The Novel Road

Short Story Saturday: Sean Ferrell

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:11:00 +0000

The Phrenologist's Collection

                     by Sean Ferrell

   "Classes ended today." I wait a moment for Alan to finish serving the other patrons. He has been busy tonight, the bar smells of smoke and his shirt sleeves are rolled up to the elbow and soaked with alcohol and sweat. "My lecture was somewhat pointless, since most students can only think of getting away from school at this point. I was somewhat startled to see young Mister Cleary in my 9:30 am class. I told you about him?"

   "Yes, I think you did."

   "I'm sure I did. He gave me quite a few headaches." I don't even have to say what I want, Alan knows and puts the whiskey before me without question. "After our difficulties this semester I would have thought that he would avoid my last Basic Phrenology class. He only took it as part of the humanities requirement, and so many other student's just skip the last day."

   "But he was back for more, huh?" Several people around me leave. Alan thanks them for their business and collects their glasses and tip from the bar. I decipher his thick hands and large eyebrow ridge as indicative of a long lineage of service work. He is shaped like a silverback gorilla, his back strong and too wide for his height. His arms sway a little when he walks. He looks like he should be brutish, but he has a simple grace like those apes that live between mountain trees.

   "It didn't take long for him to start again. Not far into my lecture he brought up that obscure little 19th century Jew from Vienna. Cleary had been reading some of his papers over the winter break. Where he finds them is beyond me." I tap my foot on the brass rail that runs the length of the bar. My briefcase, which I emptied at the house hours earlier, sits next to the stool. "As he did all semester, he began by promoting the absurd notion of the unconscious. I asked him, 'How is it possible for consciousness, which brings with it the meaning awareness, to be rooted in that which is un-aware? If it is unaware, what would it know of thoughts, dislikes, loves, etceteras? And what of the evidence of these having clear regions, localized on the surface of the human brain?' That was my main point: what did he make of the evidence which Phrenology handed us?"

   "What did he say?"

   "He made some rash statement that perhaps brain size, shape and contour depth had nothing to do with intelligence, emotion, intuition. With the aid of another student I pointed out, not for Mister Cleary who I suspect hides thin ridges beneath his moppish hair, the regions of the skull which indicate contrivance and susceptibility to conjecture and deceptiveness. Then, as there are no Jews in the class, I used a Jewish skull from my collection to show just how those regions of the Jewish brain are most prominent. I felt satisfied that the rest of the class was able to note how clearly this deflates the arguments of one so-called 'doctor.”

   "You're getting a little worked up about it, Doc." Alan laughs and refills my glass. I can feel my heart is beating and my ears are hot. I look at myself in the mirror that runs the length of the bar. My face is red, the color running up my face and along my high forehead, chasing my receding hairline. I have the deep lines and loose flesh that comes with age and devotion to study. My eyes squint back at themselves as I measure myself, attempt to understand my disturbance.

   Our conversation is quiet for a moment.

   "How long have I been coming here, Alan?"

   After a moment of thought. "I think it's about three years now."

   Now it's my moment for thought. "Have I told you that my wife left me?"

   "No, Doc, you didn't. I'm sorry."

   No need to be. "Do you know what the hardest part is? It's not her being gone. That's nearly a blessing. The hard part is the work it takes to make my life, my situation in the home, appear normal. I must do this so that none of my neighbors will bother me. Neither Anne or I were close to any of our neighbors, so why start now? Since Anne left six months ago--her shallow attempts at explaining her unhappiness as part of my behavior continues through letters and phone messages from her immediately after sessions with her new phrenologist, who, she claims, 'Sees in my head the sort of patience found in the skull of a saint'--I have tried to avoid contact with the neighbors, lest they realize that Anne is no longer in the house. Some of them would worry about me, drop by unexpected, and worst of all offer unwanted and useless advice. The work it takes to keep everything looking normal is exhausting. It takes time away from my other duties, my lesson plans or grading. I have to pull both cars in and out of the garage, and sometimes take hers and park it around the block. I leave lights on in the kitchen and her room when I leave for the store or school, or here. I tend her gardens. Weeds are pulled and tulip bulbs were planted last week that should have gone in last fall, when the rains were coming. All I can do is wait and hope that something comes out of the ground. I do this late at night of course, so that no one sees me. The neighbors should see no change in the house's habits. They see nothing but the exterior signs, of course, but those are the most important in many cases. Like body language, my neighbors would read the changes in my home like an alteration in the inner workings and take that as a sign that they should interfere." My foot taps continually on the brass rail, its tempo matches the beat of my heart and both slow considerably as I share with Alan the shape of my evenings. From the look on your face I can see that you think this is quite a bit of work to go through, just to avoid conversation with the neighbors. Well, if you had met my wife you would know that this is preferable to her company. If you had met my neighbors you would see me as the little boy trying to plug the leak in the dike. And if you had met both, you would be driven to heavy drinking in a small bar."

   Laughter and a head shake. Alan goes to work at the other end of the bar for some time while I work on my drink. The last bit of daylight has finally died outside. I grow more depressed as the days grow longer, since I feel like I waste more time in the summer. Now that the sun is down my spirits are lifted.

   Alan returns. "I've been watching you Doc, since you started coming here. You come in, and like some, you stare at your drink. But the others, they weren't looking at the drink, they're looking at their problems. But you, you're looking at the drink."

   Surprised that he could make such an astute observation, my foot stops its rhythmic tap on the brass. "Granted, I have not given you any sort of examination, but I can clearly see the general shape of your skull and, despite warnings to my students about making a diagnosis on a generalized shape, I would have thought your personality should have been more pedestrian and surface oriented. I suspect that at the back of your skull there is a knot of bone, that ridge denoting intuition." Animal, cagey intuition. "You, Alan, are full of surprises. Also, you stand as proof against making rash judgments. And, you are correct.

   "Yes. Quite true. I have been appreciating the perfection of the glass." The glass is held up for him to see. He has viewed it and a hundred like it in his lifetime spent filling and washing them. "Its smooth surface and crystalline appearance aside, look at the shape of its mouth. The perfect circle of it. Every point of that circle expressed in the perfection of the formula pi. It doesn't matter what is placed in it, for it bestows upon its contents a perfect shape." My companion cleans glasses with a cotton rag. "Oh, if only the human head were of such perfection. What a human this would be."

   Alan finishes one glass. It is placed, open mouth down, on a white towel covered with six identical glasses. From a sink he pulls another, rinses it, and begins to dry. "I don't know about that. Ever hear of a glass jaw?"

   "You only think that because you haven't seen the studies, the research." He nods.

   "I have a student, who is much like this glass. She is a young woman in her early twenties, and she often comes to my office. She never lacks anything in her papers or exams, but she arrives early to class and stays after. She is like a beacon in the dark. She is like this glass, waiting for herself to be filled."

   Alan rests his elbows on the bar. "Sounds like you've got a little thing for this student of yours." A wicked grin. My foot taps again on the brass rail.

   "Nonsense."

   Silence.

   Alan returns to his glasses.

   "No, I merely appreciate her as a student."

   "Well, you said she was like that glass, and you practically make love to that glass every night." Smile like a Doberman snarl. I don't respond. My glass is near empty and I think I should go. Alan stops his cleaning and leans on the bar again. "Listen, Doc, I don't mean anything by it. You've been coming here for three years, we know each other, right? So I teased you a little. Sorry." Despite my hand's signal to the contrary, my glass is refilled. "On me. Now, tell me about this girl."

   I smile. I sip. "The first time she came to my office, at the beginning of the semester, she wore her hair back, in a pony tail. It was pulled so tight that I could see the signs of intelligence in her skull, its perfection. As she sat in my office, discussing various terms she claimed to have difficulty with, I found my mind wandering back to the shape of her head." I use my glass as a stand in for Miss Miller. It is posed on the bar before me, between Alan and me. In my mind it is her, perched on the edge of my office chair. I mentioned to her that often the easiest way to learn about the forms and shapes I was teaching was to view them first hand. I stood. Before I could even conceive of what I would do, her head was in my hands." I gently touch both sides of my glass, lift in into the air, cradle it in my palms. Alan is silent. "I stood behind her, I placed one hand across her forehead, as if checking for fever. The other I ran down the side of her temple, past the occipital lobe, down Drayden's ridge behind the ear. I recited their names and traced shapes and ridges across her head. She didn't move, not even a quiver. After I had checked her skull, and had discovered in her a tendency to intellect--despite her sex--and an unusually developed sense of empathy, I asked her if she would feel comfortable in running through the same exercise with me as her model. I took her place in the chair and she mine, behind me. Her cool hands wrapped around my forehead and ran along the crest of my balding crown. Her right hand shook, as did her voice, as she recited the regions of my skull from front to back, right side then left. I took her hand and said, to reassure her, 'Miss Miller, you have the attributes of a person who shall go far in the field. No need to be nervous.' She thanked me quickly. Before she left I suggested she might come again, for another tutorial session. She demurred at first, then smiled and said, 'I would like that.' Since then we have met several times a week. She complained that other students teased her about our sessions, but I console her. They are jealous. I can see it in class. No one sits near her, at least two empty seats surround her on all sides. She sits alone, like a jewel hidden among stones. The other students chatter like crows to one another when she is called on, even during role call. I never speak to her in a familiar manner when we are in the classroom, yet the others circle and gawk at us both. I have told her time and again that brilliance is a burden, like deformity. In some ways it is worse, because deformity can never truly conceptualize itself as outcast. But brilliance can feel that sting."

   A short silence. The smoke in the bar has thinned. No one else is here.

   Alan pulls a clean towel from a drawer. He swipes at the bar, soaks up pools of spilled drinks, melted ice. His motions are quick and aggressive. Again I am reminded of the gorilla. Something in me tells me that Alan is much like that rare beast. He holds so much of its strength and charm. "So, she's like your glass. She's perfect."

   Again, a silence. My thoughts come slowly because of liquor, but they don't stop completely. "In my days as a student, in conjunction with my studies of phrenology, I did some work in logic, most notably the positivist school led by Boole. Boole's contribution to modern thought, the breakthrough he had concerning the relation between man and the greater scheme, centered in an understanding of language. Our ability to make a statement and be understood. He worked with statements reduced to symbols, the simplest elements representing anything said. Through a long series of proofs and truth tables, his T's and F's lined up properly, he closed in on a unifying symbol, a single vertical line, through which all statements could be made. He proved that both conjunction and difference could be defined in terms of the statements relations to the one function of his line. In my own life, I have sought that sort of clarity. Such a line with which to define all relations. I had thought, quietly as my life passed and I became the man I now am, that such a clarity would evade me. As I sat with Miss Miller for the last time today, as I ran my hands across her head, felt the contours and emotional range of her being, I began to sense between her soft skin and my rough hands, just such a line. A principle through which all that could be said, all that had ever been said, all of this was held in the most tender of gaps between the surfaces of my hand and her head. I realized that this was the simple element, the line that I had sought for over thirty years. All relations are exterior, the interior being vague and shifting. All connections between people, everything that can be said or felt between two people, is dependent upon this line, this invisible barrier that stands between them. Anne's dislike of me grew over thirty years. I didn't have any control over her as she began to fester, like a cancer in our house. She began to complain of loneliness and I mentioned her friends. She complained of depression and I suggested trips abroad, which she took, and which cost me a small fortune each time. Finally, after she returned from the Riviera and told me a divorce was necessary, that at least we didn't have any children who could be hurt from our separation, and that she had fallen for a man on her trip who did some sort of spiritual work within, not a church, but an "organization," I realized that I had ignored a fundamental principle at work. Within our relationship, her slow change over thirty years of marriage was the perfect example of this exterior function. Our position in one another's lives, on the outside, never changed. But, the wide range of emotion from love to hate had been covered within the simple boundaries of our life together. Between us ran that invisible barrier. The same with my students, who hold a position in relation to me that is identical from year to year. Yet there is such difference between them emotionally that one refuses all that I say, and another hangs upon my every word."

   Despite Alan's nod I think he doesn't follow my reasoning.

   "The point is this," I lay both hands, palm down on the bar and collect my thoughts. "Even though there are elements on the interior of the people around you, your relations with them are actually all exterior, defined by the invisible barrier, like Boole's function, between you and them. And given enough time, you will experience the full range of interior possibilities even though the outside doesn't change. It doesn't matter what one does, this barrier stands as a function between all relations."

   Alan looks at me with cool eyes. He doesn't understand what I say, and he never will. It doesn't matter. I smile at him and close my eyes. With my palms still on the rough bar I ask him to pour one last drink, even though I can hear the clock chiming and I know he wants to go home.

   After Alan refills my drink I make some other observance of the time. It is as superficial as everything else I have said to him. He mentions the back door lock, and asks if I would watch the front while he closes. We go through this whenever I come to his bar. When he turns his back I down my drink and place this empty glass quickly into the open briefcase at my feet.

   After Alan has locked the backdoor, and I am out the front while he locks it behind us, I decide that I should walk home. I leave the car parked in front of Alan's bar, and follow the sidewalk for the three miles back to my house. It is cool, and there is no traffic. As I pass Anne's flower bed I check for weeds in the moonlight. A quick glance is all I give.

   Inside the home I open my briefcase and remove the glass. I take it into the kitchen, where I wash it in warm, soapy water. I rinse it and then dry it with a soft, cotton towel as I walk to the living room. Anne has left me with no furniture. She sued for half and the half she won was the half inside my half. I have the house and two cars, but there is nothing in them. I make a mental note to myself to remember to pull her car from the garage in the morning. I stand in the living room and run the towel over the glass for I don't know how long.

   I finish polishing the glass and place it carefully on the mantle, over the cold and dark fireplace. I put it there next to the other almost two dozen glasses that I've taken from the bar as the semester progressed. One on each day that Miss Miller visited my office.

    Before I turn out the light and go upstairs to rest my head on a pillow and let the alcohol put me to sleep, I gently touch the perfect rim of the newest glass, then I kiss its side, barely touching its surface with my lips. Between my lips and the glass I can feel the simplest of barriers. As I leave I cast one last glance over my shoulder to steal another look at the grown collection of empty vessels. Then I turn away, and shut off the light and go to my empty bed.

The Novel Road Interview: Norb Vonnegut

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 06:19:00 +0000

What better way to start December 28th!

The paperback release of a superb financial thriller, "Top Producer" is today. Not only is this an incredible novel, it will have you calling your broker just to "check"...Please welcome Bestselling author Norb Vonnegut to The Novel Road...

