground school, lessons, soloing, cross-country flights, and passing tests, I felt a great sense of accomplishment. Flying is a way of experiencing reality like no other. You get a different perspective of the Earth. You experience the size of things, wide open space, and get a better idea of your place in it. When flying or traveling, I always get the chance to say “Wow!” I love saying “Wow!”