The plumber’s tale, the housewife’s tale, the madman’s tale.

The book is not a biography, more a memoir. Is it true that when you first met Vivian Stanshall you hadn’t heard of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band?

It seems my life leads me to the right place at the right time. I was a baby beatnik, only 15. I loved that era. But before I went, I also knew Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Brautigan.

It was all winding down before the world heard of it. After that, Manson showed up, drug dealers followed the flower children. I got out just in time, the summer of love in 1967. I had the best of it, growing up in Marin in the sixties. Can you begin with some stories about your early years? Ki, you’ve been involved in the arts for a long time before you met and married Vivian. Recently, we sat down with Longfellow to hear about her Bay Area history, her work in progress on Stanshall, and their life together. His widow, Ki Longfellow, and her book “The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall,” brings vivid color and detail to the broad strokes of Stanshall’s life. Though he remains a beloved character 20 years after his death, the man known as England’s last eccentric has much in his life story that hasn’t been told. His popular spoken word surreal comedy, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, originally on BBC radio, has since been reimagined as a film and stage play. Beloved by the Beatles and the Kinks, Stanshall was unique. 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Musician, singer, writer, and artist Vivian Stanshall is perhaps best known as the charismatic front man of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, whose albums and stage antics brought them to prominent attention in England during the late sixties. Gripped by River House, trapped in an aging hotel of mirrors only Houdini could escape, how much can haunt a mind before it too is only a thing once imagined? 'A haunting and disturbing journey through the psyche.'-Erika Mailman, Author of 'The Witch's Trinity' Intense, literary, and harrowing, Houdini Heart is a tale of bone-chilling horror, emotional torment, and psychological terror. Her atonement? Or her suicide note? But life is never as you dream it, and River House isn't what she'd always imagined it was. Cocooned in its walls, she will write one last book. To a child, the splendid hotel was mysterious and magical and all its glamorous guests knew delicious secrets. Pursued by those she can't outrun, anguished by a guilt she can't endure, and driven close to madness, she flees to the one place she's ever called home: a small town in Vermont where River House still stands. But now? She's alone, tortured by a horrifying secret no woman could bear. Weeks ago, she was one of Hollywood's biggest writers, wed to one of its greatest stars. Once caught in its pages, there's no escaping Longfellow's terrible tale. HOUDINI HEART harkens back to the masters of suspenseful supernatural horror: Poe, Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, but speaks with a wholly fresh voice.

Houdini Heart by Ki Longfellow