Today's visitor to The Novel Road, I count as a friend, which makes interviewing this vastly intelligent, funny and kind man something I've looked forward to for some time. I made him promise not to look at the interview questions till he finished the final edits on his next Bestseller "The God's of Greenwich" due out in April of 2011. (He peeked, which led to me showing him how NOT to answer the "two sentence Hook" question. Like I could answer it better than a bestselling author? I re-looked up hubris after I failed miserable to answer my own question)

Norb Vonnegut writes financial thrillers and blogs about money for The Huffington Post, Switzer in Australia and Acrimoney. Before turning to a career as an author, Norb worked in private wealth management as a stockbroker with Morgan Stanley, Paine Webber and other investment banks. It was there, knee deep in the business of finance, where he learned one absolute and irrefutable truth.

The people of Wall Street are characters. They're a ready mix of quirks and edgy humor. They speak in tongues, and their escapades make them the perfect fodder for irreverent fiction. Their behavior, so ordinary on Wall Street, can border on the bizarre anywhere else. You'll see what he means inside the pages of Top Producer, The Gods of Greenwich and his novels to come.

So after two decades in the trenches, he traded money management for writing thrillers about fictional stockbrokers, traders and hedgies. His villains are a blend of pure fiction and people he heard about or read about through the years. You'll find themes like friendship and betrayal in his novels, lots of backstabbing as he describes financial scandals and gravitate toward stories about underdogs who prevail against overwhelming odds.

You don't need a background in finance to understand what makes his characters tick or the mistakes they make. They're are no stock tips in his novels. But you might gain a few insights from a Wall Street color commentator (Norb) as you board a roller coaster ride of fiction that could be fact.

Norb graduated from Phillips Exeter in 1976, Harvard College in 1980 and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1986. These days, he and his family split their time between New York and Narragansett, Rhode Island. Norb is an avid cyclist and volunteer with the American Foundation for the Blind as a member of the Board of Trustees.

Norb Vonnegut

Me: Your novel, “Top Producer”, has gained you the reputation of being the “Grisham of financial thrillers”. I believe this reputation is not only well earned, but also well founded by your experience as a stockbroker and financial analyst for the Huffington Post. How hard is it to live up to your fans expectations? How does the pressure to deliver measure up to your days as a broker?

Norb: First and foremost, thank you for your kind words and for inviting me to be your guest on The Novel Road. It’s an honor to post here with so many talented authors.

Author versus stockbroker—these are two different worlds that converge, oddly, in ways readers might not expect. As an author, I work hard to deliver something special on every page. It might be that whoa plot twist from left field. Or an irreverent observation about day-to-day life. There’s always pressure to captivate readers en route to the last page.

Is it “hard”? You bet. Turning pages is a choice for readers, not an obligation.

When I was a stockbroker, clients charged me with protecting their wealth. The pressures of watching over billions of dollars had nothing to do with entertaining readers. The job was all about people—keeping their money safe from predators and bad markets and sometimes even from themselves. So where’s the convergence? I’ve been asking one question through both careers: What can go wrong? As an author, I control the answers and the outcome inside a fictional world of my own creation. I never had this power as a stockbroker, and sometimes events developed a life of their own. My real-life experiences are a fertile place to start fiction, which is good news for a novelist. Most of the time . . .

It’s scary when fiction turns into fact, as it did in Top Producer. Who would have guessed what happened on December 11, 2008—twelve months after I completed my novel and signed a two-book deal with St. Martin’s press? Here’s what SmartMoney magazine wrote last fall when they named Top Producer to their “best reads” list:

The story mirrors reality — in ways that may now surprise even its author, who finished the book before the economic meltdown.”

See what I mean?

Me: Social Media. Talk about its importance to the modern author’s success.

Norb: Social media is the new word of mouth. On steroids. The fastest way for authors to gain recognition is for their readers to “tweet” or “like” posts on Facebook. I often wonder whether Ernest Hemingway would tweet if he were alive today. I hope Mark Twain would have more followers than Lady Gaga or Paris Hilton, but that’s a tough call.

The power of social media, I think, is its simplicity. An author’s comment can zing around the world in seconds. See those Twitter and Facebook buttons off to the right. You’re doing writers a big favor whenever you click them. Two seconds and you make an impression that could take hours of talking with friends about a good book or an interesting interview.

This is an aside. But I believe the value of big voices—the richness of James Earl Jones, the raspy charisma of Bill Clinton, the world-hangs-in-the-balance gravity of Fred Thompson—will be lost as we move from sound bites to digital bites. It’s easier to comment on a blog than lock into an extended conversation.

Whatever. We are where we are, and social media is here to stay, evolve, and weave its way into the fabric of our lives. I recently converted my author website into a blog, because I like the conversation with readers.

If you have a minute, check out my breaking news on Bernie Madoff. One of his guards in North Carolina forwarded a photo of him in the prison yard. You’ll never guess what Madoff was reading.

Me: Your main character, Grove O’Rourke, is one of the best modern day protagonists around. He’s balanced in both savvy and humanity. Talk about finding this balance in your character?

Norb: Everybody loves underdogs. And like many others, Grove O’Rourke starts with the basics. He’s smart. He’s edgy—prone to blistering one-liners. He’s safe and approachable. People tell Grove stuff, because he uses their information in the right way rather than trading on it for personal gain. He’s a good guy, who always seems to be rescuing the people that cycle through his life.

But Grove is no superman. He has his own shortcomings. Plenty of them. He’s working through a personal tragedy. He’s has this sense of never fitting in. It’s been that way ever since his childhood. And as you will see in Top Producer, Grove’s profound sense of loyalty makes him vulnerable. Things go wrong when he helps friends and events spiral out of control.

There’s a little Grove in all of us. I think readers care about characters with foibles. It’s nice to see heroes work through problems—especially if they’re not faster than a speeding bullet or able to leap buildings with a single bound. Everybody has weaknesses, right? And I’ll confess, mine are power tools. If I have a drill in hand, there’s a disaster in the making.

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"If anybody can turn international finance and hedge funds into a riveting thriller, it's Norb Vonnegut. The Gods of Greenwich is a pure delight, racing relentlessly from the bedrooms of Manhattan to the boardrooms of Connecticut to the banks of Iceland. Bravo!"

– Jeffery Deaver

***************************************************************

Me: To the financial layperson, the financial world seems to be based on whim. The stock market can crash based on rumor or innuendo. What’s more, companies with no relationship to the rumor, fall simply because if brokerages sell one, they sell them all, furthering the fall and appearance of “no confidence” in the overall market. Are analysts over analyzing, putting too much faith in conjecture?

Norb: Okay, Doug, you’re touching on important issues—whim, innuendo, and no confidence. I worry less about “over analyzing” and more about dangerous investment techniques. Forget about playing the game. There’s a new breed of hedge funds that are “gaming the game” with uncertain consequences.

Some of these funds program computer “robo-readers” that scour the news and social media posts for words or emoticons indicating mood. Once they know how the world "feels," hedge funds can make lightening fast momentum trades. Buying when spirits are good and propelling the markets higher. Or dumping shares when the world is on the verge of an extended funk.

The thing about traders, though, is that they lay traps for one another. It’s been that way ever since the first market opened, and it’s behavior that I explore in my new novel The Gods of Greenwich. It’s probably easy to dupe robo-readers into buying, for example, with a computer code that spits out thousands of happy emoticons over social networks every few seconds. Tweet here and watch the market go up.

Whatever happened to value investing?

I’m old school. I like it when analysts scrutinize corporate balance sheets, cash flow, and profitability. It’s when the investors focus on how the game is played—and forget the basics—that I get scared. BTW, I’ve posted a video about “speed trading” on my blog Acrimoney. It will be especially interesting to anyone interested in the flash crash of May 6, 2010, which is a non-fiction example of how the game unraveled.

Me: Did you struggle with the amount of information you wanted to include, versus the amount that kept your novel moving at it’s blistering pace? How much information is too much?

Norb: I assume you’re referring to financial information. Less is more. I spent my career reading how financial securities work. And there’s one thing I know beyond any doubt. It’s people that make for a good story. It’s human interactions—the plotting and the scheming, the reacting to overwhelming events, the backstabbing and betrayal—that create the stuff of mystery, suspense, and a good cry. Nobody ever gets emotionally involved in a synthetic CDO, right?

I regard Wall Street and Hedgistan as background, not the story. The Gods of Greenwich, for example, is really about keeping up with the Joneses. Something we all understand. It just so happens my characters own hedge funds and are dying to join the Greenwich glitterati. Readers will disappear into a different world, and I hope, learn a little, laugh a little, and lose themselves in the story.

Me: Give me a two sentence “Hook” for your novel, “The Gods of Greenwich”.

Norb: Want to know what’s worse than going broke? Get in bed with The Gods of Greenwich.

Me: You get to have lunch with any author, from throughout literary history or present. Who would it be and why?

Norb: I probably change my mind ever five minutes. Sometimes the answer is F. Scott Fitzgerald. Other times it’s Ernest Hemmingway. Or it’s a working author like Carl Hiaasen, Tom Wolfe, or the writers I’ve linked to on the home page of my website. But when push comes to shove, I’ll go with Dorothy Parker.

I can’t imagine a better way to spend lunch than drinking wine with DP and listening to her zingers. She probably has the sharpest tongue of all time. I am so taken with her venomous wit, in fact, that I created a character with a DP backstory in The Gods of Greenwich.

It wasn’t hard mixing DP into a thriller about hedge funds. She was always weighing in on the subject of money. Here’s one of my all-time favorite quotes from her: “I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I’ll bet I’d be darling at it.”

Me: This question, courtesy of Jeff Hall: “I'm a shortstory-ist. Writing a novel is like a crazy long marathon, only harder. How do you maintain a clear sense of that first passion that inspired you, throughout a 200 thousand word journey?”

Norb: It’s pretty simple. I write novels that are 100,000 words, give or take. That cuts the problem in half, right?

I don’t mean to be flip. My goal is to laugh or go ballistic while writing. (Sometimes it gets noisy in my office.) If I don’t enjoy what I’m writing, readers won’t either. That’s why I struggle to make every sentence perfect and pithy. Ponderous doesn’t cut it.

If I can turn a phrase that makes me happy, then I’m ready to test it on my editors—my wife first and then, if she’s okay with the draft, my editors over at Thomas Dunne/Minotaur/St. Martin’s Press. If the last word of every chapter is the most important word, then I’m telling the story the right way.

Me: If Norb Vonnegut ever writes a Non-Fiction book, what would the subject be?

Norb: Bicycling. My wife Mary and I once bicycled 1,500 miles through Europe. That was twenty-five years ago. But we’d love to do it again. Now you may understand why cycling is such a big part of Grove O’Rourke’s life in Top Producer.

There’s part of me that says write a book about professional cyclists during an extended race, like the Tour de France or the Giro de Italia. I’d like to make the sport come alive for non-cyclists—in much the same way that Michael Lewis writes about finance for readers outside of Wall Street.

The truth is, however, you don’t need to be a professional to love the sport’s adventure. I cycle regularly and would prefer to write a memoir about re-tracing our route from Copenhagen to the Loire Valley twenty-five years ago. Stuff happens on the road, and I’m sure there would be plenty of anecdotes.

Now that you have me fantasizing, let me put something out there. If any readers produce reality television shows and want to do something involving extended bicycle tours and a middle-aged guy who could stand to lose ten pounds, I’m your man.

Me: The publishing world is changing. Share your thoughts on what you think these changes may hold for authors, both successful and debut.

Norb: Clearly, the delivery system for books is the biggest change. Bookstores are finding new ways to add value, because they’re locked in something of a cage fight with electronic books. We have no idea how publishing will evolve. Today’s economics allow anyone to self publish and hope for a viral hit.

Editors are the one constant I see no matter how publishing evolves. As long as there are great books, there will be great editors. I think the key for all authors is to align with the best editors they can find.

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"This novel ponders the age-old ramifications of greed, but Vonnegut gives it a fresh timely twist."

– USA Today

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Me: A friend of mine gave me a question to posit to Ben Greenman of The New Yorker and short story fame: “How will literature change when 80 percent of all books are sold on e-readers?” How would you answer this question?

Norb: Tough question. What did Ben say?

Purists will wince at this prediction. But long term, I think novels will border on interactive experiences. Right now, we can click on words for instant definitions. We can fall in love with books and tweet passages from readers left and right. It won’t be long before we can click into videos. Brilliant, right?

As the processors grow more powerful on I-pads, Kindles, and Nooks, I think the exchanges between authors and fans will grow more complex. There will be more opportunities to entertain readers, which is what stories are all about. A click here or there, for example, might bring a personality insight into a character that’s not available in the main story.

Kindles and other devices, however, are still in their Jurassic Park stage. In The Gods of Greenwich, I list an email address—which is almost a dare to get readers to send a message. They’ll get a nice surprise in return. But this form of exchange is fairly basic. Fifty years from now, the back and forth will grow more sophisticated as technology continues to advance.

Don’t believe me? Who heard of Google ten years ago?

Me: Among your many talents as a writer, you write great short stories as well. My friend Jeff Hall was wondering: “As a short story writer, my greatest struggle is not deciding what to put in, but rather what to leave out. My 5K shorts typically start out as 12K novellas that I have to pare and trim ad nauseum. Do you find the process works best if you give yourself free reign and then whittle the result down to a manageable size? Or do you keep your stories focused and directed as they are birthed so that the initial product is of a workable size?”

Norb: I don’t think about stories in terms of size. Or in terms of chopping them down—even though “whittling” is always part of the process. My goal is to hook readers at the open (you can download the first chapter of The Gods of Greenwich on my website), ratchet up the tension in the middle, and then end with a killer finale.

The middle is the most difficult part to write, whether it’s a short story or 100,000-word novel. Peter James, #1 internationally bestselling author (Dead Like You), explains it best. He draws a line graph of “the middle” with three peaks, each one higher than the last. The goal is to introduce new events, each one turning up the heat in the story.

I like Peter’s visual, which reminds me of roller coasters. It’s the kind of ride I’m trying to give readers. When they finish one of my stories, I hope they say, “Yikes.” Or something like that.

************************************************************

Norb, Thank you for your time and incites. All the best my friend!

"The Gods of Greenwich is a fast-paced and satisfying locomotive of a financial-based thriller, Dominick Dunne meet Barbarians at the Gate. Vonnegut has opened the vaults of Greenwich's elite, and oh what secrets and schemes pour out!"

Andrew Gross, New York Times Bestselling author.

