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Author Ben Loory Visits Pasadena Village

If you look for Ben Loory online, you’ll find “Ben Loory - writer rhymes with story” - which is entirely appropriate for a person whose talent is writing memorable stories. Villager Helen Kraus introduced him to a Pasadena Village group of about thirty that spent the afternoon of October 14 with him. He strolled in from another room, wearing glasses and with close-cut hair, casually dressed, smiling and seemingly pleased to be there.

Loory announced that he was there mainly to read some of his stories but gave a brief background of himself. He’s from New Jersey; his parents were English professors whose house held only books and no TV. He loves movies, which led him to screen writing, but he hated it and felt he was no good at it. Differences with his writing partner, who liked drama while Loory’s taste is for horror or comedy, led him to solo writing. A screenwriter, however, needs a portfolio so he began to stockpile ideas.  He liked his ideas and after taking a class at his favorite Glendale bookstore, the Mystery and Imagination Bookshop, he began to use the ideas for short stories. (Side note: his quote about the Glendale bookstore was, ”It’s gone now, like all good things.”)

Loory said that he views his work as a type of fable, a short tale to teach a moral lesson, often with animals or inanimate objects as characters. He launched into reading with his raspy voice. First was The Poet which he assured us was not a personal description because, unlike himself, when the poet finished a poem, he put it away in a drawer. Next came The Duck, about a duck who fell in love with a rock. After a long process, he ended up pushing it off a cliff, upon which it turned into a bird and flew away, allowing the duck to become closer with a girl duck. Then we heard Elmore Leonard which was not about the real author Elmore Leonard, but a book with which Loory had a clearly emotional connection as he had to pause twice to regain composure.  

Later on my own, I read his War and Peace, in which War and Peace are a married couple. They have a quarrel, and War, the man, kills Peace. He then proceeds to keep killing until he has eliminated the entire human race, after which he uses the bones to make a new wife - a bit of a departure from Aesop’s simple tales. Loory’s stories have varied messages and morals, depending on interpretation and personal analysis.

Each of Loory’s stories has a witty, plot-twisted ending, which he says “is where it works  for me.” He describes his process as “sit down, write, stop at the end.” He starts with an idea, and he never gives up, typically writes, then follows through and edits with painful revision. He keeps old drafts and sometimes reworks them. He most enjoys horror, and early stories tend to be dark. But he needed to lighten up, as he put it, and now the ratio of his stories is about ten with animals to fifteen with people. He finds that people like animal stories. There were some spontaneous comments and questions from the group, to which Ben seemed engaged and happy to respond.

Ben Loory has a third book “in the works” waiting to be published, but in the meantime, avid readers can enjoy his Stories for the Nighttime and Some for the Day and Tales of Falling and Flying. A more complete list of his work can be found on the website for Chapman University, where he’s been a lecturer.  Readers can also look at Ben Loory’s own website where there’s much more to find out about him and search his name on YouTube for an additional source for him and his work. You’ll be handsomely entertained.