Jule Selbo

A few days ago I attended a ZOOM event (set up through Thriller Fest) – it was an interview with the prolific Dean Koontz.

    and 100 more**

The hour went by quickly – and he had lots of tips for writers.

One that stood out:  Get a good office chair.

Koontz shared that he gets up at 5 am, walks his dog, has a quick bite to eat and then settles into his office chair and stays there.  No lunch. No errands. No interruptions. He writes until dinner time. (Could that really be, I asked myself. Can one be that protected, every day, from “stuff that needs to be done”?) He credited this disciplined schedule for the happy fact that he averages a completed book every six months – so far the total is around 105 novels (add to that some short stories and novellas).

He also gave some of the credit to his Herman Miller chair. “You gotta have a good chair,” he said.  I remember looking over at my office chair – a swivel, faux leather, armless ugly thing that has befriended my behind but doesn’t contribute much to me wanting to sit on it (non-stop) for ten to twelve hours.

(Above: just some other chair options I have seen at friends’ homes, what does yours look like?)

Herman Miller office chairs are pricey.  But the designers seem to care about those sitting behind a desk. You can go on their office chair site and take a “Find Your Chair” Quiz. You share how long your workday is, if someone else shares the use of the chair, posture preferences, height, weight, desire for adjustability and back support and ventilation.

I took the quiz.  The chair that would keep my butt, back and mind happy costs just under $2,000.

Attending the Koontz interview was good for my dark-February psyche.  He had a lot of interesting things to say about building characters – good guys and bad guys.  How he sometimes blends horror, sci-fi, fantasy and humor into his mystery-crime books and why. How he works with and relies on his editor (and it seems to be a good, healthy professional relationship – very supportive and creative.)

But what about that interview comes to the forefront in my mind over and over? That Herman Miller chair. I imagine it at my desk, tall, proud, mysterious in its ability to hold me in place, and expensive.  Will it ever be a reality?

Could it change my world as I know it?

Another tidbit that floated across my existence that could be life-changing:

This morning, on my usual five-minute drive to the local coffeeshop at 5 AM, I was looking forward to my snippet of “whatever is on NPR” at the moment. I was gifted with a short dive into a piece on Russian Elie (Ilya) Metchnikoff (1845 – 1916), the founder of gerontology. A successful immunologist, he had a large working space at the Pasteur Labs in France – where he declared that aging was a disease, and he was – dang it all – going to cure it.

Well, that caught my attention. I almost sat in my car in front of the coffeeshop so I could listen to the end of the podcast, but my desire to finish Chapter 15 in the next Dee Rommel Mystery book took precedence. I knew I could find the podcast later and there was no need to fight my Catholic schoolgirl discipline.

But what I did hear: A very young Metchnikoff lost his first wife to tuberculosis, nearly lost his second wife to typhoid fever. He became fascinated with germs, bacteria (are germs bacteria?) microbes (maybe germs and all bacteria are microbes?). One of his big discoveries was the presence of ‘phagocytes’ – bacteria-eating cells that could fight infection. He won the Nobel Prize for that work.

So not a ‘quack’.  Maybe he had his big idea about curing aging while sitting in this chair. He became obsessed with figuring out how humans could live 150 healthy years and then – when we were just sick of the whole thing – we could opt to die. Nice and neat.

One of his answers to longevity? Yogurt.

He had heard of some farms in the mountains of Bulgaria where inhabitants were centenarians. They ate a lot of yogurts – and since Metchnikoff believed that the large intestine, where imbibed foodstuffs were held and broken down – was largely responsible for unwanted events in human health (which lead to aging and death) . Metchnikoff did some experiments and came to believe yogurt affects bacterial action in the intestines in a positive way. I know, I know – all that probiotics stuff.

Not that I hadn’t heard of this.

We are inundated with information on pro, pre and antibiotics, micro and macrobes, kefirs (just don’t add honey or maple syrup) but when listening to the podcast on Metchnikoff, I realized (for the umpteenth time) that unless a “fun” story is attached to healthy advice (or any advice) things can go in one of my ears and out the other quite quickly.  What was the “fun” story that drew me into Metchnikoff’s championing of yogurt?

When he would go out for dinner in Paris, he would bring a Bunsen burner with him and sterilize the restaurant-provided knives and forks on the table before using them… Just one of the little things one can do to go to war with a pesky germ that may be lying in wait.

So. Eat more yogurt.  Save up for a Herman Miller chair.  With just these two changes in my life, will I finish a riveting, satisfying, exciting and fun book every six months?