The Novel Road Interview: Amy Minato

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 01:32:00 +0000

My guest today on The Novel Road didn't just talk about chucking it all and leaving the hustle and bustle of society behind, she actually did it. Amy Minato chronicled her time of societal disconnect in her novel, "Siesta Lane"

A poet at heart, Amy rejected her life of consumption in her native Chicago to go back to nature—specifically, to a commune in Oregon, where she rediscovered herself.

She originally moved to Eugene, but that wasn't quite simple and green enough.

"But though a hip college town, Eugene is still a city where buildings obscure land," Amy writes in "Siesta Lane: One Cabin, No Running Water, and a Year Living Green.

My soul pinches and pinches at me until I search the classifieds for a way to live more rural ...."

Amy found a place in Rainbow Valley, about 10 miles west of Eugene, off a road called Siesta Lane. It was a cabin with electricity but no water and heat, on eight acres with some other cabins and a main house. Sort of private, sort of communal, and very rustic.

She loved it.

"I felt like stepping out of society and renewing my personal values," she said. "I wanted to live a more healthy lifestyle and create a life that was more grounded."

Amy didn't want to go all the way back to nature, though. She loves camping and
backpacking but is a social person who values a sense of community. She found that
on Siesta Lane and found while keeping a journal that she was able to develop her writing.

"Siesta Lane" includes poems, reflections, anecdotes about the year Amy spent in the cabins. She also cops occasionally to the pretentiousness of her mission, and laughs along with the reader at her attempts to be both environmentally-friendly and sane, considering the fact that she’s moved in with a bunch of strangers in a remote locale.

"It's really a call to live a simpler life," she said. "I wanted to see if I could pull it off. I didn't have any kids and I wasn't on some sort of career path -- I know not everyone can do that -- but it really worked for me."

One benefit of living at a slower pace in a rural setting is learning more about flora and fauna and the rhythms of nature. There are all kinds of birds and animals in the woods of western Lane County and Amy eventually has to face an ethical dilemma: What effect does an intelligent, aggressive cat have on the local bird population?

All good things must come to an end, and life in the cabin on Siesta Lane ended when
the property was sold. Amy fell in love and got married and became a poet and writer and teacher and mother. She lives most of the year in Multnomah Village, which she enjoys for its feeling of community within a city, and part of the year in Joseph, at the foot of the Wallowa Mountains.

There are more writing projects planned, more worlds to discover, but only one Siesta
Lane.

Jan Muir, a relative of the great environmentalist John Muir, lends her beautiful black-and-white illustrations to the book.

Siesta Lane is both a practical case study in living green, and the heartwarming story of a modern idealist who dives head-first into the fray and discovers just what it takes to live a year unplugged.

I'm honored to welcome Amy Minato to The Novel Road...

Amy Minato

Me: I became quite attached to the tenor in your writing style. Did you love of poetry influence your writing voice? If so how?

Amy: Poetry is my religion. When I read it, the best verses resonate within me like a temple bell.

Any creative writing I do is poetry, even when it’s not. Even when it’s a letter or a story or an essay. I’ll dust and shine the language until it reflects back even if it takes ridiculous long. (This is obsessive and unlike the rest of my haphazard personality. We are talking about a woman who can’t bear to follow a recipe and who makes a bed in 5 seconds.)

Me: Is there a backstory for your Siesta lane?

Amy: The story of the story of Siesta Lane stems from an eight year old girl dwelling every spare minute in a gnarly willow in the Chicago suburbs who grew into a woman aching for the limbs of her first love.

Me: Talk about the process of writing Siesta Lane?

Amy: My writing process is to stretch out on my bed with pillows everywhere, a cat purring on my back, clutching a bowl of snacks (snacks are key) in one hand and a pen in the other. Being supine tricks my subconscious into thinking I’m asleep, which coaxes it to wander the dark hallways of my mind until part of it stumbles out onto the paper. I do this for hours, not even getting up to stretch or answer the phone (woe to anyone who knocks on my door during the voodoo-writing time) and usually rushing late to pick up my kids with a weird glaze to my face, muttering nonsense

I wrote the book as a diary, a testimony, and as an investigation of this crazed urge to live near trees. Being awarded the apt-named Walden Residency in Ashland gave me the space to tinker with and shape Siesta Lane as a book. I scrutinized and murmured every word in Siesta Lane as I would a poem. It took a long time to write, longer to edit. It’s an expression of my soul finding home in an alien world. A book about pulling away from consumerism and chit-chat to live deep. Moving to Siesta Lane was a siesta – a contemplative rest in mid-life. I call it one woman’s search for Walden in the Pacific Northwest. A wealthy member of the literati shuddered after reading it, “It’s well-crafted, honey, but no one will read this. People just don’t want to wear secondhand clothes!” It’s different than other naturalist books in that I lived with nine other people! Quirky characters so fun to write about I’m trying fiction next.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why you two are a perfect match.

Amy: Janet Reid was my Glinda the good witch (as in Frank Baum’s version of the Wizard of Oz not as in Wicked). She believed in my book more than I did. She boomeranged it to publishers and never gave up. It took awhile for readers to be interested in voluntary simplicity. Now we all have involuntary simplicity because of the economy. Increasing awareness of global warming has folks accepting more lifestyle change. While the world caught up to us Janet stayed cheerful and optimistic. We’ve never even met but I worship her business card.

Me: You get to have lunch with any author you which, from throughout history or toady, and why?

Amy: Let me sit at an Indian buffet with Loren Eiseley. Or maybe not. I may faint or fuddle. My feeling for him as a writer mirrors my daughter’s giddiness over her favorite rock stars. Something about his incisive science, haunting lyricism and intelligent melancholy ripples my waters. I’m burning up here. Pass the chutney.

Me: Like you, I come from a state that suffers from preconceived notions of what it’s like. Most people think of Oregon as rainy with lots of tree, yet the state boasts a considerable desert. How much has the total geography of Oregon comes into play in your writing?

Amy: Oregon is my other religion. This land, that roams from fertile wet to austere alpine, and I have a twenty-year marriage yet I still swoon over its landscape. My new novel is again about the pull of a place. But instead of the fertile Willamette Valley the new one perches on the oblique corner of Oregon where I live whenever I can. I exist in Portland where we have work and my kids have school, but I rush home to bask in the blue mountains every summer, drag back to Portland dreaming of my return to the hypnotic beauty of Wallowa lake. It’s a curse like impossible love.

timoconnorphoto.com

Me: Can you tell us about your next novel? If so, when can your fans expect to it?

Amy: My new book, Green Gentian, centers on this desire for land that keeps and crushes us even while such desire keeps and crushes the land. Pearl, the central character, has been scraped and polished by her place. Zany based-on-true-but-toned-down-to-be-believable characters circulate the novel and bump each other like loose electrons. I hope to finish it by next spring, if it doesn’t finish me first.

Me: Life experience in the writing process.

What advice can you give writers on its importance?

Amy: I would tell a new writer to go toward mystery, to be draw into your life and puzzle it out in your work. You don’t have to change your external life like I did to examine your internal one, but you may need to look at it through a different perspective, clothed in fiction, plumped with philosophy or crocheted into poetry. If the idea of having the work you create published puts you into a cold sweat it might just have some truth in it.

The Novel Road Interview: Lisa Desrochers

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:07:00 +0000

The next, the next, the next... Who will it be?

My guest today on The Novel Road has earned
every right (and then some) to the title of:

"The Next Big Paranormal

Romance author."

Her novel, "Personal Demons", currently

climbing up sales lists, is garnering rave reviews

along the way.

Released in September of this year, the book is already being re-printed in 10 countries! What makes her book unique, besides crisp writing, great characters, and action seldom seen?

Well.... Actually who could ask for more, and if you do: Goodluck. "Personal Demons" has it all, and then some. First, a little about my guest...

Lisa lives in central California with her husband and two very busy daughters. It was her oldest daughter's love of books that first inspired her to write for young adults. There is never a time that she can be found without a book in her hand, and she adores stories that take her to new places, and then take her by surprise.

Growing up all over the country has inspired wanderlust and she loves travel, which works out well because she lectures internationally on a variety of health care topics. She has a Doctorate in Physical Therapy and maintains a full-time practice in California

*********************************************************

Please to welcome, Lisa Desrochers

Lisa Desrochers

Me: Your research ethereal for the most part. With the exception of locales and applicable science, where do you draw your event inspiration?

Lisa: My research for Personal Demons focused on angel and demon lore and hierarchies. The beauty of fiction is anything can happen, but I still wanted to ground my fictional heaven and hell in something that at least remotely resembled common belief systems. As far as the events that drive the plot, those all flowed organically from the characters.

Me: Paranormal Romance is a huge and expanding genre. Once the all but exclusive domain of vampires. Angels and demons are taking a large piece of this market. Are there any other directions within this genre you’d like to go?

Lisa: I have a WIP that focuses on magic, which is also well explored in urban fantasy. But this manuscript has a little different take on it.

Me: Sara Barnett and Michael Nathanson are your audio book readers for “Personal Demons”. Talk about a debut novelist’s part in choosing the readers and what is was like to hear your work performed for the first time.

Lisa: One of the funnest (funnily enough, that’s not an actual word in the English language…but I digress) things about this whole publishing process was listening to audition tapes and choosing my readers for the Personal Demons audiobook.

We got three audition tapes for each reader (Frannie and Luc) from Brilliance Audio. They came in on a Friday in July when we were leaving on a camping trip, so my whole family listened to them in the car and our choices for Sara and Michael were unanimous. I have to be honest and say that I laughed out loud several times while listening to the audiobook.

The actors are just that…actors. It’s a dramatic interpretation of my work, with the emphasis on dramatic. My demon, Luc’s voice is very mellow in my head. He’s pretty cocky, being a Creature of Pride, so he really doesn’t stress too much. Michael’s Luc gets a little more worked up over things than mine does, but overall, I think they did a great job.

Me: Paranormal is a hot genre. It’s also highly competitive. How important is having a publisher like Tor Teen /Macmillan in your corner?

Lisa: I joke that my editor helped me make Personal Demons into the book I thought I wrote. It’s really important to have a solid editor behind your work. Professional eyes see things differently. Tor has been fantastic about getting Personal Demons onto shelves in all the major chains as well as several indies.

Me: You have three books, "Personal Demons", just released and two in progress Original Sin and Hellbent, all will be on the market by May 2012. You have mounting foreign rights deals, 8 or 9 countries at last count, for “Personal Demons”. Has it all hit you yet, or have you been too busy to watch your star rising?

Lisa: It’s been pretty busy, mostly because it’s happened so fast. I had my one-year anniversary with my fabulous agent, Suzie Townsend, after Personal Demons was on shelves. As a matter of fact, it’s been just a year since it sold. (Dec. 22^nd) I wrote Original Sin in the two months we were on submission to agents with Personal Demons and have spent the summer in edits with that, and I’m in progress with Hellbent, as well being crazy with everything that goes into releasing a book. But…all that said, I have relished all the up moments, which include foreign sales. We released in Austrailia/New Zealand just after the U.S., and in Brazil last month. I have my German cover, and they re-titled it Angel Eyes. There are ten total foreign territories we’ve sold to.

Me: Talk about your editor and your experience in this crucial part of publishing. Did you mesh right away, or did it take time to get on the same page?

Lisa: Personal Demons sold at auction, and the primary reason we went with my seriously cool editor at Tor was because she was totally on my page with the manuscript. Every one of her revision requests made the book better. Both my revision letters for Personal Demons and Original Sin were pretty tame, and I love that she wasn’t afraid of Original Sin, which is much darker and edgier than Personal Demons.

Me: Give me a two sentence “hook”, describing “Personal Demons”.

Lisa: Frannie Cavanaugh is a good Catholic girl with a wicked streak and a unique skill set that has the king of Hell tingling with anticipation. She finds herself in the middle of a battle for her soul between Lucifer Cain, who works in Acquisitions for Hell, and Gabriel, the angel sent to protect her, and it isn’t long before Luc and Gabe find themselves fighting for more than just her soul.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why you two are a perfect match.

Lisa: Suzie totally rocks. Being a newbie, it was important to me to find a hands-on agent who had time to walk me through the process. At the time I signed with Suzie, she had just started agenting (now she’s kicking publishing butt and taking names) and she was very responsive when I had a question. She also has an amazing editorial eye and went through a round of revisions with me before we went on submission. But mostly, I chose Suzie above the other agents who offered on PD for no other reason than she loved my manuscript.

Me: Publishing is going through an evolution at the moment. How has this or will this affect you?

At Fine Print Literary
everyone works

Lisa: If you mean e-publishing, I think it’s great. Readers of physical books will either keep reading physical books or switch to e-books, but they won’t stop reading. And, a few people who weren’t readers might actually start reading because there’s cool technology now. So anything that puts books in hands in a good thing.

There are a lot of options for e-readers—self published and traditionally published books. I also think that’s great. As long as a reader knows the source, and therefore has realistic expectations, I don’t have a problem with them having choices.

Demon head
18th Century

Me: Life experience in the writing process. What advice can you give writers on its importance?

Lisa: I’ve heard writers joke that they had too happy a childhood, because they have nothing to write about. Honestly, other than shaping you as a person, and therefore influencing your writing indirectly, your own big life experiences don’t play much of a role.

It’s the little experiences I draw on more often—something funny my daughter said; a backed up toilet; watching different reactions to being caught in the rain. Silly things.

Me: You get to have lunch with any author you which, from throughout history or today, and why?

Lisa: Ooo! There are so many I’d choose. JRR Tolkein, Pasternak, Steinbeck. If you’re going to make me choose one, I’d have to say Emily Bronte, because Heathcliff so deliciously warped, and I’d love to know her inspiration.

Me: My recent interview with David Brown, of Atria Books, talked about the importance of having a social network to help promote your work. Talk about your personal efforts to “get the word out”

Lisa: If your book is one of the chosen few to get the “big push” from your house, it’s less important, but for most of us, I’m convinced it makes or breaks you.

I started a blog before I was even agented. As soon as my book sold, I started promoting it on my blog. Even thought I knew I wouldn’t have ARCs until spring, I started a monthly Debut Contest, where the winner had a choice of one YA debut off a list of four that I provided or a signed ARC of Personal Demons.

I’m shameless, I admit it. I would choose the four biggest buzz YA debuts I could find each month as the alternate choices to mine to draw their readers to my blog, and then I Tweet the heck out of it. Usually those authors, also being debut authors and wanting free PR, would re-tweet my tweets. I started out in my first contest in January with about 40 entries. That winner chose a book other than mine. From that point on, the contest grew every month until I was getting over 150 entries, and everyone from the Feb winner on chose Personal Demons. Anytime I’m near another author, I have them sign one of their books for me then I give it away with a signed copy of Personal Demons.

