Nove Meyers
Running Away From the Circus
September 5, 2024
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I suppose that if you grow up in a circus family and spend the first twenty years of your life trying to become a Catholic Priest you can’t help but write a memoir.

But it didn’t start out that way. As the oldest of six kids, I was the only one who remembered seeing my mother catching fire from our gas fireplace, watching her and one uncle burning up another uncle’s stash of counterfeit twenties, and spending a month on yet another uncle’s travelling circus. So, I decided it fell to me to capture some of these stories for posterity.

And that’s all I planned to do; just write down a few stories. Until I went to the writing conference in San Miguel deAllende Mexico in 2017. After listening to keynoter Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club, and attending a few of the seminars I remember telling myself, “You might be able to write a book.”

Two years and a few writing conferences later I was encouraged by a kindly seminar teacher who praised the “voice” in my writing, noted by ability to write with a sense of humor, and shared Charles Dickens maxim with me; “make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.”

And that’s how Running Away From the Circus- Confessions of a Carnie Kid Who Tried to Become a Priest came to be. Reading a bunch of memoirs and a few “how to” books, I arranged my stories into the semblance of a plot and developed a character arc for a coming-of-age memoir. After pitching to a handful of agents and realizing the complexities and time frames for traditional publishing I decided to go with Atmosphere Press, a hybrid publisher from Austin.

It was the middle of Covid, so all the stops on my self-designed book tour got cancelled and I didn’t find my name on any of the bestseller lists. But my goal was modest. I figured I’d be happy selling as many copies of my memoir as Obama did in a single Costco store. I think I’m nearly there.

Synopsis
The book begins with the tale of a relative falling from the top of a circus tent before following the protagonist through the first twenty years of his life. The writing follows two tracks: a personal exploration of circus and carnival life in the mid twentieth century and a quest to follow God towards the Catholic priesthood. Somewhat surprisingly these two journeys are not quite so contradictory as they might at first appear.

Written against the background of San Francisco in the nineteen sixties the book also stumbles up against both American culture of the times and the angst of the Catholic church as it tries (only partially successfully) to re-invent itself. Political assassinations, the hippy/drug subculture, and the Vietnam War compete for the character’s attention with the promise of relaxed religious mores but not, ultimately, Roman Catholicism’s insistence on mandatory celibacy for its clergy. No stone, it seemed, went unturned.

BIO
Nove Meyers considers himself to be a “writer in retirement.” He’s retired, sometimes just tired, and tends to write in binges. His retirement comes after a twenty-year career working as an educator and another twenty-five running a small business, his own iteration of his circus heritage. Nove and his wife Barbara divide their time between Tucson, Arizona and the Oregon Coast.

“Running Away…” won the grand prize at the 2019 San Francisco Writer’s Conference and was recently awarded the “Hearten” grand prize for uplifting memoir from Chanticleer Reviews.

One story that didn’t fit into “Running Away…” provided the inspiration for a completed but not yet published historical novel set in the SF Bay Area and the Texas Hill Country in the nineteen forties against the background of WWII. And yes, it does include circuses and elephants.

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