I’ve given away 20 signed books (only half of which were mine) in the last three months. My blog has grown to almost 900 followers and I have almost 1600 Twitter followers who look forward to my contests. I just ran my first ever Original Sin ARC contest in conjunction with releasing the cover. I recruited nine awesome bloggers who have supported me and Personal Demons for months. I let them release the cover and ran a contest on my blog. They all got between 50 and 100 comments on their post and I had almost 300 entries. People love free stuff.

****************************************

I'd like to thank Lisa for taking the time out of her busy schedule and wish her all the luck in the world... Wait a minute, she doesn't need luck. Her star is rising, and it couldn't happen to a nicer person. All the Best, from The Novel Road

The Novel Road Interview: Jeff Somers

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:42:00 +0000

   Readers respond to powerful stories, to inventive stories...to Jeff Somers stories. The power and pace he brings to the pages of his novels, marks him well as one of the foremost authors of his genre. His fans are legion. Viewers of his videos can't wait for the next appearance of a whiskey bottle, glass and guitar lead in.

   His wild sense of humor seems on the verge of breaking loose every minute of the day.

   Have I been looking forward to his visit to The Novel Road? Heck yeah! Having read his books, and watched his video, I can tell you Jeff Somers is pure entertainment.

I'm pleased to welcome Jeff Somers to The Novel Road

Me: A world gone mad, replete with post apocalyptic semi-dead in a land of midnight’s midnight… So you live in New Jersey?

Jeff: Oh! Jersey humor! I LOVE JERSEY HUMOR. Lord knows I never hear jokes about Jersey. I can see the tone you’re trying to set here: Erudite, sophisticated, worldly.

Not just living in New Jersey, I was born and raised in New Jersey. I currently live just 5 minutes from the literal spot of my birth, a sawdust-covered tavern floor where, legends say, a stain remains to this day, resistant to any type of detergent. I was also educated solely in New Jersey, first at overcrowded public schools, then at St. Peter’s There but for the Grace of God Academy, then at Rutgers University. Here’s something I wrote in a short story a few years ago about St. Peter’s There but for the Grace of God Academy:

In the fall my brother Yan and I matriculated into high school. Our parents maintained a long arm and enrolled us in St. Peter's There But For the Grace of God Academy, which was a pseudo-religious-slash-military establishment stressing Latin and self-mutilation. We awoke one fine September day to find the ancestral home surrounded by Jesuit Commandos, who piled us into an armored truck along with several other frightened boys. Yan and I cheered our fellow kidnap victims by singing The Sound of Music (Yan's voice indistinguishable from Julie Andrews') and we plotted a brisk escape from the truck; but once the rear doors were thrown open Yan and I were inexplicably ratted out by our fellows. My brother and I entered St. Peter's as prisoners, and spent our first weeks there being beaten on a daily basis by a burly priest named Father Hump, until we could speak perfect Latin, although we could no longer remember our own names.

St. Peter's There But for The Grace of God Academy was designed to instill in its charges a sense of discipline and a love of God. Towards the first goal, we were enrolled in classes such as Sewing Leather Sneakers for Nike Inc. and Kathie Lee Gifford Clothing Line 101. These classes taught us to be patient, to endure hardship, and to manage complex and minute tasks with broken and bloodied fingers. Towards the second goal, we were beaten unto insensibility, at which point we often hallucinated that Jesus came down from heaven to deliver us from our living hell, which certainly made us love him....until we awoke for Cooking for the Jesuits 101 at 5am the next morning, an advanced class that often resulted in failing grades and thrown food, at which point we started resenting Jesus all over again.

Yan and I look back on our years at St. Peter's There But for the Grace of God Academy fondly, of course, or at least Yan would if he had not perished in the Great Failed Escape of 1989 (or so I thought), in which thirty-one boys lost their lives attempting to tunnel under the fences surrounding the campus. His loss was doubly senseless, since we were set to graduate later that same year. Perhaps the looming specter of the final examinations (which are rumored to have cost more than one senior his life) had driven Yan to this extreme, or perhaps it was simply the girls academy situated across the way from St. Peter's, where nubile and uniformed young women often spent the hot afternoons washing cars in cut off T-shirts.

At any rate, I did manage to graduate with only a few broken bones and permanent scars in the spring of 1989, and as I said I look back fondly on my years at St. Peter's; so fondly that when I returned some years later to burn the place to the ground in a blaze so hot it liquefied windows in surrounding buildings for miles, I shed a tear or two as I sipped a strong Martini on an overlooking hillside. Or perhaps that was just the dry air and the heat.

So yes, I live in New Jersey. I know diners, I know traffic circles, I know the New Jersey Turnpike exits like I know my own skin. It is the greatest place in the world. Or so I imagine, as I’ve never left it.

Me: From essayist to dystopia, you’ve proven your versatility and talent. Give me the title and story line for a Jeff Somers YA novel.

Jeff: Let’s call it The Really Cool Kids who Drank and Smoked a Lot. It would involve an accidental homicide at an unchaperoned party, furtive attempts to cover it up and displace the body. The kids would swear secrecy and eternal silence, but one by one would start killing each other off as they get paranoid. In the end, one of the kids would survive, completely free of suspicion. As part of the marketing, we’d insinuate it’s actually autobiographical. We might have to kill a few people to make it look good.

Me: Avery Cates is a unique dystopian archetype. How did he evolve?

Jeff: Indiana Jones. Seriously. My brother and I had a long discussion once about how Indiana Jones was one of the best movie heros evah because he got his ass kicked. In a lot of action stories, the hero is just supernaturally capable. They take punishment and shrug it off and come roaring back, maybe with some dirt and blood painted on to make it look dramatic. It’s boring. We liked Indy because when he got beat up, he looked like he was getting beat up, and he had bruises and scabs. He looked like a guy trying desperately to avoid physical pain, you know?

So when I started working on The Electric Church all those years ago, I wanted the character to be tough and mean, but I wanted him to be human. He avoids pain, because that’s what people do. He’s tough and mean, but it’s only because he knows that any sign of weakness will get him killed. And he feels that pain, buddy.

That’s the key, I think, to Avery, aside from his father-son issues that keep manifesting as a doomed desire to save and protect people coupled with a conviction that things Used to be Better, you know? Avery feels that pain, and tries to run away from it.

Me: Hollywood and Jeff Somers. I hear your suggestion that Justin Bieber play Avery Cates in the film to come was shot down, though Sean Ferrell is still considering an offer to write the screenplay. Any other news on the film front?

Jeff's just finished custom home.
He designed it himself...

Jeff: Ferrell’s screenplay was bosh. He tried to go all Charlie Kaufman and wrote himself into the story as some sort of observing angel, floating around glowing or something—it’s unclear. He gave himself all sorts of funny lines commenting on the action, too. By page 350 of the screenplay it’s really just Ferrell sitting at a park bench chatting with the audience. It goes on for hundreds more pages. At one point he starts singing “Pennies from Heaven” while dressed as a clown in the moonlight. A CLOWN IN THE MOONLIGHT. Think about it.

My own casting suggestions involve me, playing mutliple characters. My emails and phone calls are no longer returned.

The news on the film front is that there is, in fact, still a film front to get news about, which is pretty damned exciting. I know they’re very close to a first draft of a screenplay. Beyond that it is blissfully out of my control, and I like it like that.

Me: Talk about the day you became a Wikipedia star?

Jeff: “Star” is perhaps a strong word. More accurately “The day I actually showed up on Wikipedia.”

Plain and simple, whining works. Every now and then I wake up wearing someone else’s pants and I stand in the bathroom, urinating, for about fifteen minutes, and I scowl at myself in the mirror (the whole bathroom is mirrored, for obvious reasons) and think, today I will see what I can get other people to do for me. This was one of those times. I posted on my Blog that I wanted a Wikipedia page. I’d created one for myself several years ago, back in the Wild West period of Wikipedia, but it had been deleted. So I began complaining.

People got right on it, but it was like that Monty Python bit from “Holy Grail”: They set up a page, but it was deleted for me not being notable enough. SO someone put up another page with more details and that was deleted. And then another, and another deletion, and then finally the fifth or sixth one stuck. I was pretty proud of myself for a while, then I saw this episode of Deep Space Nine, which is just as detailed as my own page: Damn.

Me: This question, courtesy of Jeff Hall : “I'm a shortstory-ist. Writing a novel is like a crazy long marathon, only harder. How do you maintain a clear sense of that first passion that inspired you throughout a 200K word journey?”

Jeff: First of all, 200,000 words? Holy crow, man, what kind of books are you writing?

I’ve never had this problem. For me, stories are as long as they are. Sometimes I write 2,000 words, sometimes 80,000, but I rarely struggle to extend something. I tend to think that if you’re struggling to write your way into official novel territory, maybe what you’re writing isn’t a novel after all. What usually happens with me is I keep writing a story and then I get to the end, I check the word count, and then I decide what to call it.

One thing I think I do almost unconsciously is break the plot into sections and treat each one like a short story, in a way. It’s like that time you decided you were going to eat an entire bucket of fried chicken in one sitting: If you just keep going eventually your jaw locks up and you die of heart failure. But if you treat it like sixteen normal-sized meals, you’ve got a fighting chance!

As for inspiration, the answer to that question, no matter the context, is whiskey. Scotch, to be more specific. Glenmorangie 10-year to be even more specific in case anyone out there likes to mail bottles of booze to authors.

Me: Lunch with you and any author (except Sean) you choose, from throughout history or today, and why.

Jeff: Lunch with Ferrell! The mind boggles. I’ve seen the man drink. It’s disgusting enough. Who would want to watch him eat? He reminds me of BrundleFly.

Myself, of course, forming a stable time loop that in essence grants me immortality.

My god, I need to have a genie appear and offer me wishes. I would crush that scenario. I’d end up ruling the universe and the genie would be weeping in a corner, totally destroyed.

If I have to get all serious about a question involving the ghosts of dead writers, I have to ask if I can bring recording equipment with me, so I can steal ideas.

Me: Publishing is going through an evolution right now. Talk about how this has or will affect you.

Jeff: As an author, it hasn’t really. I haven’t been publishing long enough to gas on and on about the good old days. I used to write on a manual typewriter, but that was part affectation and part being born before computers were everywhere.

Well, I’m lying; here’s one way things have changed for me as an author: The long tail. I can think of dozens of writers I read when I was a kid in the 1980s who no longer have any presence whatsoever on bookshelves. Regardless of where they went career-wise, the books I read and loved 30 years ago cannot be found on a real-life bookshelf, and back in The Day that would be the end of it. People write books, try to sell them, and then fade away if they don’t sell enough.

Except today that isn’t necessarily true. There are so many options, so many sales channels. You can self-publish, re-issue your old books. People can find old copies of your books online pretty easily. We’re inching towards a place in history where “out of print” doesn’t mean anything any more, and that’s pretty amazing. I’ll bet there are a lot of writers throughout history who managed to put out a book or two and then faded into obscurity who would have been delighted to have the Internet around to keep their books available, or to publish new material if publishers were uninterested.

That, and the fact that my last publishing contract required me to wrestle a bear or forfeit my advance. This was new.

Me: Talk about life experience. How important it is to an author?

Jeff: It’s as important as anything else. I’m reminded of a quote from Laurence Olivier when he was working on The Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman was a method actor playing a man who’d been awake for days bing tortured, so he’d stayed up for days straight prior to filing th scene to get some verisimilitude. Olivier saw him and said something along the lines of “My dear boy, why no try acting?” The thing about writing is, you are making shit up. I don’t care what you’re writing, unless it’s nonfiction, you are making shit up. Yes, writing what you know will capture honest details that will ring true, but generally speaking I don’t hesitate to write about things I’ve never actually experienced, because I can make up the details, you know?

Life experience is the ultimate inspiration. You go somewhere, you do something, it leaves marks on you, and one day you see something else and it clicks with this old memory and you have a story in your head. But never, ever forget that you’re a writer. You. Can. Make. Shit. Up.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why the match is perfect?

Jeff: Why? Did she make you ask that? Are you working for her? Is she having me followed again?

My agent and I are perfect because when I was sending out query letters a few years ago trying to entice an agent, she’s the only one who wrote back that my letter made her laugh uproariously. She then mentioned that my sample chapters had some “disturbing” copy-editing errors, but that she wanted to see the full novel anyway. I knew she was perfect.

Plus, when we meet to discuss business we meet in bars, and she buys me whiskeys until I fall off my chair. That’s how you run a writing career, folks.

Me: Talk about editing your work. What advice can you give other writers on the editing "Stop line"?

Jeff: I don’t edit much, honestly. I write one draft. I take that draft and stare in horror at the awfulness of it, then I do a line-edit. I read the whole thing over and revise as I go. That’s it. I stop. I’ll do more revision when I get feedback from people, depending on how good or bad the feedback is, and then I stop for reals.

I don’t think anything I’ve ever written has ever improved due to a third or fourth or whatever revision. I think the event horizon for diminishing returns in the revision/editing process is much closer than you think, and very quickly you are grinding the gears. I know people who have been working on one book for two decades. Is the 198th version significantly better than the 100th, or the 3rd? I doubt it.

So my advice: Stop editing, sooner rather than later.

Me: Give me a two sentence “Hook” for “The Terminal State”.

Jeff: Avery Cates gets pressed into the army, has augments implanted in his brain that allow people to control him, and then gets bought out of the army by the two men he wants to kill more than he wants to kill anyone else: Canny Orel and Wa Belling. Hilarity ensues!

Me: If Jeff Somers ever wrote a Non-Fiction book, what would the subject be?

Jeff: Probably "Stop Drinking Before You End Up Like Me". Or, possibly,

"Why Wearing Pants in Public is Largely Unnecessary".

Me: You have some great fans in your blog’s forum. The “Official Jeff Somers Thinks Too Much of Himself Forum”, how did it come into being?

Jeff: Well, one day I was sitting in my office, wondering if my hangover might be cured by a good old-fashioned forced-vomit, wondering where my pants were, wondering when, exactly, my office had come to reside in someone else’s house, and wondering, of course whether the people yelling and pounding the locked door to the office were friends or foes, it occurred to me that I did not have a forum where people could post about how cool I was. So I created one.

Creating it myself was a bad idea. The forum gets spambots constantly and has been compromised a few times, because I am lazy and incompetent. But no one else was volunteering to create one, so I took care of bidness, as they say. Hence the title of the forum, because, really, did I really think the world needed an online forum to discuss me? I dunno. Discuss.

I don’t actually check it much, though I should, because I think the forum-dwellers enjoy provoking me into saying things I shouldn’t. I dive in once and while. I have organized my “Street Teams” via the forum; volunteers who get promotional stuff from me (stickers, bookmarks, etc) and agree to distribute them round the world to promote Cates when a new book comes out. That’s been a blast.

The Novel Road Interview: Allison Pang

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:30:00 +0000

Paranormal Romance is a growing genre. No news there. What does make the news is who is new and the way the quality of her work is raising the bar.

A marine biologist in a former life, Allison Pang turned to a life of crime to finance her wild spending habits and need to collect Faberge eggs. A cat thief of notable repute, she spends her days sleeping and nights scaling walls and wooing dancing boys....

Well, at least the marine biology part is true. But she was taloned by a hawk once. She also loves Hello Kitty, sparkly shoes, and gorgeous violinists. She spends her days in Northern Virginia working as a cube grunt and her nights waiting on her kids and cats, punctuated by the occasional husbandly serenade. Sometimes she even manages to write. Mostly she just makes it up as she goes.

I am pleased to welcome Allison Pang to The Novel Road

Allison Pang

Me: Paranormal is a hot genre. It’s also highly competitive. How important is having a publisher like Simon and Schuster in your corner?

Allison: A lot of it can depend on the support and enthusiasm the publisher has for the book (and there are plenty of indie pubs that adore their authors and give them as much support as they can.) Even within a larger publishing house like S&S there are different imprints – and each one can vary as to how they handle things like marketing and publicity, but the publisher needs to know the best way to market that particular book, whatever genre it happens to be. The key thing is probably going to be distribution. A larger publishing house like S&S is going to have the resources to get a book out there in places that a smaller publishing house might not.

Me: As a writer, clarity of idea is crucial to conveying a story. Some authors create a plot first, others create characters, then build a story around them. Explain your process and why.

Allison: I’m a panster at heart. I usually have a vague idea of how I want the story to end and that’s about it. Even in my more “detailed” outlines, I generally just have an objective I want to have accomplished – i.e. Main characters find a body under a bed in chapter X. (That’s about as detailed as I get. I don’t really care how they get there - I might have a couple of ideas for some characters, but usually I just throw them together in a scene and see what happens.) When I’m done, I smooth things out as I need to in revisions (or rewrite a bit.)

Me: You have four works in progress. Wow! How do you keep them separate in your mind?

Allison: Well, most of those were started before I sold – right now I’m only really working on the ones that pay me. But I don’t have any issue moving back and forth between them. Usually I’d work on one until I got stuck at some point. If it was something I would need to think about for a while, I’d backburner it and just slide over to a different story. I think part of this flexibility comes from playing in the Play by Post online writing games I’ve done for a few years. I’m usually running multiple characters in different settings (often at the same time), so switching between stories is very much the same.

Me: You’ve recently posted on your blog some of your marketing thoughts. Is it really ever to soon to start creating a buzz as a debut author?

Allison: Maybe not buzz about the fact that you exist or that you have a book coming out – but specific buzz about that book does need to be spaced out a bit or I think you run the risk of overexposure (especially if the release is a few months out.) Within the last few weeks before the release is when things should probably be geared toward heavy marketing – however, you have to remember that many of these blog tours and such are set up months beforehand, so a good plan is crucial.

Me: Talk about your editor and your experience in this crucial part of publishing. Did you mesh right away, or did it take time to get on the same page?

Allison: I was very lucky that Danielle and I meshed so quickly. I knew she loved the book and loved my voice and that helped quite a bit when it came to the revision letter. As long as I could explain my reasoning behind why certain things needed to be the way they were, she was fine with any decisions I made. In return, I had to trust her when she pointed out places that needed to be tweaked or rewritten. It’s an interesting symbiosis, but it’s fantastic when it works. (Plus, she sent me chocolate. J )

Me: Give me a two sentence “hook”, describing “A Brush with Darkness”.

Allison: I’m lousy at hooks. So here’s three sentences direct from the book that do pretty well:

I had a naked incubus in my bedroom. With a frying pan of half-cooked bacon and a hard-on. And a unicorn bite on his ass. Christ, this was turning out to be a weird morning.

Me: You get to have lunch with any author you wish, from throughout history or today, and why?

Allison: E. E. Cummings, simply because his poetry is about as close to perfection as you can get.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why you two are a perfect match.

Allison: She goes above and beyond for me, to put it simply. It’s a bit of a complicated situation as to how we got to work together and I won’t go into details about it here, but I can say that I’m truly blessed by our working relationship. For me, communication is key. No matter how busy Suzie is, she always manages to find a little extra time for me, even if it’s just to answer a quick question via email. She is a phenomenal resource and a tremendous person.

Me: Before you had an agent and book deal. Talk about editing your work. How did you know when to stop before submission?

Allison: I’m not sure any writer knows. You write until you feel like it’s the best you can write and then send it out. If rejections or critiques come back and they’re all fairly similar, then work on those parts. After my first round of rejections, I took a look at the manuscript with another critique partner and tightened it up some more and then sent it back out. I also had entered into a few writing contests on the hopes that it would final and I could skip the slush pile (and I did win several, one of which led me to an offer of publication).

Me: Can you tell us about your next novel?

Allison: It’s the sequel to A Brush of Darkness – I can’t really say too much about it at the moment without spoiling the first one, but it is the second of a confirmed series of three to be published in the next year or so.

Me: Publishing is going through an evolution at the moment. How has this or will this affect you?

Allison: The publishing world seems to be changing on a daily basis and everyone is affected in some way. It’s an exciting time with a lot of new opportunities and groundbreaking innovations – and a savvy author needs to be able to navigate these new waters with an open mind. As far as how it will affect me? Guess I’m just going to have to wait and see. J

Me: Life experience in the writing process. What advice can you give writers on its importance?

Allison: Well obviously life experience is important to some degree (that whole “write what you know, research what you don’t” adage is certainly true.) To be a writer, you do need to make a commitment to writing – whether that’s a certain page count or word count per day or some other method, but it’s also important to get away from the keyboard, even if it’s to avoid burnout. Experiencing things first hand can give your work a sense of realism that you might not be able to capture otherwise and inspiration can come from anywhere.

Special Flash Fiction Sunday: Bryan Russell

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 06:59:00 +0000

Reunion

By Bryan Russell

The two naked men nodded hesitantly to each other. They stood in line, not wanting to move. Neither were entirely certain how to hold themselves, but fatigue dulled nervousness, and accumulated fear overshadowed shame. This nakedness was just one more thing. They tended to hold their hands in front of themselves, out of politeness. Their ribs were clearly visible in pale, taut skin, the bones arching toward each other,
meeting in the hollows of concave chests.

“Are you from Budapest?” one man asked.

“Yes,” a second man said. “And you?”

“Yes, I lived on Egyesules Street.”

The second man blinked, a light kindling in his eyes. “Is it so? I, too, lived on Egyesules Street. Out past the park.”

“We were near the boulevard. That’s where my home was. We had a beautiful garden.”

“Yes, yes, I know the area. That’s strange. Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” the first man said. “I don’t recall you, though I thought I knew most of the people on the street. Yes? My family was there for many years.”

“Mine, too. Mine, too. How old are you? I cannot tell in here.”

Everyone in this place became indistinct after awhile, features blurring, age creeping over each face regardless of years. Everyone here was centuries old, vast lifetimes washing quickly through their veins.

“I am thirty-five. And you?”

“I am thirty-six,” the second man said. “It’s so strange. I don’t recall you. And yet we must have seen each other, yes?”

“So many years on the street. Playing as a boy. Playing football at the park. Many boys were there. Did you play?”

“Yes, I played. I wasn’t very good. If I looked up I tripped over the ball. If I looked down, everyone yelled at me for not passing.”

“I was pretty good, though not as good as my friend Bodo. He was a very good player. Very good.”

“I remember him!” the second man said. “Yes, he was very good. I remember that. I remember playing with him. What has happened to him, do you know?”

The first man looked away and said nothing. They were both silent for a time.

“You had a garden, you say?” the second man said. “I must have seen it. Walking on the street, I must have passed it by.”

“It was beautiful. I worked very hard on it. The garden was already very nice when we bought the house. I was struck by it. That is why I picked that house, I think. I had always liked the garden. Even as a boy, walking to play football. Isn’t it strange? You were there, too. Playing football. Walking past the garden. I think I improved it, though. The garden. I read a lot of books, taught myself. Every spring I would go out planting.”

“Yes, I think I saw that garden. A beautiful garden. Was there a little stone wall? Yes, a little stone wall. And beautiful flowers.”

“Thank you.”

A guard walked by and the men stopped speaking. Their eyes followed the guard. The whole line of naked men quieted at the passing of the booted feet. The bare feet of the naked men stopped their weary shuffling, still as mortuary statues.

The second man nodded slightly once the guard had passed. “I think I remember you. I didn’t recognize you at first, but I do now. Did you have an older sister? A sister named Myrta?”

“Yes, that is me.”

The second man opened his mouth to speak, but closed it, fearing the silence that would follow his question. He nodded, thinking of the street, the garden, the games boys played, the girls they admired. He could smell the roses, the blossoms on the little tree. “There was a tree,” he said. “You had a little tree, with blossoms. They smelled lovely.”

“Yes, that’s the place,” the first man said.

The second man wanted to ask what kind of tree had blossoms that smelled so sweetly. He knew little of horticulture. But the guard was returning and the whispered voices were silenced.

“Juden!” the guard yelled. “Jetzt, jetzt! Schnell, schnell!”

The line started moving, the naked men shuffling forward.

“It is good to see you again,” the first man said, his lips barely moving.

The second man nodded. “Sholem.”

“Schnell, schnell!” the guard yelled.

The naked men walked into the chamber. The second man was still thinking about the blossoms. What were they? He would have to ask. The memory of the blossoms struck him so sweetly, so keenly, the fragrant taste of them hanging in the air. They would fall in graceful arcs, spinning slowly down to new resting places, gathering in pale drifts amidst the insubstantial ghosts of old petals. Petals, a spring snow atop the green, green grass.

Short Story Saturday: Jeff Somers

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:00:00 +0000

His Rings Like Gifts

By Jeffrey Somers

   We all stared at the gun, leaking smoke, wondering who'd fired it, drumming up all this damned noise. Even though we could see it in his hand no one dared look at his face; then we'd know. Guessing was better and didn't we have bigger things to worry about: The smoke and the blood and the old man cold and immobile before us? The sinking lights around and the haggard rough-edged sound of our breathing spun away, the echoes elastic. It started to seem like we were waiting for him to get up and dance, grinning red and wet at us. I sighed smoke.

   He didn't twitch, much less dance, but Eddie did. He jittered back, one hand stapled to his mouth, and skated into the shimmering china closet. His eyes pulled away from his face, trying to break free. The crystal unicorns and stained coffee mugs holding him up clinked hazardously, but nothing broke. Ted slummed over and pulled Eddie up, favoring him with silent, roundhouse slaps and snarling, wordless abuse. I left the job to him and listened to the crackle of dust in the air.

   I put a hand on Will's shoulder, stopping him from his careful retreat, and gestured. He grimaced at me with his yellow teeth and tried to explain but I shoved him forward and he shut up.

   We each grasped a frilly arm or a slack leg, pulling the old man taut between us. Someone asked me if I wanted that rare and I barked an answer, feeling sweat pop out on my brow as we lifted him and started to shuffle for the door, staggered and clumsy. Steadied, we made our way to the back, our breath in each other's faces, red skin sheened shiny and wet from the rain outside. They all had their mouths open; they suddenly all looked like strangled pigs to me and I couldn't help but smile. That pissed Ted off, so I swallowed it and stopped looking at him.

   At the back door we heaved the old man out into the pour, following reluctantly with shovels in hand. We dug half-heartedly and conversation dried up, replaced by the clink clink of shovels, and slowly we were surrounded by dark mounds. Deep enough, we pulled the old man in with us; he landed in a jumble and I got mad. Take a fucking care, I snarled, wiping muddy sweat from my face with a worn, calloused hand. He was a fucking corpse and with his watery skin and butcher-paper eyes our good will was all he had left.

   After, we sat by the grave and smoked dried-out cigarettes to clear our lungs. The mist started to roll in on its dusty sock feet, making us nervous. Ted got all superstitious about death and it got us all a little creeped out, his slow pleading waver fading into the ground to set root until next time. With chummy slaps on the back we pushed ourselves back into our jackets and ties and headed back to the dim silent house and the gummy blood on the floor.

   We could hear Rachel upstairs testing her hangover and I offered my new fellows a drink of whatever she had left behind her. I pulled off my jacket and draped it neatly on one of the chairs, heading up with my hands in my pockets to show no harm intended. My new fellows were all making noise and it was better that way, I suppose; the thick sounds filling the rooms and rising, buoying me up on hot air and soundproofing. It was healthy to have a ruckus behind me.

   As I rose her perfume filled the cracks between the noise and I could feel her light steps as they trembled on the floor.

   Despite the low warning moans from below, she seemed surprised to see me.

   Whirling in a small confusion of skirts she pointed a cigarette at me and smiled; we'd done this all before, in different ways. Her lips were smoky and so was her hair, and as she nuzzled my ear she whispered slow, slow over and over. I always tried to be, but it didn't always work. I tried to tell her what had happened but she kept covering my mouth with hers, my arms with hers, my legs.

   We woke up early, all of us, and cooked up great slabs of bacon in the blood-streaked kitchen. We were dried-out and edgy, in loosened, stale clothes and caky faces which cracked in the light. I had her perfume all over me and it made me thickly ill.

   Eddie and Ted argued over the money, spitting crumbs at each other and sipping coffee. Rachel watched them tight-lipped and sharp-eyed. It was impolite, wasn't something you argued about. I had left bloody streaks on her pale skin and bruises on her smooth legs and they made her look demonic with her sudden cat eyes.

   We all got ready to leave; it wasn't our house, after all.

   It took a while to gather everything together, we had scattered ourselves and forgotten most of it. Rachel showered as we searched and came down wet and sweet and rubbed pink by towels. Suddenly, she was too clean for the place, too clean for us. We sat around her with unshaven cheeks and yellowed teeth, dirt and blood on our clothes and hands, pushing through wire-stiff hair. She stayed away from us, now that she was sober. She looked at me like I'd left a film on her, a sneering look. I didn't mind. She'd be drunk again that night and we'd be friends again.

   As we left, a guffawing group of new friends, she stood in the doorway and smiled brutally after us. I turned just in time to see her close the door, and briefly wondered if I'd killed the right one of them.

The Novel Road Interview: Tawna Fenske

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 01:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: "Making Waves" by Tawna Fenske - Release Date Aug.2 2011

The Novel Road Interview: Tawna Fenske

I found a blog not long ago that made me laugh. So I went back, over the next few days, and my laughing continued, so much so, the blog made my morning read (between you and me, to make my morning read it has to be special). The blog name: “Don’t Pet Me I’m Writing” is a great way to start the day.

The thing is, I’m a guy and this blog is about Romantic Comedy. I’ve tried to shift the comments on the blog to Table Saws and Planers, but the women commenting act like I’m not there. They refused my insights into PVC and Duct Tape, though the author of the blog did seem to know her way around that magic, fix all tape. She even thought of uses that didn’t readily occur to me…

My guest on The Novel Road is author Tawna Fenske and quite simply, she cracks me up. Add to this the fact that she’s intelligent and writes humor better (in my opinion) than anyone at “Saturday Night Live” tells me the book world has a new Romantic Comedy star coming it’s way. In the interview, I liken her humor to Janet Evanovich, and I could see Tawna and the Great Evanovich co-writing one day, like their male author counterparts are doing in ever increasing numbers.

The problem will be: who will get the lead billing? Yes, Tawna is that good.

Curious? Let me prove it, but first, a little background:

A third-generation Oregonian who can peel and eat a banana with her toes, Tawna has traveled a winding career path from journalist to English teacher in Venezuela to marketing geek. She’s the author of the popular daily blog “Don’t Pet Me, I’m Writing” and a member of Romance Writers of America.

Her debut novel, MAKING WAVES, hits shelves August 2011 as the first in a trio of quirky romantic comedies from Sourcebooks, Inc.

Here’s a peek at her novel:

Juli’s lost count of the number of jobs she’s held, but she definitely never applied to be a pirate. Or a stowaway on a pirate ship. But when fate lands her on boat captained by Alex—a man whose unscrupulous boss kicked him to the curb after 20 faithful years—Juli finds herself in the middle of a revenge-fueled Caribbean diamond heist with a crew more suited to the boardroom than the poop deck. Alex didn’t plan to be a pirate, either. He just wants to recover his dignity, pension, and something resembling a normal life. But normal flies out the window when Juli enters the picture—a twist Alex wishes he didn’t find so exhilarating. But the two soon discover that while normal is nice, weird can be wonderful.

Please welcome, author Tawna Fenske…

Tawna Fenske

Me: Your comic sense is incredible. I see another Evanovich coming our way. What has had the greatest influence on your sense of humor?

Tawna: I'm probably the least funny member of my family. I grew up with everyone around me cracking jokes at all times—graduations, weddings, funerals—you name it, some relative could find a way to make it funny. I just happen to be the one writing stuff down.

Me: Favorite Stand-up comedian and why?

Tawna: Television isn’t really my thing. I don’t mean that in the “only a couple hours a night” sense—I mean that while there is a television in my home, I have no idea how to operate it. I’ve caught the occasional standup comedy routine that made me laugh (Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen Degeneres, Steven Wright) but since I have the attention span of an ADD mongoose on speed, I just don’t spend much time watching movies or TV or—hey, look…the cat needs brushing.

What were we talking about?

Artwork by
Monica Carretero

Me: Publishing is going through an evolution at the moment. How has this or will this affect you? New authors?

Tawna: Once upon a time, an author could live in a cave eating roots and avoiding human contact and still expect to have a successful career. Those days are long gone. Authors now need to be visible, interacting with readers on Facebook and Twitter and blogs and book tours. It’s not enough to be an author who writes a decent book—readers want to know what sort of cereal you eat and whether you prefer boxers or briefs.

I actually don’t mind this. My agent pushed me into the social media pool ten months ago, and I’m delighted with how quickly I’ve built a blog following that even includes a few people not related to me. I’m still a bit mystified by the whole thing—seriously, 1,000 strangers want to read about how I lost my rings in my underwear? But I’m happy about it (the blog following, not the rings) and I love interacting with readers and using that to gauge what they want. Social media helps me feel I can impact book sales in a small way without relying on my publisher to do everything. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sourcebooks and I’m thrilled they’re known for investing a lot to build authors’ careers. I just like the idea that I can contribute, too.

Me: Life experience in the writing process. What advice can you give writers on its importance?

Tawna: Er, I write romance, so is this a question about my sex life?

I’m sure there are plenty of people imaginative enough to dream up elaborate plots without ever leaving their sofas. I’m not one of them. Sometimes I’ll gripe to my husband that my creative well has run dry. “It’s Tuesday,” he’ll say. “When did you last leave the house?” If I have to think about the answer, I know I need to get off my butt and go find people to laugh at in the mall.

I travel a lot and have had tons of interesting life experiences, but I’ve found that just taking the dog for a walk gets my creative juices going. There’s something about fresh air and beautiful scenery and picking up poop in a little bag that stimulates me as a writer.

Stimulates. We’re back to the sex thing again, aren’t we?

They don't do Tupperware parties
in Oregon

Me: What was the first thing you ever wrote that told you “I can do this?”

Tawna: I’ve been writing for my supper my whole life—first for college scholarships, then for newspapers and post-college marketing jobs. I even won my wedding by writing about how I wanted to get married at center-court at a Portland Trail Blazer game (why yes, I did tie the knot in front of 21,000 screaming fans and sweaty athletes). Fiction was a big switch for me, and I didn’t really take a stab at it until about eight years ago. I knew right away I’d enjoy it, but there was that initial moment of terror where I realized, “wait—you mean I get to MAKE STUFF UP?!”

Me: In two sentences, describe your current book or work in progress.

Tawna: I attended an event several months ago where authors got to meet with librarians and persuade them to stock our books. I was surprised at how often writers struggled to describe their work. The one-paragraph blurb you use for a query letter or a book jacket is very different from a conversational pitch. If you and I were sitting down for a glass of wine and you said, “tell me about your debut novel,” I’d probably say something like:

Alex’s sleazy boss kicks him to the curb and steals his pension, so he and three colleagues head to the Caribbean to intercept the boss’s illegal diamond shipment in the most dysfunctional pirate mission in history. Things get complicated when Juli – who’s supposed to be dumping her dead uncle’s ashes at sea—has an allergic reaction to seasickness pills and accidentally stows away on their boat.

Is that what you’ll see on my book jacket or my Web site? Nope, those blurbs need more detail. But the point of a two-sentence pitch is to pique interest—to make someone ask, “and then what?”

Me: How strict are you when it comes to staying true to your outline?

Tawna: Outline? What’s an outline?

I’m not a plotter. I may have some faint idea where a story is headed before I start writing, but I generally like to be surprised along the way. I was on the phone with my editor a couple weeks ago when she praised the cleverness of a certain twist near the end of my debut novel, MAKING WAVES.

“I didn’t see that coming!” she said.

“Me neither!” I replied.

There was this long pause where I could tell she was trying to figure out if I was being funny. I wasn’t.

I’m constantly figuring out plot points and character traits halfway through the book and then having to go back and layer them in so they feel like a natural part of the story instead of the product of too much Chianti.

Me: I have been offering a piece of advice lately regarding the… Gulp!... Query Letters. I’m telling new authors to avoid even learning about a query letter till their manuscript is complete. I’ve gone so far as asking a new author not to even look the term up till he’s done with his book. Do you agree or not? Explain

Tawna: Every author is different, so I try never to stomp my feet on my soapbox and insist “THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE!” (Unless I’m talking to my husband, in which case I’m all about the stomping).

With that caveat out of the way, I’ll say that I’ve seen a lot of authors pour their heart and soul into a book without giving any thought to the big question, “what’s the book about?” or considering where it might fit in the marketplace. They type THE END and think their work is done—shouldn’t it be someone else’s job to sell the damn thing?

It shouldn’t. An author is his or her own best advocate for a story at any stage in the game, whether pitching to agents, editors, readers, or the drunk guy in the elevator. You set yourself up for heartbreak if you don’t at least consider the sales side before pouring everything you’ve got into a book. I’m not saying you should tattoo your query blurb on your right arm and your dream agent’s name on your left before you’ve finished the first chapter, but I am saying it will help you in the long run if you give some thought to your “hook” in the early stages of the game. You don’t need to craft query letters and make daily visits to agentquery.com, but it helps to have those things simmering in the back of your mind.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why the match is perfect?

Michelle is a great agent
but she lost the election to
the snarky Linda Grimes
who kicks puppies

Tawna: You know that thing I said earlier about tattooing an agent’s name on your arm? If I weren’t terrified of needles, I’d have a great big “Wolfson Literary” on my right bicep. I adore my agent.

Michelle Wolfson is actually my second agent, and in a way that’s what made me appreciate how amazing she is. She’s responsive. She’s smart. She’s ridiculously passionate about her authors’ careers. Even when we got socked with some of our toughest rejections, she always had a game plan and she never lost her enthusiasm for my writing.

Now that she’s landed me this wonderful three-book deal for my romantic comedies, she’s thinking ahead to what comes next and where we can both take my career in the future. Having someone with that sort of zeal for your work is invaluable. Having someone with the industry knowledge to actually make it happen is just plain orgasmic.

Me (sort of): What’s the #1 question people ask you since your three-book deal was announced?

Tawna: How did you decide to write romance? Depending on the tone of voice, there are three possible translations:

1\ Have you always been a pervert?

2\ Couldn’t write a real book, eh?

3\ Ohmygod I love romance!

I actually don’t mind the question, since it gives me a chance to be an ambassador for the genre. Romance fiction generated $1.36 million in sales in 2009 and was the largest share of the consumer market at 13.2%. It was the second top-performing category on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists (outpaced only by movie tie-ins). The genre runs the gamut from Christian inspirational to uber-hot erotica, from historical to paranormal. I think some people hear “romance” and think “Fabio with a greased chest.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s like hearing “animal” and only thinking “dog” instead of “dolphin” or “platypus” or “sucker-footed bat” or…well, you get the idea.

And yes—I have always been a pervert.

****************************************************

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Tawna for her time and to say “I told you so” to those who doubted my opinion about this truly funny lady.

The Novel Road Interview: Joan Wolf

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:00:00 +0000

I’m extremely honored to have author Joan Wolf as a guest on The Novel Road.

Joan has had 45 books published over the course of her 35 year writing career. The New York and the Washington Post Bestseller lists know Joan well. Her current passion, Christian Romance, added to a packed backlist of Historical Fiction and Contemporary Romance puts Joan in the ranks of some of the most successful authors around.

The first non-picture book she ever read was Black Beauty, and spent most of her childhood reading horse and baseball stories. As a teenager, she loved romantic suspense: Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, etc. As a young woman, she became a huge fan of Georgette Heyer and of Dorothy Dunnett’s "Lymond" series. She swears, "I must have re-read those books a hundred times". Thru the years, she found herself turning more and more to books of a spiritual nature. Gary Wills’ book "What Jesus Meant" has had a profound effect upon her life.

A former high school English teacher and Yankee's fan, she splits her time between working with her husband at their church's food pantry and writing.

Please welcome, one of the icons of the Romance Novel genre, Joan Wolf

Joan Wolf

Me: What was the first thing you ever wrote that told you “I can do this?”

Joan: My story is the tale of a desperate housewife. My husband and I had just moved to Connecticut with our new baby. I had quit work (that was what we did back in the day), I knew no one in my new town, and I was lonely and bored. I picked up a few books that were on the best-seller list (these were the days of Rosemary Rogers and Katherine Woodiwiss) and I read them. I had taught literature and creative writing to high school seniors for a number of years, so I thought, O'kay, I’ll give this a shot. I can work while the baby’s napping. It seemed a much more interesting project than cleaning the kitchen floor.

I set my book in the regency period not because it was about to become the hot new thing in romance publishing but because I was a huge Georgette Heyer fan and I knew both the historical and the social scene of that time. I had only the vaguest idea about what kind of a plot I might come up with. To be perfectly honest, I was surprised when I actually managed to write a whole opening chapter. I hadn’t written anything except term papers since the time I tried to write a book about a horse when I was a kid. Then I wrote another chapter, then another. Wow! I was a writer.

Selling the book proved to be a whole other story. I mailed it off to publishers on my own for almost a year, with no positive results. Once I even got my manuscript back with someone’s vacation pictures stuck in the middle. Finally some kind soul told me I needed an agent. I got the first one I tried and she sold my book (The Counterfeit Marriage) and got me a contract for two more. Interestingly, it sold to NAL, a company that had previously turned it down when I sent it on my own.

Me: Christian Romance is a rapidly growing market. What do you think has spurred the growth?

Joan: Christian Romance has always been popular in Christian book stores, but I think its surprising growth into the wider book market has been spurred by regular romance readers who just got tired of the heavy sex, vampires and werewolves that seem to populate most romance novels these days. I know I got sick of it, and that’s one of the reasons I turned to Christian romance. It offered me a chance to express my own faith while telling an emotionally and psychologically rich love story about human beings. The New York publishing houses are no longer giving women this kind of romance and these readers are discovering that Christian romance does. I think that’s why it is growing so quickly and I also think it will continue to grow as the word spreads: This is what readers are looking for in a love story.

Me: In two sentences “Hook” for your new book.

Joan: The book I have coming out in July from Thomas Nelson is called A Reluctant Queen, the love story of Queen Esther, and the title says it all. It tells the story of a sheltered Jewish girl who becomes the wife of the Great King of Persia, saves her people from annihilation by the evil Haman, and finds the love of her life in her exalted (but lonely) husband.

Me: How strict are you when it comes to staying true to your outline?

Joan: What outline?

Me: If you could have lunch with any Author you choose, from throughout history or today, what would you want to talk about?

Joan: I’m sure I should name someone exalted, like Shakespeare or Jane Austen or Dante. Well, maybe not Dante; I don’t speak Italian let alone medieval Italian. But, truthfully, I would adore to have lunch with Dick Francis. I have been a horse lover all my life and I’ve read every single one of his books - some more than once. Naturally, I’d want to talk about horses - and maybe writing (a little). I’m quite sure he was the most delightful man and I was truly saddened when I learned of his recent death.

Me: You have a love for Historic Fiction. I really enjoy your "time" in the sixth century. When did you come upon your love for the Arthurian Ideal?

Joan: When I was in high school Camelot was playing on Broadway and a boyfriend took me to see it for my birthday. Richard Burton played Arthur. I fell madly in love with him and thought Julie Andrews was insane to have looked at anyone else. After crying my eyes out at the theatre, I read everything I could get my hands on about Arthur. I read Mallory, of course, and the other medieval Arthurian tales, but what really began to intrigue me was the historical Arthur.

It sparked my imagination to think that a leader from deep in the dark ages could have left so strong an imprint that legends sprang up around him. That is why The Road to Avalon is set in the final days of Celtic-Romano Britain and I portray Arthur as the savior who kept civilization alive by turning back the waves of Saxon invasion.

Me: My favorite subject – Editing. Talk about editing your first book. Also, how did you know when to stop?

Joan: Alas, when I edited my first book I kept changing adjectives and adverbs until I thought I had the right ones. Now when I edit, I take things out. Adjectives, adverbs, sentences, whole paragraphs - gone forever. In truth, I rather cringe when I look at my early stuff.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why the match is perfect?

Joan: I have been very fortunate in my agents. Every one of them has really loved my books and has been committed to selling them. I would never have done as well as I have as a published author were not for excellent agents. My present agent, Natasha Kern, is the one who introduced me to the Christian Romance market. She’s been a huge help; I’m new to this genre and she knows just about everything.

Me: Heroes, have they gotten too perfect?

Joan: Every hero has to have a problem (an emotional or psychological problem, not a plot problem) he needs the heroine to help him deal with. A man who is sufficient unto himself is not the stuff romance is written about. He can be the most gorgeous hunk in the world, but he’s gotta have a flaw somewhere.

Me: If you got a blank check to write about anything and it’s guaranteed to be published, what would the subject be?

Joan: This is so easy for me to answer. I have been working on a book about Mary Magdalene that I just love. I have written the first two parts and my agent, Natasha Kern, is very excited about it. It’s a very different slant on Mary’s story, starting with her childhood and showing how the events of her life caused her to become the woman whom Christ regarded as one of his disciples.

I think women especially would love this book; it has a very feminist cast to it. I have become quite entranced with Mary myself, and I look forward to delving back into her world.

Me: The publishing industry is going through an evolution. How are these changes effecting you and what would you advise new authors to do?

Joan: Is it evolution or revolution? No one knows. All we know is that publishing will never be the same. This is good and bad. The old model of books shipped and books returned was ridiculous. There has been an increasing problem with shelf space in the stores - rows and rows of best sellers block out the chance for a new author to get a spot. The mid-list is almost gone. We just have to hope that what is coming will give new opportunities to new writers. I think it will.

************************************************************

The Novel Road Interview: Bryan Russell

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:12:00 +0000

The Novel Road Interview: Bryan Russell

     In the deep, unknown reaches of a land far to the North there is... Ok, there's a lot.

    But here, on The Novel Road, I bring you a glimpse of the heretofore unseen. You'll experience, first hand, a genius so vast it tickles the edge of madness. (just kidding about the madness part)

    This interview begins with a town. Actually it starts with a building... Well, if you want to be picky, it starts with what was in the building - A Bookstore

    On any given day, there was a line of intellectually gifted people, standing in the cold, holding Moosebucks coffee cups. They all wore glasses, occluded by chill fog, and many struggled to keep their pipes lit. The leather patches on the sleeves of Tweed coats, well worn. All carried umbrellas, mostly because they all thought it was cloudy when they left their homes, that personal fog there from the start of the day. They share tales of skinned knees from missing curbs. A scattered oath or two after a head bounces off the glass (from the general lack of depth perception) as each took their turn looking in the window of their ice bound Mecca... And for the person within.

   Ladies and gentlemen, Bryan Russell is here today, saving me you a trip North to the land of hockey, polar bears, beer and "Eh?"

   He is here, his store now a memory. Yet in his mind, his precious store will always be. Like many tales similarly told, a malevolent economy swept the spirit of 500 Ouellete Avenue, in Winsor, Ontario away.

Bryan’s love of the written word will always be. His talent for writing is remarkable. Enriched by his time surrounded by great works, he puts his hand to pen. His BA and MA in English and Creative Writing, as well as his Bachelor's in Education, along with a smattering and scattering of his writings published are building him to a new day.

   As far as The Novel Road is concerned, that day starts here. Why here and now?

   If you look at my guest lists, you will find authors with combined sales of over 100 million books. You will also find a select group of debut authors that, for one reason or other, I have come to believe will be successful due to the qualities found in their work. Everyone has an opinion on what makes for a great book.

Do I have a knack for seeing those that will step ahead of the pack? Maybe. Anyone want to argue the quality of Sean Ferrell’s work? I tell you now he is an author to watch as well as read.

   I have access to hundreds of unpublished writers. I picked only one to be here. He has no agent, no contract of any kind, and I tell you now. This is an author you will hear about one day.

May I introduce you to Bryan Russell…

Me: What was the first thing you ever wrote that told you “I can do this?”

Bryan: It was a Halloween story I wrote for my class in grade seven: an evil Halloween spirit breaks into my school and murders my classmates one by one. Luckily I was a well-liked and well-adjusted kid, and so wasn’t sent for psychiatric counseling. Plus, I murdered myself in the story, as well, and most gruesomely. No one gets away! Who needs happy endings?

Anyhow, my teacher selected my story to be read to the class. But the important part wasn’t that selection, but the response of my fellow students – they loved it. They were so excited, so interested in waiting to see who would die next, and how… there was something incredible about that response. That I hooked them into the story and they needed to know what happened. They believed in the story.

It was a profound experience for a kid. I think that confirmed for me the possibility of being a writer. Not just to write something, but to write something for someone – an act of communication.

Plus, people like getting murdered. Who knew?

Me: Favorite writing junk food?

Bryan: I don’t really tend to eat much when I’m writing… too lost in the world, I think, and food takes me out of that. I’m one of those tunnel vision people. I will drink, though. Straight whiskey. Oops, I mean coffee. Oh, wait, I can’t have that, either. Milk. Milk… wait, I can’t have dairy. Water. A cold drink of water. Yes, that’s what I have when writing. Preferably thawed from an iceberg.

Me: In two sentences, describe your book or work in progress.

Bryan: After killing his father in an argument, Japheth Tagori is sentenced to a life of service as a soldier in the Legion – yet he cannot escape his past, as the brigands who worked with his father (a smuggler) want Japheth dead because of something he’s forgotten he knows – the destination of a cartload of gold set to fuel a rebellion. The rebellion, though, is merely a diversion, as a war between empires looms on the horizon and Japheth finds himself a pawn in a dangerous game, manipulated by the mysterious Ghost King even as his enemies seek his head – and as Japheth seeks to understand his own identity as a soldier.

Me: How strict are you when it comes to staying true to your outline?

Bryan: An outline is an outline – it’s the book, in the end, that’s important. I always try to do what’s best for the story, and if that means diverging from the outline, then that’s what I do. And stuff always changes, for me, with all the subsequent drafts – sometimes drastically.

I usually have some main events and an ending that I hold strongly to – but even there, well, there are no sacred cows. Sometimes the red pen is hungry and will devour even the finest of original ideas.

Me: Lunch with you and any Author you choose, alive or dead, and why.

Bryan: I’d probably pick David Foster Wallace, though Tolkien would have to be in the running. I think they are the two writers who have influenced me most, and in different ways. Tolkien started it all – as a child, he got me into reading, and then writing. I consumed his books in endless loops.

Wallace was a little different – I read Infinite Jest when I was eighteen or so, and was blown away. “You mean, you can do that in a novel? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” A million new doors were opened by that book. I ended up studying a lot of postmodern writers, and used them as a springboard to all sorts of different things. And that sudden breadth of vision and understanding has been hugely important to me, and really helped shape me as a writer.

He died too young, sadly, and even though I never had an opportunity to speak with him, I did read David Lipsky’s Athough Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, which is a memoir of a road trip the author took with David Foster Wallace – and reading it is sort of like overhearing a long rambling conversation with Wallace. It’s as close as I’m ever going to get, anyway.

Me: I have been offering a piece of advice lately regarding the… Gulp!... Query Letters. I've told a new author to avoid even learning about a query letter till his manuscript is complete. Do you agree or not?

Bryan: I think both paths can work, though I lean toward not worrying about querying until the manuscript is ready. For some writers, doing it before can help – it can push you to clarify and focus your story, and keep that central conflict and drive of the story at the forefront. So, there are advantages. But there’s also a lot of risk. It’s very easy to get sidetracked and have all your energy flowing into writing a query, into endless angst and worry, resulting in a compulsion to dive headlong into the publishing world’s social media storm – sort of an online Bermuda Triangle for many writers.

Personally, I say write a great book – worry about the rest later.

Me: My favorite subject – Editing. Talk about editing your first book. Also, how did you know when to stop?

Bryan: Ha! The problem with my first book attempt (many long years ago) was that I didn’t edit it. Oh, I copyedited it, and smoothed sentences, and adjusted a few scenes here and there. But, really, I didn’t know how to edit, at least not for story, for structure and pacing and balance. Plot was a meandering construction, loosely understood.

It’s different now, where my novel has gone through many drafts and permutations. It’s vastly different from what I started with, and hopefully much better. And when to stop… damned if I know. It’s hard to change, I presume, once it’s in print.

Me: This question, courtesy of Jeff Hall : I'm a shortstory-ist. Writing a novel is like a crazy long marathon, only harder. How do you maintain a clear sense of that first passion that inspired you throughout a 200K word journey?

Bryan: 200K is too long! Sadly. My revisions would be much easier if that weren’t so. But, for me, I usually don’t start writing a novel unless I have a story idea that I know will carry me a long way. It takes a certain momentum to pull through a novel, page after page – the story needs a certain weight, a specific gravity. When that pull is strong enough, I simply can’t avoid writing the story. When it fills up my entire head, I know the story is ready to be written.

Me: You get a blank check to write about ANYTHING and guaranteed to be published. What would the subject be?

Bryan: Genocide.

Cheerful, I know. But I have a novel idea that won’t let go, even though I don’t think I’m ready to write that book yet – I’m not yet the writer I need to be. But in the future hopefully I will be, and hopefully I can write it – and hopefully it will mean a little something. In a sense, genocide is the dark shadow of the last century of human history. Writing this book would be my attempt to understand that shadow, to somehow try to come to grips with it. How do you understand human devastation? I’m not entirely sure you can, but perhaps the attempt is an important one.

I'd like to thank Bryan Russell for his time and energy

in doing this interview. Anyone wondering what

the artwork is about?Visit Bryan Russell daily at

The Alchemy of Writing

The Novel Road Interview: Sean Ferrell

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 05:15:00 +0000

I have an incredible list of authors that are gracing The Novel Road pages with their wisdom and humor.

All, from the debut authors to the Mega-Successful, are so incredibly talented in the art of the written word.

My guest today, Sean Ferrell, offers me personally a chance to talk to an author whose work I absolutely admire and (please forgive my arrogance) you should too.

It’s rare to find anyone that walks the Literary line, to create a work of mass appeal. Sean is one of those rare people. His novel entertains, as well as carries the heart and mind from first word to last.

He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York

I’m pleased to welcome Sean Ferrell to The Novel Road and in case anyone is wondering… I’m a fan.

**********************************

Sean Ferrell

 Me: I’m a huge fan of your novel, “Numb”. Your short stories "Billy Echo" and "Building an Elephant", which won the Fulton Prize from The Adirondack Review, have a "Literary DNA" that shows itself in "Numb". Talk about your past work, and how it has helped build you into the author you are today.

Sean: The term “literary” gets a lot of flack and a lot of respect, depending on who is doing the talking. In my mind it's just another genre, one that a lot of authors could be placed in if there weren't such an overwhelming marketing desire to label a book once and be done with it. It is often a label put on a book when people don't know what else to call it. I know powerfully good mystery novels that are literary. I know literary novels that are wonderful mysteries. And sci-fi. And horror, and women's lit, and YA, and on and on. The fact that my novel doesn't focus more on an element like the mystery of Numb's past, or the science/medical causes for his condition, may lend weight to the idea that it is “literary.” But you also mention Billy Echo (which floats in a magical realist stream) and Building an Elephant (is it sci-fi, magical realism, I don't know) and I think the main thing they have in common with Numb is that I was concerned with how the story was told as much as telling the story. I think when a writer is equally concerned with how the story is told as much as the story itself, that is when you find “literary” writing. I am thinking of books that are equally concerned with word choice and language, with new turns of phrase and putting words together in a way that is “just so.”

I think of it in the way that the musician Robbie Robertson once described his approach to writing music. He said that it never occurred to him to take a standard blues progression and use it in his music. He said that he thought it was his job to come up with his own phrases and licks and that he was shocked to meet older blues musicians who happily admitted to using other people's inventions in their music.

Sunste Park, Brooklyn

And I think that all writers, to some degree, have the literary lurking in their writing. It's just a matter of scale, the amount of focus they give to the telling in balance to the story, and there are certainly those who push it so far to the telling that some readers think “literary means no plot.” But as I said, I've seen many a great “genre” book that was clearly written with one eye on plot and one on the telling. Right now I'm reading Lost Dog by Bill Cameron, and you can't tell me that his control of voice and masterful eye for details of life, and wonderful way of illustrating those details, isn't literary. I'm laughing at this right now, because I know that Bill bristles at the greater respect that “literary” types get. He'd probably slap me for saying he's got a bit of the lit-rah-chure in him.

Me: What was the first thing you ever wrote that told you “I can do this?”

Sean: My first holy-cow-comma-this-is-working piece was a short story entitled ,“The Phrenologist's Collection.” It was the last story I wrote while in graduate school, and it was the first that felt like it was really mine. Up to that point I had written a lot that felt forced. I was trying to write in a way that would be accepted and encouraged. I didn't trust my own voice. “The Phrenologist Collection” was the one that told me I was finding my voice.

Me: Give me a two sentence “Hook” for your Novel.

Sean: Numb is the story of an amnesiac who wanders into a circus and discovers he can't feel pain. This “talent” leads him toward celebrity and self-destruction.

Me: You show a tremendous connection to your subject matter, as evidenced by your crisp plot and characters. Talk about your characters and how they crystallized in your mind?

Sean: I live with my characters chatting in my head for a long time. A lot of what I write doesn't make the final cut, but it's necessary to know them. Numb started as a man telling me about his morning routine, his cleaning of new wounds and working to keep old scars from tightening up. Mal appeared when Numb walked into the circus. He quickly demanded attention and was angry when he couldn't get it. Hiko appeared when I began to think of her artwork—I worked my way backward to her, starting with her work and finding my way back to the woman who made it. Emilia... who doesn't long for a little bit of Emilia in their life? And who doesn't fear it? In the end I get to know them by not forcing anything out of them. I write to discover what they do, not to talk about what I think they did.

Me: You get to have lunch with any author, from throughout literary history or present. Who would it be and why?

Sean: This is a horrible question, because who can I leave out? I choose Pynchon because I'm sure he'd order the entire menu. No, I choose Vonnegut because I'm sure he'd order something that used to be on the menu and then point out that it's no longer on the menu and so it goes. No, wait, I choose Italo Calvino because he'd order something the restaurant didn't realize was on the menu. Or maybe Margaret Atwood, to see her order something that should be on the menu. Or Ralph Ellison, to watch him choke down something that should never have been on the menu. No, Hemingway, because he'd eat at the bar. Or Faulkner, just to have drinks.

Me: I read an interview you gave on Writers on Process . You had me wondering about how you wrote on the subway, in long hand?

Sean: Short answer: uncomfortably.

Yes, I used to do this. My process changed after I wrote my third novel. It had to because I was getting novels out but not in a format I could pass to my agent or editor. Having two-hundred thousand words in cryptic Seanskrit does me no good. Now I have a laptop that I work directly into. I still miss my longhand process. If I ever find a million dollars on the street I'll go back to it. That is an invitation for someone to give me a million dollars.

Me: Talk about editing your book. How did you know when to stop? What advice can you give other writers on the editing "Stop line"?

Sean: Keep going over it again and again, but stop before you lose your sanity. Put it down for a long time and come back to it later. Write another book before your final edit. Or don't. It's your book, you know what it needs. Be honest with yourself, especially the scary “I don't want to have to work on that part” stuff. The stuff that scares you is the heart of your work. Every book is different. Don't measure how much work this book will need based on how much the last one needed. Every writer is different. Don't measure how much your work will need based on how much your friend worked on their book.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why the match is perfect?

Sean: What can I say about Janet Reid that hasn't already been written on the men's room wall of the Old Town Bar? She laughs at all my jokes, whether they're funny or not. She knows when to kick me in the kidneys. She's not afraid to have one too many rounds. She is viciously protective of her writers. She is a better evaluator of work than she gives herself credit for. She is unafraid to do what terrifies me.

Me: This question, courtesy of Jeff Hall: “I'm a shortstory-ist. Writing a novel is like a crazy long marathon, only harder. How do you maintain a clear sense of that first passion that inspired you, throughout a lengthy word journey?”

Sean: If something feels like a novel and then partway through it loses steam and you feel like you simply can't get back to it unless someone puts a gun to your head, why are you working on it? Work on something else, come back, or don't. I stopped working on my second novel to write all of my third, and then returned to my second. I thought I'd abandoned it because I'd lost my interest, but I did return to it, refreshed, and churned out another thirty thousand words to finish it.

You will know when a story is a novel. I knew with Numb. Up to that point I had only written short stories, and I assumed Numb was another. Suddenly he was going into a lion's cage to wrestle a circus lion and I realized that when he got out he would be going somewhere else, that what would happen in the lion's cage was the beginning of his story, not the end, and I took a big gulp of air and said to myself, “Holy shit, is this a novel?”

Me: If Sean Ferrell ever wrote a Non-Fiction book, what would the subject be?

Sean: “How to be Unsuccessful at Avoiding Work: A Multi-step Program.”

Seriously, I think that if I ever wrote a book of non-fiction it would probably be something incredibly esoteric and academic involving nudity and Star Trek.

Me: The publishing world is changing. Share your thoughts on what you think these changes may hold for authors.

Sean: More heavy drinking, worry, stress, opportunity for self-flagellation. You know, more of the same, only with faster download speeds.

Me: I hear Jeff Somers has sworn off alcohol, become a vegan and that you and he can be found wondering the city streets at night singing songs from "West Side Story"... Care to comment?

Sean: You've got some of the details mixed up. While on a bender, Jeff was found on the West Side swearing. He was wearing nothing but a sandwich-board advertising a neighborhood cooperative organic garden project, of which he knew no details when questioned by police, referring repeatedly to his sandwich-board as his “wash-n-wearables.”

Seriously, Jeff is a talented and good friend, and if it weren't for our mutual restraining-orders against each other we would probably get into a lot more trouble together.

Me: Can you give me your “must read” list?

Sean: I shy away from “must read” as a phrase. The contrarian in me immediately responds to “You simply MUST read/see/eat this” with “I'd rather not.” This attitude drives my mother crazy.

So “must” read, no, but I will list some authors I've been enjoying lately. I already mentioned Bill Cameron. There's also Marcy Dermansky, Colson Whitehead, Thomas Pynchon, Jess Walter and that rapscallion of screen and stage, Jeff Somers.

The Novel Road Interview: Gary Corby

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 00:08:00 +0000

The Novel Road Interview: Gary Corby

Marked well, are we by the past. Stories and legends told again, then again. The teller tells by different eye, yet draws on history’s ground for reality. How many times do we see the Iliad told, applied to this time and place? Shakespeare cast both comic and tragic view, touching generations from centuries past till now and on into the next.

Looking for a different tale? You came to the right place.

My guest today holds his history dear. So much so that he has been able to make it come alive in his ingenious, fast paced Historical Mystery, placed in ancient Greece. His book is quite literally one you won’t want to put down, let alone ever lend.

Pericles

Gary Corby is the author of “The Pericles Commission”, a great “who dun-it” that will have you walking the streets of ancient Athens using the best blue screen in the world: Your imagination. You will run wild with rich detail that Gary provides and leaves you wanting more.

His background in Mathematics and Computers, added to autodidactic love of history has both grounded and qualified him to convey his rich historic message. His sense of humor? We’ll have to thank DNA, because it rises again and again throughout the book.

He’s traveled the world, and no doubt been asked to leave more than one of the world’s great museums at closing time. The rumors that he is searched each time he leaves the Louvre and the British Museum, I’m sure has no basis. But look at his picture! If that face doesn’t say “Guess what I just… Found”, then he is the jolliest man from down under that’s ever been… Did I mention he lives in Australia?

Gary Corby

Me: On your blog, I liked your observation, about how bizarre many events throughout history actually were. I often talk to people about events or opinions, in our current times, that they find unique or new, and point out historical references that prove their thoughts or situations have occurred before. Have you found this to be true as well?

Gary: Oh, definitely yes. Technology changes throughout time, but people never change. Love, fear, ambition, lust, anger, greed, cowardice and valor, intelligence and stupidity...those are the things that drive any society, and they're a constant.

Me: I think Nicolaos is an amazing character. You’ve wrapped him well in both time and circumstance. Talk about how you created his personality.

Gary: So many detectives are super-brains. I did the opposite. Poor Nico! His brother is a genius. His boss is a genius. His girlfriend is a genius. He's just this average guy, trying to get along. But he's the one expected to solve the riddles.

My choice was easy, because living in Classical Athens at the same time as Nicolaos were at least 12 world-class geniuses. One more amongst that lot would go unnoticed. But a normal person who has to get along with these brilliant and highly eccentric people...now that's a story. Nico's job is not only to solve crime, but to be our observer during one of the most critical periods in history.

Me: You hit the reader “sweet spot” in how you balanced the levels of historical fact vs. creativity. How hard was it to limit how much history you wanted include?

Victoria, Australia

Gary: Of all the tough research problems a writer faces, the worst of all is leaving stuff out. You'd think it'd be the other way round, but it isn't so. I could write a couple of pages on the drainage system of Athens in 460BC, but no one's going to read it. People want to read story, and plot, and characters. Technical description is called exposition, and the rule for writers is, Research = Exposition, and Exposition = Death. What you can do, though, is write about the consequences of your research. For example, I know in Classical Athens sewerage pooled in gutters running down the middle of the street.

Herodotus

When my hero Nicolaos is dragged off by a couple of thugs, something squishy which doesn't bear thinking about gets caught between his sandal and his foot, and he has to hop on the other foot while shaking the first to get it clear. A whole day's research on drainage devolved into two lines of book text about a messy foot. That's good, because a foot with poo on it is story and character, a treatise on drainage is not.

That's the right way to do it.

The wrong way is what I frequently catch myself doing. In every book I've written a few paragraphs of explanation about the difference between a chiton, a chitoniskos, and an exomis. And every book, I take those paragraphs out, because the explanation is exposition, and Exposition = Death. (If you're wondering, they're all different styles of clothing worn by Classical Greeks. I could tell you more, but that would be exposition.)

Me: Talk about editing your work. How did you know when to stop before you submitted?

Gary: I'm supposed to stop editing? Damn, nobody told me that.

Here's the rule: we all have the ability to read two versions of a manuscript and decide which is better. We have this ability to greater or lesser degree, but we all have it. When I reach the point where I'm unable to make a change that is definitely better than what I already have, then it's time to stop. It doesn't mean the manuscript is ready. It does mean I've written to the best of whatever ability I have. When I have more ability or knowledge, I'll attack it again.

The version of Pericles Commission that went into production was major revision 18.

Me: Historical based Mysteries have had a very loyal following. I got hooked after my first Barbara Mertz (Elizabeth Peters) novel. Which authors have had an effect on your choice of genre and why?

Gary: I adore Elizabeth Peters! Or rather her Amelia Peabody books, and the Vicky Bliss stories too.

Major influences...there are many:

The Flashman stories of George MacDonald Fraser, for the historical accuracy and the humor.

The Greek novels of Mary Renault, because they're the best novels of Ancient Greece ever written.

The Roman mysteries of Lindsey Davis, Steven Saylor, and John Maddox Roberts, because those three created the first mysteries set in the ancient world.

Ngaio Marsh, because she's the best of the writers from the hey day of traditional mysteries. If I can plot a book to her standard, I'll be more than happy.

Herodotus. For most people, The Histories is the world's first book of history; for me, it's a menu I can open at any page and find a new novel.

Thucydides. He could teach Machiavelli a thing or two about power politics. (In fact, he probably did.) His writing makes modern thrillers look bland.

Aristophanes. The greatest comic of the ancient world. Simply hilarious. I've tried to make the slapstick humor of my books approximate what the Greeks themselves saw when they went to laugh at the latest from Aristophanes.

Janet Reid

Me: Talk about your agent and why the two of you are a perfect match?

Gary: Talk about Janet Reid? That's like talking about a force of nature. I honestly had no idea how famous Janet was when I signed with her. Now I know. When industry-insiders ask me who my agent is, and I reply, "Janet Reid", there's always this short pause of respectful silence. Or perhaps it's sheer terror.

Janet is one of the most Internet-savvy of the agents, and to me at my distance, that is hugely attractive. I'm not sure which of us suffers fools least; probably me, because she has infinite reserves of patience and knowledge when it comes to publishing.

Me: This question, courtesy of Jeff Hall : "I'm a shortstory-ist. Writing a novel is like a crazy long marathon, only harder. How do you maintain a clear sense of that first passion that inspired you throughout a 200K word journey?"

Gary: I don't want to be annoying, but I've never had a problem! Perhaps it's because I don't outline. When a twist appears in the story, I'm as surprised as you are.

A novel is a series of scenes, and each scene is like it's own little short story. If you think of it like that, then writing a novel doesn't seem quite so daunting.

Me: Publishing is going through an evolution right now. Talk about how this has or will affect you.

Gary: They probably worried the same amount when Gutenberg invented movable type. All those out-of-work monastery copyists! The Death of Publishing! Etc etc etc.

I come from a background of doing high end software development. That's probably inoculated me against the future shock some people report. From my point of view, when I started to learn about the publishing industry, it was like I'd taken a trip back into the 1970s.

Publishing systems are currently struggling to reach the same state software was in during the 1990s, or maybe late 80s. I look forward to joining the current millennium, one day.

In passing, I would dearly love to replace the senior management of major publishers everywhere with successful executives from technology startups (for strategic decisions) and people who've run chemical plants (for operations management).

Me: I see you have returned recently from a promotional tour, your first of many no doubt. Talk about how you were brought into this process. How involved were you in the choices being made?

Gary: Book tours were a foreign land to me. I brought to it a level of cluelessness that was probably unsurpassed. Luckily for me, that literary agent we just talked about used to be a book publicist. Janet saved me!

Stores are understandably not keen to talk directly to authors they've never heard of. I can only imagine how many inappropriate requests they get. So you really need a publicist to make the initial contacts. In addition the stores need to slot in author visits to their schedules. I wrote a long list of places I would have loved to visit. Then we checked to see which stores in which places were interested and had free time. Then we had to condense this down to a schedule that made sense! The whole process is much, much more work than I would have imagined.

Sappho

Me: You get to have lunch with any author, from throughout history or today. Who would it be and why?

Gary: Sappho. She was considered the Tenth Muse by the Greeks, which tells you right there how brilliant she was, but alas her work is almost completely lost. I'd make sure I left lunch with a signed edition of her complete works.

Me: The reviews for the Pericles Commission have been excellent. Amazon Bestseller. When can we expect your next novel?

Gary: You're right, the reviews have been really excellent. (Says the author, modestly). I'm shocked!

The next major release is The Pericles Commission in Australia, which will be the first week of January. Then book 2 in the series, "The Ionia Sanction" releases in the US in either October or November 2011.

The Ionia Sanction is set in the province of Ionia, which these days we'd call the west coast of Turkey. The plan is a book a year. I'm currently writing the third book, working title "Sacred Games", set at the Olympics of 460BC.

Me: Give me a two sentence “Hook” for Pericles Commission.

Gary: "Nicolaos walks the mean streets of Classical Athens, keeping civilization safe from enemies both domestic and foreign." There you go, I did it in one.

Me: Talk about life experience and how important it is to an author.

Gary: Two scenes in the next book, The Ionia Sanction, actually happened to me. There's no way I could have written this series in my twenties, because it requires the ability to step back and see people from a distance. Perhaps I could have written different books, but not these ones. If I'd been writing books back then, they would have been science fiction.

It interests me, and I've remarked before, that authors seem to hit their stride later in life than other artistic types. I imagine the need for characterization, and the overriding need to have something fresh to say, drive that.

Gary's first royalty
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Dr. Syntax: The Last Country House Party? E-Books and Publishing's Phony War

portales55@gmail.com (Douglas Morrison) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:34:00 +0000

Dr. Syntax: The Last Country House Party? E-Books and Publishing's Phony War